I was a Windows user for a long time. From the day I started using computer till last week, I never thought of leaving Windows.There were several software which kept me glued to Windows.
All was well until my friend inserted an virus infected pen drive to my laptop and it *really* screwed my operating system. I had to completely erase my hard drive to get it back on control. That incident made up my mind to change to a more secure OS, something like Ubutnu!
Got a new installable CD of Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid OS from the latest edition of Linux For You magazine and installed the new OS last weekend. There were no glitches while installing Ubuntu on my laptop. The installation took about 30 mins and most of the features were working just out-of-the-box.
Had to struggle a little to make my Reliance Netconnect broadband connection work on Ubuntu (how I made it – in a separate post) and the screen resolution is somewhat lesser that what my monitor could support. But apart from these issues, Ubuntu has impressed me a lot in the past one week. The free OS has come so much closer to the priced counterpart – Windows. Congrats, Ubuntu team for achieving this!
So, in the upcoming posts, I might detail out my journey on a Linux based operating system. Be there!
If you have used Ubuntu before, feel free share your opinion/review through comments. I’ll be happy to hear that!
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Its great to know that.
Let me share my experience with you of some 3 years back. I am an old fan of replacing Windows with Ubuntu. It was the days of using dialup modem. I cant install its driver. And if I can remember correctly, there was a software Automatix. Which download necessary codecs and other things. But I cant enable dialup internet on it. So I cant use that software which I was thinking to be a blessing. My thought was to prepare full fledged alternate to say good bye to Windows.
My another major concern was playing songs and movies on it too. But installing codecs and their dependencies drove me crazy. So I went to Windows again and keep sticking with it.
The interesting thing was I download installation binaries on some other system. And when I try to install them I got some library dependency issue. Then I waited for the next day to download that dependency. And it goes on :p I think it was Ubuntu 6.
But best of luck with your system. Please post the screenshots of your customization. I will love to see them. It motivates me to make another attempt for Ubuntu. Please share your experience of playing multimedia on it. If you got full arsenal, then I am coming too. :p
Good work!!! again.
Thank you, Tahir.
I’ll definitely share my Ubuntu screenshots soon. And, installing Audio/Video codes were not too difficult. Now I can watch all DVD movies from the Totem player. Will share the details of that also soon.
Btw, I too had faced the the ‘dependency’ problem you mentioned. It was kind frustrating at first.
Welcome to FOSS family
. . .
Hope this link [http://bit.ly/2VXMPL] comes handy and helpful to you as a beginner
Thanks for the welcome, Jeyanthan.
Btw, the link you had shared is awesome. here’s the updated link for the Ubuntu version 10.04 – http://blog.thesilentnumber.me/2010/04/ubuntu-1004-post-install-guide-what-to.html
Glad you liked it
Ah! I missed to update with the latest ones
Welcome to FOSS sir. As a techy you should have done this long time ago
I myself have been using Linux from 2007. Started with Ubuntu 6:10 then 7:04. After that I haven’t put my hand on Ubuntu. Order the Lucid but guess it got missed out. I’m a happy ArchLinux user.
Ubuntu forums is the first place I used to check for any problems I face. For the scree resolution there is one file where u need to add the actual resolutions your monitor can accommodate. Don’t remember it exactly now.
Codecs are pretty easy days. All you need is good internet. By trying to open the file formats if its not supported you will be prompted to downloded to codecs.
Yes Ubuntu has come a long way from the days I started using it. Happy computing
Thanks, Prem!
//As a techy you should have done this long time ago //
Yeah! I should have. In fact, I was having Ubuntu 9 as a dual boot along with my Win XP but never used it that time. There were several reasons for that (lack of drivers, netconnect problem and lack of Tamil support in Firefox that time). But, now Ubuntu has matured a lot, made my mind to switch to it.
I would strongly recommend Ubuntu to you from my one week of experience. Of course, you must be having better experience than me as a long term Linux user.
Ubuntu… Nah I’ll try it for just to get the feel of it. I’m pretty much happy with Arch Linux which doesn’t have any release cycle associated with it. It made me buid my own OS from the plain vannila system. After a year of Linux usage you might want to change to something. I took Arch 2 years back & never looked back
Chk the wiki for more info on Arch Linux.
Installing Arch will take 5 hours but it is worth the effort
//Installing Arch will take 5 hours//
woah! the Arch Linux page claims that it is *lightweight* but it seems like it is not.
anyway, I need to get a feel of Linux first before diving deep into building my own OS. Need to learn a lot in this space.
// The Arch Linux page claims that it is *lightweight* but it seems like it is not.
Lightweight in the sense of running the operating system. In order to make it lightweight there is a heavyweight option of installing
Hi Veera,
That what I tried to finish last evening.
I have newly Dell desktop and was trying to have Ubuntu10.04 version running on my windows7 using VirtualBox. I tried, installation was successful on VirtualBox (used a downloaded .iso image) but there was some issue in autom configuration in x-server/x-config. So when I booted my virtual image, the ubuntu gets started in command mode and not in GUI(Login screen) mode. I read on net about this issue and there seems to be an issue. Do you have any update on this? Do you think of using virtualBox in windows?
Thanks
Raminder
we need to edit the xorg.conf file in order to manipulate the screen resolutions. Unfortunately, Ubuntu 10.04 does not come with a xorg.conf file. I’m still looking for some solutions to this. Will definitely update here once I found that.
Btw, as of now I do not have Windows in my machine. Only Ubuntu and I don’t have any plan to install Windows in my machine for the time being.
I switched to Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop a couple weeks ago and have never since booted into my Windows installation. Lucid Lynx (10.04) seems to be a quantum jump in out-of-the-box usability of a linux distribution.
Last evening I did for the first time in 2 weeks run into the need for Windows. My 401K provider does not work well in Chrome or Firefox. So I needed IE. I’m looking at IEs4Linux for this.
//Lucid Lynx (10.04) seems to be a quantum jump in out-of-the-box usability of a linux distribution//
+1. It is perfect.
And, OMG! my payroll site works only in IE and I don’t even have Windows now!
Need to look for some alternatives.
There are several ways you can install IE and run. One such option is wine.
http://www.winehq.org/download/deb
thank you for the link, Karthikeyan. Will check it out.
Btw, in your blog you mentioned that you use Netbeans IDE on Ubuntu. How is the speed of the IDE? Is it fast?
Its very good. I use acer 5740 core i5 with 4GB RAM and netbeans starts up exactly in 4 seconds and its responsive. But as you are new too Ubuntu 10.04 if this bug http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1478787 hurts you (random rare freezing of keyboard and mouse) , just upgrade the linux kernel to 2.6.34 . Its easy to install the new kernel ..just download i386 for 32 bit processor or amd64 for 64 bit and double click it.
As a techy, I know all too well Windows’ problems. When a virus is capable of blocking CTRL+ALT+DEL… I got issues :p
But as a techy, I spend too much time during the day doing technical stuff already. I have better things to do than configure Linux.
Ubuntu 10, IMO, is perfect. I spend zero time resolving dependencies or configuring stuff during normal usage. It doesn’t force me to put on my techy mindset, which to me means relaxation time, and to my friends means they don’t have to be a clone of me just to understand the darn thing!
+1? +10 for Lucid Lynx, it earns all the previous +’s that the older versions (IMO) just didn’t earn, and makes it all worth it.
agreed. Most of the features in Ubuntu are just working out of the box.
Hi Sundar,
Great. I switched to Ubuntu about 2 years back and have never looked back. It’s good to see more and more people moving away from Windows. Pass the word around and manage to “convert” a few others to this wonderful world of Linux.
Yup! I’ll strongly recommend Ubuntu to my friends circle.
Hi Veera am using ubuntu 11.04 atm.. Wen watching a preview video wen draggin opened windows it does some bubble animation.. Well hw can i enable tat?
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