The Best Operating System

What say you?

Hey Chris, this is Gnimsh from #lg, just writing in my two cents on the subject of OSes. I have been using windows all my life, and in the past year have started using linux (ubuntu) off and on between my desktop and my laptop. I first installed linux on my desktop due to some issues with windows (my keyboard was not initializing properly so I had to disable and then reenable the keyboard after windows started) and I thought “hey, I bet I won’t have this problem in linux” and I actually did, but only once. Then I somehow broke linux and it wouldn’t boot into the X server, so I just went back to windows for a while. I tried again with every new version of linux, and it did make my system faster. At times I was even running it as my main OS, but I always felt a few things lacking. For instance, my music provider of choice is Ruckus, which needs its own program to download the music files via ruckus.com. I’ve googled this and it seems that running the program under WINE works up until you have to login and then it just freezes.

What I like about linux, for the most part, is that not only does it “just work” but it works out of the box. I can install it and have a fully functional operating system and need to install only a minimum of programs, instead of searching for and downloading and reinstalling everything each time I install. I really do love that feature. Free is a good price too. When I first got this laptop, it had Windows Vista installed (which I didn’t want) and after using it I ran into a few annoying problems…the hibernating didn’t work, and shutting the system down seemed to take 10 minutes or more to complete, which was annoying when I wanted to restart as quickly as possible. So I installed ubuntu on my laptop, only to run into different problems. The cd drive wasn’t recognized in 7.04 (this is fixed in 7.10) and also whenever I would put the computer into hibernate the sound driver would no longer work, and I would have to restart. So that annoyed me, but I also found uses for linux. At a cafe one time windows would not log on to their wireless, so I booted into ubuntu and it connected the very first time.

Lately though, I’ve been needing windows more and more. I am studying abroad and skype is very limited in ubuntu, no webcam support. Also I now have a device called magicjack for my phone service to make and receive calls in the US, and right now it only runs in windows. I tried a VM of XP in ubuntu, but there was some USB driver issue not switching it to the VM, and I couldn’t get the fixes to work. My webcam also doesn’t work in linux, and although there are driver issues out there for it, I don’t know how to install something without an installer, or how to do the make scripts and all that jazz.

One of the things that I like about using linux that I don’t normally get using windows is a sense of accomplishment. I find that when I’m in linux I’m constantly googling on how to fix problems or install things (how to install opera on 64 bit ubuntu, for example, before 9.5 came out…this required a lot of workaround). I just really like the problem solving involved in using linux, though sometimes I do think its a huge pain.

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