Ubuntu 9.04 experiences

I have been using Ubuntu 9.04 for a month now and I am finding it a very usable operating system as all the Ubuntu releases have been. This version finally has support for my wireless card (Atheros AR5007) in my HP Pavilion dv6000 series laptop as standard so i do not have to do the whole ndiswrapper stuff.

I installed this distribution as a duel boot on my laptop which was very simple to do, I just booted into the live CD then clicked on the install to hard drive icon on the desktop followed the instructions and prompts, added a user name, password and computer name, at the partitioning section I used automatically partition and I just used the slider to decide on how much space I wanted to dedicated to Ubuntu from my Vista partition, the installation finished and I rebooted.

On boot up I was presented with the grub boot loader with Ubuntu selected as the default setting, booting into Ubuntu was quick and easy all of my devices were recognised apart from the graphics card. The software updates started immediately, Ubuntu automatically found the drivers for my nvidia graphics card which were not installed during install but all installed fine and after a reboot everything worked perfect.

This is a very usable operating system with all the software you need available for free.

For office tasks Open Office 3.0 is provided as standard with all the functionality you need to start work straight away with the ability to open and save Microsoft Office file extensions up to Office 2007. Also Open Office allows you to save your word processed documents in a PDF file format allowing for easy distribution of documentation in a professional file format.

For IM there is a program that I have been using for a while now in Windows called Pidgin which has been available for both Linux and Windows. It allows you to use most IM protocols in one package at the same time. I logged into my yahoo, msn, and googletalk accounts quickly and easily with no fuss.

Firefox 3.0.8 is included for web browsing, Evolution Mail and Calendar for your mail and appointment management, Brasero Disk Burner to write files to DVD or CD, Totem Movie Player 2.26.1 for DVD playback.

Access to all of your documents held on your Windows partition is easy, Ubuntu will mount your Windows partition and all you need to do is double click on your Windows partition and navigate your way through the folders to find your documents.

These are all the tools you need to get started using a computer straight away as a basic user. Other tools can easily be added with no fuss using the “apt-get” command at the command line, or by browsing the add remove programs section under the applications menu from the desktop.

If using the “apt-get” command make sure it is fully updated before you start as the package you are looking for may be in a new database.

To update the database type “sudo apt-get update” at the prompt just type in your Ubuntu login password.

Once updated you can install your application by typing “sudo apt-get install application_name” replacing application_name with the name of the application.

There are so many resources available for Ubuntu if you should ever get stuck, and if you cannot find the information you require someone in a forum will always be willing to help.

I use to use Red Hat, and the Fedora core distributions and still use Fedora including the new version 11 but this was mainly due to its support for all of my devices e.g. my wireless card in my laptop, I also use to find these distributions easy to use, but Ubuntu by far is the easiest Linux distribution to use and now that it supports my wireless card I will most likely stick with Ubuntu.

Ubuntu makes a great desktop for your day to day use and for the advance user who requires that little bit more functionality.

If you have any questions or require any help please get in touch via email. My contact information is available from the contact page.

Download a copy from http://www.ubuntu.com

Please provide information feedback regarding your experiences with Ubuntu 9.04