I finally got a new computer at work here, and after hearing about Ubuntu
for years, I decided to take the plunge. I installed ubuntu.
I have to admit, I am impressed. I spent years getting my old Fedora Core
5 Desktop up to a point where it was comfortable, and functional. It fit
me like an old skin. I think I compiled most of the GUI myself, and
tweaked it to my satisfaction. It was at least hundreds of hours of
effort.
Ubuntu is better. I know what I'm doing, but Ubuntu is so fucking slick.
Every little thing, Like the multimedia keys on my fancy-dancy MS keyboard
that I got working after a few hours of futzing about. On ubuntu, they
worked perfectly. Fonts look nice, for the first time *ever* in Linux,
and they look nice with the change of one radio button. My music player
displays the song name. Evolution notifies me of new emails seamlessly,
and unobtrusively. OpenOffice works great out of the box. VMWare works
great out of the box. My fancy 22" widescreen works better than it does
in XP. I could go on and on.
Give it a couple of years, it'll give Mac a run for it's money UI-wise.
In some ways it's already better.
What I find most impressive is the Ubuntu Forums. Most problems are
solved by the forums at www.ubuntuforums.org, with not only a search
function that lists really good, relevant results, but if, say, you do a
search, and don't find anything, and start typing a post to the forum
titled "X problems with Foo", the forum will look up similar posts.
I know this is way late, and I'm getting on this bus near the last stop,
but I've been thinking about these problems for a long time. I've been a
Linux User for more than 10 years now, I've seen Linux run on just about
every piece of hardware known to man. I've supported Linux for more than
5 years, and I've developed Linux (not the kernel, just a distro) for more
than 3 now. They really have solved every problem. Now it's just a
matter of traction and mindshare.
Published
27 February 2008