Ubuntu: Linux…for People

I’m sure everyone is waiting with baited breath to hear more of my computing adventures since the apocalypse a couple of weeks ago. What’s that? You weren’t? Tough. I’m going to tell you anyway.

As I said in an earlier comment, I installed CentOS on the advice of my dad, who is wise in the way of such things. It was nice – very polished, and it installed super-smoothly. However, I couldn’t get the drivers for my wireless network card, an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200, installed; I was never even able to successfully compile them from source. Then I tried to install a media player, and found myself wandering the excruciating labyrinthine halls of what Windows users refer to in hushed, frightened voices as “DLL Hell.” I can’t install this component without these six dynamically-linked libraries, which won’t install without six more libraries, and so on until you just don’t care anymore.

I whined about this to my old boss from work, Luke, who is one of the smartest sons of a gun I’ve ever known. He chastised me for not using Debian, whose package management system, he said, was the bee’s knees. All right, I made up the “bee’s knees” bit, but he did indeed speak very highly of it. So I burned a copy of the network install disk, and away I went.

It installed less smoothly than CentOS. It had a text-mode interface, rather than a nice X-based GUI like CentOS had, and I got confused at some point; it started asking questions about my “monitor,” which didn’t really apply to my laptop’s LCD screen, and I think it interpreted my attempts to go back a few steps in the install process as a desire to just go with the defaults, and so once the installation was complete, I couldn’t even start X up. Bleah.

OK, so then I thought I’d try Ubuntu like Ross and Scott suggested in their comments to my previous post. I went to their home page, and immediately started laughing. Don’t get me wrong – I love the site…I think it’s put together very well. But Ubuntu’s slogan, “Linux for Human Beings,” brought to my mind the fake charity fabricated by George Costanza in an episode of Seinfeld as a way of giving Christmas presents to his office coworkers without spending a dime. “A donation has been made in your name to The Human Fund. Money…for People.”

Anyway, enough tomfoolery. I burn the install disc and give it a whirl. It’s got a text-mode installer like Debian -- which, incidentally, Ubuntu appears to be based on, which means you still get the sexiness of apt-get -- but without all the questions. Let me tell you: it installed like a dream. Not only that, but it detected all my hardware and installed all the drivers without even asking me. Including the wireless adapter driver, which works, by the way, like a charm.

The aesthetics are nice, too. I like the default Gnome theme, with its earthy browns and simple composition, but I like the feel of kubuntu, Ubuntu’s customized KDE package, even better.

I also like the MacOS X-like approach to administration. Instead of su-ing your way up to root when you need super-user privileges, you just use sudo, and enter your normal account password to gain access. It’s part of the “root accounts are dangerous” meme, and I think it’s a good one. Also, fewer passwords to remember = good.

Anyway, it’s up and running and flat-out awesome. I haven’t tried to get my printer, a stupid, old Brother HL-1440, working yet, but I’m sure it’ll work out with a little elbow grease.

In conclusion, I’d like to send out a big “thank you” to my homeys for recommending Ubuntu, and I’d like to propagate that recommendation. Ubuntu kicks ass, and unlike The Human Fund, it exists. Use it.

Ubuntu. Linux…for People.