My Ubuntu

After years being a windows user, eventually I decided to join Linux community. The main reason is that this platform is more attractive from the open-source software point of view. After reading some forums and newsgroups I decided to try Ubuntu for my Fujitsu-Siemens laptop. Although I have a 64 bit system I have chosen not to ask for problems and picked the 32-bit distro.


The only thing that was keeping me from moving to Linux is M$ Excel, which is used is our university at the informatics lessons for VBA programming, and the last 5 years I had some friends asking for help with that. Now I think I have had enough of that and next time I would be asked for VBA help I'll say I know nothing about it :)

The first impression from using Ubuntu is very positive! Installation of the system was so rapid that I even thought that there's an error and something didn't work :) Very cool! First I tried to install only the KDE version but eclipse refused to work with that one. With Gnome everything is working, here's the check list:

- eclipse (ok)
- firefox, with flash player (ok)
- USB memory stick (ok)
- SD card reader (ok)
- external USB hard-drive (ok)
- playing wmv/avi/mpeg/flv (ok)
- playing mp3 (ok)
- burning CD/DVD (ok)
- viewing graphics/pdf/chm/djvu (ok)
- Skype/Gtalk/Yahoo!Messenger/MSN/ICQ (ok)
- Xilinx WebPACK/ModelSim - (haven't tried yet)

I haven't tried to connect a webcam so far. And one thing I have problem with is running Picasa on wine - it just hangs at the splash screen and does nothing.

Now I've got to find a file manager a-la Windows Commander, coz I'm not impressed with Nautilus file manager.

I have to say that I'm not a Windows-hater. I think that most of the "linuxoids" words that "Windows must die" or "Windows is a crap", are meaningless. I had no problems using Windows besides keeping the anti-virus database up to date, which is not that hard. It is just the nature of my hobby (read oss programming) that requires something else than a proprietary Windows system.