Has Ubuntu Replaced Windows on Your Box?

[Nikolai]

ken, I used to have exactly the same view as yours.

I first tried GNU/Linux in 2000 or 2001, it was a distro from Corel (Corel 
Linux I think it was called, not sure. Microsoft was investing some good cash 
into Corel in those days as far as I remember). I wasn't impressed at all but 
I caught the bug (no pun intended). From then on, I have had an on/off (or 
love/hate if you will) relationship with GNU/Linux for a few years to come. 

I went through several distros: Red Hat (various versions), Mandarake (various 
versions), Debian, Slackware and a few very obscure and exotic ones I don't 
even remember the names of. The relationship would always end in one and the 
same manner  - something or other just wouldn't work and it would eventually 
cause me to dump the distro and look for another one. All this time I was 
dual booting (Windows/Linux) simply because of my work - I was in graphic 
design and later in digital photography business so I needed Photoshop, 
Illustrator, Freehand, Flash and so on (please don't tell me the GIMP is 
Photoshop for Linux, it is indeed a great image editor but without adjustment 
layers and 16-bit image support, it was useless for my work). So unless I had 
to do some Photoshop or similar work, I would always run GNU/Linux (whatever 
distro I had at the time). But as I said, sooner or later I would dump my 
Linux because I would get tired looking for solutions or fixes to the 
problems I was having. Eventually I said that's it, as much as I like and 
support the whole GNU/Linux idea, if I can't use it, I can't use it. The last 
distro I ran was Mandrake 10 (loved it).

Then a couple of months ago a friend of mine passed to me this cute looking 
double CD. I have never heard of Ubuntu before (wasn't following GNU/Linux 
events anymore), but I thought hey, judging by the cover this thing should be 
at least as good as my last Mandrake and perhaps it will run smoothly on my 
box. Have to admit though, I wasn't doing as much digital imaging work as I 
used to, as a matter of fact, I was just about to begin my computer science 
study at the university and running a live CD, I thought, wouldn't harm 
anyone.

Needless to say live CD didn't sit in my drive for too long, before I knew it, 
I had the full installation of Ubuntu (v5 something).

Point is though, nothing really fundamentally changed, I'm still chasing 
around solutions and fixes because a lot of things simply don't work (or 
things that used to work, break). What changed though is me. I think I have 
eventually understood why I'm coming back to GNU/Linux all the time - 
GNU/Linux for me is a computer worldview. As far as computers are concerned, 
I don't believe in Microsoft, I believe in GNU/Linux just like I believe in 
the Biblical God as opposed to any other god. It's a philosophy and once you 
hold a certain world view (in matters of computers or life), you do things 
differently than others. In GNU/Linux, you are on the journey to study and 
master your own OS, you have almost full control over what's going on with 
your system (you can have full control if you want to) and a lot of other 
thrills I don't have time to talk about right now.

At any rate, I understand a lot of people simply don't want *that*, they want 
an OS like Windows but free. Well, I'm afraid it's not going to happen, ever. 
If you want GNU/Linux, you must be prepared to study and master it (hack it), 
if you don't, well, forget about it. There are obviously attempts to make 
GNU/Linux more like Windows but to my personal delight, such attempts 
constantly fail or at least don't go far enough and can't catch in any 
meaningful respect Windows.

ken, if you are waiting for a Windows like GNU/Linux, your wait is in vain.

Nikolai



On Wednesday 09 August 2006 05:32, Ken N9VV wrote:
> At first I thought someone was kidding with this question, or making
> a sour joke. But then I realized that they were serious. Here is my
> answer.
<snip>