Ubuntu

Ubuntu seems to be the Operating System of choice, that is spawning across Talis. Whilst it does have limitations with non open source integration (I'm moaning mostly about e-mail and AD integration with Evolution) I have found the experience and re-visit to be a good one.

I first became aware of Ubuntu at Talis around 3 years ago, when Matt Bird introduced me to this easy to use Linux distro, I subsequently replaced all my boxes to run Ubuntu and even completed my final year project with Ubuntu.

Unfortunately when I came back to Talis I was given an out of the box XP imaged desktop, and didn't think about Ubuntu until my recent move to a new team was given the green light.

It appears that there are three Operating System factions in Talis, and two I have the time of day for - that is XP and Ubuntu (hardy Heron), the third are the Macs (eww). Even worse than this, we could have Vista (ewww).

Synaptic, is my favourite tool of preference and searching in google for the word "cool" and "ubuntu" normally gives back some "must install" packages (fish being my favourite at the moment).

Today, with a single click I installed Kubuntu. Great? Not really was first impression. Perhaps I need a list, some reasons why I should move over from Gnome to KDE, annoyingly it changed my splash screen, but I have kept my preference to GDM!

I’m currently running Ubuntu in a virtual machine (Virtualbox) and when the guest tools are installed, and in full screen mode (on my second monitor) I have a wonderful hybrid system, that doesn’t steal my mouse or keyboard – I haven’t noticed any performance problems, in fact the VM could be the most powerful machine I have run Ubuntu with as I have a much overpowered laptop in anticipation for Vista (I’ve run Ubuntu on a laptop that didn’t even support ACPI – can’t think of the spec now – but it was well less than 1ghz and no more than 256Mb Ram).

I’m a long time posting, I feel that I have to be in the right mood to post – so perhaps I should use twitter?

Revival, not yet.