I think this thread should be put to good use
I’m not a Ubuntu user, I just installed it with Wubi and dual boot it. I only did this during last week so I’m still pretty excited about this OS and I’ve been playing around with it. I haven’t really done the work that I usually do with my computer yet, so for now I’m just telling about my first impressions.
I have never had an office product on my computer, because I haven’t seen a reason to buy the package. I guess most people get it pre installed, or learn to use it in their work or something. I’ve always used Wordpad for my text editing, which already tells you I almost never edit text. So in that aspect I don’t loose anything using Ubuntu. For many the absence of Office products is a huge problem.
Now, I as well am a really "old" (4 years or something) Photoshop user. However, before I started using Photoshop I used GIMP for a good while and I maybe could be able to transfer back to GIMP if it was really necessary. My brain is just so well programmed into Photoshop. I used GIMP because I didn’t know Photoshop existed, but once I tried PS I just didn’t want to go back. The window jungle GIMP creates is just really agitating for me. Though I
could run Photoshop in Ubuntu, if I really wanted to...
There are some nice things about GIMP as well and it does some things better, but my button shortcuts don’t all work and I don’t know where all the tools are so I’d rather not learn a new program when I know that I won’t be as satisfied with it as I would be with another one.
The other things I do are coding and browsing the internet. Ubuntu is actually really bad for internet browsing. What? Maybe it’s just me getting used to something, but the fonts are really bad. For example Youtube comments look weird. The font size looks so small and it feels like there is more letter spacing. This is in Chromium (don’t know why I didn’t download Chrome). I tried my heart out, but I couldn’t replace the default font unfortunately. This is a minor problem and I’m sure I’d get used to the new font.
What I really like about Ubuntu is that it’s so easy. Everything is so simple to do and everything is presented very well in the default menus. What I like the most is installing programs. In Windows 7 I’m always left with zipped and extracted files and I have to click through the wizard. Ubuntu has many ways to install stuff and every single one of them is nice. If I sometimes feel bad when a guy somewhere coded a website and a CMS to support it in a day, making it better than what I have ever done, I can just open terminal and install a program -- makes you feel more technical right away
The other thing is the immense amount of free software, or rather the lack of software that costs something. It’s just simply awesome. Makes you feel free.
I think it’s not uncommon for "designers" like me to have a Linux installation somewhere. You can’t really modify Windows (or mac os x) to great extent without running a program on the background or hacking something. Ubuntu insists that you modify it, it wants you to make it the way it fits you the best. I haven’t dived into the theming yet, I have the picture that it’s fucking hard work, but I’m really exited to know that I can make this installation look more like me than any other OS.
Now, I think there are some problems. Like that panels don’t support transparency, which comes to the way of you when you are theming. The look of the GUI has come forward a lot during the versions 10.04 and 10.10, but it still is pretty simple. Maybe that is for the best, but you sometimes feel as you were browsing a website which is a feeling I’m not used to. I think "Panels" needs something new. Windows abandoned the traditional taskbar because it wasn’t the best option. I think Panels should ship with a more "docky" and versatile taskbar. Of course there is a lot of "dock software" and I myself use Docky. It’s the small things. For example the "help" box that appears when you hover over something is very big and
ugly in my opinion. Overall there is a feeling that the GUI is not quite as polished as with other OS’s, but that can be just me.
I also think that having so many options to configure can be really hard on you. You might be overwhelmed by the choices you have and just back up your gear and go back to the land of "unfree" and "restricted" where you don’t have to make all of these hard decisions
I like Ubuntu and it’s definitely better than I thought, but I think that a week from now I’m back to Windows 7. I might keep the installation and maybe use it to update my website to better avoid viruses.
Some guy had a problem with how the fonts looked inside the OS. If you right click on the desktop and go to "change desktop background" you get a windows which has "fonts" tab in it. Press that and you get options for rendering. The rendering changes real time so you can see what fits you the best. By default it’s "Sub pixel smoothing" which is really blurry especially for a Windows user. If you come from Mac I can’t say how it compares. You can also changes the fonts from the same menu. There are packages floating around with Mac OS X fonts as well as Windows fonts (which can also be found from the synaptic packet management msconfig or something like that).
Here’s a picture of my Ubuntu installation. It’s just some theme grabbed from gnome-look.org, but it looks completely different than with the default theme. Though to achieve this I have to run some extra programs *sigh*
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. Now I don’t really care about these things I just do websites and don’t waste time installing/trying other OSs
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