After a year of running a Microsoft Free Household(c), I've switched OS's again, although this switch was less drastic.

I've been hearing all kinds of whisperings about Ubuntu, and when I was presented with a laptop at work to take to RailsConf in a couple weeks, I naturally had to do something about the OS immediately. This seemed like a good opportunity to give Ubuntu a test drive.

All I can say is that I was immediately impressed. Here's a list of things that have traditionally been a pain in the ass with Fedora that somehow 'just work' in Ubuntu.

• Installing the Adobe Flash plugin.
• Installing codecs for mpeg, quicktime, and yes, even wmv movies.
• Wireless networking. Granted, it still took about 20-30 minutes to find instructions on the Ubuntu forums with links to the right drivers and get everything installed and working. But that's comparred to 2-3 unsuccessful days on Fedora. Did I mention they were unsuccessful?
• Wireless Encryption. Once non-encrypted wireless was working, getting connected to a WPA encrypted network was simply a matter of entering the key.

So, I haven't even been to the conference yet, and already the home computer has migrated, too. First thing I noticed on the home computer... everything is faster. And that's not just that new car feeling. I keep the system monitor running on my toolbar showing how much processor, memory, etc. the computer is using. Didn't usually take much to max out the processor on Fedora, but I didn't really notice much since things seemed to be just as fast as they were under Windows. Now I go do things that I KNOW used to max the processor all the time and it barely creeps over 50%.

So, If you're thinking of giving linux a try, I highly recommend Ubuntu. Try it, you'll like it, or your money back. Here's some install notes that I'm making as much for myself as anybody else who is interested.

Partitions. Default install for both Fedora and Ubuntu seems to be to put everything in '/' (root). I don't think that's wise, but maybe I'm just paranoid. So, here's the partitions I set my new install at home to, leaving 90+ Gigs unallocated for future expansion.

• '/' : Primary : 8G
• : Extended : 47G
  • '/tmp' : 2G
  • '/var' : 4G
  • '/usr' : 16G
  • '/home' : 20G

I also had a problem with links on webpages opening in new windows rather than new tabs, as the default firefox settings said to do. Solution:

• Change setting to open new links in new windows.
• Restart Firefox. (may not actually be necessary)
• Change setting back to 'new tab'.

And just to go off on a tangent, here's a string of seemingly random characters (0P8865365P65148QO53R47Q920119S90) that you would probably not have any need to reverse and ROT13, but who knows, maybe you'll be feeling rambunctious some day. Oh, and here's a seemingly unrelated link to a seemingly random story on seemingly random website.