by Garvin Nelson

Created on: August 16, 2008

What is really like to use Ubuntu, Linux operating system?

I have been using Ubuntu Linux for about 10 months now starting with version 6.06, (Dapper Drake), recently I upgraded to version 8.04 , (Hardy Heron). Both releases are called LTS or long term support versions, this means that Canonical, Ubuntu's Parent company will offer free updates for several years.

As to my personal experience with Ubuntu is that it is and excellent well rounded package of software that gives me what I need out computer with almost all the bells and whistles of a non free OS such as Windows. I have had a few moments of frustration in the switch from Windows to Ubuntu but I was able to find solutions to most of my problems with a superb community of humans that populate the forums.

The bad

My Scanner Still Does Not work. I have a HP Scanjet 2400 flat bed scanner I am yet to get working. My personal belief here is that HP out-sourced this scanner and do not really own the rights as you could expect some kind of support from HP in their unified Linux drivers but that is not the case here. Go figure?

Limited Number of First Person Shooter Game options. There is a lack of games of the first person shooter type in the community and this not out of the lack of effort of some talented persons. There is however just not enough of them working together to create a really novel game.

Most of open source game developers use the quake code to power their games, I do not like the quake engine because the bots run faster backwards than me running forward. We are not built that way and so I always feel it is fake environment while playing. I also feel like I am a shooting spit balls at the bots also.

Unreal is such a better engine for game developers to use but they not really the open source type. However Unreal Tournament runs under Linux which is not so bad.

I am Still not comfortable with poking around in the OS. This is pure laziness on my part as I am just not willing to place the effort in as yet to learn the in and outs of Linux.

The Great
A solid Operating System that is very stable. Linux has always been that way so I wont delve into it much here and Ubuntu is no different. It is just comforting to know that the OS wont crash on you.

A huge array of software that have features rival that of the best commercial software. Every need (except scanning and gaming) that I ever had that require software to get it done I found in Ubuntu. The software is of a high grade and fully functional. For photo editing Gimp is almost as good as Photo Shop, vector graphics Inkscape is great and Sun open office is effective.

No viruses Yet. It should be noted that anti virus software is available if you want it. Hopefully there will never be a point the I will need it.

It is free. 200 US Vista OS alone, Microsoft can kiss my behind.

A generous community. Every question I ever had got answered and I never felt like I was being sold a service. Just other humans being humane giving of themselves freely.

The Live CD. You can run Ubuntu off a CD or USB thumb drive without installing any thing on the computer. So you could try it without installing anything. You can use this feature to save data from crashed Windows machines.

This is a great flavour of Linux and I am impresses at what I got from trying Ubuntu I can only whole heartily encourage others to try.

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