Thursday, April 3, 2008

Linux test

Well I lost my drive on my laptop at home. While I waited on the restore disks from Dell I decided to see how Ubuntu would load to my Dell E1505 Laptop.

I've played with Ubuntu server on several occasions but it was only in a VM test environment and I didn't do much "work" on those loads. I thought that loading it at home would force me to figure things out.

I've had it loaded for several weeks now. And there are things that we like a ton and things that we really miss.

Things that we miss...
  • iTunes - I can connect to my iPod G5 with the native music player that shipped with my linux flavor but it doesn't connect up to iTunes.
  • Everything that I did with Windows is available with Linux but it takes me a while to find it. We are not the most patient people with searching for the stuff we are looking for.
  • Office is nice but still just a little different.
  • specific drivers aren't officially offered for linux on my dell.
  • Sonicwall Global VPN client not actually offered for Linux. (it is nice b/c I can't work from home, but then again I can't fix stuff from home now).
Things we love...
  • Simplicity
  • Quick boot
  • Quick shutdown
I plan to reload my laptop with windows and possible it will be a dual boot. Ubuntu is nice but not exactly what we need.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Michael,

Don't turn to the darkside! :)
You can install VMware** with an XP image on it and still have your XP apps (iTunes, VPN Client, print drivers) when necessary (in a window!) and still enjoy the best OS around!!

Jeffrey Thompson
jthompsonic@gmail.com
http://itdiscuss.org/linux

Anonymous said...

I forgot to leave my VMware link:

http://itdiscuss.org/vmware

Foster said...

Great idea! I'm going to start working on that. I have played with VMware a little in the windows environment and it would be beneficial to know how to run it off a linux machine. Thanks for your comment.