So I'm kind-of into computers and I like to experiment. I like to listen to some geeky pod casts, and there is a lot of buzz in the tech world about Linux. Linux if you don't know is an operating system like windows XP or Vista, or Mac OS X. I decided to see what all the excitement was about a year and a half ago and I downloaded a copy of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a flavor of Linux that is supposed to be the easiest to use.
Another reason that I tried it was the way you can take it for a test drive without making any changes to your computer. They have what is called a live CD. You put the CD in your computer, reboot, and when it first starts up you press F12 for the boot menu and then select boot from CD.
I was unimpressed by Ubuntu. It was so slow. I messed around with it for an afternoon and then tossed the CD on top of one of those CD spindles and forgot about it.
Then last year I bought a new computer with my tax return. It was super-fast and had a huge hard drive. I also found out that it did not get along with my external hard drive and would constantly crash whenever the external drive was connected. One Saturday I took the thing apart and installed the drive that was buried inside into my computer. Now I had two huge hard drives and I needed something to fill them up with.
I decided to give Linux another chance. I searched for that CD I had made months earlier and installed it on the new hard drive. It was about a million times faster after I installed it. Of course in retrospect it makes perfect sense that it would be faster to have it installed rather than having to run off the CD.
Ubuntu was still a pain in the butt though. The web browser it comes with is Firefox (my favorite) was unable to play any video. I went to Adobe's web page and there were 3 different ways to install Flash; none of which made any sense to me. I popped in a DVD and Ubuntu couldn't play it. I tried to listen to some music, but Ubuntu couldn't play any of my mp3's! It was so frustrating! Why would I want to switch from Windows to Ubuntu when I couldn't do the things I use my computer for the most?
I did a lot of googling trying to figure out how to do this and that. Play DVD in ubunut, play mp3 in ubuntu, DVD wont play in ubuntu... and on and on.
There is a lot of user support for ubuntu, and a ton of forums to search through. Everything kept coming back to terminal commands I needed to type. Remember the old DOS days when you had the black screen and C>: ? Same thing, only now its user @ computer~$ and the screen is white. I learned a lot of little commands that had to be typed to download little “packages” so that Ubuntu would play DVD's and mp3's and all the other little things that were driving me nuts. The most important one was sudo apt-get install libdvdread. After a few days I had Ubuntu able to do most of what I do in Windows. Thats not a very good track record, when you come from windows that just does all that stuff without any problems.
I was messing around with things and had to reinstall Ubuntu a few times because I did something that I couldn't figure out how to undo. I didn't care, because this is all just an experiment and I don't keep anything in Linux that I have to have. I can reinstall at anytime and not lose anything important. Most recently I somehow deleted the sound card drivers, and that required a reinstall. I decided to try the 64bit version that time just for kicks. I knew there were problems for 64 bit Vista, so I expected there to be similar problems in Linux. I was mostly wrong, and the only problem I ran into was with Flash. There is no 64bit Linux flash player, so that was a pain. Especially since I don't have cable and I watch most of my TV online. No Flash, no TV.
I have been thinking for a while now that I should upgrade to the newest version of Ubuntu. New versions are released every 6 months, and the latest was released in November. Last Saturday I bought a Linux magazine at Borders that had the latest Ubuntu CD in it. I moved from Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibex! It was no problem for me to delete the Linux partition and then install Ibex in the empty space.
It took me about 45 minutes yesterday to download all the updates and install some of the “necessary” packages. This time I am trying some new things. I used medibuntu to get all of my DVD/mp3 problems taken care of, and I downloaded the VLC player.
VLC player is available in Windows and Mac too, and can pretty much play any type of file. I had been using totem and totem/xine on my last install with a whole bunch of codecs I had downloaded and had never run into any problems. Still haven't found any problems, but I think video plays smoother in the VLC player than it does in totem.
I have now gotten to a place where there really isn't anything important I can't do in Ubuntu that I can do in Windows. Ubuntu is not nearly as user friendly as windows is, but it is definitely usable.
Things that are good about Ubuntu:
1 Price! Ubuntu is free and will always be free. I paid $14 dollars for a magazine with ubuntu install discs, rather than burning my own. It was also an impulse purchase. Newegg.com lists Vista ultimate at $180. I already saved $166!
2 Pre-installed software.
Ubuntu comes with the OpenOffice, suite: a word processor, spreadsheet program, and presentation program. All free. I paid $80 for the student version of Microsoft Office Last year! Open Office is maintained by Sun Microsystems and is the child of Star Office from back in the 90s. Its what I am using right now to type this up, before I copy it to my blog!
Firefox! The best web browser, and all the extensions work in Ubuntu.
Pidgin is an IM client that works with everything; AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ... and it also functions as an IRC chat client too!
Transmission is the built in BitTorrent client. If I can't watch a TV show on the internet (ABC shows and the Big Bang Theory) I get it using BitTorrent.
Rythmbox is the music player. Its pretty good, but I don't use it much. Everything I want to keep safe (like my music) doesn't get stored in Ubuntu. I have copied a few songs over to test it out, but it would be too hard to try and recreate my iTunes play lists
Totem is the movie player-its ok
Evolution is the email software- never used it but I'm sure its great!
3 Linux is safe! There are no viruses or spy-ware or worms on Linux. None. If there were you would still be protected, because Ubuntu doesn't automatically give you access rights to install software. You have to elevate yourself to root or super-user using the sudo command to install software. Viruses would have to do that too, but they don't know your password. All the funny videos that get passed around in email I never open in Windows. That would be an easy way to get a virus. But I never worry about that in Linux. Its just not something to worry about.
4 Open Source Software is great. A lot of programs I was using to solve problems in Linux also work very well in Windows.
I use a program called handbrake to copy my DVD's onto my iPod. It was originally written for macs, but was ported over to PCs and Linux. In windows I have to pair it with AnyDVD to get around the copy protection, but because I have the libdvd library on my Linux computer I don't need any extra software.
I use TrueCrypt to encrypt my private stuff. Things like financial information that I don't want anyone to have, and my external hard drives. If someone steals them they won't have access to my backups and personal information. Truecrypt works on Linux, PC and Mac, and an encrypted file made on one operating system can be decrypted on the other two. Plus, it doesn't use certificates like Vista's Bitlocker that can be deleted. Just a password.
Another Program I like is VLC player. I was looking for another media player to use because Totem, the default player in Ubuntu, played video back kind of choppy. VLC can playback just about any media file without having to scour the internet looking for a codec or plug in. Everything just seems to play right out of the box! VLC works on PC and Mac too.
Now Somethings I don't like about Linux:
1 There are lots of hardware issues. Mainly there are no drivers. Many are written, or worse reverse engineered, by enthusiasts. A lot of drivers are buggy, and a lot of hardware simply have no linux drivers. Manufacturers make sure they write drivers to work with Windows, but not for Linux. Ubuntu does a good job of having a lot of drivers, but there are a lot that are missing. My webcam for example has a built in microphone. The Camera works, but the mic doesn't.
2 There are a lot people who think that Linux is free, and feel that any linux distribution should not include anything that isn't. That means things like mp3s and DVD's don't work in linux at first. However, if you have any .ogg files they play perfectly fine, because that codec is open source. It only takes a few minutes to install the software to play mp3s and DVD's, but still; it's a pain in the butt.
3 I really like the Sidebar in Vista. Its handy to be able to look at the edge of my screen and see the weather, or how hard my CPU is working, or how much bandwidth I'm using. Linux doesn't have one of these.
4 Some major software titles don't work in Ubuntu; Photoshop, and iTunes come to mind. You can use GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) that is supposed to be similar, or Rythmbox which can sync an iPod, download podcasts, and purchase music. They're just not the same though.
5 Sometimes Ubuntu makes you want to bang your head against the wall until you hear a squishy sound. I can't tell you how frustrating it was trying to get DVDs to play when I first started with ubuntu. I must have read a dozen forum posts before I figured out how to get to the command line and download the libdvd library, and then play a DVD. I had a similar experience trying to install Flash so that I could watch videos on the web. I finally gave up. I couldn't find anyplace that gave me hints how to install Flash on 64 bit linux. And so this was just one more thing I had to learn to work around. I still find myself exercising great faith that the gobbly-gook I find on some forum will solve my problems if I copy it into the command line.
My final thoughts:
I don't think I would recommend that anyone use ubuntu as they're primary computer. I would also warn anyone who is looking at using ubuntu to know that they are on their own. The guy down the street, or a friend at work, or one of your kids probably doesn't know anything about ubuntu and won't be able to offer any help. If you can use Google, and you don't mind message boards you'll probably be OK though. Oh yeah, you might want to buy a helmet, for when you start to get frustrated.
I like it, and I find myself trying to use it more and more, but I'm not sure if I'm just doing it to be different. My next project and major step forward with ubuntu will be to get one of the new netbooks like an acer aspire or an MSI wind and install ubuntu as the only OS and see where that takes me. Something where I can't reboot and get into “safe” windows. It will be interesting, thats for sure! Anyway, thats what I think about Ubuntu!
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