Ubuntu Linux - The Healthy Choice
I've been playing around with Linux for about 3 years now, although it's only in the last year or so that it has actually appeared as an integral part of my desktop. However, the more I use Linux, the more frustrating Windows becomes whenever I move away from Linux to use Windows. Quite simply, Linux, overall, is better. It makes more common sense. It runs faster. It is definitely more stable (except when you have problems with your memory). It looks cleaner. It's more versatile for what I want to do.
In fact, there is very little that I want to do that Linux doesn't do. Games are one thing, but I don't get much time for games generally. It's not a huge problem. Playing media files can sometimes be an issue, but it usually copes. There can be a few problems though. Hardware-wise, it's not too bad. Occasional disagreement with memory causes a lock-up, but that's not the fault of Linux, that's the fault of a PSU blowing holes in my RAM. The nVidia drivers (when I get them installed) work fine, though my card is slightly too new to be recognised, and I can't therefore, change all my speed settings on the card. However, considering I don't really play games on Linux, it's no real issue. My USB devices work fairly well - USB 2.0 is supported. My USB headset is supported, though the volume control of the chord doesn't work. It's not exactly life-threatening. So, aside from games and the occasional media playback issue, there's nothing really wrong with Linux.
So, once you've got past the potential 'it doesn't do what I want' problems, there's how it does them, and whether it does them well. Like I said, graphically I prefer Linux. Of all the Linux distributions I have tried, Ubuntu is by far the most appealing to me. I prefer GNOME to KDE any day of the week - it looks cleaner, more conservative, more integrated. Some people don't like the 'Human' theme that comes with Ubuntu - I quite like it.
General Computer Usage
Multiple desktops are something which are a must for someone like me. When I am working, I invariably have multiple windows open. If I'm doing anything to do with websites, I'll have my usual windows open - Firefox, my web browser; Thunderbird, my email client; GAIM, my instant messenger client; my FTP client (Filezilla on Windows, gFTP on Ubuntu); a media player (Windows Media Player on Windows - no matter what people say about it, I've never found a windows application that is better for playing media personally, though iTunes is good for podcasts, not that there are many good ones around to be honest), Rhythmbox on Ubuntu. That's 5 applications already, before I'm editing. When I'm editing, I'll have a text editor open, like gedit (Ubuntu) or Notepad2 (Windows - far better than Notepad). If I'm copying and pasting, I quite often use Abiword too (if in Ubuntu). That's quite a few applications open at once. To have them all on one window is possible, but not the most practical solution.
Multiple Desktops
Therefore, multiple desktops are a must. Now, this can be done on Windows. One of the reasons I buy nVidia graphics cards, if you take out Linux support, is because of their support for such desktops with an application called nView. You create as many desktops as you like, and you flick between them, either by a taskbar, or by keyboard shortcuts. Problem one - the taskbar mucks up your desktop icons. Problem two - keyboard shortcuts are slow for this purpose - say you have 6 desktops - you can only cycle them one by one, you can't cycle straight to a particular desktop (even if you could, you'd have to know the shortcut for that particular desktop, and you'd have to have 6 shortcuts that didn't interfere with any shortcuts you already had for any program!). It's much easier to have the desktops listed at the bottom of the screen, with their own identifiable label, which you can scroll using the mouse in a fraction of a second. That's what Linux does. It saves huge amounts of time with my work.
Comparing Applications
So, laying out my applications is easier (yes, I took about 300 words, and summed it up in 7. Sorry), but what about the applications themselves? Are they any good? Well, actually, they aren't all that different. Which programs do I use the most? GAIM is open most of the time, unless I'm really busy. Firefox is open all day - although it gets closed and reopened every few hours because it does gradually eat my memory. Thunderbird is open too. All three of these applications are used in both Ubuntu and Windows. Moreover, I also use the same extensions (though a couple are slightly different versions).
My text editors are hardly different. In Windows, I use Notepad2, available on the Open CD. It's very good, highly recommended. On Ubuntu, I use gedit. But let's face it, a simple text editor isn't going to be radically different. Moving up, there's office applications. I don't use Microsoft Office, I use OpenOffice. I much prefer it, and it has functions that I use constantly that Microsoft Office just doesn't have - like PDF exportation. I also use Abiword, which suffices for almost all word documents. Both are available on both operating systems. When it comes down to media, however, there is a big difference. You can't using Windows Media Player (duh!). However, Ubuntu comes with the fantastic application that is Rhythmbox. Now, you do have to convert all your music to Ogg Vorbis, but that really shouldn't be a big problem. After all, you can download plug-ins that make Windows Media Player play Ogg Vorbis, and you can buy MP3 players that play this media type too. The joys of open formats! Granted, the application doesn't look as good as Windows Media Player, but it does the job just as well, and please, don't tell me you actually watch the visualisations, do you? For music streams online, there is the wonderful Streamtuner, with mplayer and Totem for playing DVDs. All of them do a wonderful job.
On to imaging and you guessed it, the program I use on Windows and Ubuntu is the same - GIMP. Oh, and it loads faster on Ubuntu than Windows (as does OpenOffice now I come to think of it). It works in exactly the same way. But it is more stable. The Windows version does have a tendency to crash when utilising certain modules.
In fact, when it comes down to comparing applications, there is only one area where Windows comes out on top: FTP. I prefer Filezilla over gFTP. I'm not a massive fan of the gFTP interface and Filezilla supports dragging and dropping much better. Filezilla is the one application I will reboot for - if I'm spending all day on website stuff and I know I'll be using ftp frequently, I will boot in to Windows. It just saves time. But it's the only application that I'll do that for.
So, anything else I use on Windows that I also use on Ubuntu? Why, since you mention it, yes! Audacity (for sound recording, very good little application). I think that does it for comparing applications - basically, moving to Linux hasn't meant that I've needed to lose any of my programs. Far from it. I have more programs installed on Ubuntu than I could ever have on Windows.
Stability and Performance
This is something I like. A lot. Ubuntu is generally very stable. I've only had a few problems with a fully working system - and most of them were with dodgy RAM. It doesn't normally crash for no reason. Applications don't crash too often either. When they do, a prompt comes up asking if you want to restart it immediately. You don't have endless pop-ups appear asking if you want to send Linus Torvalds a bug report that, let's face it, wouldn't get read anyway. Imagine if someone at Microsoft read every one of the bug reports I could have sent them. That'd be a full time job.
It's not just this, though. One important thing, for me, is that Ubuntu doesn't steal your CPU when you aren't looking. If I leave my PC for a few minutes, Windows tries to hijack my CPU by running background tasks for half of China, running anti-virus checks, spyware checks, downloading 60 billion Windows fixes for crap code. I woke up this morning and I could hear my PC whirring away at what sounded like a rather arduous task. When you wake up to a Ubuntu PC, it's quiet. It makes it so much more responsive. Imagine trying to open OpenOffice and the GIMP under a Windows machine that's processing 10 things in the background. That's going to be slow - and they open slowly to begin with. Under Ubuntu, because the CPU isn't cluttered, they'll open much faster. That's what I want. Nice. Performance is also enhanced by other things. I've used this illustration before, I know. But you probably didn't read it anyway. You want your desktop background to change automatically. Say, every 2 hours. In Windows, you download Webshots. It does the job, but it uses up 50Mb of RAM, 3% of your CPU, etc.. What's more, it uses that constantly, all the time the PC is turned on. What a waste. The Linux way - option 1 - put a script on your desktop that changes the wallpaper. Click it, and the wallpaper changes. Option 2: same as above, except the script runs as a cron job. Can't write the script? They're not hard to get hold of on the internet. Efficiency. That's what I'm after.
Closing Thoughts
So, after that glowing appraisal of Ubuntu, shall I tell you a secret? I wrote this whole post in Windows... This is Noelinho's problem, you see. He's fantastic at breaking software. It's like this: people come to me complaining that their PC doesn't work. I fix it and make it work again. How do I do this? I've got a PhD in breaking software. You don't learn to fix things without experimentation and breaking! No matter what I use, I'll make it break eventually. It's just me. I love playing. But for most people, people who just want their PC to work and aren't intent on trying out 50 new programs a day, distributions like Ubuntu will just work. You really should try it. Oh, wait. Only mrBen is actually left reading this...
Anyway, why did I write this? I've written similar things before. Well, having suffered a week without Ubuntu, I miss it. Windows doesn't make sense the way it used to. I constantly think 'but it'd be so much easier if it worked like this...' - and it would! I thought for a long time that, as a power user on Windows, I'd not get on with Linux. There'd be too many customisations that I'd lose. But I haven't. They just run a little differently. I've gained much from using Ubuntu. I recommend it not as a cheapskate geek who just loves to be different and show off with things that other people can't use, but because there's less stress involved, it's simpler, it does everything (gaming aside) that I need, and means that I can spend more time using my PC than setting it up. Though I should say, I'm just about to reinstall Ubuntu now...
(Tip: Always think before upgrading when you have a couple of thousand applications installed. Problem 1 - you can't actually remember what was installed. Problem 2 - the unexpected can always happen.)
Oh, and another thing - installing programs is far easier than under Windows. Really.)
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