HI SYN!

For the past month and half I’ve been trying to use Ubuntu 7.10 exclusively.  However, the same old story happened to me as it’s happened to others.  Here’s the recap of some of the issues I ran into:

- Exchange client: I tried the thunderbird exchange client, didn’t work and webmail is no substitute for the full client

- IRC: X-Chat is awesome, however I use BNC’s that require both a password and a different port on connection; something X-Chat doesn’t like

- Flash: It’s “supported” but not fully since some flash movies work (ie> most of youtubes) and others do not (ie> just about all of yahoo.com’s)

- Java:  Hit and miss for websites (ie> SmugMug).  I trialed SmugMug and generally like the service but I wasn’t able to fool with the easy to upload features during the trial.

- Nvidia 8800GT: It’s not new but yet the drivers are considered beta and need to be MANUALLY installed (and reinstalled for every kernel upgrade/recompile)

- Creative X-Fi: Not supported at all and I had to install a SB Live! card to get sound!  This card is not very new so I’m not understanding the hold up here.

- Dell Webcam: I got spoiled by this little puppy for the first month I had this monitor before I switched to Ubuntu but it’s not supported in any way in Linux right now

- Games: I had WoW running under emulation

Things I will miss

- (Good) Virtual Desktop: Windows has it but it’s not as good as Ubuntu implementation.  I really liked the ability to use the scroll button to switch between 2 Virtual Desktops

- Overall Unix Desktop feel: The only way I’m getting this back is if I switch to a Mac… and if OS X ever supports (not via hacks) my XPS 720, I just might pull the trigger on that.

- Compiz: The wobbly effect is an immediate disable in my mind but I do like this engine after all

- 4GB memory usage: The most I used was 3.2GB but having all 4GB available was nice!

As I thought before, Linux on the Desktop is a good idea but won’t be fully realized outside of nitches and devices like the Asus EeePC.  I still think the ultimate (Open Source) OS will be something based around a design like BeOS…. now if Haiku can only get to beta stage I can start considering a switch to it!

If it weren’t for Exchange, I would be using Ubuntu 100% of the time. At first, I thought I found a solution in Evolution but it seems their Exchange interface is a bit buggy. Other than that, it’s been smooth sailing again using *nix as a desktop. It’s been quite a while but nowadays there seems to be a GUI interface for nearly everything.

The coolest thing I’ve been fooling with all week, when I’ve actually had time, is Nagios. I’m not sure how it slipped thru the cracks but it’s definitely the most flexible monitoring solution out there, perfect cost too!

So far so good. This is basically the half way point of this short-holiday week and since work is crazy busy I haven’t been able to post about how it goes.

My test system is as follows:

AMD 3200XP

768MB DDR1 Memory

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So, it’s been around 8 years since I’ve actually used an OS other than Windows for anything more than a server. Yet here I am, typing this on a freshly installed Ubuntu 7.04 system. I’ve been sitting here playing with it off and on all Sunday afternoon and have come to the conclusion that I need to give Linux another try as a desktop/workstation OS that just works. I really hope this works out, I truely do.

Most times during the work day, I despise having to use Windows for most of my work tasks since I’m 99% of the time working on a UNIX box remotely. Wether it’s a company box in Dallas, Frankfurt or China I’ve been using putty to remote in to do all work on the servers. Not that using a terminal SSH session will be a different feel from putty, but the environment around that session definitely will.

So here we go, a week of nothing but Ubuntu for all things work related, starting Tuesday technically but I have a feeling I will be extending this experiment to any time I touch a computer, outside of video games.