![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Why Linux?
This all started when I had to reinstall XP on my old laptop. After doing this, I went online (from my desktop machine) to search for drivers, only to find that HP had essentially ceased supporting my laptop. Drivers for some key components like audio and video were no longer available, and even though there were several different wireless drivers available, none would install successfully. I'm soon leaving home and will be away for at least two weeks, so I absolutely needed my laptop to be working. I had been wanting to try out Linux again for quite some time, and this seemed like a good excuse.
My previous experiences with Linux
I've been checking out Linux every now and then for several years, but always gave up when I eventually hit a brick wall. Usually, the lack of a driver would stop me. Sometimes, I'd even find the driver, but it would be too hard to install it. Often, the friendly GUI applets provided with the distros for handling things like system configuration, hardware and software installation, networking etc., would collapse like a house of cards, forcing the user to resort to the terminal and editing configuration files to repair the damage. This made tasks that should be very easy in a modern operating system incredibly difficult and complicated. Needless to say, my expectations were not very high.
Installation and hardware support
The specifications of the laptop are: Pentium M 1.6 GHz, Radeon 9600, 512MB RAM, Atheros wireless LAN, 40GB harddrive. This time I decided to go with Ubuntu 8.04. I was also considering OpenSuse, but it's a 4GB download instead of 700MB and would probably have used more space on the laptop's small drive
After downloading and burning the CD, it was as simple as booting from it. After a very lengthy boot process (just when I thought the computer had locked up at the boot screen, it sputtered back to life again), I was looking at a fully functional Linux desktop with working audio, (2D) graphics and..behold..networking (both wireless and wired). This allows you to preview the OS without having it touch your harddrive at all. To install the OS permanently, you just click an icon on the desktop. Installation is very simple, I basically just clicked next a couple of times and I was done. Some more advanced options are available but since my XP installation was useless anyway, I let the installer automatically use the entire harddrive for Ubuntu.
After installing it proper, boot time was more acceptable still slower than XP, but acceptable nevertheless. Out of the box, almost everything was working. It was nothing like the experience I've had with earlier distributions. It was possible to configure the network and many other things using the provided GUI tools no need to open a single terminal window. My main Vista rig does have a shared printer that I have not yet installed, but I'm hoping that will be just as easy. Even enabling 3d acceleration was easy and achievable from within the GUI. This was one of the most difficult, if not impossible, things to do in previous Linux distributions, requiring many frustrating hours with the terminal, a text editor and if at all possible, some hard liquor.
Look and feel
Other than the fact that Linux now works, unlike earlier distro's, it still looks and feels like Linux. Most of us already use things like OpenOffice and Firefox under Windows, so it's easy to adapt. It will take some time for new users to get used to the Linux terminology and directory structure, but it shouldn't be overwhelming.
Ubuntu uses Gnome with a custom theme by default. The default Ubuntu theme isn't exactly pretty. I think a blue, silver or maybe green theme would look more modern, but I'm told the brown theme is supposed to symbolize humanity.. Whatever. My computer is a machine, not a human. At least the theme is easy on the eyes, and you can always change it when you've had enough. It also looks somewhat outdated, with flat-looking icons and toolbars and an overly simplified file manager that reminds me of Windows 98. I wish Linux would stop treating all new users like dumb users. User friendliness is about designing a good and consistent user interface, not about making it as simple and dumbed down as possible. I may not be that experienced with the Linux environment, but I'm not dumb or inexperienced with computers. In the past, I've used many different versions of Windows, MacOS and even AmigaOS.
The Applications menu is also far more simplistic than the Orb menu in Vista or even the older Start menus..it's just a simple cascading menu with links to various apps. I especially miss the recently used apps, recently used documents and instant search from Vista. You can probably add features and change things to your liking, but out of the box, Ubuntu looks simplistic and outdated, like a cross between Win98 and MacOS Classic.
Since I got OpenGL working, I even got Compiz (the Linux equivalent of Aero) up and running. It didn't really add much to the experience, nor did it make the GUI look prettier. It basically adds a ton of annoying animations everywhere...Woobly windows are fun, for about five minutes. Then you begin turning the effects off one by one. There are a few application switching methods that can be fairly useful, but there are too many of them and too many different keyboard shortcuts to keep track of. It's simply too overwhelming, slowing down the workflow rather than speeding it up. Hopefully, developers will learn to use the effects only where necessary to enhance the user experience, rather than overwhelming the user with dazzling animations everywhere. Since it's a laptop, and battery life is important, I went back to the old 2D engine.
Kubuntu
While Ubuntu comes with only Gnome by default, you can easily install KDE 3, 4, or even some other environment. There's also Kubuntu, which comes with only KDE by default (there's a separate version for KDE4 and KDE3). If you download Kubuntu and later decide that you want to use Gnome, that's also very easy to accomplish. Note that KDE doesn't come with many of the Ubuntu-specific customizations or the brown color scheme etc. It's a pretty generic KDE desktop, without the Ubuntu feel.
KDE4 is very new and still suffers from some annoying problems and questionable design decisions. It looks like a bizarre combination of OSX and Vista. It has the start menu from Vista, but with Aqua scrollbars. The file manager looks like the one in OSX but doesn't work quite in the same way. It's very confusing at first, but seems to be more powerful than the Win98-style file browser in Gnome. Window borders have the same color (or rather, shade of grey) no matter if the window has focus or not, making it hard to tell which window is active. Also, strange error messages have a tendency to pop up when you least expect it. Gnome and KDE will coexist quite happily, so feel free to try it out. You can even launch Gnome applications inside KDE they'll look awful, but they will work just fine, most of the time.
Conclusion
I'll keep Ubuntu installed on my laptop for sure. I basically use it for email, IM, web browsing, word processing and mp3's, mostly when I'm away from home and my desktop rig. Ubuntu works great for this. There's tons of third party apps for other daily tasks as well.. Indeed, for most tasks, it's at least as good as Windows. It's certainly cheaper, because you don't have to buy a $400 program for every little task you want to accomplish. Buying a Vista and MS Office license would cost almost as much as a complete computer system, which is ridiculous. With more third party software and games, Linux would be able to do everything that Windows does today, and more.
I will not, however, try to install it on my desktop computer. Sure, I do a lot of web browsing and emailing from it, but I also use it for games and music production. I also have a very stable Vista installation that I don't want to risk loosing. Vista is a very, very good OS, except for the cost and restricted licensing terms. Some games are ported to Linux, but not nearly enough. There are probably some audio workstation programs for Linux, but I'd really miss the wonderful masterpiece of software engineering that is Ableton Live 7, and my huge library of Windows-only VST plugins. If more games were available, I would possibly have made Linux my default OS, only switching to Vista to run Windows-only games and music software.
This all started when I had to reinstall XP on my old laptop. After doing this, I went online (from my desktop machine) to search for drivers, only to find that HP had essentially ceased supporting my laptop. Drivers for some key components like audio and video were no longer available, and even though there were several different wireless drivers available, none would install successfully. I'm soon leaving home and will be away for at least two weeks, so I absolutely needed my laptop to be working. I had been wanting to try out Linux again for quite some time, and this seemed like a good excuse.
My previous experiences with Linux
I've been checking out Linux every now and then for several years, but always gave up when I eventually hit a brick wall. Usually, the lack of a driver would stop me. Sometimes, I'd even find the driver, but it would be too hard to install it. Often, the friendly GUI applets provided with the distros for handling things like system configuration, hardware and software installation, networking etc., would collapse like a house of cards, forcing the user to resort to the terminal and editing configuration files to repair the damage. This made tasks that should be very easy in a modern operating system incredibly difficult and complicated. Needless to say, my expectations were not very high.
Installation and hardware support
The specifications of the laptop are: Pentium M 1.6 GHz, Radeon 9600, 512MB RAM, Atheros wireless LAN, 40GB harddrive. This time I decided to go with Ubuntu 8.04. I was also considering OpenSuse, but it's a 4GB download instead of 700MB and would probably have used more space on the laptop's small drive
After downloading and burning the CD, it was as simple as booting from it. After a very lengthy boot process (just when I thought the computer had locked up at the boot screen, it sputtered back to life again), I was looking at a fully functional Linux desktop with working audio, (2D) graphics and..behold..networking (both wireless and wired). This allows you to preview the OS without having it touch your harddrive at all. To install the OS permanently, you just click an icon on the desktop. Installation is very simple, I basically just clicked next a couple of times and I was done. Some more advanced options are available but since my XP installation was useless anyway, I let the installer automatically use the entire harddrive for Ubuntu.
After installing it proper, boot time was more acceptable still slower than XP, but acceptable nevertheless. Out of the box, almost everything was working. It was nothing like the experience I've had with earlier distributions. It was possible to configure the network and many other things using the provided GUI tools no need to open a single terminal window. My main Vista rig does have a shared printer that I have not yet installed, but I'm hoping that will be just as easy. Even enabling 3d acceleration was easy and achievable from within the GUI. This was one of the most difficult, if not impossible, things to do in previous Linux distributions, requiring many frustrating hours with the terminal, a text editor and if at all possible, some hard liquor.
Look and feel
Other than the fact that Linux now works, unlike earlier distro's, it still looks and feels like Linux. Most of us already use things like OpenOffice and Firefox under Windows, so it's easy to adapt. It will take some time for new users to get used to the Linux terminology and directory structure, but it shouldn't be overwhelming.
Ubuntu uses Gnome with a custom theme by default. The default Ubuntu theme isn't exactly pretty. I think a blue, silver or maybe green theme would look more modern, but I'm told the brown theme is supposed to symbolize humanity.. Whatever. My computer is a machine, not a human. At least the theme is easy on the eyes, and you can always change it when you've had enough. It also looks somewhat outdated, with flat-looking icons and toolbars and an overly simplified file manager that reminds me of Windows 98. I wish Linux would stop treating all new users like dumb users. User friendliness is about designing a good and consistent user interface, not about making it as simple and dumbed down as possible. I may not be that experienced with the Linux environment, but I'm not dumb or inexperienced with computers. In the past, I've used many different versions of Windows, MacOS and even AmigaOS.
The Applications menu is also far more simplistic than the Orb menu in Vista or even the older Start menus..it's just a simple cascading menu with links to various apps. I especially miss the recently used apps, recently used documents and instant search from Vista. You can probably add features and change things to your liking, but out of the box, Ubuntu looks simplistic and outdated, like a cross between Win98 and MacOS Classic.
Since I got OpenGL working, I even got Compiz (the Linux equivalent of Aero) up and running. It didn't really add much to the experience, nor did it make the GUI look prettier. It basically adds a ton of annoying animations everywhere...Woobly windows are fun, for about five minutes. Then you begin turning the effects off one by one. There are a few application switching methods that can be fairly useful, but there are too many of them and too many different keyboard shortcuts to keep track of. It's simply too overwhelming, slowing down the workflow rather than speeding it up. Hopefully, developers will learn to use the effects only where necessary to enhance the user experience, rather than overwhelming the user with dazzling animations everywhere. Since it's a laptop, and battery life is important, I went back to the old 2D engine.
Kubuntu
While Ubuntu comes with only Gnome by default, you can easily install KDE 3, 4, or even some other environment. There's also Kubuntu, which comes with only KDE by default (there's a separate version for KDE4 and KDE3). If you download Kubuntu and later decide that you want to use Gnome, that's also very easy to accomplish. Note that KDE doesn't come with many of the Ubuntu-specific customizations or the brown color scheme etc. It's a pretty generic KDE desktop, without the Ubuntu feel.
KDE4 is very new and still suffers from some annoying problems and questionable design decisions. It looks like a bizarre combination of OSX and Vista. It has the start menu from Vista, but with Aqua scrollbars. The file manager looks like the one in OSX but doesn't work quite in the same way. It's very confusing at first, but seems to be more powerful than the Win98-style file browser in Gnome. Window borders have the same color (or rather, shade of grey) no matter if the window has focus or not, making it hard to tell which window is active. Also, strange error messages have a tendency to pop up when you least expect it. Gnome and KDE will coexist quite happily, so feel free to try it out. You can even launch Gnome applications inside KDE they'll look awful, but they will work just fine, most of the time.
Conclusion
I'll keep Ubuntu installed on my laptop for sure. I basically use it for email, IM, web browsing, word processing and mp3's, mostly when I'm away from home and my desktop rig. Ubuntu works great for this. There's tons of third party apps for other daily tasks as well.. Indeed, for most tasks, it's at least as good as Windows. It's certainly cheaper, because you don't have to buy a $400 program for every little task you want to accomplish. Buying a Vista and MS Office license would cost almost as much as a complete computer system, which is ridiculous. With more third party software and games, Linux would be able to do everything that Windows does today, and more.
I will not, however, try to install it on my desktop computer. Sure, I do a lot of web browsing and emailing from it, but I also use it for games and music production. I also have a very stable Vista installation that I don't want to risk loosing. Vista is a very, very good OS, except for the cost and restricted licensing terms. Some games are ported to Linux, but not nearly enough. There are probably some audio workstation programs for Linux, but I'd really miss the wonderful masterpiece of software engineering that is Ableton Live 7, and my huge library of Windows-only VST plugins. If more games were available, I would possibly have made Linux my default OS, only switching to Vista to run Windows-only games and music software.
).
