The switch is almost complete, and now I’m running the latest and greatest release of Ubuntu as my primary Operating System. Sorry Microsoft … we had a great run, but the time has come for something different.
For the past fifteen years I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Microsoft, but at the same time I had defended them whenever possible. Was this because I’m a bit of a Microsoft fanboy? Perhaps. But I find the anti-Microsoft people to be quite comical when riled up. That said, after learning about some of the less-than-acceptable Windows updates “features”, I decided it was time to look elsewhere for my computing needs. I’m sure that Microsoft will not use the unknown backdoors to Windows for malicious purposes, but if someone else were to gain access to some of my past customer files, then I would be in some very serious hot water.
But, all that aside, I’d like to tell you just how simple it was for me to install Ubuntu on my 4 year old HP Pavilion zt3000 notebook. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the best, this install was a solid 8.
After downloading the 7.10 .iso file from the Ubuntu site and burning it to disc, I swapped my notebook’s Windows harddrive with a faster 80 gig and prepared myself for a solid 10 hours of configuration after a relatively easy install. However, my estimation couldn’t have been farther off. Less than an hour after booting the notebook and starting the install process, it was already fully operational and I was busy setting up my email, downloading the Opera browser and setting up the Transmission BitTorrent client. Unlike previous versions of Ubuntu, this install was even able to recognize my Broadcom wireless card and download the necessary firmware and software to activate it.
That said, if you happen to have a Broadcom wireless network card and you’re having trouble getting it to work in Ubuntu, do yourself a favour and plug yourself into the network with a CAT5. If you try to set up the wireless card without being connected to the net first, you’ll be in for a world of frustration (I know first hand, as I’ve made this mistake a few times in the past). So long as you have a line to the internet, you can usually find the information you need at the Ubuntu Forums.
So if everything went so well, why the 8 out of 10?
Well … I’ll admit that I made that CAT5 mistake at first, thinking that I should be able to use the drivers found on the CD or using the Windows drivers that came with my notebook, but no. Aside from that, there’s a slight bit of an issue when importing my old Outlook data into Evolution.
In order to bring the last 12 years of emails with me to Ubuntu, I need to convert Outlook’s .pst file in Windows. I chose to do this by downloading Thunderbird and importing my files to there first. Afterwards, you can take that Thunderbird file to Ubuntu and import it into Evolution. One word of caution, though. If you have several folders to store your emails like I do, make sure you remember how they were nested. This is important because you will lose the nesting during this import process. That said, once everything is in Evolution, you’ll be able to move the folders however you’d like.
So those were the two things I had trouble with during the installation and migration process. I’ll still keep a Windows installation around as it’s a little hard to write .NET software from Linux, but unless I need to do something that is completely Windows-specific, I think I can say that Ubuntu will be my primary OS for the next little bit. It has the features I need, and it’s simple enough that my family can pick up my notebook and use it whenever necessary. Unfortunately, Solaris and FreeBSD could not fit this requirement.
That said, Solaris and FreeBSD are best for servers, so it’s all good.
Have you ever used Ubuntu for any real amount of time? I’ve used it on and off for the last two years, but never for more than a few hours at a time. I’m curious to know what you think about the operating system.
