I’ve finally decided to give Windows the flick from my system at home. My Windows XP install had decided to do all sorts of crazy stuff, such as not let iTunes save it’s library file and to run out of RAM inopportune moments. While a yearly re-install is somewhat expected with Windows, it finally annoyed me enough to make the “big switch”.
While I’ve been using Fedora Core 6 at work for some time now, I decided to try Ubuntu at home. Why? It’s reputation as a stable and usable system, with a community that is focused towards everyday use. So far I’ve managed to get the Nvidia drivers installed, and xorg configured to use my Dell 2007WFP in widescreen; both required manual editing of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
I also have Amarok set up for playing music now, and I must say I’m VERY impressed. One of my biggest concerns with ditching Windows was the lack of iTunes. So far, Amarok seems like a very suitable replacement. I’m especially impressed with the last.fm integration, as well as the whole “context” menu on the left of screen.
So far…
Pros:
- No more pirated software
- Hopefully no more periodic reinstalls
- Amarok is awesome
- Beryl is slick
Cons:
- Getting video drivers working STILL requires hacking xorg.conf
- Pidgin isn’t in the “Add/Remove” software installation menu yet
- My other partitions are all NTFS still, so I may have some file permission issues to sort out
To do:
- Find out if GnuCash is a suitable replacement for Microsoft Money
- Get my iPod synced with Amarok
EDIT ( 2007/05/29):
Done:
- NTFS hasn’t been any issue, I have full read-write access after using nfts-3g
- Get all my Samba shares set up so I can watch things on XBMC
- Find out how to use BitTorrent on Linux!
- Worked out the GnuCash can’t import Microsoft Money’s .mny files, and I should’ve exported to QIF first. That’s not the impression I got from the GnuCash main page…
5 comments ↓
Getting your iPod synced with Amarok shouldn’t be too much of an issue, we (Dave and myself) use rythmbox, we like the simplistic interface a bit more than Amarok. But the iPod integration is much of a muchness.
The samba share stuff is all pretty point and shoot these days can’t see you having a problem at all with it. Although you might (I’ve had dramas with this before need to do a bit of smbpasswd -a trickery.
Ubuntu comes with a BitTorrent client already installed, so it should be as simple as clicking on those torrents.
You can always install Azureus though.
I’ve got Samba configured already, but haven’t had a chance to test it. If Amarok annoys me too much I switch over to Rhythmbox, but I’ve tried it at work and wasn’t super impressed. I guess I’ve been spoilt by iTunes for too long.
I had to edit fstab to use ntfs-3g instead of whatever Ubuntu had configured by default. It appears to be working properly, both read and write.
As for BitTorrent, I’m trying out Transmission as I couldn’t work out how to configure the default client. I didn’t put too much effort in though!
As a mere consumer of products I don’t understand, it seems to me in my narrow view that you have gone to the darkside craigy
I’ve always flirted with the dark side, Al.
I figured it was about time I stopped denying the nerd inside, screaming to get out, and be allowed to do incredibly nerdy things such as installing Linux, watching Battlestar Galactica, and buying Transformers
I use ktorrent as my bittorrent client. I preferred the way it uses one client for all torrents, I haven’t’ used a windows client in over a year, but they seamed to open a new client for each torrent.
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