Here’s another comparison between Linux and Windows – Installing Software.

With Windows, you typically download a software package that has a graphical installer.  You click next a few times and installs.  I thought this was smooth and easy.

Now all day yesterday while installing software on Ubuntu, I was using apt-get.  Holy cow!  apt-get absolutely rocks!  With one command I can have it find, download, and install software.  Windows really needs an apt-get type of application.

I used Vista for over a week and I was not impressed. I was not particularly thrilled that when deleting some files I had to do 3 separate actions because of the Windows Defender crap. It made me feel like Windows was trying to defend itself from me. I like my operating systems subservient! I want to be in control of my computing experience. So the box that Vista lived on has started it’s conversion to a dual boot Ubuntu / XP Pro machine.

The part that burns me the most is Microsoft is huge!  They have so many developers and resources, so why is it that their OS takes 551 MB to sit idle and won’t see more than 2.8 GB of ram?  This is what the World’s Greatest software company has to offer?

As I move on into learning more about Ruby and Mono using the Ubuntu partition, I will still need the XP partition to use my RealFlight G3.5 R/C simulator and have a stable installation of Visual Studio 2005. I can not go cold turkey yet! (And as bad as their OS may be, their tools are very good.)
So far I have completed the Ubuntu partition. It took me about 3-4 hours total to install, update, and add all of the software I wanted or needed. I have installed Firefox, Thunderbird, Ruby, Java, Eclipse, MonoDevelop, Apache, PHP, MySQL 5, OpenOffice, and PHPMyAdmin.

As an interesting observation, I have had some trouble with this hardware accepting 2GB of ram and the onboard NIC operating at the right speed when using Vista and XP. I have not seen the same problems while running linux.

I was able to fix one of the machines!  It was a simple problem.  Apparently PCI-E video cards require XP SP2 or better.  I did not have a slipstreamed XP disk and instead of making one, I just decided to install that copy of Vista I received from PowerTogether.com.

There are a few things I like thus far and several I do not.  But it’s not fair to judge after 48 hours.  I’ll give it some time and get back to you.

This last weekend I started a project to upgrade my desktop machines to dual core processors.  One AMD and one Intel.

One word of advice:  Don’t use cheap motherboards.

3 of 3 machines are down.  Hard.  Can’t load XP, Vista, or Ubuntu.  This is going to consume my time for a few days, so please stand by if you waiting on something from me.