Last week I installed the newest version of Ubuntu on my PC. I had just recently started using Ubuntu (7.10), and was already quite impressed. Naturally I was looking forward to the new version, and I was not disappointed. Here are some of my first impressions.

First off, the installation booted quite quick. Even faster than a fresh installation of Windows XP, if I remember correctly. Out of the box, the look and feel have a nice atmosphere, but some people will find it slightly boring. Of course, further graphics improvements are always welcome, so I went about setting up Compiz. Luckily I had figured out how to do this previously on 7.10, so it wasn't as hard this time around. Everything could be done from the package manager. After installing some nVidia drivers and the advanced Compiz configuration program, I was able to set some very funky display effects. I especially like the idea of my different desktops being represented as a cube. And the graphics look very smooth and polished. Visually there was nothing more I wanted to tweak immediately.

I'm typing this article in OpenOffice, and find the experience quite pleasant. I'm no stranger to OpenOffice, but in this particular default installation I found one thing which was not quite wrinkle-free. The spellchecker kept underlining very common words, like “experiences”, and “disappointed”. Finally I discovered that changing the language settings to “English (USA)” instead of “English (South Africa)” yielded much better results.

Next, I noticed that the font being used in this document wasn't Arial. I opened the font drop-down, but couldn't find any of the fonts I am used to on Windows. Google to the rescue. I found out there is a package called “msttcorefonts”, which you can install to make such fonts available. Much better!

Next, I played with audio and video. I had recently purchased a new CD by one of my favorite bands, and decided to rip the tracks to the hard drive. In the menu, I immediately found a program for this, Audio CD Extractor. With the exception of having to install the appropriate codec to create MP3 files, the process was dead-easy. As soon as I inserted the CD, the program immediately populated the display with the track names. After another few clicks (changing some preferences), the extraction began, and was finished within minutes. Very impressive.

My impressions of video handling were mixed. My first try was to play a DVD. No luck there. The movie player had some problem with playing the disc. Fortunately, it offered to search for the missing packages, and install them with minimal effort. Great, I thought. But after that it still didn't work. A few Google searches and about 20 minutes later (with a few additional packages installed), DVDs finally played. Except that the player skipped the menu and started with the first track immediately. When I couldn't fix that, I decided to install VLC. This yielded much better results, and everything now worked as it should have in the first place. After doing some research about DVD codecs, I now know why this process had to be so difficult. Since (most) DVDs are encoded with proprietary codecs, these can't be included with the default installation of Ubuntu. And that's why you have to install them yourself. But I did have a pleasant experience with video nonetheless. I successfully loaded several AVI files without having to install a single additional codec or package. Not bad.

With Ubuntu 7.10 I tried to install the Linux Port of .NET, Mono. That went without a hitch, but I couldn't get MonoDevelop installed. I haven't tried it with Ubuntu 8.04 yet, but I suspect that this is not an Ubuntu related issue anyway.

I must say that I am impressed with the selection of pre-installed software that comes with Ubuntu. It's a very useful collection, and for most everyday tasks you have everything you need. And finding and installing other software is quite painless. The Add/Remove program provides you with a world of software available for Linux. And if you can't find something there, chances are you will find it using the package manager. And what I love even more is that you don't need to worry about package dependencies. If a program you are installing needs another package to function correctly, Ubuntu will install that package for you. Very handy. The only downside to using Ubuntu in South Africa is that bandwidth is quite limited. I have a 3GB limit for each month, so I can't afford to install anything that looks interesting.

Overall, I'm having a wonderful time with Ubuntu. And even though I understand why some people with less technical knowledge might find Ubuntu slightly difficult to figure out at times, I love figuring out little “challenges” now and again. At the moment I can't switch to Ubuntu completely yet, because I need to develop software for Windows. But that will change soon, when I will have a separate work computer. From then on, I plan to move to Ubuntu on my home computer completely. So far I haven't found a single reason not to.

I think so far everybody agrees that Vista is not one of Microsoft's best products. Recently I've had a look at Ubuntu, and I must say that I'm quite impressed by their whole model. Here's a quick comparison.

Obviously Ubuntu has the price advantage, since it's free. The price for Windows XP was not too bad, considering that it's quite a good operating system, but paying for Vista is just beyond me. I've worked with Vista on brand new PCs with much better specs than my 2-year old XP machine, and Vista was considerably slower than XP on my machine.

Then there's the matter of release frequency. With Microsoft, you wait 2 to 6 years for a new version. With Ubuntu, you get a new version every 6 months. Maybe it doesn't have as many new features then as a new Windows version, but the incremental improvement model appeals to me so much more. And support for Ubuntu is given at least 18 months for each release. But if you upgrade every 6 months, you don't need the support for that long anyway.

I haven't installed Ubuntu on my PC yet, but from other reports it seems it's quite fast. Especially the one derivative fo Ubuntu, Xubuntu, makes old PCs seem like the newest out there. But Microsoft seems to have taken a step back. Vista really is slower than anything I've ever seen. I tried to delete a 90MB file once (moving it to the recycle bin), and it took more than 2 minutes to complete. On my XP machine this kind of operation takes at most 2 seconds.

And then there's the software issue. On Windows, most good software is commercial, and you need to pay. More good free software is constantly emerging, but for Linux there's so much more! You have thousands of software packages to choose from. Because almost all Linux software is open source, the competition is much greater, and that's why you have more choice. Granted, you won't get open source software with the complexity of something like Photoshop, but that's just a little price to pay.

And then my favourite issue: it seems to me that you can install Vista on your machine only once. Or twice, at the most. This is totally contradictory to anything I would expect for a consumer product like that. It's like buying a book, and being told you're only allowed to read it once. Of course, with Ubuntu, you don't have this problem. If you buy a new machine, or you just want to re-install, you can do this without thinking twice.

Considering the fact that XP will soon not be sold anymore, and that Microsoft is increasingly trying to force Vista onto everyone, I think I might convert to Ubuntu sometime in the near future. I've been looking at compatability with the software I now use, and surprisingly there are some good options. From what I've seen, I think I can safely switch to Ubuntu without having to sacrifice any type of software that I'm using on Windows now. I do a lot of .NET development, and have found that I can do that on Linux too (with the Mono Project). And that even allows me to write software that's compatible across Operating Systems. That's quite inspiring.

What do you think about this topic? Feel free to give us your thoughts.