I once complained to a friend that I hate everything Microsoft, the .NET programming, the MS SQL, even ol’ Bill himself. He sarcastically remarked that if I walk the talk, then I shouldn’t be using Windows at home too. AH-HA, GOTCHA!! I actually don’t! Well, not mostly anyway.
I’m talking about Linux, specifically Ubuntu, one of the more than 50 flavours of Linux in the world, and how it has changed my computing life forever!
My history with Linux goes way back to my university days. Back then, I have tried to install a Red Hat Linux on my PC, an old Pentium 120 MHz with 200 MBytes of hard disk space. I did successfully install it, but the video card didn’t support it, and I could only see the icon of the Gnome foot, move the mouse a little bit, and nothing much else. When I decided to revert back to my old Windows 95, I found out that my hard disk’s MBR (Master Boot Record) had already been hard wired to using LILO (Linux Loader), and despite my attempt to revive it, could only ask for RM 300 from my mum to buy a new hard disk!
That left a really bad impression of Linux on me, although that only really dampen a little my eventual full embrace of Linux.
A series of events recently pushed me towards Linux again. I bought a spanking new computer in the early 2005, a 2.8 GHz machine with 512 MBytes of DDR2 RAM. That left my laptop, my main workhorse until that purchase, idle. An ex-colleague, who is ironically a staunch supporter of Windows, gave me a copy of Ubuntu Linux, and I was impressed with its LiveCD option. The CD gave me an option to run the entire Ubuntu operating system off the CD, without overwriting the existing Windows.
The advent of Windows Vista did the final push. Having heard so many bad reviews about the bloated operating system, I felt compelled to give Ubuntu a try. It is also morally incorrect to buy pirated Windows.
Oh, by the way, has any of you been to Sg Wang and Low Yat recently? The place is now completely devoid of any pirated CD’s or DVD’s! I felt so sad. The view of the empty rows of CD racks and permanently closed shops of my favourite pirated CD heaven is enough to make us pirate-loving Malaysians weep! ='(
I had now came to the revelation that it does not pay to buy pirated goods anymore ….
…..
….
Downloading them would be much a better option instead! =D *hehehee*
As a result of the above-mentioned circumstances, I picked up enough courage and hit the “Install” button on the LiveCD. And the rest is history.
I must commend on the quality and the amount of research that has gone into the product. I must admit, Ubuntu is ONE HELL OF A PRODUCT! It’s great! To be fair, it has its share of negative features, but overall, Ubuntu gives me a lot of reasons to stick to it. Let me give you a rundown of the good and the bads things about Ubuntu:
Let me start with the bad news first:
1. The learning curve is actually quite steep for a novice. Your first impression of Ubuntu might deter you. It’s orange and brown in colour, very dull, and it has got two panels (the equivalent of taskbars in Windows, where your minimized applications, Start button and time clock sits). One sits on the bottom of the page, another at the top. While the layouts can be confusing at first, you can actually tweak them to mimic Windows, but hey, that would defeat the whole point of using Ubuntu in the first place, right?
The picture above is my laptop equipped with Ubuntu Edgy. Notice the drape brown colour of the default desktop. Also, notice Windows XP running within a virtual machine inside Ubuntu! Cool!
Also sometimes you are required to “compile” your own software! If you think it sounds intimidating, it actually is! The only rejoice from this is that you only need to do this about 5% of the time. But fret not, there is a lot of helpful people in the community to help you. More on that later.
2. Minor issues with hardwares. Especially if you have some obscure proprietary peripherals installed. Users of NVidia and ATI video cards can relax however. These two types of video cards are supported in Linux, although ATI’s solution is actually an unofficial support. Be warned though, that the famous Creative Soundblaster X-Fi card is NOT officially supported by Creative. X-( That made a lot of Linux people raging mad, including yours truly here!
3. Errr …… nothing else major I suppose.
Now let’s get on with the juicy parts:
1. It’s FREE!! Yes, as in, no money is needed. You can freely download and distribute them without any guilt. And it will continue to be supported for the next 18 months, or 3 years for the Ubuntu Dapper. Freedom at last!
2. It’s damn fast!! I rarely see hard disk lockup (those hard disk activity that happens when Windows spins your hard disk vigorously when running some big-ass applications). Linux’s file system (I use XFS) are less likely to encounter fragmentation, so you do not need to defragment at all! Even if I were to let it run multiple big applications at the same time, kill them, run another batch, all applications seems to run at normal or slightly slower speed only. Incredible! You can hardly crash an Ubuntu. In my almost-a-year run with the laptop Ubuntu, I have only managed to crash it once, and that is also only during installation.
3. The amount of community support on the internet is overwhelming! Since almost everything is open-sourced, you can be assured that the softwares you install in your Ubuntu are top class! Think Open Office, Firefox and GIMP. The image viewer that I use, GQView, not only displays your image in fullscreen, thumbnails and slideshow, it also comes with a sweet surprise, a duplicate image finder! It is very helpful for me, as I have tonnes of “images”, some of those that are duplicate, and it helped me in managing my “collection of images”. (Ahem!)
4. How many times do you encounter a problem where you need to reformat your Windows, and found out that you need to download your Windows Update from the internet all over again? Then what if the connection is broken in the middle of the download? Castatrophic is what I would describe it as. Enter Ubuntu. Even if you really need to format your Ubuntu, (I can assure you, you almost never really need to, it’s that stable!), you can actually copy a backup of the updated binaries and restore them back after everything is done. It’s about 200 MBytes, you can easily copy them to a USB drive. And you will not need to download the updates from the internet again, it will just read from the restored binaries! Sweet!
I can go on with lots more of great features in Ubuntu, but I’ll let you discover them yourself.
One of the main reasons why I stick to Ubuntu is that I have found a replacement software for all tasks that I want to do, and justify that they do the job better than their Windows counterpart. Save for one; the Adobe Lightroom. Has it not because of the Lightroom, I would have long formatted my desktop to fully use Ubuntu. But Adobe (Photoshop CS, Elements) has been reluctant to port their softwares over to Linux. More groans from the Linux community! =(
My friends are all proud of their latest, fastest and best laptops. They showcase them to me, how fast they are, with the latest Windows Vista and all, some installed with Mac theme to make them look like Macs. It’s like driving a Proton, but sticking “Honda” or “Ferrari” all over! These guys are desperate. Me? I am actually proud to show them my old laptop, and how fast it is with Ubuntu installed! Brilliant!
Would I recommend Ubuntu to a casual user? You betcha! If surfing the internet and writing some e-mails is all you ever do, Ubuntu does a great job here, and then some. My wife did not notice anything unusual when I let her surf the net from it. But dig deeper, and you could be overwhelmed, even for a seasoned computer user like yours truly. This is after all, a Linux system, and if you want to dig, discover you shall. You have been warned.
I must say that it is very liberating after having installed and used Ubuntu for more than 6 months now. As a fellow Ubuntian had remarked, have patience in installing and discovering, and you shall reap the full benefits of Ubuntu. And benefited I have! In celebration of the spirit of Ubuntu, it is only appropriate that I write this blog in my Ubuntu machine. So there, long live Linux, may the community thrive on.
The screenshot above is taken of the chat that is taking place in MSN Messenger, while I was composing this blog. Extra cool! I rest my case.