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Four weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the desktop. Part 1: Switching is hard

Over the past few weeks, I’ve found that the saying “it just works” is about as useful as saying that airplanes “just fly.” It’s an easy thing to say until you have to learn to pilot one. Foreign languages also “just work.” But have you ever tried to learn one?

Linux is like that.

That’s not a knock against Linux, though. Learning anything new is difficult. I’m sure people have similar issues when switching from Windows to a Mac (or vice versa—yes, that happens, too). Each little act of re-learning how to do things even as simple as taking a screen shot or changing your desktop background creates some friction. It’s just something you should keep in mind whenever you hear someone saying that switching is easy (or if you are trying to convince someone of that).

Yes, switching to a new way of doing familiar tasks is difficult. But, like learning a new language, there’s a reward for your toil.

On January 30th I decided to try Ubuntu Linux as my primary desktop. Linux comes in a variety of “flavors” called distributions, each with slightly different features but all based on the free Linux operating system. Ubuntu is the current darling of the desktop Linux world. Why Ubuntu? Well, I’d tried various live CDs in the past (Knoppix, Mandrake, Ubuntu) and I just liked Ubuntu the best. Also, I built a machine for our children two years ago that was originally running Mandrake but I never liked it and eventually upgraded them to Ubuntu and it’s worked like a charm.

Or did you mean why in general?

As I’m sure you’ve heard, Microsoft recently launched their latest operating system, Windows Vista, to much fanfare and derision and hoopla. Like all major system upgrades, there are a lot of people who like it and a lot who hate it. (And of course the other 99% of the world who just don’t care either way and who will just get whatever happens to come with the next computer they purchase, but I digress.)

I actually have a modern system that can run Vista Ultimate (a dual-core with 2 Gb of RAM). But frankly, $100 for an upgrade to a crippled operating system (Vista Basic) is way too much and $350 for Ultimate is just ridiculous. That’s 1/3 the cost of my entire computer! I’m also strongly against DRM. I like to think that I own my computer and media. I don’t want anyone telling me where or when or how I can watch a movie I purchased or listen to my music. The whole debacle from the pricing and licensing to the DRM to Microsoft’s thinly veiled stance that all of their customers are potential software thieves—it’s just too much.

So, what better time to try out Ubuntu Linux and find out if it is a viable alternative to Windows on the desktop.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried Linux. I’ve popped in a number of live CDs over the years and I even installed one a couple of years ago (and then quickly uninstalled it). My kids (four and six) are full-time Linux users. Their computer has been running some flavor of Linux since it was born (currently Ubuntu). They use it for edutainment-style gaming and watching the occasional video.

Linux has come a long way in the past few years. Contrary to popular opinion, Linux isn’t just for geeks anymore. Installing Ubuntu Linux is better than the installation of Windows XP. As soon as the installation is complete you can do a number of very useful things such as access the internet, edit photos, write documents, send email, use instant messenger—all in an attractive, customizable graphical environment with menus and windows and mouse clicks.

But is it really possible to use Ubuntu Linux on the desktop today?

Of course, the answer is: “It depends.”

This is part one of what will probably be a three—maybe four—part series. Next time, I’ll write about my out-of-box experience with Ubuntu Linux, switching over to Linux versions of my favorite apps and finding alternatives, setting up my hardware and desktop environment, and the problems and wonderful little surprises I discovered on the way.

[ Continue to Part 2: Down the Rabbit Hole ]

Comments

  1. John Watson: Four weeks with Ubuntu… : Meandering Passage on 2007-03-11 15:25:28 wrote: […] Watson of “flagrantdisregard” has posted the first part of a series of posts on his experience of switching to Ubuntu Linux as his primary desktop.  John expounds in this […]

  2. aussiebear on 2007-03-11 20:36:51 wrote: Of course switching to a different Operating System is hard! Its when you overcome that initial learning curve, then you can fully appreciate its benefits. What pushed me away from Windows was MS’s “anti-piracy” measures. I’ve got no problem with a company trying to deter pirates, but at the cost of saying “everyone is a pirate until they pass my rectum exam”. (I’m talking about WGA)…And Steve Ballmer plans to make it harsher in response to Vista’s poor adoption! The thing that concerns me about it, is that it (and its related components), has the potential to do things without notifying the user. Here’s a very recent example: http://www.heise-security.co.uk/news/86294 Its not that hard to write a simple dialog box that popups up and tell the user what’s going on. (Takes less than a minute).

  3. Christer Edwards on 2007-03-11 21:20:20 wrote: I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying your switch as well. I suppose we do throw around the “just works” phrase a bit too much but sometimes compared to other distributions it’s the truth. I spend a lot of time tutoring new users and while it is often a difficult initial learning curve I think it is pretty simple to catch on. Glad to have you onboard with Ubuntu. If you do run into anything show stopping in your initial switching period let me know. I’d be happy to help.

  4. Thomas on 2007-03-11 22:43:40 wrote: I put Unbuntu on my old computer when I got the new laptop and I absolutely love it. Unfortunately, in my line of work I use a lot of very specific, high-end, media manipulation programs that aren’t universally compatible with Linux, even with emulators. Some even get buggy with a dual boot system because of the amount of memory and drive space needed. As much as I’d love to do away with windows forever I’m going to have to keep it on my better computer until a Linux compatible version of the type of software I need is available.

  5. madison on 2007-03-12 03:50:54 wrote: Thanks for the info, i agree that somethings that are supposed to be universally compatible with Linux have there hang ups too.

  6. Matheus Andrade on 2007-03-12 05:41:19 wrote: Moving from a language to another - be it a spoken language or any other code we use in life - is always challenging and rewarding in the end. I am a full time Ubuntu user since 2k5 - and a very content one. ‘Course that some things are harder on Linux, and some can’t even be done natively, but some things are not doable in Windows or Macs as well. Nothing is complete, thank God - since that’s the reason that variety is born over. I cannot assure Linux (or for that matter Portuguese, Cantonese, comic books or movies) is the best way to do things. But it’s other way, all valid like any other. Congrats and I wish the best in your new Open Source life.

  7. JGJones on 2007-03-12 05:44:29 wrote: Since you take a lot of fantastic pictures, I thought you might be interested in this upcoming Ubuntu Studio: http://ubuntustudio.com/ Blurb from site:

    Coming this April… Ubuntu Studio. A multimedia creation derivative of Ubuntu. Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional.
    It’s based on the Fiesty Fawn distro (which have been quite very stable for me for the last month, but I am capable of fixing where it goes wrong, so if you’ve only switched recently, I suggest you wait until after it’s released, to allow them to iron out all bugs etc) Cheers

  8. Shooting the Kids (Chris) on 2007-03-12 07:53:29 wrote: John - it’ll be fun to see what decisions you make regarding creative software. Amy’s beginning to feel comfortable enough in GIMP and F-Spot that she’s got a decent workflow down for her photography. My switch to Inkscape was about as painless as it could have been. If you’re planning on using Inkscape, get the latest DEBs for it rather than the older ones in the main Edgy repos.

  9. RuthDeB on 2007-03-12 09:55:11 wrote: Hiya John! Longtime reader, firsttime poster :-) I’ve been trying to upgrade my RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 vmware image in order to be able to run the mathmap plugin to the GIMP. (have you seen the stuff the Escher’s Droste Effect Flickr pool has been doing? Amazing things going on there.) Anyway, there’s a vmware image for Ubuntu too, but I went with RedHat since that’s what we use at work (for servers, not desktops). Trying to get my RedHat image up-to-date enough to deal w/ all of mathmap’s dependencies has been a wild goose chase to say the least. So I’m eagerly awaiting your future installments. What do you do for personal-finance software? I love Quicken.. is there something Quicken-like that runs on linux?

  10. Sinwen on 2007-03-12 10:28:41 wrote: "… in my line of work I use a lot of very specific, high-end, media manipulation programs that aren’t universally compatible with Linux …." This is the major Linux concern. It will never be solved until a real user of let say Katia or Autocad or any other pro software, is also a fine Linux programmer and want to get involved into it. Being just a programmer isn’t enough. I tried to install Varkon on Ubuntu, I am surely not expert enough to do this and the all system got stucked. I had to format the HD. But of what I managed to see, it was’nt the program I expected. Many, many, many people are ready to switch to Linux the day these kind of compatibilities are effective. Big companies get their soft tailor made but million of others cannot and depend of the softwares business. Something else : does anybody know how to switch from Ubuntu to Dreamlinux ? Tahnks

  11. Valis on 2007-03-13 02:21:18 wrote: RuthDeB: Try GnuCash for starters. Generally a good place to find alternatives for proprietary apps is Open Source Alternative: http://www.osalt.com

  12. Eric P on 2007-03-13 15:14:32 wrote: I just switched from Quicken to GnuCash and I like it very much. It’s elegant and efficient, like so much of Linux. I have myself just completed a very happy switch to Ubuntu on a new dual core with 2GB ram. Yes, it was a lot of work to get it set up right, and to learn new ways of doing things. I have used Windows since v2.0 (no kidding, 1986 I think.) And I have LOTS of commercial software, like Photoshop, Illustrator, CorelDraw, Quicken. But, I have tried over the last couple years to start adopting the open source software that’s available for Windows. Most of it is. OpenOffice, Blender 3D, Audacity, Firefox, Thunderbird, Inkscape, Celtx - I got used to these on Windows, so the transition felt more natural. I can use Gimp pretty well, but I can actually still run Photoshop 7 very well under Wine, though that took some messing around. And recently, I feel the FOSS programs are equivalent or better than the commercial alternatives. Like Lightzone raw photo software (free on Linux) - I’ve been wishing for a program with these capabilities for a while. Some of the learning curves are steep. With Gimp, the tools are pretty much the same, they’re just in different places. With Blender - oh my, the working technique is so different. That takes some work, but you know, when you learn it, it’s the fastest way to work I’ve ever seen. The nicest thing is that I feel I have complete control over my computer. Learning a new system meant learning how to really do things. With Linux, it’s transparent. Seek and you shall find, ask and forums will be open to you. Networking, installation, updating, now, after three weeks - I feel I’m nearly a master of the OS, and even after 20 years with Windows I never felt that way! In short, persevere. It’s worth it. Right now I still don’t recommend to any other less geek-oriented people to switch to Ubuntu. But it’s progressing to the point where, in a year, I think that would be very possible.

  13. Dervish » Blog Archive » Ubuntu-ing on 2007-10-08 22:27:12 wrote: […] flagrantdisregard blogs about her trial of Ubuntu. […]

  14. flagrantdisregard » Blog Archive » A year with Linux on the desktop on 2007-11-16 10:09:08 wrote: […] system. I wrote about the surprises of that switch (both happy and vexing) in a four-part series (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) in […]

  15. Tilly on 2008-05-30 06:04:54 wrote: A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,