Ubuntu Productivity

Hypothesis:

Ubuntu Linux is a fun toy, but it probably will not succeed as a complete replacement of Mac OS X on my desktop at work.

Experiment:

Following up from my first Ubuntu Linux experiment, I learned enough to know that Ubuntu might work as a serious alternative to Mac OS X. But I did not like the problems present in Ubuntu 7.10 so I decided to try out the beta of Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

Despite the bugs still present in the beta, Hardy Heron worked much better on my PowerPC (PPC) laptop and it was stellar on my Intel Apple iMac.

With experiment # 2 I set out to learn:

1. Will Ubuntu 8.04 fix the problems I encountered in 7.10?
2. Will Ubuntu Linux run better on Intel hardware than it did on my old PPC?
3. Can I replace my mission-critical Mac software with free Linux alternatives?

This experiment lasted a while. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 about 1 month before it was complete and I did not want to make any final judgments about it until I knew the bugs were squashed.

During this beta time I downloaded and tested just about every piece of Linux software Google could find for me related to graphics editing, text editing, email and organization, etc. What I found was encouraging, but confusing as well.

Many free software alternatives do not behave the same way the mainstream commercial applications do. They get the same job done, but they do it in a different way. As a result I found myself learning not just which software packages in the Ubuntu Linux world replaced my Mac software, but also how they replaced it.

A great example of this is searching. In Leopard we have Spotlight. In Linux there are a few alternatives depending upon what you want to search for. Beagle, Tracker Search, Google Desktop, Gnome Do, and Nautilus. None of them behave the same as Spotlight, but when you combine them all they accomplish more than Spotlight.

The result:

Ubuntu is not a Mac OS X killer by any stretch of the imagination. However, Ubuntu 8.04 is a serious contender for my default desktop operating system. There is still some experimentation to be done, but I have it running on a separate partition of my iMac. The next step is to use it daily and see what kind of snags I hit.

The next step

I will use Ubuntu 8.04 daily as my default desktop operating system. Every time I must fall back to OS X is a time to learn. What goal was I trying to accomplish and could not? Did I fail to get it done in Ubuntu Linux because of my lack of experience (perhaps there is a tool for the job and I just do not know of it yet?)