My Thoughts On Ubuntu
I’ve been playing around with my Ubuntu installation since reading Ben from Openswitch’s tour of his PC. Ubuntu has released Feisty Fawn now, which I have not upgraded so far. Right now I’m running Edgy Eft on my second hard drive, and have only been logging in to it every so often for the past couple of months.
I had planned on ditching Windows completely at the time, but I was having a few problems getting some of my settings right, and got tired of tweaking. For instance, I upgraded to a 19-inch flat screen monitor, and had a lot of trouble getting the screen resolution set right…….so I set Ubuntu aside at the time. It turns out, that wasn’t such a big deal to fix……….but sometimes you do have to do some research to come up with the answers.
Some Good Points
The way I see it, Ubuntu has a lot of good points. One of the main things being the price…….$0.00. Aside from that, the possibilities are just endless. If you know what your doing, you can make it do anything that computers are capable of doing. There are programs to fit just about any need you may have - that are also free. There’s a huge friendly community at the Ubuntu Forum and tons of customizations at sites such as Gnome-Look.org.
Not-As-Good Points
Something that’s not so great, is that upon installation, there’s a lot of things to do to get up and running. For instance, if you have a graphics card, installing the drivers can be a headache. If you want to watch those YouTube videos, you’ll probably have to install some codecs to get them to work. It’s mostly easy-to-fix stuff, but when you already have Windows installed, it’s a lot easier to just log in to it. I know, that doesn’t sound so bad. I guess the biggest downside is, you can’t use some programs that you really like. For most programs, there are alternatives available, but it’s not always the same.
I plan to keep learning more about Ubuntu/Linux. I think there are a lot of positive things about Open Source Software.
Welcome to the Ubuntu fold!! It’s my primary OS and once you get used to making the switch, I think you’ll learn to love it.
Incidentally, in Feisty Fawn installing the closed-source drivers is point-and-click easy. You can also use Envy. Have you tried Beryl yet?
Yeah, I agree. I already really like it a lot. If I can learn to use that command line, I’ll be set!
Actually, I’ve just been reading a little about Beryl. I haven’t tried to do anything with it so far. I’m not familiar with Envy.
Actually, even though I’m a command-line guru I intentionally force myself to *not* use the CLI. See if you can do the same.
Search for ‘beryl’ over at YouTube and you’ll find tons of cool examples.
It goes without any saying if you have any questions or need help with anything, drop me a line.
Thanks Brian. I looked at a few examples and will probably see if I can get it going when I’m off from work. Why not use the command line? I thought this made doing a lot of things much easier.
There are typically two schools of thought: If you’re administering servers, the command line is the only way to go. If you’re navigating a desktop, you should never have to drop to a command line or it’s a poorly designed desktop.
I’m not advising against it, just that I try not to if I can help it when using Linux as a desktop.
That makes sense……..and with Linux, you should be able to design you desktop to fit whatever your needs are.
sometimes you do have to do some research to come up with the answers…
oh, is that ever true! i too am looking to kick the Microsoft habit and join the Open Source fold.
i fantasize about going to Mac and then converting my Toshiba to a Linux OS….that way I can be out of Windows and MS….but I can still function 100% on Mac while learning to use Linux and the essentials of open source.
Yeah, that’s why I’m doing the whole “dual-booting” thing. I’ve never been on a Mac, but I hear they’re nice. The thing about Linux, is that once you learn your way around, you can have it behave and do anyway you please.