Surviving Windows

[Derrick]

Ubuntu Linux... it grows on you...

I have recently converted all but one of my personal computers to Ubuntu. To be more specific I am now using Ubuntu 9.10 on two desktops and one Netbook. Windows XP is only surviving on my laptop for support reasons and handling accounting backups on a program that only works in Windows. That conversion is also in development and sometime soon I have a very good feeling Windows XP will die on my notebook and Ubuntu will rise. Wait, I am being too harsh in my descriptive passage. Windows XP meant a lot to me over the years and it was truly great! But it is time to move on. It has been a gamble but so far so good.

Speed wise the experience has been only revealing with Ubuntu definitely feeling a lot faster than Windows. I have been able to do everything on it that I would normally do on a Windows system. I can view websites just fine without any limitations that I could discover. My plug-ins for Firefox even work without a hitch. All the usual communication software also run. Google Talk and Skype work like a charm. Video calling on Skype is something I however have not confirmed yet.

Some stuff like importing video from a video camera got a little tricky but Google solves those problems quickly. Look, let’s be honest Ubuntu makes Linux a whole lot more user friendly, but some things are still better fixed using the console. I don’t however imagine you have to be a genius to get the stuff to work that I got working. I am still trying to get play through working for audio coming into the computer via the Line-In and out via the speakers but there seems to be hope on the horizon. That is a simple thing that should really be much easier in Ubuntu, but seems to be a universal issue.

As for editing spreadsheets and word documents, Open Office has seriously grown on me the last while. Everything simply works. Printing documents on my trusted HP Office-Jet all in one was also no issue. The printer even shares perfectly across the network. For specific printer features a quick visit to http://hplipopensource.com did the trick. If I think back to what the Linux experience was like a couple of years back compared to now, the operating system has come a long way and really is ready to replace Windows for many users currently using Microsoft Windows. I replaced my RTM version of Windows 7 with Ubuntu because I cannot bring myself to spend the amount of money Microsoft wants for the Ultimate version of Windows 7 because I get everything I want in Ubuntu. I truly and honestly do. My gaming has gone off the PC and onto the console with my XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 doing a great job there. I am still of the opinion that the PC gives the best gaming experience if you can afford it, but my PC gaming days look like they are numbered. It just costs too much to stay with the required hardware.

If you follow my blog posts, expect to read more about my experience away from a Windows dominated computing environment. This blog post was written using Open Office Writer.