Ubuntu Linux is teh awesome

I'm a Linux geek - this started back in 1994 with Slackware (0.99 kernel) on 25 pounds of floppy disks. Along the way, I've gotten less interested in recompiling kernels and messing around to make things like sound and video work. I'd run Red Hat for a while, and tried SuSE, and ended up with boring old Red Hat Enterprise Edition.

Well, all the cool kids have seemed like they've been trying Ubuntu, so I loaded it this afternoon. Let me tell you, this is the Linux for the masses. In 15 minutes, I had this:


Trivial to Import my data from USB, grabbed my pics from the iPhone (and no, there are only Safe-For-Work pictures, thank you very much).

It comes with all the office applications (word processor, spreadsheet, etc). It also comes with the Gimp, which is an open source Photoshop type app. I used it to make the Palin/Breda logo (don't blame the app; my skillz are weak).

I haven't installed iTunes. Yet. This is the only mission critical app left, and is in a sense an acid test: Apple does not want people running iTunes on Linux. Either I'll try it running under emulation (WINE or VMWare), or I'll toss the whole thing and try Banshee.

Note to Apple: all you're doing is giving me an interesting challenge. The old definition of copy protection applies here:

It's a method of preventing incompetant pirates or legitimate users from using your product.

Arrrrr.

Anyone sick of spyware and malware should think about this. It's way, way easy. I'll update everyone on the iTunes thing - that's the last bit that would keep you suffering on Vista.

Arrrrr.