Thursday, June 23, 2011

Ubuntu

Tonight I finally bit the bullet and tried to get a version of Linux working on my home desktop. I wasn't sure what to try, but after a bit of research I decided on Ubuntu. I don't know where my Win7 disk is (I'll get reorganized after the upcoming move), so I didn't want to do something that would upset my productivity and home internet browsing back. So with that in mind, I chose the "install it on top of Windows" option, called Wubi.

It downloaded fairly quickly and asked for a reboot. I really look forward to the day when bootups take a handful of seconds. I walked away and missed the "choose which OS to boot into" choice, so it chose Win7. I came back to my machine and instinctively logged into my Windows account.

"Wait a second..."

*sigh*

Once I rebooted again and got into Ubuntu, I had to get some drivers - one of which was for my video card. After I got that going, and rebooted, I was mildly blown away at the beauty of the interface. The menus were crisp, the buttons were well bright and cheery. I halfway imagined the Matrix; my mind had anticipated something much more unapproachable than what was actually before me.

It wasn't long before I was trying to get it to do something that I couldn't figure out - get two monitors to register (I've got them, I might as well use them!). I'm sure it's something simple, as it's probably a fairly common problem. I'll leave it for another day. I'll keep my Windows 7 install around. If I want to play a great game chances are I'll have to use that to play it, but Linux has come a long way from when I last saw it. Maybe I didn't give it a fair shake, but this time around I aim to do so.

1 comment:

  1. FWIW, there has been a fair amount of dissension in the ranks regarding Ubuntu's new Unity interface. I haven't even seen it, because I use KUbuntu, which runs KDE rather than Gnome as a desktop manager. It's an interface alternative you might want to try sometime, although be warned that practically all searches you do for help with Ubuntu assume you're running the "normal" Gnome version.

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