Well, all the cool kids have seemed like they've been trying Ubuntu, so I loaded it this afternoon. Let me tell you, this is the Linux for the masses. In 15 minutes, I had this:
Trivial to Import my data from USB, grabbed my pics from the iPhone (and no, there are only Safe-For-Work pictures, thank you very much).
It comes with all the office applications (word processor, spreadsheet, etc). It also comes with the Gimp, which is an open source Photoshop type app. I used it to make the Palin/Breda logo (don't blame the app; my skillz are weak).
I haven't installed iTunes. Yet. This is the only mission critical app left, and is in a sense an acid test: Apple does not want people running iTunes on Linux. Either I'll try it running under emulation (WINE or VMWare), or I'll toss the whole thing and try Banshee.
Note to Apple: all you're doing is giving me an interesting challenge. The old definition of copy protection applies here:
It's a method of preventing incompetant pirates or legitimate users from using your product.Arrrrr.
Anyone sick of spyware and malware should think about this. It's way, way easy. I'll update everyone on the iTunes thing - that's the last bit that would keep you suffering on Vista.
Arrrrr.
Oooooh, spiffo! I hate to admit it but ... I didn't try Ubuntu because all teh kewl kids were doin' it. I needed something to sate my inner snob, thus settling on Mandriva. It's French, like my superior coffee. Heh.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't tried it recently you might give OpenSuSe 11 a look.
ReplyDeleteLike you I want a desktop that "just works" and I don't want all the fuss of fighting updates and such. I've been using SuSe since 9.2 and it's gotten steadily better with a few real stinkers thrown in (10.2 noteably.)
I'd be wary of KDE 4 though. Even though it's included it has some .. quirks. Not game breakers, but definitely annoying and there's little functional advantage to it at this point.
Maybe I'll load up a VM with Ubuntu if I can find 20 free minutes at work.
Funny enough, we started in the same year, and with the same distro (and install method).
ReplyDeleteI prefer Kubuntu though. I was a Redhat fan for a while; then I switched to mandrake, because it was jsut better and ran that for a couple years.
Almost overnight though, the RPM based distros just fell far behind the .deb based distros; and when Ubuntu and Gentoo showed up within a few months of each other, that was pretty much it.