mmrobins.com

I’m finally trying to make the complete switch over to linux from windows. As much as I consider myself good with computers I’ve had too many problems getting things to work in the past to stick with any linux install. I think the last time I tried installing linux was Fedora Core 1 more than a year ago and that was just frustrating and terrible.

I’m pleased at how far many distributions have come since then. Ubuntu 5.04, the hoary hedgehog, is the distribution I’ve had the most luck with so I’m going to try to move forward with that. The install was easier than installing Windows and all the hardware worked right off – on the desktop.

I tried the install on my laptop and the major thing that linux still doesn’t have working is the wireless. To be fair, it’s not entirely linux distros fault since from what I understand the wireless device manufacturers aren’t releasing drivers for linux. However, I haven’t found a linux distro that makes it easy to configure wireless even if you do get the right driver. You’re going to have to wade through a few forums explaining how to use ndiswrapper and then it will only work if you’re lucky. I got one laptop working with ndiswrapper and a DLink 650 PCMCIA card, but I can’t get my new Dell Inspiron 9300 with a Dell 1450 mini-PCI built in wireless.

On the desktop install, dual boot with windows xp worked (although the repartitioning portion of the install isn’t as clear as it could be), sound, networking , mouse, keyboard, usb pen drive, and more worked right off.

For a music player I’ve found I like Amarok the best. It took a little to get sound to come out of it in Gnome (I had to change the music engine settings to Gstreamer and then try output plugins until esdsink finally worked), but I love the way it will look up lyrics so easily, recommend other songs, and is integrated with audioscrobbler. You also have to download a lot of media file support, including MP3. Since many of those standards are propietary most free distros don’t include them for legal reasons.

Although this isn’t done automatically, I got my windows drives viewable. I can’t write to them since they’re NTFS format, but I can read my whole music library. I had to do this through the command prompt and by editing some text files, so as far as I know there’s still no graphical interface for this.

Setting up network printers isn’t hard, but it’s not nearly as easy as it is in windows. You can’t just browse to the printer and click on it in Linux. Instead you have to know the exact path name and type it in.

There’s a few hurdles remaining for a home setup. I need a Microsoft Money replacement for my finances, but I think GNUCash should work. I haven’t tested CD or DVD burning but I’ve heard they work.

I’ll write more as I use linux more, but I’m impressed with how far it’s come. It might even be usable for daily work soon. If I could get Mac OS to install on PC hardware though…