I’ve been using Ubuntu 8.04 Linux for the past year, but installed the new 9.04 on my new computer. I could not believe how easily everything worked.
Sound works, the wireless card works, suspend works, even the webcam works, with no fiddling whatsoever! Is this really Linux?
Linux just gets better and better every year, and I can honestly say now that Ubuntu now has far fewer problems on my laptop (emachines D620) than Vista – even though it was sold with Vista! And I don’t have to worry about viruses, or deal with Vista’s horribly annoying popup windows asking me if I really want to do everything…
The winds of change are blowing. I’m not saying that suddenly everyone will suddenly switch to Linux now just because Ubuntu has made a great distribution, we won’t see that until it is readily available in stores alongside Windows, but this feels like a turning point to me.
The question is slowly changing from “Is it worth the fuss moving to Linux?”, to “Is it worth the fuss staying with Windows?”.
Well done Canonical for putting out such a well-polished free operating system.
If you like the sound of this, you can download a bootable (“live”) cd and see if it works on your computer without messing up Windows at all.
I just wish I could buy a laptop in New Zealand without being forced to pay Microsoft for Windows, when I won’t even use it. I’d much prefer to be giving that money to Canonical (who make Ubuntu).
Samuel Dennis 