Since January, I’ve been almost exclusively using Ubuntu. Before that, I knew absolutely nothing about using Linux. I was a Windows/DOS user for 12 years, stretching right the way back to Windows 3.1.

At the same time as switching to Ubuntu on my home desktop, I also started a new job, and all the computers at the office are Macs. I spent the first month mashing the right hand side of the mouse, then caved and got a two button one :)

It’s been an interesting opportunity to compare Linux, OSX, and Windows, with only the last one not being novel to me. After the jump, there are 2500 words on making the switch, including a run down of the handiest things I’ve found and the biggest problems I’ve dealt with.

Over the past few years a lot of what I do has been shifted online rather than sitting on my own hard disk. This makes it easier to play with operating systems, because I don’t generate and store so much personal data to backup and be wary of erasing. I’d noticed frequent Windows reinstalls were becoming less of a pain because of this, but that made me less inclined to stick with it because I thought it would be just as easy for other OSes. It is.

I held out with Windows 2000 SP4 for a long time. This is because all of the “user friendly” obfuscation in XP makes me shout obscenities and bang my fist on the desk. No joke. However, drivers and games were becoming more problematic in Win2K, so I decided to upgrade to XP at the same time as switching to Linux. Unfortunately, I need to keep a Windows installation around for games (For any readers who don’t know what I do, games aren’t simply a luxury for me: I work with them).

I’ve also found that to this day, I still need the DOS command line when de-spywaring PCs for people. Some malware is so nasty, and Windows so vulnerable, that it frequently locks down the GUI. The Linux terminal really wasn’t such a big jump from even the most basic DOS commands.

So I installed Ubuntu Dapper, and after two weeks realised I hadn’t booted into Windows once. I liked it a lot, and got Beryl running with functionality and visual effects almost as good as those I was seeing on OS-X at work (Low framerates though; it’s not supported in Dapper at all and I had to use XGL until I installed Edgy and could switch to AIGLX. If these terms are baffling you, don’t worry. If you get into Ubuntu you’ll soon learn all about them).

I’m impressed with the security on Linux and Apple OSes. They don’t just accept your initial login as validation to make changes to the system, instead they demand your password every time anything attempts to change system files.

This does feel a lot more secure than Windows, though I’m absolutely sure there would be ways to punch through it. However, another reason I like it is that encourages the separation of system/program files and the data they use. Furthermore, all of this is done via your home directory, with your personal data and application configs all stored there.

Since using Macs at work, I’d also like to change my Ubuntu keyboard config to match Apple’s (not found a way yet, but I will). I felt wary of this, because I’ve met plenty of Apple cultists who will even change the subject just so they can harp on about how good Apple products are. However, keyboard shortcuts that use apple instead of CTRL are a lot more comfortable and a very tiny bit faster, because I find I use my thumb and first finger rather than two fingers. For all the things I don’t like about Apple Computers and their zealots, they do have an impeccable sense of aesthetics and in some respects user experience. Besides, there are five minute windows whenever I’m first at work or home, in which I use the wrong set of keyboard shortcuts :)

There are a few things I’ve carried from my use of Windows and OS-X into Linux. Because it’s open, I have it functioning somewhat like a hybrid of both, which is making it better than either.

A month after installing Dapper, I formatted and reinstalled my EXT partition with Ubuntu Edgy, and everything worked a little better, which included decent framerates for Beryl. However, there are a bunch of useful things I’ve learned and problems I’ve dealt with, detailed below.

• Alter System Files With Nautilus
• Handy System Tools
• Problems with nVidia Drivers
• Nautilus Search
• Aesthetics of Ubuntu
• Hidden Files
• Making Backups
• Closed Video Formats
• Fresh Windows Install Rides Roughtshod Over Dual Boot
• Update Caused X Server to Stop Working
• MP3 Sound Quality

1. Mighty Morphin’ Power Nautilus:
It’s well worth learning to use the terminal, but sometimes a GUI is handy if you’re in a rush.

Standard Nautilus windows won’t allow you to make changes to system files at all, and rightly so. You need a more powerful version to do that.

Right click on your desktop, make launcher, and set the command to “gksu nautilus”. This will ask for your password when you run it, and allow you to make system changes through the GUI. Well worth it, especially for familiarising yourself with the way the Linux file system is set up.

2. Terminal, run program, and force quit:
These are things you’ll likely use all the time if you become a regular Ubuntu user; it’s handy to have them in your panel (like stuff in Windows quicklaunch or the OS-X dock).

You can drag and drop terminal to your panel from Applications > Accessories. You can add run program and force quit by right clicking on a panel and selecting “Add to Panel…”. I also added a drawer and shoved system monitor, synaptic, and lock screen in there.

3. nVidia API Mismatch:
This was my first major problem under Ubuntu.

If the nVidia drivers have the wrong kernel version, the desktop environment breaks and you can only get a terminal. This can happen quite easily if you use the closed source nVidia driver (which does actually work a lot better than the OSS nv driver).

You can manually install nVidia’s driver, making sure the files needed to compile the correct kernel during install are present, or you can use the excellent Envy script, which will automatically download the correct nVidia drivers, compile the right kernel and install.

Manual installation is a hassle, but I recommend it if you have time. This is because dealing with a broken X server and the nVidia installer by myself taught me a lot about my system. When the X server later broke due to something else, I knew what Xorg.0.conf was, where it was located, how to edit it from the failsafe terminal, what other drivers I could use, how to shut down and restart gnome from the terminal, and so forth.

4. Search is OK:
Search does work properly in Nautilus, it may just seem like it isn’t to a long time Windows user, because it doesn’t immediately cause massive hard disk activity. Search from “file system” rather than “root” if you want to look at a whole drive.

5. Make Everything Smaller:
Holy crap, I couldn’t believe Ubuntu was running at 1280*1024 when I first installed it. Everything was so big! I like things small.

You can set a lot of stuff, such as icon sizes, by opening a Nautilus window and going to Edit > Preferences. Font sizes can be changed with System > Preferences > Font. The Application font setting, as you might imagine, gets inherited by many things.

6. Hide and Find:
CTRL + H unhides all hidden files and folders in a Nautilus window (hidden items begin with a dot, e.g. .icons)

7. Backups:
There’s a proper way to back up data via the terminal rather than moving icons around in Nautilus. See, for example, the procedure for Evolution. I grumbled at this initially, but by the first time I’d done it I realised why it was better: Not only does it preserve all your file permissions, but you can put all of the commands into an executable script and thus make things very easy whenever you backup in future.

8. Closed Video Formats:
I was annoyed that I couldn’t play back wmv3 video and DVDs when I first installed Ubuntu. This meant an entire partition of videos, including some exceptionally fine, wholesome erotica was suddenly off limits or required a reboot into Windows. I soon realised this was due to closed formats and appropriately relocated my annoyance at their vendors and those who choose to encode with them.

There are solutions. Most of them are solved with mplayer, which isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to get up and running, and also this section of Ubuntu Guide.

9. Windows Flattens GRUB:
It seems by far the easiest way to set up dual boot is to set up partitions, install Windows first, then install Ubuntu, which drops GRUB in, allowing you select from your OSes on boot.

G-Parted is a great way to set up your partitions (I have: 20gig EXT for Ubuntu, 2 gig swap for Ubuntu, a 15gig NTFS partition for XP which I’ll probably make much smaller next time I reformat, and a 25gig NTFS partition for games. Everything else I have is on other hard disks). Partition Magic is what many would choose, but apparently it can’t handle Linux partitions properly.

The reason to install Windows first is that, if you install Ubuntu beforehand, Windows later shits its vile, inconsiderate spoor all over your MBR and gets rid of GRUB. Of course! If someone is installing Windows, they won’t want to use anything else, right? Hah.

To fix it, the best way is to boot from a live CD of Ubuntu and reinstall GRUB. It’s easy. Various instructions are here, there and everywhere.

10. Official Update Supplied Shiny, Brand New Graphics Problem:
An official Ubuntu update broke my graphics drivers recently. I’d like to note that it’s the only time I’ve heard of an Ubuntu update breaking something instead of improving stuff. Apparently, this update was allowed out the gate on the assumption that people would be using the OSS nv driver. I find this as strange, unsettling, and inconsiderate as Windows overwriting GRUB.

It happened to a lot of people running non-OSS nVidia drivers, and you can see a few threads on it here, here, and here. This would have killed me and sent me reluctantly back to Windows if I weren’t a technical user. Just goes to show that Ubuntu is presently a way from user friendly, and as a result YMMV.

Also, if you’re using any flavour of Ubuntu, sign up at the forums! They’re an invaluable learning resource, and so might you be if you’re the first to solve a problem.

11. Sound: M is for Motherfucker.
At first, the quality of sound playback really, really sucked. In all media players, MP3 and OGG playback suffered from extreme crackling that sounded like clipping on the audio, yet the same files sounded silky under windows.

I read that installing alsamixer could sort out bad sound quality, so installed it and got “no mixer elems found” every time I tried to run it. This is apparently because modem drivers (for “snd_intel8×0m”) interfere with drivers for my onboard sound (”snd_intel8×0″). Nothing I found about this could solve my problem; some have solved it by blacklisting snd_intel8×0m, but this did not work for me.

This, like lack of 3D acceleration, was a potential deal-breaker. Up until I moved house recently, I thought the poor sound quality was because I was cooped up with all my stuff in a tiny room and had some things stacked in front of the speakers. When I cabled everything up at my new place, I was mighty ambivalent. I loved using Ubuntu by this point, but couldn’t go on with this kind of sound quality. I even considered building the cheapest silent PC possible to act as a Windows music server. Luckily I found a cheaper solution ;)

I’d like to have solved this eloquently without moving from my chair, but I was very pushed for time. So I found a cheap old CMedia soundcard in my bits box, popped it in, disabled onboard audio and the modem in my BIOS, and everything sounds fine now. That saved me time, but I learned less from this problem than others. The problem is still there for me to recreate and solve later though ;)

Overall, Ubuntu has been frustrating at times. This isn’t really much different to my experience of other OSes, except for one thing: Ubuntu is open enough and has enough of a culture around it that I can fix things myself, and in so doing learn a hell of a lot about it. OS-X is still better than Windows in terms of security and aesthetics, but it’s nonetheless just as closed. I can go a lot deeper into Ubuntu, and as a result it feels like my operating system rather than somebody else’s.

For ideological reasons, I’d like to be able to switch to entirely open source software, but practically I don’t find this is quite possible at the moment. Hopefully, as Linux distros become progressively more user friendly there will be more demand for Linux support in terms of games and hardware. I certainly make sure to fire off emails whenever I’m struggling to get something working with Linux, just to let people know that there are Linux users who are trying to use their products or would like to.

Ubuntu isn’t something I’d yet recommend to many people I know. The desires of most people for flashiness and out of the box functionality are unfortunately still better served by commercial, closed source OSes. However, OSS is great if you like messing around with computers, even if you don’t know a thing about programming them. I won’t be spending significant amounts of my own time with closed source OSes in future.

The indicators are clear: Just like the browsers, email clients, and media players I switched to in the past few years, Open Source Operating Systems are almost there and steadily getting better.

In contrast, closed source OSes have been getting worse in many respects for a long time, and I suspect not many years hence will have to do quite a bit of backpedaling to become competitive.

Switching hasn’t been easy, simple, nor has it looked cool or made the people around me go “wow!” all the time. That’s all quite superficial though. Because of what I’ve learned and what I can now do, it was well worth it and I won’t be switching back.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 16:43 and is filed under Games, Media, OSS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.