Well, is the picture above an accurate reflection of my own feelings? Lets delve into it.
Good Things I have exerienced
First off, a lightening fast installation. I think it is an absolute fillip to be able to take a CD, or flash drive to a computer devoid of any operating system and literally have a working system in 15 minutes via the 'live' option. Even better, if the software is to your liking, around 1 hour later you can be fully installed. On numerous occasions I have had to wipe my computer system in the past. Getting Windows up and running again was pretty much a days work, especially when all my favourite applications would have to be downloaded and re-installed with the inevitable re-start between every application installation. Linux has cut those shackles free. If you know what you want, it's a simple matter of getting the operating system installed, then selecting all the applications which you want from the repositories. Sit back and get the kettle on. In the same way that Mac OS and Firefox found far simpler methods for completing day to day tasks, which once discovered leave the user slapping their forehead in disbelief that no one else thought of it before, Linux has pulled it's own trump card with it's sofware installation management.
And here lies the big contradiction with Linux.
Linux is considered to be, and in many ways is can be, a difficult 'geeky' operating system that you only know how to work properly if you got bullied at high school. My first impressions of Linux are quite the opposite. I feel that if you were the average home user, a lot of features would be much easier and safer than Windows. When installing software I was never once asked where on my harddrive I wished to put it, which I am explicitly anal about with Windows. Now, I haven't gone on a mission to find out where everything has been put, but I haven't stumbled across anything by chance either. The system side of things seems very hidden to me, with my minimal knowledge of Linux innards. On a personal note, I've managed to 'let go' of the strangle hold that I usually keep on Windows. I normally ruthlessly control what applications and background processes are allowed to run from start up. I'm never out of MS-Config, removing things which I've learned to be surplus to general usuage requirements. I brutally defragment, disk clean up, registry clean, registry defragment and install minimal/alternative drivers instead of the big clunky corporate editions (e.g. Real Alternative instead of Real Player). All this in an effort to keep Windows in check and not spralling into a giant resource monster. It seems to be that I've learned to do more complex house keeping in Windows than what I may ever have to do in Linux. The point to this ramble is that the average home user will have a faster, more efficient computing experience without having to learn all of the various house keeping tricks.
With Linux, every now and again I check the 'Disk Usage Analyser' and find myself very, very surprised how compact everything is even after having a mad splurge on silly applications and add ons via the synaptic package manager. I don't bother going to hunt for background processes to kill because even on my Eeepc with it's little Atom processor and 1 gb of ram, general web browsing, document editing and email client duties perform faster than on my Windows XP system of 2.6 GHz dual core + 2 gig of ram. That is impressive. And also rather annoying.
As I have further investigated Linux, I have ended up venturing towards the terminal, and other more geeky areas. However, mainly this has been from looking up mis-information of what is required to run certain applications, ultimately doing things the hard way. Or rather, the prefered way of some Linux veterans. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the benefits and practicality of a Command Line interface, especially when using it for certain operatiions that should remain hidden to the majority of home users (there's a very good reason why Windows doesn't have an icon for 'Format C:\' in the start menu). However I found the terminal mostly redundant. I installed a *.rar extraction facility add on to the archive manager through the command line, but I think that was all that really needed doing!
The ready packaged applications are on the whole great. I have tried Ubuntu 64bit on my desktop (dual boot) and Ubuntu Netbook Remix and EEEBuntu on my netbook. Seeing Firefox and Open Office as standard is lovely. Rythmbox and Songbird really impressed me with their pre-loaded lists of internet radio stations. Last time I checked, Windows Media Player just isn't that open minded right out of the box. Transmission is a lovely 'all you need' torrent handler, and the bundle of games included has kept my girlfriend entertained nearly as much as Eastenders and Coronation Street.
The operating system multi-tasked well, booted up quickly, and was stable. I experienced a couple of system freezes during my time invovled in this project, however I'm not bothered about that so much because I was doing a lot prodding about with it. It identified all hardware I have and sourced the appropriate drivers. It even got the majority of the extra media buttons working on my keyboard. Most impressively of all, compared to Windows, was that it automatically got my USB ethernet dongle working right away. Windows required the driver disk. I had no problems whatsoever finding replacements to my usual Windows applications. All distros I tried readilly identified all cameras and mobile phones that I connected to it via USB.
Not so good things I have experienced
This will be a far shorter section. Only a few bug bears exist for me, and some are entirely unavoidable. Others are not even the concern of the Linux community but more of the rest of the computing world.
Drivers. They are important things. I was chatting to a friend who was dual-booting Ubuntu on his gaming laptop. He said he was originally only running Ubuntu, running his PC games under WINE. In the end though he put Windows back on as he couldn't get the right drivers to support his graphics card in SLi. Now, this is not Linux's fault, nor Ubuntu's or the Linux communties fault. It is Nvidia's fault. Plain and simple. Similarly I am having to tolerate (and for a person like me, this is a challenge) rather poor sound playback quailty from my Creative sound card which I do not suffer in Windows. There is extra high frequency clipping and reduced dynamic range for whatever reason (and it's not an MP3 decoding issue). Creative do not provide Linux specific drivers. For hardware which is not so run of the mill, I feel it must be a greater challenge for drivers to be written in isolation from the manufacturer. A big tip of the hat and thank you to ATi however, who had a package for my graphics card that had almost the same full functionality as the Windows version, which would satisfy all but a dedicated gamer.
Another little bug bear was getting Flash media in webpages working. Trying to install flash will not work, unless you first install flash support from the add/remove programs client. I know that when Flash came along it was considered to an evil bandwith-hogging, spider-preventing monstrousity but with how prevelant it is across the web, I would have thought this would have been supported out of the box. Now, it's not much of a problem for me to take the steps to get it all working, but for your average home user, frustration would have kicked in at the point of downloading the flash installation application and finding that it does not work.
Similarly, I found the Ubuntu Restricted Extras to be a entirely essential package for everyday computing. Again, something to have straight out of the box I would have thought. I understand the FOSS philosophy, and that propriety or protected drivers and decoders don't really fit into the Linux world, but I really do feel that at the end of the day pragmatism needs to sit along side idealism.
Of course, these missing packages are surely available right from installation in other distros. From my reading it seems Mint Linux has gone down that path far more readily. And I'm probably getting a bit too Windows-orientated here; Linux is not designed to replace Windows, nor do everything that it does. It is designed to do what is required of it by the people that use it. That of course leads to the double-edged sword of having multiple distrubitions of the operating system. However, I'm going to toe a line in the ground here, and say that the average person has certain expectations of computers in general. These include showing websites properly and playing MP3 files from the get-go.
Audio
A big part of why I got roped into this experiment was to investigate the audio recording side of things. I have failed spectacularly in this respect, mainly due to a lack of time due to the work and education commitments of my real world life. So, I shall try my best to make an assessment based on what I've managed to expose my self to.
The most advanced and complete DAW for linux, by all accounts, seems to be Ardour. I'm not sure how well the computing world as a whole realisees what an audacious task it is to make a DAW, let alone a free, open source one. I read that the man at the helm of Ardour has lost backing from SSL and SAE, making the task bigger still. Despite this, Ardour is very impressive. It does away with a few standard conventions which takes a while to get familiar with. It certainly has an impressive bundle of features. Is it as good as the latest versions of Cubase and ProTools? I very much doubt it. I'm still fighting away with Ardour and JACK, and only just getting chance to follow up the very helpful links that were so kindly posted in response to my 'Ardour and Adversity' post. I do still intend to do a 'Linux/Adour' version of a demanding mix to compare with a 'Windows/Cubse4' version, so for me this project will run on longer than the month in order to satisfy certain quriousities, as I believe it also is for Blair. If I'm forced to make a judgement, I'd say Ardour is more than enough for a bit of hobbiest home recording. For a full professional recording studio setup I think it might not be quite there yet (however, as an amateur recording enthusiast I've got no right to make this assumption), although the flexibility of JACK and Ardour's sends and bussing system would be a boon. For someone somewhere between the two... which is probably where I am, the absence of plugins from the major players is a worry, as is the very 'pro audio' nature of JACK.
End Result
Linux will remain on my netbook. It will be the operating system of choice for that hardware due to how quickly it works with the resources available to it. I won't miss the XP home edition which came with it in the slightest. The CD Key was on a printed sticker on the underside of the netbook, which has become obliterated due to the unit being handled. I don't care in the slightest. I have EEEBuntu on a flash drive should I have to purge the system, and I've learned how to set it up to get the features I like from the standard Ubuntu NBR distro.
However, Ubuntu 64bit wil not be replacing XP Professional on my desktop. It shall remain on my hidden 80gb drive for general interest use and for compelting the audio investigation. However, there are a few really simple reasons why the main operating system will remain Windows.
1) Cubase 4. I invested a significant amount of money in this software. Running something like this under WINE isn't a preferred option for me. I have it set up and running sweet as a nut under XP, so I ain't going to mess about with it. Ardour is yet to convince me it can do everything i wish it to, as easily as I would like. Also the general audio play back issues I'm experiencing really put me off doing audio work under Linux. You can't mix audio properly if you aren't getting honest sounds out of your speakers. I'm sure others with different hardware will have better experiences.
2) Games. Farcry 2, Fallout 3, Left for Dead, RaceDriver GRID. I don't see the point in messing about with WINE, when I have the operating system designed to run these already at my disposal. The ATi drivers for Linux also lack a little bit of functionality compared to the Windows ones which impacts on performance.
I have to throw in a caveat however.
If I did not use my desktop PC for the two (slightly) specialist roles of an Audio Recording Setup and Gaming system, then Windows would be gone in the blink of an eye. For general, everyday, non-specialist computing Linux is a breath of fresh air. This is mainly due to the open-source nature of the experience. As I read in an article that someone posted on the forums in the lead up to this whole thing starting; most people don't want to convert to Linux, they just don't want to have to use Windows. Escaping the rat race is the big attraction. There is a great feeling of freedom that comes with the GNU world. Instead of investing money in new software, you just invest the time to try it. You can discard it without the worry of money being wasted. It is a peaceful, relaxing computing haven, away from the madness of constant comercial advancement/exploitation. Also there is something undoubtedly cool (if you are that way inclinded) of stepping into an alternative computing world of recursive acronymns, fresh thinking and non-coroprate character which has produced a graphics package called 'GIMP' and a WIMP environment call 'Gnome'.
So if you're using your PC for pretty typical things, if ya got the balls, and if you are prepared to struggle with getting the occassional 'standard' function working properly throw away the Windows saftey net , go download a distro and a MD5 checker. Get stuck in.
