So, the unthinkable happened. I liked Windows 7 RC. It’s true, I tried it and it didn’t suck. Even better than it not sucking, it was actually nice to use.
One thing that I think worked in Win7’s favour is that with each Ubuntu release I’ve been becoming more and more disillusioned with a Linux Desktop. Every release fixed something on my laptop only for something else to break. I’m also fed up with the Gnome project’s release plan which seems to be think of something cool and experimental and put it in a full release before it really works correctly. Meanwhile they remove simple things like font installation and don’t bother to replace them (seems someone did finally notice).
So basically a few weeks after the release of Ubuntu 9.04 I got fed up and realised it was time to start seeing other operating systems. I decided I’d give it 6 months until the next version of Ubuntu, meanwhile I’d try something else. I reduced the size of my Ubuntu install and created a spare partition on which I installed Win7 RC.
I thought moving back to windows after using a linux desktop for over 8 years would be tough, but in fact it was really easy. Also I had access to things like the Nokia software to connect with my N95, a recent version of Skype, a fairly decent all-in-one IM and Social Network application, and TortoiseSVN. I still used Firefox for web, Thunderbird for email, and Open Office for my documents.
Here we are, almost 6 months later, and the next version of Ubuntu out next week. Since I got back to the UK I upgraded my desktop machine from Ubuntu 7.10 to 9.10 beta and had a quick play. It certainly looks nice, but the problems I’ve had in the past were related to my laptop, so I’ll have to wait until 9.10 is fully released before I’ll know if things are working properly. I’ll also need to see what’s new and broken in GNOME. If things are working better I will probably go back to a Linux desktop, but I will most certainly be running Windows 7 in VirtualBox.
A while back there was a rather nasty hack called Automatix that made life easy for people too lazy to learn how to use their new Ubuntu operating system. It installed a bunch of things that didn’t come with Ubuntu that if you took the trouble to find and install yourself would have left you a more stable system and an improved knowledge of how Ubuntu worked.
It was criticized badly and luckily died a death. Unluckily it’s been resurrected in the form of Ultamatix.
Recently, two very good articles have been written about the dangers and general pointless of this hack. One from Matthew Garrett and the other from Steven Rose. It seems the new author vowed to fix the problems that had been made in the original and then pretty much repeated them.
The key thing here really is that if you can be bothered to learn the not very steep learning curve of Ubuntu then with a little bit of work you can install pretty much every piece of software available in Ultamatix yourself. You will come out the other side with a nice warm feeling and the hopefully some idea what you’ve just done. This way, if in the future you should find a piece of software you want to install that isn’t supported by Ultamatix you can do it yourself with relative ease.
On the other hand if you can’t be arsed to learn anything then just remove Ubuntu and install “Ultimate Edition“, a distro based on Ubuntu with all the Ultamatix packages included. This way when your install goes tits up you don’t waste the Ubuntu support people’s time with your questions. Of course if you’re going to do this why not just buy a Mac?
If you really want to cut some of the time out of finding and adding new software repositories then Ubuntu Tweak looks like a much safer option. I’ve tried it on one of my Ubuntu machines and was fairly impressed with it. It also helped me fix the Templates folder after I deleted it and then couldn’t get it working again. Though a post on the site has me slightly concerned, I’m pretty sure what he’s talking about is available in the Software Sources app. I’d be interested to know if anyone has done a run down of the safety of Ubuntu Tweak.
Update: incorrectly credited Steven Rose as Steve Rose. Apologies
As those in the Linux world will no doubt know the latest version of Ubuntu (8.10 – Intrepid Ibex) has been out for about a week now. I’ve been using this version on my laptop since alpha stage and on the main desktop machine in the flat since it hit release candidate.
I’m pretty happy with it but there is one thing to watch out for if you’re using a legacy nvidia card (anything below FX). Basically when X Server 1.5 first was used on a distro 6 months ago it broke nvidia drivers. Nvidia released a new driver for their current generation cards but didn’t bother with their legacy drivers.
Well 6 months later the release of Ubuntu 8.10 is nearing and users of the legacy cards are starting to worry because it uses the new version of X Server. This means if they upgrade they’ll be downgraded to the crappy nv driver that does no 3d and to be honest barely works. This is what happened with me when I upgraded the desktop.
Well the day before the new release nvidia managed to release a beta version of one of the legacy drivers. This maded it into the intrepid-proposed repository and is available for people who want to use it.
Until it hits the main repositories, you’ll need to enable proposed and grab it from there. You can also read all about it on the launchpad bug report.
One thing to remember is this driver is a beta so things might not work 100% but my view is that anything is better than the nv driver. I also find it interesting that Fedora was released with X Server 1.5 six months ago and nvidia didn’t release any useable driver until the day before Ubuntu 8.10 is released.
Update: seems X Server 1.5 was only properly released 2 months ago and Fedora had been using a dev version but in my opinion nvidia were still pretty slow to release a working driver for their legacy users.
