So there are thousands of blogs about Ubuntu. Even more about XGL/Compiz. What makes me any different, I don’t know. I just feel the need to put my opinion out there, and thats what I’m going to do.
Coming from windows, but with a little experience in linux, and a lot of interest in it, I have found myself disapointed more often than not. Tried Suse, Slackware, Fedora, Red Hat (pre fedora) and a few others. Nothing ever gave me enough cause to use it for more than a week and as anything other than a toy. With Ubuntu, I haven’t booted into Windows in about a month. There are some things I miss, but I am managing. I will be booting into it for games, but I can’t think of any killer windows app that I have to have right now.
So onto my thoughts. First, Ubuntu. It’s Linux for humans, or so they say. I think its more like “Linux for psuedo geeks”. A novice who has never been in Windows may not have a problem getting used to it, but a novice windows user would be confused. I personally like the freedom that the OS gives in terms of usage and customization, but this freedom comes at the price of a learning curve, and a pardigm shift in though from windows. Overall though, its a pretty sweet deal. The only hitch, as it has been in all linux distros from the beginning of time, was my Broadcom Wireless Controller. But, it took 10 minutes to handle vs hours in other distros. Ubuntu++ there. apt-get and synaptic are the best package management tools in existance. They just work. You want something, you find it, you apt-get it, you run it. That simple. No worry about dependencies, no versioning to worry about, nothing. Find, install, run, enjoy. Repeat as needed.
The best app that DOESN’T install that simply, has to be XGL/COMPIZ. I was always a fan of the fluid feel of OSX and all of the futuristic movie computers. Alot of people call this eye-candy or flair or cowbell…but I think it serves a purpose. If for nothing else, it makes your computer feel like its responding to you. Its not just reacting, but actually responding. I don’t know if my choice of words really convey’s my feelings, but that’s all I can come up with. The cube is also very useful. I’ve always liked the idea of the multiple desktops on linux, but they never seemed intuitive to me. Now, the concept just seems to make more sense as far as remembering where programs are, especially if you set the cube to the inside mode.
All in all, anyone with a little time to spare should try it out. If you don’t like it, no problem, to each his own. I’m far from a linux zealot that wants the world to recognize linux’s greatness, I just like to share my experiences, especially the good ones.
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