Why I came to use Ubuntu
Tags experience, microsoft, mythbuntu, ubuntu, windows
I started using Linux back in the late 1990s. Back then it was dialup on Windows 95, and I was getting fed up with Windows 95 and its constant crashing and other problems, so I read about Linux somewhere, and downloaded Red Hat Linux, and installed that.
However, there were a number of problems with that, including no support for my Creative soundcard nor the modem, and it did not automount the hard drive partitions other than root, and I did not know how to fix that. So I gave up on Linux temporarily.
I do recall at around that time seeing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or whatever it was called) for sale in PC World, along with BeOS Professional (not the basic BeOS free version). I did not purchase them, but was still interested in an alternative to Microsoft bugware.
I downloaded BeOS and tried that, there was not much to it, no real software. I then heard of Xandros, which was formerly Corel Linux. I had to pay for it, but it promised to be easy to use and more Windows-like than other Linux distros, so I bought version 1 of that and installed it. I was quite impressed, although there were a few bugs. As for using modems, I had already purchased an external serial modem which worked fine with Linux.
But the bugs and lack of software I could use meant that I did not use Xandros much, and moved on to Windows 2000 (after having much misery with Windows ME preinstalled on a PC I bought in 2000).
Windows 2000 was much better than its predecessors, but eventually along came Windows XP Professional, which I purchased to do video editing with (and still do, using Sony Vegas, from time to time).
However, for general usage I found Windows XP Pro getting worse and worse, running too slow and crashing often.
So I remembered Xandros, and looked for a newer version. I found version 3 of the Open Circulation Edition, tried that, liked it and when my WinXP PC became too unbearable to use, I bought Xandros 4 and used that.
I also started to subscribe to Linux Format magazine, just over a year ago, and read about the other distros, including Ubuntu.
I was reluctant to change at first, but after a major problem with Xandros, having to reinstall due to the hard disk developing faults, and not being able to get the graphics drivers working properly, I thought I should try something else.
Ubuntu was free, and supposedly very easy to use, so I gave it a go, was impressed with how so much of it "just worked", and installed that, and have now used Ubuntu as my default OS for about a year, starting with 7.10.
In the last few months I built myself a new PC with a dual core AMD 64-bit CPU, and my first choice for OS was Ubuntu 64-bit version, and is actually still the only bootable OS on the PC, although I run various others as virtual machines from time to time.
I have also now installed Mythbuntu on the old PC that was formerly running Ubuntu 7.10.
I have also tried other Gnome-based distros but I particularly like the way Ubuntu have implemented the Gnome desktop, especially with Compiz enabled and the wobbly windows, previews, OSX-like program switcher, and so on.
However, there were a number of problems with that, including no support for my Creative soundcard nor the modem, and it did not automount the hard drive partitions other than root, and I did not know how to fix that. So I gave up on Linux temporarily.
I do recall at around that time seeing Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or whatever it was called) for sale in PC World, along with BeOS Professional (not the basic BeOS free version). I did not purchase them, but was still interested in an alternative to Microsoft bugware.
I downloaded BeOS and tried that, there was not much to it, no real software. I then heard of Xandros, which was formerly Corel Linux. I had to pay for it, but it promised to be easy to use and more Windows-like than other Linux distros, so I bought version 1 of that and installed it. I was quite impressed, although there were a few bugs. As for using modems, I had already purchased an external serial modem which worked fine with Linux.
But the bugs and lack of software I could use meant that I did not use Xandros much, and moved on to Windows 2000 (after having much misery with Windows ME preinstalled on a PC I bought in 2000).
Windows 2000 was much better than its predecessors, but eventually along came Windows XP Professional, which I purchased to do video editing with (and still do, using Sony Vegas, from time to time).
However, for general usage I found Windows XP Pro getting worse and worse, running too slow and crashing often.
So I remembered Xandros, and looked for a newer version. I found version 3 of the Open Circulation Edition, tried that, liked it and when my WinXP PC became too unbearable to use, I bought Xandros 4 and used that.
I also started to subscribe to Linux Format magazine, just over a year ago, and read about the other distros, including Ubuntu.
I was reluctant to change at first, but after a major problem with Xandros, having to reinstall due to the hard disk developing faults, and not being able to get the graphics drivers working properly, I thought I should try something else.
Ubuntu was free, and supposedly very easy to use, so I gave it a go, was impressed with how so much of it "just worked", and installed that, and have now used Ubuntu as my default OS for about a year, starting with 7.10.
In the last few months I built myself a new PC with a dual core AMD 64-bit CPU, and my first choice for OS was Ubuntu 64-bit version, and is actually still the only bootable OS on the PC, although I run various others as virtual machines from time to time.
I have also now installed Mythbuntu on the old PC that was formerly running Ubuntu 7.10.
I have also tried other Gnome-based distros but I particularly like the way Ubuntu have implemented the Gnome desktop, especially with Compiz enabled and the wobbly windows, previews, OSX-like program switcher, and so on.
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