(from Wikipedia)
A funny thing happened when I installed a new hard drive last week. I ended up switching to Linux.
I realize that’s kind of like saying I accidentally walked in a Buddhist temple and now I’m a convert, but it happened.
After popping a new hard drive in my trusty laptop, I reinstalled Windows XP then once I finally got everything reconfigured (I don’t want to think about how long it took to get XP to acknowledge that I have an Ethernet port, let alone my wireless card…) I decided to make a small Linux partition and install Ubuntu to tinker around with it.
That’s where it got strange. In the week that followed, I only booted into Windows once and only for about a minute to test something.
I mostly use open source software to begin with, so really, Ubuntu had almost all my go to programs right out of the box (Openoffice, Firefox) along with a few other neat toys so I really wasn’t missing much.
Fact of the matter is, this free operating system is really impressive. The biggest complaint I hear about switching to Linux in general is hardware compatibility. Well, I’m not sure what hardware everyone else is using but while Windows XP had me ripping my hair out trying to get my wireless card to work, even though I had an official driver disc, Ubuntu recognized and was able to use it right after it was installed.
The second complaint is that a lot of work in Linux-based operating systems still gets done through the command line interface instead of just clicking through window boxes. Well, I have a little story about that, too.
Over the weekend, I finally decided to suck it up and use the Windows installation. Realizing that I’d barely configured it, I grabbed Windows Live Installer to reinstall Messanger and Windows Live Writer (still my favourite blogging client) and was met with nothing but errors as I tried to install them.
After an hour of Googling, I found out I had to go into the DOS prompt (yes…command line) and manually register a bunch of .DLL files. So really, there isn’t exactly any safety from the command line line Windows either.
Maybe I just had bad luck with the Windows installation and good luck with Ubuntu’s but overall, I found setting up Ubuntu to be far less painful than Windows (particularly the part where I left Windows update running all night and by morning, it still wasn’t finished downloaded SP3.)
While it’s come a long way, do I think Linux on the desktop is ready for primetime? I’m going to have to say no at the moment.
I’m not a programmer, but I do enjoy tweaking my computers and I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty with the command line. For the mainstream user though, there are still some issues.
Proprietary drivers for one. In Windows (or MacOS for that matter) thing like DVD and MP3 playback work right away while Linux forces you to go looking for the restricted codecs package which not an obvious move.
Then we’ve got compatibility issues. Many Windows programs will run fine under Linux using Wine
but I’m not sure how to go about explaining that to someone whose trying to get Bejewelled to work and is used to just click on the install icon their web browser dumps on the desktop.
Now I just wish I could find a blogging client as good as Windows Live Writer or figure out how to get it working under Ubuntu.
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