I’ve spent another day with Ubuntu. That’s not really the important fact, though. What’s important is that my wife has spent a few hours with it. Aside from being totally incompatible with our wireless print server, she liked it. “It’s like Windows [Office] was before it got all complicated”, she said when I asked her how she liked it. Her primary purposes for using it today were to create an Office document and browse the web. Both went well. To print, she had to insert a USB disk into the computer, save to that, then tote (verb) the USB disk upstairs to open it in Word.
Ok, so the honeymoon is over, it’s not a practical desktop OS for our setup, but then we’ve got four computers in the house – three on Vista, and one on Ubuntu, a wireless print server, two wireless routers, and a hub – hardly a practical setup. If the printer was hooked up directly to the laptop, then I don’t think that printing would be an issue…but it isn’t, so it is.
Aside from that, it loaded the USB disk contents correctly, saved the documents in Word format correctly, and did it all without a single complaint or configuration file change. I’ve had trouble getting USB drives to work on Vista before, so I expected the worst. I was pleasantly surprised.
So, Ubuntu has passed the WAF test and I’ve been given permission to keep it on the laptop. 
3 responses so far ↓
Rusty // September 18, 2008 at 9:36 pm |
yes, I also was pleasantly surprised by the Ubuntu experience. The google image result with the girl in the t shirt convinced me to try it!
However, I am just as impressed by our Windows XP clean install on my spare computer. It also sports star office.
Vista will get there. In the mean time, thank god for VMWare!
barik // September 21, 2008 at 7:32 pm |
Am I in wacky land? Michael Earls experimenting with Linux? It has been a long time, I hope you are doing well these days.
mearls // September 21, 2008 at 7:40 pm |
Thanks for visiting. It may be wacky land, but it’s true.