I wanted to post this just for those who might be considering running Ubuntu Linux. This is from my experience as a desktop user, and day to day activity:
What I can’t do with Ubuntu:
- Play games at a speed identical to Windows
- Counterstrike, World of Warcraft
- Use high-end audio devices to their full extent (ex. Line 6 Toneport)
- Edit and view Microsoft Excel documents as how they appear to Windows users
- Spreadsheets with many macros, formulas and various features end up looking incorrect
- Play proprietary music
- Itunes – I can unlock their music using utilities, but this is a chore
- Boot in safe mode – if I mess up my X configuration, there is no safe mode to get to a GUI and fix it
- Have not tested this in feisty
- Watch videos inside firefox that are non-flash
- No codec wizard for videos inside browser yet
- Auto configure 5 button mice to use all of their buttons (Microsoft / Logitech)
- The xorg ButtonMapping “1 2 3 6 7″ option fixes this, but that isn’t intuitive
What I can do with Ubuntu:
- Rip / Backup / Play media
- Music CDs, DVD movies
- 3D Desktop
- Beryl / AIGLX makes my desktop into a very useful cube
- View flash websites
- View downloaded media
- Feisty’s new codec wizard makes this easy
- Create Word, PDF documents
- Create / Edit pictures
- I always hear how hard gimp is to use, but if you can right click you can use it
- Create 3D scenes
- Blender may actually be hard to use, but very efficient if you memorize the shortcuts
- Point and click install of software
- Synaptic Package Manager makes it very easy, and “Add / Remove Applications” makes it even easier
- Install Linux completely from a GUI, no worrying about partitions etc
- Printing
- Wifi with WEP encryption
- Plug and play USB
- Send / Receive email
- Download torrents
- Use Instant Messanger
So that is just from my personal experience, everyone’s usage differs, but if you were curious about what the heck you can do on Ubuntu, there it is.
Related posts:
#1 by Markus on February 11, 2007 - 9:01 pm
Just one more thing that still makes me use Windows even though I don’t want to:
- Adding an external monitor to my laptop is a pain. Playing around with xorg.conf and loosing my x-server over and over again because of wrong settings drives me crazy! Also if I disconnect my monitor when I take my laptop on the road, I have to reconfigure all these settings again. Same applies to projection devices: “Hang on, I just have to go into my xorg.conf” is not a good way to start a presentation…
Would love to see some support for this in Feisty!!
However the best thing about Ubuntu by far:
- Software updates to almost every piece software installed in one unified step!
Cheers,
Markus
#2 by morphado on February 11, 2007 - 9:19 pm
primavera and autocad and an easy way to install software, not all people have acces to the internet.
really i can’t understand one thing why we should be connected to download klik package why not make them available just like dmg for macosx
#3 by David Parrish on February 11, 2007 - 9:23 pm
In my experience, I get a *higher* framerate playing World of Warcraft in Ubuntu (cedega) than I do in windows. Lately it’s also become just as stable.
However, I can’t get my USB 5.1 audio system to work in Ubuntu.
Automatix2 will also set up vlc and mplayer so that they work inside firefox.
#4 by Marcos Dione on February 11, 2007 - 9:23 pm
with konqueror, kmplayer and mplayer you can play any embedded videos mplayer supports.
#5 by Mike Cohen on February 11, 2007 - 9:28 pm
iTunes 6 or earlier (but not 7) for Windows will run under Wine.
#6 by Kris Marsh on February 11, 2007 - 9:41 pm
# Watch videos inside firefox that are non-flash
* No codec wizard for videos inside browser yet
As another poster mentioned, mplayer is capable of playing embedded videos. The apt package is mozilla-mplayer (In multiverse/misc). Granted though, it would be even better if the Feisty “Easy Codec Install” covered web browsing – installing flash and embedded media.
#7 by Dorian Pula on February 11, 2007 - 9:44 pm
I think the getting Beryl to work is less intuitive than getting a mouse to work.
The biggest issue for are device drivers. It becomes a real chore to find hardware that runs well under Linux, (or even at all), works well in general and is affordable. And Linux support is non-existent for most vendors, even if all they needed to do is support someone’s reverse engineered driver. Hence printing is impossible for me under Linux, due to Canon never writing any Linux drivers.
Also getting iRda devices such as remote controls is also much harder.
Oh and embedded videos work well.
#8 by mike on February 11, 2007 - 9:54 pm
What’s the point? Did I miss sth?
#9 by Jonas on February 11, 2007 - 10:39 pm
With the ffmpeg, bad and ugly gstreamer plugins and w32codecs, I can play quicktime movie trailers and everything in firefox using just the totem plugin.
#10 by relativ on February 12, 2007 - 12:21 am
#Boot in safe mode – if I mess up my X configuration, there is no safe mode to get to a GUI and fix it
How about a Live CD for this task?
#11 by elyinsane on February 12, 2007 - 5:56 am
>#Boot in safe mode – if I mess up my X configuration, there is no safe mode to get to a GUI and fix it
What do you mean by “mess up my X configuration”?
X *is* providing the GUI, so it makes sense that if you mess up X somehow, you aren’t gonna see a GUI.
Otherwise, change your driver to “vesa” in any xorg.conf with your monitor’s details, and you’re usually golden. I’m sure this could be set up as a GRUB menu item.
#12 by sharms on February 12, 2007 - 6:18 am
This post was for an average desktop user. Obviously I can modify xorg.conf, make movies play in my browser etc. The point wasn’t for me, but for new users (which I thought I made abundantly clear).
These are just the pseudo defaults for the system that new people may be curious about. Editing xorg.conf would be a non-trivial task, and making fallback vesa is not.
#13 by Weiers on February 12, 2007 - 7:19 am
I just installed Edubuntu for a colleague who hardly knows how to use Windows. This morning he had trouble trying to get OpenOffice.org to save a file directly to his USB drive. (He had no idea where it was mounted. Actually, If I had to use the word Mount, he would have other connotations.)
I wonder if a number of the issues that you mention do not fall in the same category as this one. You can do it, but you must just learn how.
#14 by Aigars Mahinovs on February 12, 2007 - 1:05 pm
WoW is faster in Linux then in Windows. But it is not compatible with Beryl at this moment.
#15 by Todd on February 12, 2007 - 4:57 pm
Ubuntu (Edgy) doesn’t support WPA right out of the (virtual) box, but the WPA supplicant is quite easy and works well. Also, there are many good tools to managing your network preferences (networkmanager, wifi radar, etc.)
#16 by sharms on February 13, 2007 - 6:06 am
WPA is a no go for me because I have the prism54 chipset which was supposed to be great for linux but turned out to be trouble.