Ubuntu 7.10. Linux finds his way to the desktop?
I never was a strong supported user-friendly distributions. Having had bad time with Mandriva and Redhat in the past, while doing whatever I wanted to with Gentoo which is considered much more hardcore, I decided never again to go for an easy to use Linux distribution. The major problem with Gentoo however, was the lack of time. When I start working for more than 8 hours per day, many days in front of a computer at work, I was not having fun with my home computer anymore. I bought a Mac and my life turned easier in many ways. Although I consider my self an advanced linux user, in the sense of a user who knows where and how to find help when he has an issue, I was not having fun anymore with Linux and I didn’t want to waste my time in troubleshooting. Whoever tells you that Linux is not about troubleshooting, well he is not using it like I did. Being part of a community you want to try things, not a computer that just works.
On the other hand, when I took the Mac I had a UNIX powered, idiot-proof computer. I fell for the macs and the community. I found a community that was way more innovative, with much more genuine ideas than any other. Although it may look similar, the Macintosh communities are way different than the Linux ones. Even between Linux communities you can see quite different behaviour. It’s not the same posting on a Slackware mailing list and posting an issue on the Gentoo forums for instance. The Gentoo forums kept a steady and very new-be oriented policy since day one. While other distributions decided to keep the elite and let the other users drawn. Of course the users behaviour doesn’t depend on the Linux distribution, but some distributions, reflect the users level and (not rarely) style and thinking.
I was somewhere in the middle. Among the two categories, sometimes I was trolling over poor newcomers and (thankfully) most of the times I was helping if and when I could. That was until 2004 though. Afterwards I started to avoiding communities and Linux related issues. And the truth is that since then I’m losing much more time in programming in Objective C, Python, Bash or (now learning) Ruby. But I didn’t waste much time in linux. I turned my home server from Gentoo to OpenBSD in order for it, to be stable and not require often updates. I met the OpenBSD community too. Talking about narrow-minded people? Take a look at the OpenBSD community. They blame and talk bad about everything else, while it’s widely known that OpenBSD fails miserably as a Desktop computer. Most of them are expert users, geeks you could say, programmers and hardcore computer users. It’s the entire OpenBSD project that keeps it’s elite attitude and the users just follow the guidelines the developers give. Theo De Raadt is not an easy guy. You may say that Steve Jobs is not easy as well, but he hardly affects the macintosh community in the way Theo does affect the OBSD community. Enough with OpenBSDers!
Having said the above, I never thought that Linux could turn so user friendly and usable in so little time. The Ubuntu community is really good. The documentation seems to be complete and the final result astonishing. The installation is easy, the migration from windows is easy too. You will not avoid the command line if you have troubles, lets say with your printer, which is a major drawback for a normal user. The look and feel in Ubuntu 7.10 is greatly improved. I still dislike the fonts though. In my computer ( 2.6 Ghz, 512 RAM, 300 GB HD) Ubuntu runs really fast and the eye-candies run smoothly as well. It’s easy to install Greek or other languages, it’s easy to install and uninstall applications. It seems that Linux made some huge improvements over the past two years that I don’t really use it anymore. Plus, Ubuntu seems to have very good interoperability among the standard programs, which you can see in the Synaptic Package Manager with the Ubuntu icon on the left. The programs don’t break, just work and that’s really what the average user needs to know. If they try to put the entire freshmeat.net directory into the distribution they will not be able to improve this interoperability that is very important for the end user experience. The network configuration is done automagically if your computer is connected to the Internet via ADSL or Cable. The only thing that I found annoying is the IPPoverHTTP printer configuration. Still didn’t solve it. Then I missed an application launcher like MacOSX’s Quicksilver. I’ve fount the alt+f2 shortcut which seems to be pretty nice. Not even close to what QS can do, but still a good application launcher!
It’s the first time since 2004 that I’m seriously thinking to switch my main desktop to Linux again. The 24” inches screen makes it a tempting move, the Ubuntu Linux distribution makes it possible at a good point. I can’t create good brochures without Apple’s Pages, but for the rest, it seems to be good. Not as good as an iMac but quite goood 