Ubuntu 9.10... yeah.

I've been a long time Ubuntu and Linux user. Don't get me wrong, I try to use as many different operating systems as often as I can, but primarily on my machines, I've been using Ubuntu or some variant of Ubuntu for around 4 years now.

People ask me, why use Linux? I tell them, it's fun. To me, using Linux is somewhat of an ongoing never ending project to make your computer work best. And whats different of that rather than in Windows or Mac is that on Linux the job is on your shoulders to do so. It's not for your average person by any means and I never tell anyone "Oh you should put Linux on that computer."

That being said, I am writing this post from within Windows 7.

Yep, I've recently dropped Ubuntu and opted to make Windows 7 my primary workspace environment. Now the question is, why? The answer; to put it short, Ubuntu 9.10 was... balls. Very balls.

From the moment I installed Karmic Koala it gave me nothing but problems. Battery life was much worse than before (and it already was pretty bad), I couldn't get my computer to suspend, on boot up I was presented with a notification that things were going wrong and I couldn't make them go away, I didn't like the new software center thing I felt it was much slower than the old system, and overall, it was just... balls.

What's worse is; I helped! I did bug testing for Karmic Koala while it was in Alpha, I was very excited for the release of it because it's something I contributed to, I loved 9.04 and the previous versions I used and now I have the skills to contribute to the project and then end results, it's crap.

I wanted to love Karmic Koala more than anything, but it was just balls. Easily the worse OS I've used in recent memory, worse than Vista, on the same level as Windows ME I'd even say.

So, I was thinking about it, and in the end I figured whenever I used the Windows 7 beta, I was always impressed, my buddy who's just as much into Ubuntu as I am told me that he isn't using Ubuntu at all anymore, that he's put Windows 7 on all his primary machines. So I put Windows 7 on my primary laptop, and for the most part, it's been a great experience.

It's very surreal though, going back to mainly using Windows again. Whenever I did a clean install of Linux, drivers was always a project to get done. When I installed Windows, I was going through all the stuff I normally did on Linux for video drivers and such, out of curiosity, I clicked Windows update, and bam, there's the drivers, install, restart, done.

Also, not configuring games in Wine is a real time saver. I was able to put in Morrowind, install the game and my mods, and be off on the way. No manually editing config files to make a nearly 8 year old game playable on relatively new hardware.

And battery life. My Lord! The one thing I've always missed about Windows compared to Linux was battery life. I'll keep this simple: on Ubuntu, even after configuring and running various scripts and power management programs: 3.5 hours. On Windows 7 with no special configuration: 7.5 hours.

So who knows, maybe Ubuntu 10.04 will be better and I'll be using that one when it comes out. I know I'll give it a try. I know I won't contribute to the project for the next release though. I also know that my server is going to stay on Ubuntu 9.04. But until Ubuntu 10.04 comes out, I'm sticking with Windows 7, and I'm damn impressed with it and it's being a great OS.

So until next time, remember true believers; skys are sunny, bees make honey, and don't you go changing.