Passing Thoughts

Ubuntu

I switched to the Mac from Windows about 2 years ago. I was finding Windows increasingly frustrating - unix has a great collection of powerful tools and paradigms that suit the things I need to do and not having them was a pain. My first attempt at switching was via Linux using Fedora Core. This gave me a lot of the things I was looking for but at a cost of not having a lot of the things Window does well - what you might call the consumer side of things - easy configurations, auto-detection of hardware etc. When I became increasingly surrounded by people using Macs I was quickly sold. Here was a platform that had all the Unix power and had a slick consumer grade interface on top. I moved over and never looked back.

So when Cory Doctorow announced that he was leaving the mac for Ubuntu I was intrigued. Cory is very much a 'power user' and if he is prepared to give up his Mac for it then it was got to be worth a look.

Fast forward a bit. I recently found myself wanting a smaller machine downstairs - I have my Mac upstairs with the second screen setup and sometimes I just need to be able to do the odd bits and pieces while I am downstairs with the children. Nothing great - bit of ssh, reading a PDF or surfing the web. I looked at the Palm TX but the problem with PDA's is that they have tiny screens and you can't type on them. Just before I moved to the Mac I bought a Sony Picturebook. A great little machine but because it has no integrated networking I had never managed to get it working properly with wireless. Time to try again I thought.

I found that there is a version of Ubuntu for machines with less than 192Mb of memory and thanks to this blog entry I had it installed in no time at all. This in itself was a breath of fresh air. Last time I had installed linux on it there had been 2-3 days of messing about trying to get the installer to understand the display, let alone put linux on the machine. Next step was wireless. I have a PCCARD thing that came with it - Ubuntu can see it which is a start but I could not find anyway to make it see it as a wireless device at all. Next stop was a USB Netgear WA111. I had more success with this in that I could get Ubuntu to see it and recognize it as a network device but (after diving into config files) I could not get it to see my network. After a bit of googling I found that I could pick up a Belkin USB wireless stick up quite cheaply and people seemed to be able to get it to work and so I ordered one. Ubuntu saw it right away but could not see my network. After some googling I dumped the open source driver and tried ndiswrapper and as if by magic - it all worked. Still this was a lot more work than it would be under either Windows or the Mac and I can't quite see someone like my Mum doing it - even though she is quite computer literate.

So having got it all working what is Ubuntu like? Very nice indeed. They have gone for a sudo like scheme for using root just like the Mac which I find very attractive. The desktop is clean and good looking and very easy to use. There are still one or two integration issues - cut and paste is not quite as smooth across apps as it is on the Mac or Windows. All in all very very useable though.

So would I give up all my Mac loveliness for this? Nah - OSX still manages the seamless blend of Unix and Consumer grade gloss that I find lets me do pretty much all that I want. Is Ubuntu a viable alternative to Windows? Not quite - but it is not far off and it certainly would be for some people.

I am going to setup the other old laptop with Ubuntu for the children (we already have arguments in the house about whose turn it is on the computer) so that they get some exposure to other operating systems. It will be interesting to see how they get on with it