Following on from the hiccups I had with Windows Vista I’ve been experimenting with Ubuntu Linux for about a week now and so far so good. Installation was a breeze and all my devices such as webcam and external hard drive work without problems.
It comes pre-packaged with a host of free open source software such as the Firefox browser and OpenOffice office suite, to name but a few. It comes with pretty much everything you would expect from Windows XP such as automatic updates, system and configuration tools, etc.
No real complaints so far. Only minor quibbles are as follows:
- Can’t get the screen refresh rate above 85Hz. On Windows XP I can get 120Hz
- Firefox browser uses version 1.5.0.5 rather than the latest 1.5.0.6
- Couldn’t get Macromedia Flash Player plugin to install on Firefox which makes browsing web sites using Flash difficult to use
- Trying to install additional software or tweak the operating system often requires delving down into the command line which can prove challenging to a Linux newbie!
I have managed to Google for solutions to some of the above issues but the solutions seem to involve the dreaded command line again.
Overall I’m very happy with Ubuntu. Some people may argue that the UI isn’t as nice as Vista but at the end of the day that’s not the overriding factor for choosing an operating system. Ubuntu Linux is free software for life, seems very reliable and has a loyal band of followers, and I’m sure isn’t as much a target for hackers as Microsoft software is. Having said that I will still probably give Vista another test drive once it finally gets released 
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4 responses so far ↓
1 Dean // Sep 15, 2006 at 7:55 am
Browsing through the Ubuntu support forums it looks like some of these issues I spotted are down to me using the 64-bit AMD version of Ubuntu. I don’t think Macromedia Flash has support for Linux 64-bit AMD yet? I would imagine there would be more support for 32-bit and Intel platorms.
2 Dean // Sep 21, 2006 at 7:30 am
I’ve now installed the 32-bit i386 version of Ubuntu and have now got Macromedia Flash player installed successfully.
3 Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 Clean Install Impressions « Technical Itch // Nov 14, 2006 at 5:45 pm
[...] Thirdly, I was impressed how well the clean install of Edgy 6.10 handled installing Macromedia Flash player. When I first installed Ubuntu 6.06 a few months ago I had problems using the Flash plugin. Whenever I visited a web site that required the Flash plugin, Firefox would tell me the plugin wasn’t installed. I would follow the prompts inside Firefox to install the plugin, but it never seemed to work for me. I had to end up using Synaptic to install the Flash plugin. [...]
4 Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 Clean Install Impressions // Mar 4, 2007 at 7:38 pm
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