Monday, April 13, 2009

Installing Ubunutu

Over the Easter weekend I installed Ubuntu and I must say that it was a fairly straight forward and easy process. I am glad and relieved to be honest as I thought Linux will be more problematic simply because many of the hardware drivers a designed for Windows and not Linux. Kudos to the Ubunutu team for all of the hard work in making sure that a lot of the hardware will work with this awesome OS.

My first impression of the Ubunutu system is that the default desktop is awful! Just plain ugly! So my first order of business was to change the background pic to one of my daughter. Once I did that I was very impressed with the layout of my new open-source non-Microsoft operating system.

What I especially like is how clean the desktop is with no "trial" software to be found, unlike the Windows. Sorry to get back on my Microsoft-bashing soap box, but don't you find it ridiculous that you pay a huge amount of money for MS Windows and then spend at least an hour removing all the trail software off of it. I mean really... talk about greed! Anyway, back to Ubuntu.

The next thing that I really like is the layout of the menus... very simple and straight forward. One for Applications, Files, and Settings. It was very easy to find and setup my new operating system to how I wanted things as well as to see what type of applications I could immediately begin playing with. I played a game of "Robots" to break in my newly installed OS and quickly got addicted to it.

I only got to play with my new system for an hour or two before my in-laws rang our doorbell, so I wasn't able to dive deep into the OS but so far the speed is outstanding as it only took about 30 seconds to boot up and the responsiveness of the programs, in my opinion, is far superior to the Microsoft driven computers that I have used in the past.

Two thumbs up. :)

4 comments:

  1. Hi Erik,

    Welcome to the Linux world. There will certainly be frustrations (but not as much as Windows). But somehow the frustrations are OK because you haven't paid big bucks for them. Freedom is what it's all about...freedom to do what you like with the hardware you paid good money for.

    Welcome also to an environment where you aren't putting your hand in your pocket every year to pay for virus protection. It's a bit like having to pay a security guard to watch your car because the manufacturer didn't bother to put locks on the doors.

    As for the command line, as far as I'm concerned you should never have to use it with a modern distro. But I use it often because it can be a lot quicker and easier to do a task than with the many multiple mouse-clicks needed in the GUI. Sometimes you will need the command line to fix a problem...but bear in mind that fixing Windows also requires the command line sometimes (and the Windows CLI is sooo basic). But more often than not to fix a problem in Windows would require a re-install. In my 11 years as a Linux user I have never had to re-install.

    These days, if you plug a piece of hardware into Windows you will have to go through the whole driver install routine from CD...sometimes you have to install the drivers before you plug in the hardware...sometimes after. In Linux, more often than not, if you plug in hardware it "Just Works".

    Have Fun!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I too was not too impressed with the default theme and look of the gnome desktop but you should check out www.gnome-look.org

    they have tons of differnt themes, backgrounds, icon sets etc. They are really simple to install and of course all free. :) You can truly personalize your desktop and even the login screen.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Welcome also to an environment where you aren't putting your hand in your pocket every year to pay for virus protection. It's a bit like having to pay a security guard to watch your car because the manufacturer didn't bother to put locks on the doors. "

    Powerin I love that metaphor!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the warm-welcomes everyone.... I have had to use the command line quite a bit so far... I am sure that it is more by choice than anything else.

    And thanks for the tip on the desktop themes... i will be checking that out.

    ReplyDelete