Curiosity Was Framed

I was hoping to report this weekend about my exploits with NodeJS, but my free time was commandeered by setting up my new media center pc. It was supposed to be built two weeks ago, but a faulty motherboard set me back. The box I am replacing was a 2-year-old quad-core Gateway refurb running Vista with an ATI video card that would not play well with any Linux distro I tried to put on it. So, for this new one, I made the decision to pick hardware that I knew that a good track record with Ubuntu.

First of all, I just want to commend the Canonical team for the excellent progress they have made in making Ubuntu a viable option, and competitor, against Microsoft and Apple. I consider myself relatively new to Linux still — my first installation that “stuck” was Ubuntu 8.10 — and my newest installation of 10.04 was a piece of cake.

If you are considering trying out Ubuntu (or any other Linux flavor), here are a few things that I have learned while ramping up:

1. Don’t dual-boot. The reason I say that 8.10 was my first install that “stuck” was because I resisted the temptation to boot into a more familiar OS by not having it available. There are tons of alternative applications to those found on other platforms. Then, if you find yourself pining for an application that only runs in Windows, you can check out Wine.
2. Adding monitors is easy. Frustrated by how Windows only natively gives you a task bar on one of your monitors? Gnome gives you full control over “panels”, which allow you to add icons, widgets, and taskbars anywhere that you want. (Speaking of taskbars, MintMenu is amazing.)
3. Desktop organization is now a reality. Like many power users, my Windows desktop at work tends to overflow with shortcuts, files, folders, and anything else that I need to have immediate access to. So, I can organize these icons into their meaningful groups, be it by type or project. That is, until I RDP into my machine, which condenses it down to one monitor and changes my resolution — and there goes my attempt at organization. KDE and Gnome have solved this using “Plasmoids” and “Folderview Screenlets“, respectively.

Well, that’s all I have for you for now. Obviously I didn’t even tackle the fact that the command line is infinitely more powerful than that on Windows, and the UI is so much more configurable than OSX — but for the average user, those are not the important things. I think that Ubuntu has become an OS that even my grandmother could use. And that’s the point, right?

And now, my desktop: