The Computing Club held their Unix Install Fest event earlier this week where students gathered in the food court atrium to discover Ubuntu - an open source operating system that is based on Unix. Ubuntu is completely free operating system alternative to Windows and Mac OS X.

 

The Computing Club at CMUQ was founded to serve the CMUQ community by promoting different forms of computing. Majority of the CMUQ community are either Windows or Mac OS X users and are unaware of what Unix is. Members of the Computing Club demoed Ubuntu and what the advantages were over other operating systems and the endless possible ways one can modify the Ubuntu operating system. One of the benefits the Computing Club tried to convey was the fact that Ubuntu is completely open source so anyone can take the operating system, modify the system and source code to suit their needs.

 

At the event free CDs of the Ubuntu operating systems were distributed to the CMUQ community. Students from all majors showed up at the event, not just Computer Science students. This event gave students an opportunity to explore a whole other world of open source computing. Along with free Ubuntu CDs the Computing Club provided a flyer which provided instructions on how students could install and run Ubuntu simultaneously alongside their current Windows or Mac OS X operating system. In addition the members of the Computing Club were present to help students in installing and setting up the operating systems on their laptops.