Gordaen's Blog

I decided to give Ubuntu (one of the many flavors of Linux) a chance about a week ago. You can download the CD image so that you can try out the operating system by booting directly from the CD and it had me sold fast. It comes with all the basic programs you need—all free counterparts to Windows programs. GIMP (image editing), Open Office (full office suite, similar to MS Office), Firefox 2.0 (if you don’t know about this web browser or aren’t using it yet, you better change that fast!), Gaim (for instant messaging on AIM, MSN, Jabber, and more), and a whole slew of other programs for scanning (I was impressed that my scanner worked perfectly with no additional software), gaming, and plenty more.

I decided to install Ubuntu on my tower, since I generally keep everything on my laptop (and that meant I wouldn’t have to worry about losing anything just in case something went wrong). Unfortunately, I found that my motherboard considered my SATA hard drive to be secondary to my IDE one, which complicated the install. I was able to fix the problem though, so everything worked out okay. Users with any “regular” computer shouldn’t have any problem installing Ubuntu, either stand-alone or alongside a Windows install. The operating system is really geared toward being user friendly, so it’s a pretty easy change.

It’s easy to setup shortcut keys for just about anything, so I quickly set one up for the terminal. I’ve only begun to explore the abilities of the operating system, but one of the first things I found was the multiple desktops. Think of it like having two desktops with only one screen. You can quickly (by clicking or pressing CTRL+ALT+LEFT/RIGHT) switch between them, making it easier to multi-task (or hide games from the boss).

The one thing I’d suggest is that you view the guide which can tell you how to set up Gstreamer so that you’ll have all the codecs you need to make MP3’s, DVD’s, and other media files work right away.