Geek alert: Ubuntu experience

A few days ago I installed Ubuntu Linux for the first time. As an Informashun Technologies Profeshinal I had obviously installed Linux many times…both as a server and a workstation. And in typical form I’d found the experience to be typical Unixy: Great as a server, painful as a desktop.

But I gotta tell ya, Ubuntu has this thing rockin’ as a desktop. So far, everything has “just worked”. There have been a few excursions into the command line and a couple googlin’s to find out some particular way the system things. But even then the information was readily available. Overall it’s been an amazing experience.

After installing the nvidia drivers, graphics were beautiful. I’d say they’re better than MacOs any day. Very crisp and basic. The X screensavers occupied me for several days just seeing what they’d come up with. Yes, I know…I’m easily distracted.

I had to install a seperate DVD burning package to burn some DVDs, but so far that’s working well too.

The word processing packages haven’t been really put to the test, but it’s OpenOffice…and it seems to be pretty snappy. The browser is Firefox, so that’s all standard. The flash plugin was easy to get working, and it actually seems to be better in Ubuntu than in windows.

This is definitely not the Linux of a couple years ago. This will definitely find a place alongside my Windows box and Macbook.