Ubuntu 8.04 Vs. Windows XP

Hello there. It’s been a while hasn’t it? I haven’t actually had anything to write about, perhaps I should join one of these ‘blog a day’ communities where they give you a daily topic or maybe it’s a good thing that you don’t have to read daily blabberings from me. I’ve been working full-time, and it looks like I’ll be doing that for the next few years so there’s nothing really exciting about it ;) Aside from that I’ve had Ubuntu installed on my laptop for about a month now after my Windows XP got so bogged down in crap that it was doing my head in. I have a dual-boot now but try to avoid Windows as much as possible.

It’s always a bit new when changing operating systems. It feels like I won’t really be using it for that long so I don’t bother getting all the extra bits like bookmarks updated so that I could have a functional OS.

There are good and bad things about each operating system that I use.. so maybe I’ll write about that.

Windows XP
I like the way that this laptop is made for Windows XP and all the drivers are just there and the computers bits just work (albeit slowly). I like that Windows is user-friendly and nice to look at. I like that I don’t have to type things into a console to try and get it to work and I like playing games on it.

I don’t like that Windows builds up unnecessary files and after a while there’s no choice but to re-install (even though I use EasyCleaner the greatest cleaner ever known to man-kind). I despise the costs involved in trying to do the simplest of things and that Windows have made it so that people think they have no choice but to buy Microsoft Office or Norton Anti-virus which both slow down the computer beyond endurance. I don’t like that they have so much control over new PC’s and laptops and I think people buying new computers should be given a choice (not just shoddy Vista).

Ubuntu 8.04
I like that.. certain things like my bluetooth adapter can just be plugged in and they’ll partially work (adapter used to fully work in previous release but there appears to be a bug…). I like that it’s free and that many of the programs are light and free too. I like the GNOME desktop which is simple and speedy. I like that my music player does what I tell it and there’s no waiting an hour for it to create a library. I like that I can get Firefox, Thunderbird and Skype in Ubuntu even if my headset/mic won’t work properly yet… :/ I like the community and how they want to help everyone use Ubuntu and it’s much more helpful than Windows help system which is ridiculous and only goes to a minimal depth i.e have you plugged it in?

I don’t like that I have to do so much fiddling just to get something simple to work. Was looking around today for a fix for the bluetooth bug (everything works apart from sending a file from phone to laptop) it has taken at least two hours and still no result. I had the same problems getting my wireless to work. These hardware problems are actually due to Windows and the other big companies supplying hardware that has restricted drivers but it’s still annoying. I don’t like that I can’t sync my E90 in Ubuntu cos Nokia are a bunch of gits (Nokia is a Finnish company… the guy who started Linux development, Linus Torvalds is Finnish so why don’t they get together eh?). I don’t like that I’m worried because a week ago something fell down from the shelf of my computer desk, hit the keyboard and the screen started going all jittery and looked like it’d die.