Ubuntu
May 13th, 2007 at 17:39

I was a bit worried that I was going a bit too “mainstream” last night, so I did something dangerous and irrational to try and up my geek-cred. I installed Linux.

I found an excellent installer, called Wubi, which will install Ubuntu (a Linux distro… if this is too techie for you, you should probably scroll down) automatically, without having to partition your hard disk or do any nasty reformatting. It apparently mounts a folder in windows to act as the partition or something – I don’t really understand it myself.

Aside from the faff of getting the wireless drivers working, its been all right so far – apart from the gross incompatibility of everything from Flash to Real Player to iTunes, the lack of keyboard shortcuts for half a million things that you’d expect to have short cuts for. The backspace key doesn’t even work as a back button in Firefox.

The music playing software that comes installed doesn’t actually support mp3s.

I’m going to soldier on with it though, if only so I can claim the moral left-wing highground. “My operating system isn’t owned by an evil corporation – only my hardware, car, clothes, food, consumer goods and Coke are, and this makes me better than you.”

Comments(5)

1. Matt
   May 13th, 2007 at 9:49 pm

   Flash is proprietary, you need to add the repositories.
   mp3 codecs are proprietary, you need to add the repositories.
   Real Player is proprietary, you need to add the repositories.
   iTunes is proprietary, you need to add the repositories.

   I told you to add the repositories yesterday when you were pestering me on msn.

   The backspace does work in Firefox, you just haven’t set it to recognize it, and it is possible to use GNOME without even installing a mouse, which I did for a while before drivers for my track pad came out, so don’t spout crap about there being no keyboard shortcuts – and James, you will be relieved to hear that there are no known compatibility issues between Ubuntu and Neopets.

   http://www.ubuntuguide.org/

2. Matt
   May 13th, 2007 at 9:51 pm

   Actually wtf am I talking about, you’d have to be insane to want to run iTunes on Linux.

   Amarok ftw.

3. Dan
   May 14th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

   i agree, when i had linux amarok was ace.
   and i even managed to install all the repositories.
   cleary you’re a nobb, or need a lesson down the pub

4. Dan
   May 14th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

   i meant noob
   honest

5. Dave
   May 16th, 2007 at 11:46 pm

   i’ve got my system dual booting between ubuntu and windows. i still haven’t figured out why i should use ubuntu instead of windows…. its too fucking hard to do anything in linux so why should i bother …? i don’t get it.

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