Eitan Suez's Blog

Ubuntu Review

Approximately in June or July of 2005, I started weaning myself off of my powerbook G4, and learning the Gnome environment under Ubuntu (v5.04, now v5.10).

Overall, it's been a terrific experience, and it's looking like I've come here to settle down.

So I thought I'd summarize my experiences, from my perspective as a Java software developer, and as a computer user in general.

The Good

Here are a few things I really like in Ubuntu / Linux:

• The Gnome Epiphany Web Browser: my favorite browser. See my blog entry on the subject.

• Edutainment + kids games: On linux, one can download a number of games for children that are of high quality from the point of view of the material they cover. Sure, some games like supertux, are just plain fun 'mario brothers' style games. But many can be powerful tools that can hone the brain power of children. Here are some of them:

  • kturtle (logo programming)
  • gcompris
  • tuxmath / tuxtyping

  My kids and I also very much like supertux, tuxracer, and tuxkart. I'm particularly proud of my 3 year-old who is now a supertux champion and has mastered the arrow keys, the enter key, the control key, and spacebar.

• Quality open source desktop applications. Who said that open source can't produce desktop apps of higher quality than their commercial counterparts. If you thought the adobe had the best vector graphics editing application, take a look a inkscape. For pictures, check out the beauty of f-spot. For spreadsheets, I think gnumeric is terrific.

• Authoring tools. A number of different technologies can be used to write books or articles. Docbook is one and docbook support in the form of toolkits, documentation, utilities and more is the strongest on linux. Many love LaTex.

  I particularly appreciate lyx, a wonderful wysiwym editor that does all the heavy lifting for you. If you're about to write a book and don't have in-depth knowledge of docbook or latex, then I believe lyx is the right choice.

• Strong pdf support. One can easily produce a pdf version of a document, translate a postscript file to PDF. I recently printed a web page to a postscript file and then translated it to PDF.

• editors galores. Lots of editors to choose from. gedit, kedit, kate, jedit, and many more besides.

• apt-get and the amazing synaptic package manager. Want an app? Just wish it and a few seconds later it's completely installed on your system, along with all its dependencies. That's the magic of the synaptic package manager. apt is the technology that makes it happen and the synatpic front-end gives you no reason to ever fall back to the command line.

• strong printer support

  • lj3200 which i'd given up on entirely with my mac (hp did not make apple drivers for this specific version), worked like a charm with linux, without having to install drivers
  • doing duplex printing with my brother 5150D at the office
  • doing network printing to an hp inkjet printer

• wifi worked for me out of the box.

• the sleep feature works just fine but does not conserve the battery charge nearly as well as my powerbook did. hibernate then is the alternative, which has worked great for me for many months, up until a recent kernel update.

• strong device support in general: plugged in my camera and automatically started downloaded photos, without even having to download anything.

• amazing endless suite of kde apps. from kontact to koffice, kde is simply an amazing source of seemingly boundless energy.

• kde and gnome apps can run side by side

• terrific support forums

• java:

  • unlike the last OS i worked on, there are no issues regarding obtaining the latest java udpates on time
  • all the java ides work with it: intellij, eclipse, and netbeans
  • have the option of building java applications that use the gtk toolkit

• latest firefox

• endless supply of artwork for customizing background image, login manager, login splash, window decorations, icons, and themes

• freedom!

• no viruses, no symantec, no mcaffee

• complete desktop customization features, especially with kde, although in the end i prefer gnome; i find myself forever tinkering on kde, and more productive on gnome. each has their strengths and together they make for an even better distribution: a wider array of choices; sometimes you get this feeling though that the velocity on the kde projects is just so amazing..

• i love the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to anything i rarely touch the mouse and am in complete control

• ruby. if you're doing ruby development, installing the toolstack, including rails is a snap.

• cost. i don't have to pay for additional apps. my notebook cost me approximately 1/3 the price of my last one.

The Bad

• projector support is not really there like it is on a mac
• sleep does not conserve battery well
• had some hickups with hibernate after a kernel update
• have some weird totem/video problems at the moment, though there's no lack of video players for gnome or kde, this one happens to be the default and for some reason hangs when attempting video playback

Summary

The main reason I switched to ubuntu is that I can now compile and launch my java apps in 1/2 to 1/3 the time it used to take me on my last laptop. I used to run a 1GHz powerbook G4. Now I run a 1.7GHz intel centrino (same amount of ram on both). That's a serious advantage.

Finally, contrary the general perception, I don't compile my gnome apps or kernel. I download and install precompiled binary distributions of all my apps.

I'm very satisfied with Ubuntu and in the event that you're looking for the right home, I hope this short review was helpful.

Comments

• I would love to know what you did to get your machine ready for Java development? Aren't there some problems with getting Sun's JDK/JRE installed and using it now that the open source version is being pushed. I thought you had to jump through hoops now; please correct me if I'm wrong.

  Erik Weibust

  Posted by: eweibust on December 14, 2005 at 05:37 PM

• I also have ubuntu 5.10 on a laptop. The instructions here are around 90% correct and that process works fine. Also look at this page.

  Posted by: robogeek on December 14, 2005 at 09:58 PM

• right. i followed the instructions i found on the wiki
  i'm running java 5 update 6.

  Posted by: eitan on December 15, 2005 at 07:25 AM

• I've been using Ubuntu exclusively since May of this year. It works great.

  I just downloaded the latest JDK, unzipped it, created a symbolic link and ensured the path to that symbolic link is at the start of my path.

  If I want to upgrade java version, I just download a new one and change the link.

  Its not automatic, put its simple.

  Posted by: tcrmorrow on December 15, 2005 at 11:53 AM

• Hi Erik, why do you think the existence of open source java implementations would create a problem for Sun Java users? Open source developers play fair, unlike some other software vendors who try to sabotage other vendor software installed on the same machine. You just download and install the JDK from Sun, IBM, BEA, Excelsior, Blackbox or your favourite vendor. Of course you'll need to configure your environment, setting the PATH and etc, the same with any open source Java implementation. And other open source projects like JPackage'll make your life easier whatever Java (propietary or open source) you do use.

  Hi tomorow, this simbolic link setup you talked about is the Debian alternatives system, a nice way to manage multiple software that provides the same features (like IBM and Sun JVMs) or different releases of the same tool. If just Sun followed this system when packaging his Java for Linux, or changed the license so others would be able to do so and redistribute the result, you wouldn't need to manyally change symbolic links.

  Posted by: flozano on December 20, 2005 at 05:51 AM

• Hi Eitan, you really don't need an ant-virus software for Linux because it won't be infected by Windows virus, but as you may share files with windows users it may be nice to have anti-virtus software installed in your Ubuntu notebook. Check ClamAV. I can run from the command-line, as a daemon, from your mail server or as a GUI app and has timely updates (someone found it reacts quickier to new viruses tham comercial anti-virus vendors like Symantec, but I don't have the link here with me).

  Posted by: flozano on December 20, 2005 at 05:54 AM

• Hey Eitan, can you please do a post about Ruby on Rails development?
  Thanks.

  Steve

  Posted by: spage7 on March 15, 2006 at 07:33 AM

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