I decided to see what all the fuss was about Linux this past week. No one that I personally know runs it and being as big into computers as I am, I found it strange how the thought had never even crossed my mind to install and try it out. I’ve been a windows user since the early 90′s and only briefly had run-ins with Macs in some computer labs in college.
Don’t ask me how I decided on Ubuntu, there are many distributions of Linux but I settled on this one because they just had a new release and I really liked the name of it, (crazy I know, but the truth).
I’m running Windows 7 64bit right now so I used the disk manager to shrink one of the 500GB partitions that I had setup for just files (drawings, pictures and docs) and created a new 150GB partition for the Ubuntu install. Once I had that I simply downloaded the install package from http://www.ubuntu.com/ (I got the 64 bit version). It’s an ISO file, so mount that to your favorite media and install. The install had a few more steps than typical. If I hadn’t had so many partitions and trying to do certain things it probably would have been easier, but since I picked the advanced install I had to setup a swap directory, boot directory and the root directory. Once that was accomplished it didn’t take long to install and it was up and running.
It dealt with my Nvidia graphics card and all of my addons with no problem, even setup my logitech webcam that had been sitting dormant since the windows 7 install because of lack of drivers. The only thing I have not gotten setup yet is my wireless scanner/printer. This is probably more because I have not tried than Ubuntu’s lack of ability.
Some of the features that I really like are the multiple desktop switching with the 3d effects. Also the automatic playing of mp3 files is pretty nice, you can hear the entire song or just a clip without having to open a piece of software just by hovering the mouse over the icon. The speed in which everything loads and runs is also nice. The entire OS is up and running in mere seconds with programs opening almost instantaneously. I am running it on a core i7 machine with 6gigs of RAM, so that may have something to do with it too. The software center is really slick also. Being able to browse FREE applications and install with one click is sweet. I installed Blender while I was doing ten other things and before I knew it, it was installed and ready to use. Empathy and Gwibber are also nice preloaded applications that let you chat with all your contacts across multiple platforms and see your social feeds from Facebook and Twitter all straight from your desktop. Some of these features may have been around for quite some time, but seeing as how I’m completely new to Linux, it’s all new to me! I also installed Docky (docking station) right off the bat, which lets you quickly find things and launch applications from a “toolbar” type setup, although toolbar grossly misses the mark with this one, it’s a must have addon.
Docky in action
I hope to find myself booting straight into Ubuntu more and more often as I really do like it, I give it a 10 out of 10!
