Probably two or three times a year, i make an attempt to migrate to linux. I install fedora, red hat, suse, ubuntu, mandriva… Pretty much whatever I feel like at the time. I use it for a while, then i switch back to windows after a couple weeks. 🙁 Well, After some experience with all the popular distributions, i keep coming back to Ubuntu linux as my favorite. So, this week i’ve made it my project to migrate to linux for the final time. No chance of going back to windows. I downloaded and installed the newest version of Ubuntu (6.10) and then hooked my windows HD up as a slave and copied in all my files.

After getting everything set up how I wanted (mp3 playback, dvd, email… etc.) I decided to take a quick look into xgl because i had heard and read a little about it. I started reading about it, found some wiki’s… and before i knew it, 2 hours had passed and I had installed “Beryl”. It was surprisingly easy and painless to configure, and it runs surprisingly well on my computer. Beryl is a 3 dimensional window environment that integrates with the Gnome desktop manager (or KDE, but i like gnome better). It has some very cool features and functionality, does some very cool things, and pretty much is the 2nd coolest thing i have ever seen. (#1 is Jack Bauer killing Nina Meyers.).

My conclusion is that Beryl running on top of Ubuntu linux is legitimately the best operating system / desktop I have ever seen. The media players sync up my ipod, everything works beautifully. I am never going to use windows at my home again.

Here is a video i recoreded of me using Beryl/Ubuntu.  Here are a couple of other ones if interested…  Overall, i’m very impressed with the entire setup.