Ubuntu Hardy Heron steps in to make Linux a proper desktop alternative to Windows.
Share This June 2nd, 2008 Antowan
I am going to risk sounding like a fan boy for the sake of being a fan boy in the craze for Ubuntu but here goes nothing! My experience with my new Hardy Heron installation just keeps on getting better and better.
We can hate the Ubuntu boss Mark Shuttleworth for being a rich mogul all we want but the more time goes by the more I think he deserves more! Ubuntu is really a crafty and brilliant piece of work. Switching my main desktop over to Ubuntu was a cinch. I backed up my windows documents and email and then shifted them into another windows partition. Then I let Ubuntu format the old windows drive which is a 160GB drive for it’s purposes. I had a slight grub issue at boot time where it disappeared because I didn’t have my boot sequence correct, but a quick BIOS tweak sorted that out double time.
Why didn’t I go for dual boot?
I got tired of windows and besides I have it on other computers. Yes if I need to use Windows I can still work on my laptop and another computer of mine, but the main desktop standing on my desk is now Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I also did this to force me to make it work and work hard. Making Ubuntu work hard is not a problem it turns out. Writing documents are not an issue with Open Office and web browsing is as easy as it is in Windows.
The GUI is a little different from Windows, but not so much that you cannot find your way around. The structures and computer management aspects are a little different, but the online help is so developed that finding answers and terminal commands literally fly at you.
What makes Ubuntu special?
Making the jump from Windows to Ubuntu should not be a problem for the normal office bound PC user. In fact it may make your work easier. It is special in terms of the cost saving aspect and the fact that the reasons to pay for Windows are becoming less and less. It can do everything Windows can do. Games might be a problem but there are games that emulate perfectly in Linux and Ubuntu for that matter.
I have been dipping my toes in the Linux pond from time to time for years now. I have mostly stuck to it for server utilities, but Ubuntu finally made the sense I want in Linux from a desktop perspective. Mark and friends made something truly useful for the ordinary desktop user. People who don’t want to tinker in terminals all the time although doing just that shouldn’t be too daunting for even novice users if you have a look at the help you get online.
The terminal is still pretty powerful and extremely useful but if you don’t want to do console work, you can avoid it. Ubuntu is the operating system for the everyman.
Should you give it a try?
Yes. Even if you run it from a live disk which enables you to test run Ubuntu without installing it. Naturally the performance running from DVD or CD is limited when running a live session but once installed on disk drive it is a fast and reliable operating system.
I am still experimenting and you can expect a couple more blog posts about Ubuntu.
In short. I am impressed. It is the best desktop Linux distribution I have seen so far. I obviously have to tinker with others as well and will do my best to do that. It takes time but please feel free to comment on Fedora and the like below…
16 Comments Add your own
1. NeoAtlus | June 2nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I’ve been playing with hardy for the last week or so and I must say that it grow on me. My only gripe I have are the display drivers for desktop affects, I believe that they should work out of the box.
2. Murray | June 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Ive dual booted, ubuntu it’s fast, secure, and so far, does everything I need. The online support information is all there and easy to find.
My non tecky Girlfriend has it on her Vista machine as the default boot. Now she wants me to trash her Vista once and for all. I’m still keeping windows as a backup option, but while Firefox and Open Office was the start, more and more were finding ourselves switching to OS aps. Even OS Circuit board design CAD software is maturing at an impressive rate.
RIP M$
3. Dane | June 2nd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I’m also really impressed with Hardy Heron. I’ve found myself trying out a linux distro once or twice a year for the past few years, but found them just too different and too many many things just didnt work “out of the box”.
But when Hard Heron came along I was really impressed, just about everything worked out of the box. Although i have had some issues with flash and sound in firefox, im sure these will be ironed out soon enough!
I’ve been using it soley for about a month now while my vista gathers dust
4. Jonathan Grubbs | June 2nd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I have moved both of my sons from XP and Vista to Edubuntu. and I have my wife’s laptop with dual boot Ubuntu and Vista. My sons love Edubuntu, my wife didn’t like the new layout. I found XpGnome (http://ubuntu.online02.com/xpgnome) and she love’s it!
5. chiskop | June 2nd, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Upgraded to 8.04 (from 7.10) last night, and there have been some nice improvements. Very happy with ubuntu. It would take a crow bar or something similar to get me to move back to XP/Vista.
6. Kevin | June 2nd, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Do you guys find Hardy running with 2 gigs of memory noticably faster than Vista or considerably faster?
7. Antowan | June 2nd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
@ Kevin considerably!
8. bbneo | June 2nd, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I’m curious about how old your kids are, Jonathan.
I have a 6, 4 & 2 yo and have been thinking about putting Edubuntu on their computer as well.
9. Jonathan Grubbs | June 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
My oldest is 8 and my youngest is 6. They both love Edubuntu! My youngest loves the games and the Internet, and my oldest has really enjoyed using Screem HTML Editor to learn how to build web pages. I installed Apache on his box so he can preview his web pages without having to put them online. It’s like having our own Intranet at home. I am also using Glubble (http://www.glubble.com/) with Firefox to keep them safe online. It is 100 times better than any Internet Explorer filter we used in Windows, that is when Vista let the filters run.
10. Worsbeursie | June 3rd, 2008 at 8:34 am
I’m going to have a second, older PC in a week and I will most definitely be installing Ubuntu on that after these comments.
I think Mark Shuttleworth should be made a saint. St. Shuttleworth sounds nice too.
11. Antowan | June 4th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
@ Worsbeursie
ROFL!!!
wrt saint comments.
12. Joe Dirt | June 7th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Please, be a fanboy. I am an unapologetic Ubuntu fanboy – I love to hear about other common good experiences with it like my own. I erased my XP months ago (thank God), because Ubuntu is quicker, slicker, and virus-free. And dudes – install Emerald and you can make your stuff look on par with Vista or Mac eyecandy.
13. Keith Watanabe | June 10th, 2008 at 12:46 am
I think Hardy is a disaster. I’ve encountered a lot of bugs, frequent crashes and just disappointments. 7.04 was a lot more stable for me and when I attempted to upgrade my system the thing had died. Now, part of the problem there was my use of the NVIDIA restricted driver and had been having tons of problems with that since 7.04.
Right now, I’m encountering problems with what seems to be Adobe’s Flash Plugin and a possible conflict/bug with PulseAudio. Now, I think it’s great to push the envelope of technology, but I have to complain about using something that feels completely untested. For a distribution like this to really become mainstream, something as common place these days as Flash should not encounter a whole system lock up just because a new audio source was not tested.
Also, I ended up losing things like XMMS to XMMS2 (which uses a different client apparently), Gaim to Pidgeon, multi-gnome-terminal (which I had to hack into my system), downgraded Firefox 3 to Firefox 2 because I needed plugins and found Firefox 3 to be unstable and am quite fearful of my NVIDIA driver still.
I really was impressed with Ubuntu 7.04 and decided to get rid of Fedora at that time because it was becoming bloatware. But I don’t think this latest outing “really made strides in the desktop market.” As a matter of fact, in reading other posts on the Ubuntu forums, many people felt that this recent release was a step backwards. While the packages and technology are trying to push the envelope for perhaps the next few releases, the current release feels like alpha software. I think some of the decisions made by the Ubuntu community (or whomever decides to put together these distros) were a huge mistake; or at least that they could’ve done far more testing than sticking with a release date (for what I feel are marketing purposes).
My main two requirements in any type of system are stability and “just working.” These requirements were not met with this release and I hope that the teams can address these issues in the near future.
14. wally | June 12th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I’ve had no problems whatsoever with Hardy and now have no Microsoft programs remaining on my (home) machines. I still use Windows XP because that is the system at work.
I think the gap is now no longer in the operating system desktop. Ubuntu equals or surpasses Windows there. However, there are gaps in available applications. This gap is not in internet-centric apps, where Linux easily equals Windows, but is in more specialized desktop apps like CAD (drafting). Google Sketchup is working just fine for me – I thought that would be a headache to set up but it was pretty easy. Not out-of-the-box, but not bad, either.
15. Lettre Hebdomadaire Ubunt&hellip | June 14th, 2008 at 12:41 am
[...] Ubuntu Hardy Heron : un pas de plus vers une alternative viable à Windows – Faire le saut de Windows à Ubuntu ne devrait pas être un problème pour les utilisateurs de bureautique standard. Cela pourrait même leur rendre la vie plus facile. [...]
16. Sira Los | July 11th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
How did u hack multi-gnome-terminal to work in hardy? The package is unavailable in the repositories and I ran into problems trying to complie from tar.gz source files. Please kindly share your experience.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed