Some people have commented that I seem to have started my blog in 1970. Those more in the know will realise that it’s about a decade before I was born, nevermind the fact that the Web wasn’t around then.
It’s Microsoft Word’s built-in blogging feature. I’ll give it credit. At least it managed to post the article straight into WordPress. Pity that it doesn’t know what date it is yet.
I suppose that it was inevitable from my ill-fated Win-2-Lin project at the end of last year, but I had to give Linux another chance. If for nothing else, to see if I could get XGL working with all of the groovy special effects.
The distribution of choice this time around is Ubuntu. After SUSE 9.1 failed to work well with sound, and cause some grief with the PDA, I thought I would take an alternative route. Derek seems sold on Ubuntu now, so I thought ‘why not’?
Downloading the ISO from the Ubuntu website was relatively painless. For some reason the downloads seemed slower than a jar of Marmite superglued to the hard-shoulder of a motorway from the UK mirrors, so I downloaded from France. After experiencing the ‘we’ve got everything in the world’ mentally of the DVD distros of Linux, I was surprised that the standard distributions were only on CD. How could a distribution possibly work from a CD and compare to the larger distros? (Debian users knowingly snigger here)
Booting the CD up on the system was painless. It’s nice to have a working ‘try before you buy’ concept. The idea of ‘this is what you’re about to install’ is appealing for any user. Especially if they are considering a migration.
Installation ran through onto a SATA drive without incident. The questions were kept to a minimum which I thought was a good idea. One thing that perplexed me with SUSE and Mandrake before was the sheer volume of software lists that you were expected to wade through before installing. None of that here. Some regional settings, and a question asking what filesystem to use (defaulting to ext), and a hard drive.
The impressive part was that installation took around 15 – 20 minutes in total. I have never had an O/S install that quickly on a system recently. I’m told that Vista’s install time is comparable, but the last install of that was BETA 2, which took around an hour.
First thing was first. Where’s the ‘Start’ button! It’s an application button at the top. That’s nice. I must admit, I spent a couple of minutes just clicking around to be happy where everything was. I’ve never used the Gnome desktop before, so I made the most of it. Inital thoughts left me impressed. The windows looked pretty and the system ran quick. Boot up and login was lean. But I had stumbled into a few issues.
So, on I went. The Application menu was a piece of art. A few menus with some choice programs. Having the Add/Remove option in the main Application menu is a stroke of genius. It is the most obvious place you’d go if you are a novice user. And this is where the Debian system comes into it’s own. The Add/Remove tool is built on Apt-Get. Something that I was forced to use the command line for in SUSE. Let me explain this for Windows users.
Apt-get is a kind of automatic update for software. Except rather than being tied to a proprietary system (in Windows it’s likely you have MS Update. Adobe wants to update Reader. Flash wants to update itself somewhere else and so forth…), apt-get ties all of the open-source software together in repositories. These repositories keep track of the latest software. The great thing that comes from this is:
I ‘think’ that apt-get is scheduled in Ubuntu, as after installation from the CD, there where some initial updates to download. If so, that’s great! What is also good is that the Add/Remove feature is searchable in a simple manner, so user’s don’t have to trudge through many programs. It would have been nice if the search could be scaled down though. There is nothing to separate the description and the title. Searching for a remote desktop client to connect to Windows threw up all-sorts of results.
Fixing the screen resolution should have been simple, but this is my big gripe with Ubuntu. There is no core System Control Panel of any kind. There are some system tools in the System menu, and granted, they do cover some crucial things (mouse and keyboard for one), but the whole premise of Linux for human beings in my mind is that using the terminal should be almost completely unnecessary.
I did have to dip into the terminal to install the XGL features. All I can say is “Wow!” There are clearly still some basic issues, but if there are any Vista or Mac users feeling smug about the 3D interface – don’t be. Linux’s 3D engine is amazing.
Nevermind the pretty windows effects: Translucency, exposé-style scaling. The windows ‘wobble’ when you move them. They can latch onto other windows and stretch/squish as you push them together / push them apart.
Virtual desktop (one of Unix’s oldest and most useful features) is given a facelift as you find yourself looking at desktops on the surface of a cube that can be rotated with mouse or keyboard. You can run slides of images on the top and bottom and flick with amazing ease. While all this is gong on the applications continue unhindered. It makes Apple’s ‘Spaces’ look like the XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy. And it makes that look like a GCSE computer project gone wrong.
As well as that, every element of the 3D interface is customisable, right down to keyboard and mouse shortcuts. Maybe you want to zoom the cube when it spins? Or be inside the cube instead of outside? Maybe you want the windows to only move when you hold down a key, or create some shortcut keys to access certain system menus. Everything that I could think of was there, and many more that I hadn’t. (Oh, I wondered if there was a Vista-style flip for the windows scaling. There isn’t… yet.)
Installation involved using the terminal (*groan*), but the whole thing was working within 2 hours of starting the installation. That was very nice, although there were bugs that were only resolved through a number of reboots. I also didn’t understand the relationship of Beryl and Emerald. But I got there in the end, and it looks a treat.
A couple of minor problems is that the RDP programs that I have tried flashes and go translucent when connecting with more than 256 colours, and there is no good reason for it from what I can tell. Also, the processor usage of XGL gradually creeps up and starts to upset the system after a number of hours, a log off and on resolves this, but a nuisance nevertheless.
A few other niggles that I’ve had with Ubuntu so far:
Hardly the most damning list in the world, is it?
On the plus side:
I suppose that the bottom line is, will I continue to use it?
It’s most likely a ‘yes’. I think that the learning curve is less steep than other previous Linux distros. Also, I’ve always admired Linux from afar, but never felt it could compete against the more refined OSes. I think that if I do persevere, I’ll be running Vista on another drive. My mistake last time was to go ‘all or nothing’ with Linux, and I became frustrated rather than liberated. Migrating to Linux has to be a gentle process, so I’ll have to decide exactly what I expect to do in each environment.
Unfortunately, the killer app that keeps me working with Windows is Office. Outlook is a fantastic PIM, and its integration with Exchange and other MS Apps is second-to-none. Office 2007 is also a giant leap is the direction of a great UI. Word and Excel have such simple yet essential tools – it’s hard to take OpenOffice seriously if you’re a power user.
There are also the classic Linux problems. Inline help and documentation is virtually non-existant in a contextual manner. There is still a heavy reliance on the terminal. This may sound odd. But when I’m supporting users, they usually don’t know how to open the command prompt in Windows. Why should they have to in Linux?
What would be great to see is XGL working ‘out-of-the-box’, a control panel, slightly better hardware support (although it is pretty good now), and CHM-style help as standard, rather than users having to search WIKIs for the answers.
You show me a Linux that does this, and I’ll admit it’s ready to take on the big boys.
Maybe it’s not so far off any more.