A Second Look at Linux – Part 3

Over my Christmas holidays I decided to really get back into Linux. No virtual machines. No live Cd’s. This time I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my older notebook. Just like installing in VMWare, the installation was flawless. I didn’t have to look for any drivers. Not even for my add-on wireless card. I hate to borrow an expression from my Mac friends, but it just worked. After the install, there were a few updates that needed to be installed.

Like some other Linux distros I’ve researched, I had to install the necessary codecs for MP3 playback. It wasn’t difficult, but slightly annoying. Speaking of adding software, I really like the interface for adding software. It’s very easy to discover and install software using the Add Software wizard. I installed several music players, Mono, and NetBeans(among others). I was even able to connect and browse my iPod from Ubuntu. I think that topic will deserve a separate post of its own because it’s one of the main reasons I still have WinXP installed on my primary machine. Unlike a lot of people, I actually like iTunes.

So now I’m actually using Linux on a daily basis (unlike when I ran it as a VM), and I have to admit it’s very stable and the distro I’ve chosen is super easy to use. What’s next? Well, I’m going to try to get iTunes running in Wine and do some experimenting with the Mono development tools.