Language Selection

English French German Italian Portuguese Spanish

Will I Go Back?

Filed under
Microsoft
Ubuntu

I'm using the Linux distribution Ubuntu for over a year now – I hopped on the train with version 8.04 LTS. Although I still 'need' Windows for a number of things, like vector editing for example, – no vector drawing software in Linux satisfies my needs – I am more than pleased with this operating system. OK, I've never tried another distro since, but why should I? It runs perfectly – almost, that is.

Before this I was, like most people, using Windows XP. I didn't cross over to the Linux-side out of grudge against Microsoft. Hell no: Windows XP is a great OS, no matter what anyone claims. To me it was just as stable as Linux – and I must say: it caused less driver issues than its free competitor. Anyhow, the things that led me to give Ubuntu a try were the following.

I was just getting tired of Windows XP. It held little or no secrets anymore so it became kind of, well, 'boring' to use. I was in need of a new challenge and at the time Linux was the way to go for me. Another reason was that open source software is, in fact, free – in a sense that the user doesn't need to pay in order to get it. Whether using Linux as an OS costs nothing is the subject of perhaps another article.

Friends asked me why I didn't consider Apple to be an option. The answer for me is quite simple: I want my computer to by my computer. I remember a funny video that's still very popular on the web. The guy in the video calls using a Mac as 'tricking it into what you'd like it to do'. I couldn't agree more. It just doesn't provide the freedom that Window and Linux have to offer.

For a heavy computer minded person as myself the two reasons mentioned above were more than sufficient to consider leap into the realms of the Linux-world. But why would anyone use Ubuntu as main OS? Or keep using it in the first place? I can only speak for myself, but all of my attempts to install Ubuntu, on several computers, were successful. I admit that not everything worked out of the box and some hardware caused problems that I couldn't solve. My home computer on the other hand seems to be extremely Ubuntu-friendly since everything worked out of the box.

A downside of the story is that Ubuntu, like other distributions, lacks a real device manager. The device manager of Windows XP is everything a device manager should be. You plug in hardware, you select the correct driver and off you go. Of course there are also advantages about the way that drivers are handled in Linux, and I do not wish to start a discussion about which driver type had a better performance in use (although I my opinion Linux-drivers perform better – if they work as they ought to). The advantage of driver handling in Windows is that it's comprehensible to most users and that it allows the OS to support virtually any hardware.

So, why do I keep using Linux, or more specific, Ubuntu? Or: why do I prefer to use Ubuntu rather than Windows XP? Here are three reasons why.

1. Out of principle. Ubuntu is free and therefore I don't have to convince a major corporation every once and a while that I really do own a license. Besides, I can try another distro if I like, without charge. You cannot download a live CD of Windows just to give it a try.

2. Out of ease. A fresh install of Ubuntu costs me about an hour. If I'd like to set up a clean Window-install then I lose half a day. I especially like the fact that program setting are stored in the home directory; put it on a separate partition and previous settings will be automatically restored upon reinstalling the software. Awesome, isn't it? Also the support of usb storage devices works like a charm, unlike in Windows XP. In a way you could say that Linux is more plug and play than Windows, but unfortunately you would be only half right. But the biggest advantage is that my Ubuntu system doesn't really need any maintenance, whereas when I was using Windows computer maintenance was on my monthly to do list.

3. Out of coolness. Ubuntu provides a desktop environment that I find to be superior to that of Windows of OS X – although there's still plenty of room for improvement. With a nice graphic card and enabled desktop effect you can get the smoothest eye candy ever. And again: my desktop is my desktop, Linux desktop managers in general are far more adjustable then their colleagues. On top of that customizing the Ubuntu-desktop doesn't stress cpu nor memory as much. To skin Windows XP to your satisfaction you will need external utilities – as WindowBlinds – since the internal skinning capabilities are quite limited.

Sometimes, however, doubt crosses my mind. There do exist some reasons to go back to the Windows-world. For myself the three most important ones are the following.

1. Hardware support. Windows XP offers a kind of consumer freedom that doesn't exist in the Linux- of Apple-world. I can go to a computer shop and buy any hardware I like, it will work with Windows since the package contains drivers for it. Although companies sometimes also provide Linux-drivers for the hardware they sell, you don't get any guarantee that they will do the trick flawlessly. This 'different' kind of consumer freedom can be just as important when choosing an OS, in my opinion.

2. Available software. There exists plenty of free software on Windows. On top of that the choice in commercial software is immense, so if you really need a program to do a certain task you can buy it, because more than likely it will be available. Not so in Linux.

3. Compatibility. Most people use Windows and Microsoft Office so exchanging document is a burden. Reading the text of a document isn't much of a problem, but keeping the formatting and the lay-out seems impossible. One time a friend came to me with a Word 2007-document for printing, because she was out of ink. OpenOffice totally screwed the lay-out so the only remaining option was to go back home and convert the document to pdf. OK, I guess she should of converted it in pdf anyway, since this is the only way to keep the lay-out safe, but unfortunately that's not how most people expect it to be. They made a document and they want to print it, that's all.

All I've written here I wrote from an end user perspective. I my opinion the arguments mentioned above are the ones that will attract new users or push them away. Among friends I keep promoting and advocating Ubuntu – I advise people to give it a try. Unfortunately, few stick to Ubuntu and after some time they are drawn back to the Windows environment. They don't care that Ubuntu is safer, more reliable, performs better and faster. They want to stick to the things they know, they don't need a new challenge like I did.

Steven Van Landeghem (Belgium)

Try VirtualBox ?

Hi.

I have many friends who know absolutely nothing about computers - i.e not even windows, many have had virus, malware, spyware on their Windows machines (one had over £100 phone bill due to malware dailing a premuim rate number).

I have replaced Windows with Linux (always Ubuntu) for at least 6 people over the last 2 years (one did get Mandriva but that did crash) none of them have had any problems at all. I installed all codecs, dvdcss, etc for them and I have never had any issues from them at all (except one girl who ran out of space ..) - every single person has said their computer was much faster after installing ubuntu (helped by the fact that virus's are not using up memory/CPU cycles)

I personally do not run Ubuntu (I find it too slow) Now a proud Archer...

For you however why not try running Virtualbox - the new version can also run Dx9 (3D) games...

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

More in Tux Machines

digiKam 7.7.0 is released

After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. Read more

Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand

Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech

The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. Read more

today's howtos

  • How to install go1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04 – NextGenTips

    In this tutorial, we are going to explore how to install go on Ubuntu 22.04 Golang is an open-source programming language that is easy to learn and use. It is built-in concurrency and has a robust standard library. It is reliable, builds fast, and efficient software that scales fast. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel-type systems enable flexible and modular program constructions. Go compiles quickly to machine code and has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. In this guide, we are going to learn how to install golang 1.19beta on Ubuntu 22.04. Go 1.19beta1 is not yet released. There is so much work in progress with all the documentation.

  • molecule test: failed to connect to bus in systemd container - openQA bites

    Ansible Molecule is a project to help you test your ansible roles. I’m using molecule for automatically testing the ansible roles of geekoops.

  • How To Install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9 - idroot

    In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MongoDB on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, MongoDB is a high-performance, highly scalable document-oriented NoSQL database. Unlike in SQL databases where data is stored in rows and columns inside tables, in MongoDB, data is structured in JSON-like format inside records which are referred to as documents. The open-source attribute of MongoDB as a database software makes it an ideal candidate for almost any database-related project. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the MongoDB NoSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

  • An introduction (and how-to) to Plugin Loader for the Steam Deck. - Invidious
  • Self-host a Ghost Blog With Traefik

    Ghost is a very popular open-source content management system. Started as an alternative to WordPress and it went on to become an alternative to Substack by focusing on membership and newsletter. The creators of Ghost offer managed Pro hosting but it may not fit everyone's budget. Alternatively, you can self-host it on your own cloud servers. On Linux handbook, we already have a guide on deploying Ghost with Docker in a reverse proxy setup. Instead of Ngnix reverse proxy, you can also use another software called Traefik with Docker. It is a popular open-source cloud-native application proxy, API Gateway, Edge-router, and more. I use Traefik to secure my websites using an SSL certificate obtained from Let's Encrypt. Once deployed, Traefik can automatically manage your certificates and their renewals. In this tutorial, I'll share the necessary steps for deploying a Ghost blog with Docker and Traefik.