Week Two Complete

It's been two weeks of no MS Windows and I'm doing just fine. So far there are just two things that I really miss from MS Windows, VPN access to work and Photoshop. I could, with time, learn GIMP enough to get by but "getting by" isn't what I want in a photo editor. Let's face it, I would only be happy if I could get Photoshop to work on Linux. With VPN, I need Watchguard software client for Linux. It might be out there but I can't find it. Without it I can't get to my work from home.

Linux on a Laptop. I have not had any luck getting my wireless network cards working on Ubuntu. This is a show stopper. I will be removing Linux from the laptop. I hate this but in this day and age, a laptop without wireless is not worth having. I have found some articles on line with hints and tips for fixing the problems I'm having but none work for me or the article is over my head for my level of Linux knowledge. The second problem I'm having with the laptop is the 1.5 second delay of mouse movements when opening windows. This made my laptop stutter. I could have lived with this but the wireless problem I can't accept.

USB support in Ubuntu is very good so far. Hardware support is good, but when you have problems there is never an easy answer. Rewrite the whole kernel, modify some "code", or buy a part that is compatible. These are your choices.

Software selection is pretty good. If you can think of it, you can find a program that will do it for you.

The built-in add/remove applications feature I like a lot. The ability to add other package installers is great. The problem starts when you have to download zipped files, extract them, get the dependencies too, and blah, blah, blah. What I'm trying to say is that if you can't find the program you want in a "package" it gets hard fast.

Over all I like Ubuntu Linux but I'm starting to see some of it's short comings. I have come to think of this Linux Box as more like a MS Windows 98 machine. MS Windows 98 ran a GUI (graphical user interface) over DOS (command line). If you wanted to do anything powerful you had to go to a DOS session to do it. Ubuntu is like this. The windows part is just "dressing" over the powerful command line. The real power lays in the command line. The problem is that most people don't like working with the command line so a windows "dress" was put over this command line. I think this duality is keeping linux out of the mainstream. Both MS Windows and Apple do almost everything through the GUI. Both REQUIRE very little command line action. Linux on the other hand REQUIRES command line access. You can not use LINUX without it.

I find myself comparing Linux to MS Windows. I've wonder why I do this. I have come to realize that this is because MS Windows is STANDARD. There are may things like this, the iPod is the STANDARD in mp3 players, Apple is the STANDARD in User Interfaces and TIVO is the STANDARD in D.V.R.s. These are just some examples, any products developed in those categories are compared to these items. Why are these items STANDARDs? Because they do what they do very well. MS Windows does not do everything right but it does do everything. Vary rarely do you to check computability list when buying hardware for MS Windows. There are usually three varieties of every piece of software for MS Windows (Commercial, Shareware, and Freeware) and they work with almost any combination of hardware. Is it pretty? No Is it cheap? No. IT JUST PLAIN WORKS EASILY.

With all of that said I don't dislike Linux. It's different and it has gotten something right. It's stable, it's fast (command line), and its secure. Those are great things to be, but it's just not user friendly yet. As I said, I think of it as MS Windows 98. It had a pretty windows "dress" on but underneath its still DOS (Terminal).

At Two Weeks of Only Ubuntu Linux, I give it a 7 out of 10.