My Ubuntu Story

    I switched to Ubuntu two years ago. I had just happened to buy a laptop from a friend. An older laptop, not too powerful. At the time I had already had a couple of computers running Windows XP. I had always wanted to try another OS, since I hadn’t used a non-windows OS since I was very young, and mainly then it was MS-DOS, and old Apple IIe’s which I had mainly used to play games. Once I tried MacOS, probaby 7 or 8 in school (I hated it btw). I was pretty daunted about what I had heard about linux being difficult to install and use for a non-programmer. However fairly recently I had heard through people on forums about this new, easy to use linux distro called Ubuntu.

    Eventually I got around to doing a little cursory research on Ubuntu, and what really appealed to me, more than anything was the philosophy behind Ubuntu, and that had more or less sealed it. The first chance I got, I had decided, I would install and try out Ubuntu. I wasn’t really aware of what a liveCD was at that point, so my first chance became the cheap laptop I purchased. I decided to wipe the XP partition entirely and install Ubuntu, and go at least 30 days without using windows at all. After a few bumps, 30 became 60, 60 became 90, and generally, even though my desktop was more powerful, my wife and I stopped fighting over the desktop, because I was generally no longer interested in it.

    I should also note I wasn’t impressed with what I was hearing about Vista either, I had friends who were using the betas, and it was using 500mb’s of ram doing nothing by itself. I had heard about the DRM, the price, and the incompatibility. The DRM and the insane price were the real kickers, I was determined not to spend anymore money on windows. Not to go through the pain of reinstalls, etc.

    Now to describe the first few days: Everything except one thing worked, right from the install, all the drivers, etc. I was impressed with the number of programs that came installed by default, all for free. The only problem I had was that I had a broadcomm wireless card, that took me about a week to resolve. Mainly for two reasons: A.) Broadcomm does not play nice with linux. B.) I had never ever used linux before. I was a little timid with the command line, and a little clumsy as well. I *did* however get it working. Interestingly, when a piece of hardware didn’t work in windows, I was used to a.) Reinstalling windows, or b.) buying new hardware.

    Incidently I eventually did buy a new wireless card, one with more features, but also because broadcomm card drivers do not survive upgrades well (this is again, the fault of Broadcom, and not Ubuntu or GNU/Linux).

    After getting the wireless to work, it was smooth sailing. My work even already had a samba server, and I was able to figure out how to configure the printers to work off my laptop in about 10 minutes. I got a 3D desktop, a bunch of powerful tools, irc client, multi-chat client, etc. All for free. And I learned more about computers in the first 6 months of using Ubuntu than I had in the previous 8-9 years of using windows.

    Another thing that struck me, is that when a program did have an error, for the first time in my life I actually submitted a bug report, primarily because I had faith that it would actually get fixed. In fact, I’ve submitted bug reports and *seen* them get fixed. To top it all off, the Ubuntu community is the friendliest and most helpful community I’ve ran into on any computer related issue, and they actually make an effort to make instructions “newbie friendly” and non-technical where appropriate.

    A small note about the 3D desktop. It’s actually more powerful than Vista’s Aero effects, and I was able to get it to run on an old Intel Extreme     Graphics II, with 32mb of Video memory, my laptop also originally only had 512mb of ram (I have since upgraded it to 1gb). Vista requires a minimum of 2gb of ram and a 128mb video card to run smoothly. Also my Ubuntu, with several *hundered* programs installed, only took up about 6 gigs. Vista with almost nothing installed takes 24gbs of space. Ubuntu’s default install (which still comes with several hundred programs), takes up only 3gbs.

    Since then, I’ve only had a few minor problems. Once I freaked out because I had lost X (the window manager) I thought I had tanked it, but I used my other computer, and found out, even without X, I could fix my problem. I fixed it, and then immediately installed irssi. Irssi is an irc client that needs no window manager, straight from the console. I think this should actually be installed by default, so that newbies can get live support if they lose X, just my $0.02.

    Also, once I accidently updated to the new distro the wrong way. This was a total meltdown, lost X, lost the console, everything, my drive wouldn’t boot. I freaked, I thought I had corrupted the disk, or at least had to do a complete reinstall, and I had forgot to backup anything. I had homework due later that week on the computer. However, I was able to use a live CD, log back into my hard drive, and repair my bad upgrade. It took me 1 day, without ever having done it before.

    Now a short while later, my wife’s windows desktop (it had become hers by this point) finally totally and completely tanked. The XP disc I had was scratched up and no longer good enough to do an install. She had resisted using linux again and again until this point. I was too broke to spring for another copy of XP, and in any event, I had told her, that since I was no longer using windows, I was going to be less and less able to provide support for later versions of Windows if she continued using it, which would mean more downtime, and more expense. So she agreed to let me install.

    The install on that machine had a little problems with the psuedo-hardware RAID I had, I eventually just disabled it, and she uses the second disk as a backup now. It also had some weird instability during the install process (this was on Dapper Drake), I had to keep moving the mouse about to keep it from locking up (I haven’t had this problem since after dapper drake). She was apprehensive and a bit frustrated for the first few days after I got it installed. However, now she’s thrilled, she plays Second Life, edits things in GIMP and Inkscape, posts to her blogs, chats using Pidgin, browses the web using firefox, etc. And she’s never had to do a system reboot, or run anti-virus, spy-ware removers, etc. She even uses some of her windows apps that she’s still tied to in Wine, which she even learned how to do herself. And she’s been using it less “hardcore” and for less time, than I have.

    We are now a windows free house, and the moment Dell started selling laptops with Ubuntu preinstalled, I bought one, and she got the older one. The Dell Ubuntu has *zero* “issues” with hardware. And it runs beautifully, and its slightly cheaper out the door than a comparable windows version with XP or Vista Home Basic, and much cheaper by far for each other version of windows. And cheaper still when you discount all the proprietary software I haven’t bought.

    In fact, even though Ubuntu has never cost me a dime, and nothing on it has. I am so impressed by it, I have joined the Free Software Foundation, and purchased things from the Ubuntu Store. I’ve passed out LiveCd’s to anyone who wants them, and given advice and support for free. I’ve even been *paid* (without asking for it mind you!) for installing Ubuntu on friend’s computers because they were so impressed.

And that is my Ubuntu story.