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I'm sad to say, but Ubuntu is not a threat to Windows Vista., not even close

I got so worked up about Ubuntu. Everywhere you go there is a mention of Ubunt and Beryl, how amazing it is, how stable, and all other whatnots. I intentionally did not use and help as it should be a strait forward process more or less found with windows and OS X.

So, this is a day I will remember my long forgotten days with my trusty Linux box from some 10 years ago. For such experiment a new hard drive was needed, so I went out and got a new 160 gb HDD. Booted the computer one last time to Windows XP to burn the Ubuntu 6.10 to DVD and then I closed windows one last time. Or so I thought.
Now came the installation. I connected all the wires to the brand new HDD bought specially for the new OS, and proceeded booting of my soon to be new Ubuntu box.

The last time I was installing Linux it was RedHat distribution but cant remember the version. Its installation was in terminal mode with allot of Q&A, strange numeration of hard drives and/or devices. It was a completely different universe with its own distinct rules.
Here Ubuntu plesently surprised me, its installation has graphic installation interface. Even better, it was a live disk so actually I could try it out before I choose to install it. Of course, I did no such thing and proceeded with the installation. Ok, basic information, choose drive named something or other which on Windows would represent C:\ drive, press next and load tetris to wait the installation through.

Five minutes into the installation, ups, you did not select or made a swap partition. Damed, I know that, I remember that Linux uses swap partitions, hmm.. how do I add them? Well I guess it will lead me through it. Ok, click go back to the partition dialog, but it crashes. Lets start again, ok, basic information, select partition, ups almost missed the creation of swap partition, but no help prom Ubuntu. Actually I shouldn't even have to know what a swap file is let alone search through dialog boxes to find something that resembles the something or other a error dialog box stated I should do to correct it.

Ok, installation continues, and as it is live DVD I can try out some applications. I settled with a game of Tetris.

Excellent, my Ubuntu installation is ready. First boot up, excellent, no more terminal window, straight to xWindows and gnome. Resolution is low but that was expected as new drivers are needed. Ok, need to connect to the internet go get new drivers. Hm... how to do that, system, networking, that should be it. Ok, No, maybe the next networking, No, administration tools, No. This is getting ridiculous.

About 30 min later I'm still trying to find how to connect to the internet over ADSL. It should be strait forward process. Ok, I'm stuck, clicked on first help icon I found but it required Internet. Digging around for another five minutes and finally I found something that resembles a help file. Typed in ADSL and got the procedure in terminal. WHAT? I STILL NEED TO ENTER COMMANDS, THERE IS NO USER INTERFACE. Ok, easy, we setup it once and thats it. I follow the procedure and type commands in command prompt, which once again I should not know what it is but.... And it worked, I opened Firefox and the Internet just seamed to jump, it was so responsive I got goosebumps, downloads of drivers went over declared speed for my ADSL, and I have never seen such speeds in Windows. That was the first impression.

Next chapter, the installation of ATI video drivers. What on Earth do people using Linux smoke as I want some. The procedure for installing video drivers borders with science fiction, take a look here. Ok, driver installation completed. Now, I have dual display setup, if you would like to see how this goes, check here.

Ok, now I had newest graphic drivers, dual display that worked and all I needed was that eye-candy called beryl. I installed it and for all my trouble I got just errors.

Up to now the installation of Ubuntu took 3h of my life I want back.

Ok, I can live without the eye candy but I need my files from windows partition. Gewiz, Ubuntu has no NTFS support. I need to install that too. Went to the wiki about it and with BIG RED letters there is a warning, and with small plain letters bellow it says, don’t worry about it. What !?

At this point I gave up.

Ubuntu still needs allot of user interaction to make it usable, allot of advanced user interaction. It is a big step forward for linux but nothing dramatically changes. It is still the most stable OS but also the most un-user friendly.

I was hopping that Ubuntu could replace Vista as I have no desire to pay for it but it seams it is inevitable.

I expected a smooth and polished OS but actually found it light years behind in usability to Windows.

Labels: Linux, OS