I first used Linux back in college in 1998. I remember agonizing over Slackware v. Red Hat. When I finally installed Red Hat 5, I spent countless hours learning about the primitive commands of the day.
Over the years I have learned that I don't really care about OS wars, Linux v. Windows v. MacOS. I just want a computer that works. Recently, that has been Windows 7. Despite being a software developer, I find myself not caring about the nuts and bolts: I want to write software, get paid for it, and not be held up by the computer working against me.
Recently I built a new computer from scratch with the intent of it being a combination home file server and Linux development workstation. Thinking back to my roots 13 years ago, I installed Fedora 15. Hilarity ensued (from anyone else's perspective) as I spent hours swearing at my computer.
Today I installed Kubuntu (I hate Gnome) 11.10. I was almost in tears. Fedora refused to connect to my Brother (networked) laser printer. Kubuntu instantly found it as soon as I clicked "install printer" and effortlessly installed the driver and printed a test page. Even Windows 7, which honestly is a good OS and does a lot of things right, was a bigger hassle to get this working and even that was just clicking through things. Kubuntu felt like it just owned my home network and knew what I was thinking. By the time Kubuntu was successfully printing a test page, Fedora was telling me I had no printers, and Windows 7 was still scanning the network. Seriously, I was impressed that just clicking the button it just knew the printer (in power saving mode at that) was there over a TCP/IP connection.
I prefer static IP on my internal network for a variety of reasons, mainly because with 100 IPs and 4 computers, consistency is key. When I tried setting this up in Fedora, it required googling and I screwed it up so bad (editing files using vim in /etc/sysconfig/network) that eth0 just stopped working. I had to reinstall (see previous point about ease of use), and there was still not any GUI tool for configuring it. Instead, I would have had to waste hours screwing around in the command line (which I am comfortable doing). But if Windows 7 allows me to click lazily in a box and have it just work, why not Linux? Well, Kubuntu did this just as well as Windows 7.
I don't want to put down Fedora, I know there are hundreds of people who put a lot of work into that distro and I am sure it works well for some people. But for someone who just wants Linux That Works, Kubuntu is amazing. It looks amazing, in seconds it has saved hours of time in another Linux (and minutes in Windows 7), and I am very happy with it so far.
Thank you to the people who developed the distribution, the Kubuntu-specific tools it contains, the beta testers, everyone who had a part in making this distribution possible. I appreciate the long hours and hard work you put into a free and open source operating system.
Now I need to get Samba working, and as a longtime user, I know that can be hours of fun to get it set up just right.
Over the years I have learned that I don't really care about OS wars, Linux v. Windows v. MacOS. I just want a computer that works. Recently, that has been Windows 7. Despite being a software developer, I find myself not caring about the nuts and bolts: I want to write software, get paid for it, and not be held up by the computer working against me.
Recently I built a new computer from scratch with the intent of it being a combination home file server and Linux development workstation. Thinking back to my roots 13 years ago, I installed Fedora 15. Hilarity ensued (from anyone else's perspective) as I spent hours swearing at my computer.
Today I installed Kubuntu (I hate Gnome) 11.10. I was almost in tears. Fedora refused to connect to my Brother (networked) laser printer. Kubuntu instantly found it as soon as I clicked "install printer" and effortlessly installed the driver and printed a test page. Even Windows 7, which honestly is a good OS and does a lot of things right, was a bigger hassle to get this working and even that was just clicking through things. Kubuntu felt like it just owned my home network and knew what I was thinking. By the time Kubuntu was successfully printing a test page, Fedora was telling me I had no printers, and Windows 7 was still scanning the network. Seriously, I was impressed that just clicking the button it just knew the printer (in power saving mode at that) was there over a TCP/IP connection.
I prefer static IP on my internal network for a variety of reasons, mainly because with 100 IPs and 4 computers, consistency is key. When I tried setting this up in Fedora, it required googling and I screwed it up so bad (editing files using vim in /etc/sysconfig/network) that eth0 just stopped working. I had to reinstall (see previous point about ease of use), and there was still not any GUI tool for configuring it. Instead, I would have had to waste hours screwing around in the command line (which I am comfortable doing). But if Windows 7 allows me to click lazily in a box and have it just work, why not Linux? Well, Kubuntu did this just as well as Windows 7.
I don't want to put down Fedora, I know there are hundreds of people who put a lot of work into that distro and I am sure it works well for some people. But for someone who just wants Linux That Works, Kubuntu is amazing. It looks amazing, in seconds it has saved hours of time in another Linux (and minutes in Windows 7), and I am very happy with it so far.
Thank you to the people who developed the distribution, the Kubuntu-specific tools it contains, the beta testers, everyone who had a part in making this distribution possible. I appreciate the long hours and hard work you put into a free and open source operating system.
Now I need to get Samba working, and as a longtime user, I know that can be hours of fun to get it set up just right.
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