I installed Kubuntu (Ubuntu + KDE) Linux some three weeks ago. It was simple, the installation process takes less than Vista, it doesn’t disturb with questions during the process and does not display stupid text messages that praise the OS (like XP or Win98 did). For a while I though everything was perfect… but just for a while. My laptop’s monitor has a native resolution of 1440×900. It is supported by the popular Intel GMA950 integrated graphics adapted, which is the most popular integrated solution today. Ubuntu, on the other hand, had something different in mind. It thought that XGA (1024×768) was perfectly suitable for me and didn’t allow anything higher than that. It may not be a huge problem with 4:3 or 5:4 oriented monitors, but with wide screen it looked dreadful. I don’t know how, but after hours of pain I managed to install a program named 915resolution that helped me change the resolution. So, conclusion number 1: if you have strange hardware – beware.

Being a Microsoft Windows freak for some time I got used to the point-click style of work. But on Linux it’s a little hard to accomplish many things without the console. So I started the long “what”, “how”, “why” and “why doesn’t it work” journey. After a few days I got used and now thinking in Windows terms I wonder why hadn’t I had this before. Conclusion number 2: learn the console, learn Linux OS, learn!

And then comes the software that is available. Installing programs on Linux is different than Windows. Most of the time you get source code with a nice config and a makefile; so you compile. The advantages are obvious, but so are the disadvantages. I struggled with some code that requires extra libraries, which I found and installed, only to find out that more are missing. Correct my if I am wrong in my judgment, but somehow dll hell seems much more familiar. There are programs such as Synaptic Package Manager that simplify that whole process. I must say that everything installed with it’s help works fine. The assortment of programs available is huge. Ubuntu repositories contain 20K+ programs available and the fact that they are all free is very tempting. I have managed to live for 3 weeks using Linux and I had no problems in changing the work environment, except for some OS specific programs (live Visual Studio). Win32 emulators, such a Wine, to my surprise, do actually work – even games ran, and not only they ran, they also had higher fps values than in Windows. The conclusion comes by itself: you can live with Linux and be legal. Legalize!

P.S. As my noble college pointed out, “Wine Is Not an Emulator”, so please excuse me for this mistake. I am leaving the original text intact.

This entry was posted on septembar 7, 2007 at 02:17 and is filed under General blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.