Amazing Ubuntu 8.10

For years and years and years I searched for a usable version of Linux.  Until recently, the closest thing was SUSE 11.  But things have changed recently, I tried Ubuntu again, and it’s frickin amazing.  This blog entry catalogs my continuing amazements and a few frustrations:

Amazements

• Installing stuff is sooooo easy.  I just type sudo apt-get install and it’s done!
• Ubuntu’s wireless connection manager sees all the wireless networks in my neighborhood.  It even lets me easily connect to the one in my house!  Red Hat and Mandriva didn’t do that.
• I wanted to print a document today.  I marched up to my HP printer, plugged in the USB cable, and within two minutes Ubuntu said the printer was ready to use.  Then I just printed my document.  Imagine that.  Not even Windows ever automagically recognized the exact printer model and got it all configured and ready for me to use.
• I used to always prefer the KDE desktop.  But the Ubuntu folks have done such a fine job of picking good Gnome apps and making them play nice together, that I’m happy to use the Gnome desktop.  KDE really shot themselves in the foot with the premature release of KDE verison 4.  It was unstable and it lost hours of my work (even though my work was saved).
• The Rhythmbox music player works great.  I right click on songs in the file browser and open and play them!
• The BitTorrent client Deluge works as good as uTorrent.
• The file compression utility built-in to the Nautilus file browser understands every compression format I know of, even my favorite 7zip.
• Ubuntu automatically mounts NTFS USB hard drives.  I can even copy files to NTFS drives without corrupting the disk like SUSE did.  SUSE also won’t automount an NTFS drive without manually editing the fstab file.  What were they thinking?
• The screen graphics, font crispness, and refresh speed on Ubuntu is acceptable.  Some how Red Hat fonts looked best on my Dell LCD and ThinkPad screens.  Odd that a server oriented distribution would do that.  SUSE’s fonts (for a long, long time) have look dreadful on LCD screens.  For some odd reason, they go the extra mile to make text look very unpleasant on LCDs.

Frustrations

• Whenever I startup Ubuntu or resume from hibernation, I’m asked for the password to a keyring where it stored my wireless network password.  Ubuntu didn’t ask me to save my wireless password to a keyring, it just did it.   It really should’ve asked, so I could say NO.  Windows is much nicer, it just lets me use my wireless connection.  I don’t know why Ubuntu makes it so hard.  I did some research and this problem has plagued Ubuntu for several releases.  They claim to have fixed it, but clearly they didn’t.
• Because it’s the first Linux distribution that might actually free me from Microsoft, I want to give Ubuntu some money.  I want them to be successful.  But the only way I can see on their web site to give them money, is to pay $250 for a year’s worth of technical support.  Well, I like Ubuntu, but not that much.  I only want to give them $50.  If it keeps improving, I’ll give them $50 next year too.  But I see no way to do it on their web site.  They’re throwing away money by not having a “Donate” button.

• VMWare and Ubuntu’s preferred virtualization application, KVM, barely coexist.  My battery ran out while VMWare was running.  When I restored power, VMWare could not run because KVM was auto-loaded when Ubuntu started.  Somehow, during the crash, KVM retook control of the “…virtualization capabilities of my computer…”,  which meant no other virtual machine app could run.  This happened even after I had completely uninstalled all KVM packages.  I think it’s fine for Ubuntu to choose a virtualization application and even compile it into the Linux kernel.  I just wish they’d provide a straight forward way for a mere mortal to stop/remove it.  I ended up reinstalling VMWare, which was able to flip some magic switch to prevent KVM from loading.