Try Ubuntu

I have found that it is easy for people who work with technology to criticize operating systems, and other tools. There is enough negative commentary out there. I will say that I recently tried to use Suse 9.3 on a sub-2 Ghz machine with 256 MB of RAM, and I was less than happy. I will also readily admit that I installed everything but the kitchen sink, but I found it slow. I was especially disappointed by how slowly OpenOffice performed on my hardware.

At the recent Ottawa Linux Symposium Andy Oram reports that two speakers made wisecracks about OpenOffice.org, tagging it as a bloated memory hog. Yesterday, Bruce Byfield wrote that OpenOffice is bloatware, and left no doubt that he thought OpenOffice was a piece of crap.

Which brings me to my solution. (I was not trying to solve the problem, but it just happened.) I installed Ubuntu 5.04 out of curiosity after receiving a disk with a recent Linux publication. Give this distribution a try! It was easy to install. It recognized my hardware, and loads quickly. Even the latest beta OpenOffice 2.0 loads fast. I am pleased.

I agree that OpenOffice is bloatware Hey! I still have a softspot in my heart for my old copy of Wordstar. However, people are going to use OpenOffice. I do not hate OpenOffice, and I use it. I like being able to easily save a document to PDF. OpenOffice is here to stay, and most people do NOT want to use LaTeX.

Now that I have entered middle age, it could be argued that I have become bloated myself. Let’s just say that there is more of me to love, and leave it at that. Still, there are worse things to say about me, and there worse things to say about a piece of software, especially a useful piece of the software.

Ubuntu is definitely not bloatware. If you decide to give it a try, here is a hint. The install does not ask you to enter a root password. Once you have installed the operating system, you will find yourself unable to log on using the root account. Run a terminal window, and type the following at the command line: sudo passwd root. Then create your root password. You will be unable to run Gnome using the root account, but you can run commands in the shell using su to log on as root. That’s good enough for me.

I like this distro, and I find that it coexists well with some of my antiquated hardware. I am happy. The ability to exercise choice means little without knowledge. Make it a habit to try out various distos and form your own opinion.