My experiece installing Ubuntu Lunix

Background: Although I prefer WindowsXP as a Desktop OS, I've got a complex setup, and it frequently poos the bed. After hearing so much about Ubuntu, I thought I'd install it as a second "Backup" OS to use when Windows is on "Linux Desktop" has made me pretty skeptical. I've tried both SUSE and Knoppix installs in the last year and was disappointed. In the past, I've spent enough time f***ing around with Linux, and don't have much patience left for it. These days, after so much time, development, and promises, *I just expect it to work*.

So, I download and install Ubuntu. I had a generally mixed, but ultimately positive experience.

Here's my thoughts:

-I found the installation-time parbreastion manager clumsy and kludgy. One of the worst I've seen, actually.

-I didn't like the part in the install where it listed all parbreastions, and asked me to select mount points - A task unnecessary to the OS installation. At installation time, I should only need to tell it where to install the OS, and shouldn't have to figure out what other paritions I want mounted. That kind of thing can be easily automated, and I don't need to be dealing with that poo, as far as I'm concerned. It should scan my parbreastions, and create automount shortcuts, like Knoppix does - Without my intervention. It missed half of my parbreastions anyways, and I had to manually add them to the fstab later.

-After installation and reboot, it automatically loaded WindowsXP, with no sign of a boot manager. By chance, I discovered it had installed the boot loader ondev-hda - Despite the fact that I had installed Ubuntu ondev-sda (SATA Drive). I don't normally boot fromdev-hda, and don't know why ubuntu would buttume I did. It should either ask, or install the boot loader on the drive I've installed to - But it definitely shouldn't arbitraily pick a drive to install. After setting my BIOS to boot fromdev-hda, it booed fine.

-The big test, for me, is wireless-configuration. The technology is mature enough, and GUI configuration *should* work by now, but I know from recent experiences with Knoppix 4 and SUSE 10, that it isn't there yet. Ubuntu didn't disappoint, and like all of it's forbears, it's wireless-configuration applet failed to configure my wireless card. Using the command line, I was able to get networking up and running in 5 minutes, but unable to reproduce the success using the GUI. My preliminary hypothesis is that my network mode is ad-hoc, and the applet doesn't present this as a configuration option. (I can't be the only one using ad-hoc!)

Ultimately, I don't really care what the root cause is, but see broken wireless configuration as a coal mine canary, and a sign of more pain to come. Convinced that Ubuntu was just more "Linux pooe", I was ready to pack it in, but still wanted to give "automatix" a shot. Automatix is a wrapper that automates the installation of useful (often commercial) third party products, including, most importantly for me, multimedia codecs.

Well, Automatix work flawlessly, and even installed acrobat, google earth, and a bunch of other goodies that I didn't even know existed. I was completely impressed. It has more than made up for some of the flaws in Ubuntu's installation process, and gives me confidence that I will actually find Ubuntu useful.

As for Ubuntu's interface: I love it. My videos play well as well. I can see that I will likely be using Ubuntu a little more than initially thought.