For some time now I have been a ‘computer guy’… Being said computer guy, I have always been curious about trying new things, customizing old things, just breaking things, fixing things, redoing things, you get the point. Part of that curiosity has been trying out alternative operating systems. “Windows” and I always seem to have a love/hate relationship… I leave it for brief periods of time to explore(mainly, i explore the ways that an end user can customize any part of a linux distribution… it actually is somewhat overwhelming), but in the end always return back to my trusty “Win XP”. With my current exploration, however, I may try to make a permanent switch. My most recent exploration is ubuntu linux.
I used this operating system a few months back, but only briefly… I’m going to force myself to give it a good run, and only boot windows if I must, or if i feel like playing counter strike. Now on my 3rd day of ubuntu, i really have no complaints. One of the things i first noticed is that it seems the gap between windows and linux is definitely shrinking. Alot of programs i would use on a daily basis in windows are installed by default on linux; firefox, thunderbird, gaim, the gimp, just to name a few. With OpenOffice 2, i really dont see how I should need to use Windows except to play counter strike… My daily regiment of internet/email/chatting is set up EXACTLY like it would be on a windows system… Another big plus with ubuntu, it is the first distribution i have used that comes with synaptic/apt installed and ready to go. I’ve always had to set that up and configure it manually on a redhat/fedora install.
Long story short, I really like Ubuntu. As far as linux goes, its an easy to use, very functional distribution. Check out some screenshots.
I really wonder if linux will ever get to be a mainstream OS for consumers…
it seems that Macs are doing a great job of bridging the gap(perhaps due to
the sound coat tails of the Ipod)… Really, the masses don’t care what’s on
their computer, they just buy it from a reseller and then use it when they get
home. So really it will probably take a PC manufacturer to standardize a
linux distro and begin shipping their PC’s with linux pre-loaded. The fact
that Novell has purchased SuSE linux is huge… absolutely monumental.
Hospitals, Universities, probably the federal government, all the large firms
have implemented Novell. Why? Well, these large firms needed a robust and
functionally sound network infrastructure very early on in network computing,
when there wasn’t an alternative like Active Directory. Novell is going
linux, hence offering an imaged linux client, hence novell networks will
probably start veering towards linux (or, migrate to Active Directory). If
people use it at work, they will become familiar with it and feel comfortable
using it at home. I think its happening… slowly but surely.