I'm a huge fan of alternative operating systems. I was a teenager when OS/2 2.0 was released and spent $89.99 of my hard-earned paper route money on a shiny new copy. Of course, my dad's 386 just couldn't keep up with the demands of the OS and, sadly, it was relegated to a separate partition rarely to see the light of day. I always felt OS/2 was a little ahead of its time in terms of hardware requirements, but I faithfully upgraded to versions 3 and 4 until I finally gave up the dream and joined the rest of the Windows world.
Actually, those few years with Windows weren't too bad. In my opinion, the Win95 GUI was decent (for its time) and besides, I was probably more focused on all of the geeky new things I could play with on the Internet (the dancing baby, email, WarCraft II, etc.). As the novelty of the Internet wore off, I once again started to dabble with operating systems. I tried a few Linux distros (Red Hat, SuSE, Mandrake) and even FreeBSD but I always ended up abandoning them for some reason. Maybe it was the lack of polish---they just didn't
feel good.
When MacOS X was released, I was excited. The visual effects were, of course, stunning. I also liked the fact that it was based on BSD which meant that I would have access to a much wider array of software than the previous MacOS---not to mention the conveniences of a modern OS including memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking. When MacOS X 10.3 was released, I was finally ready to take the plunge. I bought a PowerBook G4 12" which, to this day, is probably the best laptop I've ever owned. I really enjoyed the MacOS X experience. Everything seemed quite consistent and well-thought-out. And to my surprise, the quality and availability of third-party apps were excellent.
So why did I move to Linux? Well, for starters, I needed a laptop with an Intel processor for school. MacBooks were available but not with a Core 2 Duo (I wanted 64-bit capability). So I settled on a Compaq Presario V3000. While its certainly a step down from my PowerBook in terms of quality and sturdiness, it still works. I started with Windows XP Home and quickly upgraded to XP Pro (it was free through my school's MSDNAA program). XP was boring and I never really liked the clownish interface. When Vista was released, I loaded it but was pretty unimpressed. There was nothing special about Vista that made me like it more than MacOS X. And believe me, I
really tried to like it.
Finally, Linux enters the scene. I chose Ubuntu because of the positive buzz around the software. I probably would have tried SLED but I could never successfully download the 5 billion terabyte image from Novell. My first version of Ubuntu was Dapper Drake. The problem was, hardly anything worked on my laptop--video drivers, wireless, ACPI, etc (amazingly, my 5 in one card reader--that I never use--worked). I liked the GNOME interface and was hoping Dapper would work out but I quickly reverted to XP in order to get some actual school work done. I ignored the next release (Edgy Eft) because, by that time, I had my free copy of Vista that I was messing with.
Towards the end of my semester, I had some free time and decided to try the Feisty Fawn beta. With no manual configuration on my part, video and sound worked out-of-the-box. However, wireless was still an issue and was by far the most difficult thing to get working. I have the dreaded Broadcom 4311 and searched the Ubuntu forums high and low for a fix. At one point, I had the wireless card working with the native Linux drivers but the download speeds were dreadfully slow. After unsuccessfully following some how-to's and tutorials for ndiswrapper, I gave up for a week and considered purchasing a new wireless mini-PCIe card. By that time, the final release of Feisty was out so I downloaded the updates. Shock! Horror! Wireless using ndiswrapper suddenly worked using WPA (and briefly using WPA2)! Download speeds seemed faster than when running Vista.
I enabled Compiz and Ubuntu offered to download and install the propriety nVidia drivers required for 3D rendering. WOW! The effects are great! I prefer them to those of MacOS X (for now). The menus and applications are organized and neatly installed. OpenOffice.org is now definitely acceptable as an MS Office replacement and is well-integrated with GNOME--it looks really sharp.
Of course, I still have one big gripe; I can't get ACPI to work. So I leave the laptop on for extended periods. But, that's only a minor issue since I'm usually on the computer every waking hour of my life anyway. All things considered, this is a really polished release and I hope that it only gets easier and better with subsequent releases. In fact, I haven't needed to boot Vista since I got wireless working last week.
Still, I'm open to trying new operating systems. I'm definitely anticipating Apple's next version of MacOS X (Leopard). And I still haven't given up on Vista. It's a first release so I'm willing to cut them some slack. We'll see if Service Pack 1 cleans things up a bit. But I'm glad that I'm
finally able to use Linux as a desktop OS without reservation.
What I like about Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn):
- It finally works well on my Compaq V3000 laptop (wireless, video drivers, everything but ACPI)
- Comically simple application installation
- Nautilus file manager is polished and smooth (I love the image and document previews and the ability to visually tag folders similar to labels in MacOS X)
- Holy crap! Compiz is awesome! The visual effects rival those of MacOS X and they are hands-down better than Vista's effects.
- Software selection. Impressive collection of good open source software (Liferea, mPlayer, F-Spot, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc, etc, etc....)
- Automatix 2. Fills the gaps by providing useful software (even non-open source)
- Really stable so far, but I haven't put it through the paces yet.
What I don't like about Ubuntu 7.04:- Come on, the wireless stuff should be automatic by now. To Ubuntu's credit, they do make it easier to install ndiswrapper now.
- ACPI. Are you kidding? It still doesn't work? Good thing I'm a computer-aholic and don't have to turn off my computer very often.
- Filesystem organization. This is not Ubuntu-specific, they do as good a job as anyone. I just don't like the Linux file structure. My complaint is mainly with application files. Where the heck are they? I really prefer Apple's model here with application packages that you can just double-click--and they're all located in one place. There's a project that's trying to bring this concept to Linux--can't remember the name or link off the top of my head.
