Researcher IDC recently surveyed more than 5000 developers from 116 countries, and found the use of open-source software to be "pervasive, used by almost three-quarters of organisations and spanning hundreds of thousands of projects". Government IT departments looking to cut costs associated with proprietary packages software are also being encouraged to embrace open-source software and, last week, India's communist-run Kerala state announced plans to reduce Microsoft's dominance in schools by promoting the use of Linux.

Popular flavours of Linux include Red Hat and SUSE and, while these are gaining traction at the enterprise level, a strong belief persists that the operating system is not ready for ordinary desktop users. To set itself apart, Ubuntu markets itself as "Linux for human beings" and, while those who have joined the movement praise its easy installation and the range of pre-packaged software, James Dumay, a member of Sydney Linux User Group, said it hadn't always been the case. "Until recently Linux desktop applications were not ready for consumption by the general public because a lot of people were writing a lot applications to do various tasks and these didn't conform to any one standard. This caused problems with usability and inconsistency across applications," he said.

However projects such as GNOME have introduced new guidelines to ensure consistency across common desktop operations, he said. Ubuntu can be downloaded or shipped in disk format free to users. Also bundled with the OS is the OpenOffice software suite (which includes word processor, presentation and spreadsheet applications), the Firefox browser, email and instant messaging tools, media player software and support for a wide range of peripherals such as webcams and printers.

However not all popular applications are available out of the box, especially when it comes to graphics and gaming. Although users can choose from an enormous range of applications for the OS, such as image-editing program The GIMP, or Cedega for running PC games on top of Linux, these must be sourced and downloaded individually. "Ubuntu doesn't try to give you everything; it just gives you sensible defaults," said Mr Dumay. Mahyar Goodarz, a government policy adviser from Victoria, said he switched over to the operating system from Windows XP about two weeks ago.

"I am really your granny user. I only use my computer to do things like accessing the internet and word processing," he said. He said the system had proved straightforward to install and found the OpenOffice applications similar in functionality to Microsoft Office.

"The one thing that didn't work was my mobile phone syncing software, but I didn't have a problem with my two printers, or my digital camera. I didn't have to install anything myself - it automatically just asked me if I wanted to install them," he said. Despite being happy with the system, he admits he did hit a bit of a bump in the road when he installed a new release of the operating system that caused his own system to crash. However he said instructions to fix the flaw were promptly posted on the community website and the system had since been working well.

Web designer, Dave Green, has been running Ubuntu for a few months and said he had found it easier to install than Windows XP. "OpenOffice 2 is a little bloaty but it can do stuff that Office can't and is just a lot more user friendly. It doesn't include a lot of hardcore functionality but for web surfing and email it's very easy to use," he said.

Melissa Draper, a member of the local Ubuntu community, said the number of local users was growing, with 169 people now on the Ubuntu community mailing list. While this group was made up of mainly technical users and capable early adopters, she said: "We have seen a growth of low-end users who need basically email, web and office applications that have turned away from proprietary OSs."