michaelswanson.name

I’ve been a lifelong computer user and experimenter.  I went to college for computer science and learned quite a bit about programming.  Consequently, I have using Linux in some form or another for several years.  I started out with Fedora which was fine, but I found it somewhat buggy, and I never got sound to work.  Thereafter, I got brave, and switched to Gentoo.  I like the power Gentoo allows the user, and I like the ability to customize the build structure, but Gentoo had the drawback of requiring a lot of time in the area of care-and-feeding.  Many times after I upgraded the system I had some sort of blocking package problem, or a messed up config file, or a missing kernel module or something similar that required anywhere from 5 minutes to several hours of troubleshooting and work to fix.  Normally, I don’t mind working on my computer, but it got to happen so often in Gentoo that I just started to get tired of it.  Gentoo taught me much, however on the general organization of a Linux system, I completely got over my fears of working with and compiling kernels, since I had to do it so often, and I know a lot of specifics of how to modify particular config files and such.  It was also useful training in learning troubleshooting skills, especially in reference to the X Windows system. 

However, I really don’t want to have to deal with those sorts of problems every day anymore, especially not on my Linux laptop, an older Sony Vaio slim and light.  That’s why I installed Ubuntu over the weekend.  I’d spent quite a while researching and investigating different distributions.  I looked in to Fedora again, as well as openSUSE, but neither one of them looked to be exactly what I wanted.  I’d never used a Debian based distribution before, but I thought I’d give it a shot. 

I installed the Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn 7.04 Beta to test.  I found the installation process to be an easy and simple process.  In my case, my hard drive was already partitioned and ready to go so I didn’t have to mess around with that.  In fact, I was able to keep my previous /home partition, which made migration simple.  In particular, I think the idea of having the installtion work through a LiveCD is brilliant.  I wish other distributions would follow Ubuntu’s lead on this and have their installers work this way.  It seems an eminently logical way to build an installtion program, especially given how prevalent LiveCD’s have become in the past couple of years. 

In addition, I never had to deal with any software incompatiabilities, and all the drivers (including sound, my constant nemesis in Linux) worked straight out of the box.  I’m impressed with the funtionality provided so far in Synaptic (Ubuntu’s package management software) and have also been impressed with this piece of software so far.  I’m no “free-software” purist by any stretch, so I’ve been using the “multiverse” software selection, and haven’t yet found any installation to be a problem.  Also, the fact that Flash and other such “restricted” technologies work out of the box as well was particularly nice since I had trouble getting Flash to work on Gentoo.

Overall, I’ve been impressed with Ubuntu so far and look forward learning and exploring this excellent distribution further.