All About Ubuntu One

By Hoo Ann

With the recent development of cloud computing, many big companies have already launched their cloud sync services. The most conspicuous examples are Dropbox, Sugarsync and Google Drive. And Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution currently, also offers its own cloud sync tool. this is Ubuntu One. With 5GB of free storage, Ubuntu is better than Dropbox and equal to Sugarsync and Google Drive. If you want more storage, then you will have to pay for the additional storage space. The good thing about Ubuntu is that their paid storage is split into small 20GB pieces and the cost is more affordable than other service. Also the storage space of Ubuntu One is unlimited so you can just keep adding more and more 20GB bundles to your account in order to have as much storage as you need.

One of the most useful things you can do with Ubuntu One is to use it as an online backup tool. Just upload all the important stuffs on your computer into your Ubuntu One account and they will stay there forever until you decide to delete them. So if your laptop is stolen or something really bad happens to it, you still have your valuable data secured.

You can also use Ubuntu One as an integration tool. For example, I can easily sync a folder on my Windows machine to another one on my Ubuntu devices so I can access this folder from both machines. This just is not possible to do on many other cloud storage services.

Another cool thing you can do is to use it for music streaming. This is a very unique feature of Ubuntu One. With a small fee of less than $40 a year, you can sync all of the music within your Ubuntu One account to a mobile device or on the web interface. With this awesome feature, you can access and listen to your music library whenever you want, as long as you can connect to the internet. And if you purchase this music streaming feature of Ubuntu One, you will also have 20GB of storage space for free to store anything you want, not just music stuffs. For me, this is the biggest selling point as I use the web interface all the time to stream music when at work.

And as with most cloud syncing tools, there are mobile applications for you to use on your smart phones. As I have mentioned above, you can stream your music (if you purchase the music streaming service) but you can also access all of your other pictures, documents and files and edit them and Ubuntu One will automatically detect the changes and upload the changes. Another really awesome feature when you use your phone with Ubuntu One is that, when you take a photo with the phone, the photo will be automatically upload to your cloud account so you can have your pictures on all your devices.

Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution nowadays and it has many advantages over Windows. If you want to try Ubuntu, you should learn how to install Ubuntu from USB. Also, if you are interested in Linux, you can check my blog about Linux tips and tricks.