I bought a new PC last year, it’s a pretty high spec monster with plenty of memory and a blazing fast graphics card. In fact, the only thing that’s not fast is Windows XP. It came pre-loaded with a load of trial software (which I uninstalled ASAP) but it’s never been as ’snappy’ as I would expect.
It’s got to the stage where I boot it up and go and make a cup of tea while I wait for it to finish logging on, I had had enough and decided it was time to do something about it. A couple of other factors came into play:
- I am under strict instructions not to lose any data (especially my wife’s old emails!)
- I have been wanting to install Ubuntu linux for ages, especially since I saw Beryl
- I have no real desire to go to Vista (too expensive, resource-hungry, hardware and software compatibility issues, no real benefit?)
It became apparent that I was going to need to preserve my old XP installation intact and the best way of doing this was to buy a new hard drive and install Ubuntu on there, which is what I did. My new 500Gb Seagate SATA2 drive arrived, got installed and Ubuntu Studio was installed with zero dramas (following the excellent guide at howtoforge.com), then Compiz / Beryl was installed by following the instructions at ubuntugeek.com
I now have a fast, stylish OS which has a whole bunch of useful software, including many replacements for my old Windows apps. Old faithfuls such as Google Earth, Firefox, an Office suite and Picasa are all there, as well as some new ones - an accounting package, 3D modeller and various audio/video apps. Plus, it looks so much better than XP, see for yourself:
The ‘killer app’ in Ubuntu for me has to be the package manager. Imagine Windows Update on steroids, where you can not only update your OS, but all the software that is installed on your PC. Not only that, but you can use it to find and install free software in hundreds of categories. If something doesn’t work, or you don’t like it (most likely because you find a better one) simply remove it - no problems with missing DLLs or system files left behind.
However, there is one small problem with my new setup… My Creative X-Fi soundcard is not supported in Ubuntu and there are no drivers available. I do have another soundcard which I will install and use instead.
I also still need to keep XP anyway, to run Ableton Live and Reason. Apart from those 2 applications though, I really don’t need to boot into Windows.
What’s spooky is, I was speaking to a friend in the UK via MSN today and he has just gone through almost exactly the same process. Same size hard drive, same OS, everything - he even used the same tutuorials as I did. You can read all about his (very similar) experiences here:
How my friend Matt migrated to Ubuntu Studio
All in all, I am over the moon with Ubuntu (and once I get a working soundcard, it will be perfect). Really, who needs Vista?