Re: Thinking about leaving Windows and switching to Ubuntu
Some comments made me smile ... :) - Whine'dows it not bad for an average user though, Linux is good only if you know how to use/manage it & special if u know what you are doing.
This could have been more true in Linux Red hat days (and I don't know squat about Red hat) but with Ubuntu any user who is able to configure anything in windows should be able to up and running with Ubuntu in no time. I'm not talking about users like 60 years old grannys who only know how to talk to their gandchildren by clicking on yahoo chat icon and don't know squat else. Any other average user who is even not an IT professional or savvy but have troubleshot windows and have some idea about what networking is etc should not have trouble with Ubuntu at all.
Last night I partitioned my xp drive to install ubuntu. At first I started getting errors that it cannot create partition. When I actually looked at the log errors from within the same dialogue box I was easily to figure out that it has to do with last abnormal windows shut down. All I had to do was restart windows and then shut down and then boot from ubuntu CD to install.
So far everything is niftier than xp. If I browse to an NAS (which I have been having problems with connecting in Win XP and all my backup + music is on that NAS), it is SO much more quicker than browsing it in Windows. The folders on it open as if it's local drive!
My internet speed has increased two fold without doing anything. While IE 7 would hang many times, opening firefox and going to yahoo is as if I'm opening an html file on my hard disk...actually, no, it's even probably quicker than that.
I'm sure I'll run into issues. I'm sure there will be times when I'll get frustrated and miss Windows but the thing is that there is so much support and help on the net freely available that you shouldn't have much problem.
Things is, people don't keep into perspective the amount of troubleshooting or configuration you have to do even within windows these days..just because it has become part of the routine so it doesn't bother them or they don't notice but with new system, everything is not familiar same way so any troubleshooting is noticeable immediately. In windows you've to firght with viruses and defragmentation and spywares and all other this and that on routinely basis. Even though there are tools available like Norton or O&O Defrag, they still cost money and some of these tools e.g. CCleaner, Spybot etc are all manual processes just remove junk or spyware from your system. Same thing with Deframentation. I've been using O&O defrag professional on trial basis for over a month. It automatically takes care of defragmentation in the background and I had been seeing a lot of improvement in performance since I had installed it...but still the point is that I'd have to pay $44 for it. With Ubuntu, there is no defrag issues to begin with..the only thing I might have to do is occassionally remove some junk files due to install/uninstall packages.