I've been using Ubuntu Linux for a week now so here's my review:
Getting up and running
The last time I tried installing Linux was back in 1999 and it was a fucking disaster. Like, full-on, "I'll kill you, motherfucker!" disaster.
Back in 1999, Linux couldn't find my network card. My graphics card wouldn't run in any resolution but 640x480 and my motherboard's sound jack might as well not have existed. I was already building up to a full-on tantrum when I discovered that Linux had deleted my Windows installation -- even though I had told it not to.
That was a bad day.
This time around, everything was cool. I wasn't ready to commit 100%, so I split my ancient second hard-drive into half-windows and half-linux. It was really easy to do so using the install menu. There were a few more questions like timezone, and choosing a username to log in with. Nothing big. I just answered them as best as I could and walked away. When I came back it was done. It seemed to take only about twenty minutes..
Note: While Linux played well with Windows, the other way around wasn't true at all. Windows didn't respect that I had resized the clunky second hard drive and wrote over my Linux installation with Bittorrent Porn. Real classy, Microsoft. Why don't you put that porn somewhere else? Shesh. And wash your hands.
Look at all this free crap!
I've been a Windows XP guy since, like, forever, so I'm used to spending the entire day after a reinstall trying to get back the programs I need to get my work done. It's just something that you do. I don't even think about it anymore.
With Linux though, already-installed was Firefox, Thunderbird (my favorite e-mail manager), OpenOffice (Microsoft Office clone), and Gimp (a Photoshop clone.) That's like, all I need to get my work done so the whole post-install install-fest didn't happen.
All I basically did was play around with desktop themes for an hour.
Whoa, more efficient work.
I'm not turning into a Linux zealot. Really, I'm not. But there's one feature I have to rave about: workspace switching.
On Windows XP, I'd often have eight or nine programs open. But I wouldn't actually be using all of them. At most I'd be using four or five and the rest were things like e-mail, web browser windows or reference documents. I didn't realize it before, but it's a pain in the ass to alt-tab past all that shit when you're trying to find the other window you're working in.
Linux fixes this problem by giving you multiple desktops to work with at the same time. Whoa, crazy right? I use four. I drag e-mail and my CD player into the last one, plop the web browser into the third, leave the second free for temporary stuff like transfering files, and the first desktop is reserved for only the stuff I'm immediately working on.
Not a huge deal, but it does save time and keeps me from getting distracted by whatever's open in my web browser.
I only planned to switch to Linux permanently if it helped me get shit done quicker than I could do it in Windows, and this may be the key feature that seals the deal. Multiple desktops seem like such an obvious idea now.
Negatives.
* Fonts are weird. At normal size the default one (Times New Roman?) looks great. But when it resizes, it looks weird. Like right here in SuicideGirls, the font in this update text box has sharper edges than I'm used to. I don't know how to describe it. Star treky?
* Internet video is mostly unaccessible and won't ever come back. Windows Media Player and Quicktime don't work because Microsoft and Apple don't have anything to gain by supporting Linux. Thankfully, really popular video clips (like Youtube.com and Google Video) use flash instead and that works. I was afraid I'd never be able to see someone light themselves on fire again.
* I miss plug n' play. I plug in my digital camera and nothing happens. I have to "mount" it to read off it. I don't know how to "mount" it. I suspect it's easy, but don't care enough to find out.
* File sharing and print sharing is supposed to work, but it's not obvious how to set it up. I can't be assed to look up the solution. It's easier for the time being to e-mail documents to the computer across the room.
* This one's petty, but it's important to me -- I have a $350 graphic card, and yet it's completely wasted. Linux doesn't use it to do any special effects and that disappoints me. Blah. OS X has all this cool zooming shit that goes on and Linux has nothing! There's some over the top experimental stuff out there you can install, but I'm not about to do that just one week in. I'm not ready to recompile my windowing manager.
All in all, pretty cool so far. We'll see what's it's like in a month's time.
Getting up and running
The last time I tried installing Linux was back in 1999 and it was a fucking disaster. Like, full-on, "I'll kill you, motherfucker!" disaster.
Back in 1999, Linux couldn't find my network card. My graphics card wouldn't run in any resolution but 640x480 and my motherboard's sound jack might as well not have existed. I was already building up to a full-on tantrum when I discovered that Linux had deleted my Windows installation -- even though I had told it not to.
That was a bad day.
This time around, everything was cool. I wasn't ready to commit 100%, so I split my ancient second hard-drive into half-windows and half-linux. It was really easy to do so using the install menu. There were a few more questions like timezone, and choosing a username to log in with. Nothing big. I just answered them as best as I could and walked away. When I came back it was done. It seemed to take only about twenty minutes..
Note: While Linux played well with Windows, the other way around wasn't true at all. Windows didn't respect that I had resized the clunky second hard drive and wrote over my Linux installation with Bittorrent Porn. Real classy, Microsoft. Why don't you put that porn somewhere else? Shesh. And wash your hands.
Look at all this free crap!
I've been a Windows XP guy since, like, forever, so I'm used to spending the entire day after a reinstall trying to get back the programs I need to get my work done. It's just something that you do. I don't even think about it anymore.
With Linux though, already-installed was Firefox, Thunderbird (my favorite e-mail manager), OpenOffice (Microsoft Office clone), and Gimp (a Photoshop clone.) That's like, all I need to get my work done so the whole post-install install-fest didn't happen.
All I basically did was play around with desktop themes for an hour.
Whoa, more efficient work.
I'm not turning into a Linux zealot. Really, I'm not. But there's one feature I have to rave about: workspace switching.
On Windows XP, I'd often have eight or nine programs open. But I wouldn't actually be using all of them. At most I'd be using four or five and the rest were things like e-mail, web browser windows or reference documents. I didn't realize it before, but it's a pain in the ass to alt-tab past all that shit when you're trying to find the other window you're working in.
Linux fixes this problem by giving you multiple desktops to work with at the same time. Whoa, crazy right? I use four. I drag e-mail and my CD player into the last one, plop the web browser into the third, leave the second free for temporary stuff like transfering files, and the first desktop is reserved for only the stuff I'm immediately working on.
Not a huge deal, but it does save time and keeps me from getting distracted by whatever's open in my web browser.
I only planned to switch to Linux permanently if it helped me get shit done quicker than I could do it in Windows, and this may be the key feature that seals the deal. Multiple desktops seem like such an obvious idea now.
Negatives.
* Fonts are weird. At normal size the default one (Times New Roman?) looks great. But when it resizes, it looks weird. Like right here in SuicideGirls, the font in this update text box has sharper edges than I'm used to. I don't know how to describe it. Star treky?
* Internet video is mostly unaccessible and won't ever come back. Windows Media Player and Quicktime don't work because Microsoft and Apple don't have anything to gain by supporting Linux. Thankfully, really popular video clips (like Youtube.com and Google Video) use flash instead and that works. I was afraid I'd never be able to see someone light themselves on fire again.
* I miss plug n' play. I plug in my digital camera and nothing happens. I have to "mount" it to read off it. I don't know how to "mount" it. I suspect it's easy, but don't care enough to find out.
* File sharing and print sharing is supposed to work, but it's not obvious how to set it up. I can't be assed to look up the solution. It's easier for the time being to e-mail documents to the computer across the room.
* This one's petty, but it's important to me -- I have a $350 graphic card, and yet it's completely wasted. Linux doesn't use it to do any special effects and that disappoints me. Blah. OS X has all this cool zooming shit that goes on and Linux has nothing! There's some over the top experimental stuff out there you can install, but I'm not about to do that just one week in. I'm not ready to recompile my windowing manager.
All in all, pretty cool so far. We'll see what's it's like in a month's time.
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that's like, the first I've heard from you since after Trev's party.