Ubuntu is go

I have installed Ubuntu. It all seems to be running quite smoothly. VMWare is working, which is nice. I had some initial sound issues with Skype but it looks like it was a volume issue, sorted now. Waiting for Zend studio to download, hopefully that will be an easy install.

Overall, the process was rather painless. I’m loving synaptic package management. It really is much better than RPM. The desktop effects are taking a bit of getting used to. I can’t drag / drop windows onto the workspaces, but that’s not too big a deal.

So far, I’m pleased with the switch. For all you visual people, here’s a wee screenshot of the workspace switcher.

Some things that impressed me:

• Media buttons “just work”, I can play / pause / forward / etc music, beautiful.
• Installing copyright “questionable” plugins (MP3s, divx, etc) was painless and granny easy.
• The windows key does stuff, out of the box, not very useful stuff, but still stuff!
• I could import my pidgin, Evolution and something else data from Fedora. Nice.
• Desktop effects are enabled out of the box (compiz for the techies).
• Stuff prompts for configuration during install, for example ddclient. Handy.

I’m pleased I’ve switched over to Ubuntu. I’m a little wary that the #ubuntu channel is quite busy. Ubuntu seems to be popular with new linux users so there seem to be a lot of “newby” questions on there. Good they’re being answered, but it can be a pain for more experienced users.