Ubuntu: A Weekend of Use Summary

Well, getting a little more used to Ubuntu. It's actually not bad, but they've got some ways to go to make it good. The bug with the Firefox and Thunderbird fonts is a huge one, and one they need to fix. It's fixable, but I don't think the average user is going to want to search forums to make his web browser readable. Get this fixed people. Then there's the whole codec issue. It doesn't appear that any codecs are built in. After install, you still can't play MP3 or MPG files, let alone assorted AVI files. You have to go download VLC or MPlayer to get what you need. Simple enough, but still a pain. XMMS is a good substitute for Winamp though. And there are a lot of errors thrown up as you try to do the simplest things because it's missing what it needs. For instance, I tried to take a simple screen shot of the desktop to post here, but it was too much hassle to accomplish, so I gave up. I'm sure there's a way, but I don't have time to search the net to find out right now. [Edit: Thanks to OriginalLRU's tip, we now have a screenshot.] So, once you've downloaded and installed Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, MPlayer, XMMS, aMSN, Comix, BitTorrent, and WINE, you've got a reasonably usable system. I need to try out K9 and DVDShrink for ripping DVDs yet too. I still am looking for a good video editor (Kino or LiVES don't cut it), a DVD movie creator (devede doesn't want to download), something to make my Hauppage TV Capture card work to record video, and possibly getting iTunes running under WINE. If I can get those types of programs working, then Ubuntu Linux becomes a perfect Windows replacement. Otherwise, it comes up short. As a newbie user to Linux who has worked extensively on Windows XP and just recently did a first time MAC OS X install, I would rate Ubuntu far behind MAC but on par with Windows. Looking at it from a newbie user viewpoint who's looking for ease of use and intuitive 'make it work' functionality, I would rate MAC OS X number 1 by a landslide, Ubuntu Linux second, with Windows XP very close behind in 3rd, and Vista at the back of the pack as something I don't even want to touch (playing around with it on computers in stores is just Ugh, Ugh, Ugh). So, with XP on it's way out in a few years anyway, that leaves us with MAC OS X and Linux at the front of the pack. If the Linux community makes it just a bit more user friendly (include some basic codecs at least), there's no reason they won't keep gaining ground. My experience so far with Linux is better than Windows - way more stable, less rebooting, easier program installation (once you actually track down what you need), and a free open source alternative to almost any program you will need. It's got it's good points, and I think it's worth learning with the way the Microsoft camp keeps going. MAC is still the class of them all, but they are too costly and as they get more popular I fear they will wind up going down the same road as Microsoft. Learning an open source OS alongside your current OS of choice is just good common sense so that you're ready to go when one of the big corporate guys inevitably ticks you off.