The earliest record of my conversion to Ubuntu is from a July 5, 2006 blog entry. Can someone make me a Tux cake?
It’s safe to say, for over a year I have been using Ubuntu Linux as the only operating system in my home.
The Good:
- Stability. The thing never crashes. I’ve had to reboot a few times for distro upgrades. Maybe a power outage or two. Other than that, no random blue screens. And yes, I get about 3 a week on a WinXP machine at work.
- Learning. A year ago I had no idea what grep did. Now I can’t imagine life without it. I’m now running my own Debian server with LAMP (Python + Django) and Subversion. Built all from shell (apt rocks!).
- Freedom. I’m no longer locked into iTunes or anything else. My data is mine.
- Good Vibrations. It just feels good using a operating system that is community driven.
- UbuntuGuide and Ubuntu Forums. These sites were very helpful in my Ubuntu orientation.
The Bad:
- Games. Occasionally I’ll be bored and some friends will want to play games. No can do.
- Screencasting. I’ve wanted to do a couple of screencasts, but I haven’t really found a good to do so. It could be my laziness in not taking the steps outlined in How to Create A Screencast in Ubuntu, but I just thought it would be easier. Like Camtasia easy.
- The IRC Channel. Freenode #ubuntu. I’ve had to go there a few times when I was troubleshooting my ATI card or another issue and the people were definitely not pleasant. Before you blame me, I’ve gotten great help on other freenode channels like ##php and #mysql.
The Ugly:
- ATI Support. This is a very very ugly thing. I poured over tons of sites and still never got the bastard working. It’s my fault for having an ATI card. This burned me pretty badly. I’ll never buy an ATI product again.
- Microphone Support. I don’t know if it’s my soundcard or my microphone… but I only got my microphone working once (it was in Dapper, I’m now on Feisty). I have no idea why it stopped working or how to get it working again. I’d really like to use Skype.
I can make the cake, but you gotsta come to Kansas City to eat it!
I have a USB headset that I bought at Wal-mart (Skype Outlet) for like 30 bucks (Skype Certified) it works on my Feisty laptop no problem. In skype had to change the output and input device. Also, if you download the newest skype client off their website for Linux which is like 1.5 something it has more options than the one in the repos.