Ubuntu 10.10 Experiences

Super-fast and great-looking, Ubuntu is a secure, intuitive operating system that powers desktops, servers, netbooks and laptops. Ubuntu is, and always will be, absolutely free.

Yesterday I installed the latest Ubuntu OS (Operating System) release, Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (Desktop Edition. It has Netbook and Server editions too) on Vmware (Workstation 7.1) virtual machine. And I am pretty impressed with this latest Ubuntu release. I can say; It is better than any Windows Operating System..

Ubuntu 10.10 was released on October 10 (10/10/10). And it includes a lot of new features like Gnome 3.0 interface, a new Kernel (ver 2.6.35), more user-friendly interface, new easy-to-use features, a lot of default installed applications..etc and so on.

Also do not forget; TOTALLY FREE ! as all open source softwares, applications, OSs..etc

To give a quick information about Ubuntu;

Ubuntu is a computer operating system originally based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software with additional proprietary software available.

It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu ("humanity towards others"). Ubuntu is designed primarily for desktop usage, though netbook and server editions exist as well. Web statistics suggest that Ubuntu's share of Linux desktop usage is about 50 percent, and upward trending usage as a web server.

Ubuntu is composed of many software packages, of which the vast majority are distributed under a free software license (also known as open source). The main license used is the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) which, along with the GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU LGPL), explicitly declares that users are free to run, copy, distribute, study, change, develop and improve the software. Ubuntu is sponsored by the UK-based company Canonical Ltd., owned by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. Canonical creates revenue by selling technical support and services tied to Ubuntu. [Wikipedia]

Ubuntu Logo

As I mentioned, I installed it on a Vmware virtual machine. My old pc as an host has AMD Athlon Xp 2800+ (Barton - 2.09ghz), 2 GB DDR Ram, Nvidia 7600Gt, Creative Soundblaster Live Audigy and Windows XP Professional SP3 installed. And I shared 1Gb ram, 22 gb harddisk space on Iomega Portable Usb Disk (500 gb /usb 2.0 port).

Shared resources for Ubuntu 10.10 (Vmware)

VMware Workstation is a virtual machine software suite for x86 and x86-64 computers from VMware, a division of EMC Corporation. This software suite allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual computers and to use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system. Each virtual machine instance can execute its own guest operating system, such as Windows, Linux, BSD variants, or others. In simple terms, VMware Workstation allows one physical machine to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. Other VMware products help manage or migrate VMware virtual machines across multiple host machines. [Wikipedia]

Actually I did not expect to have a stable performance on a virtual system that works on a usb disk. But I got pretty impressed, Ubuntu just works fine -even better than Windows Xp Sp3- without any problem or performance issues. I tried to open many tabs (around 10) in Chromium and worked some applications installed on Ubuntu, simultenously. But I did get no frozen-process issue or a problem with the stability.

It comes with Firefox 3.6 installed as a default browser but I installed Chromium (Google Chrome -Linux edition), it works faster than Firefox.

Ubuntu startup at my virtual machine

New Ubuntu comes a lot of default installed applications from Graphic tools, audio tools, audio and video players, online multimedia integrations, social media (facebook, twitter, aol, msn..etc) integrations, e-mail and chat softwares, games, education softwares, scientific applications..etc

Ubuntu Software Center (Ready to install 35.000 more apps with one click)

And the greatest feature of Ubuntu is the Ubuntu Software Center. The Ubuntu Software Centre gives you instant access to thousands of open-source and carefully selected free applications. And now you can buy apps too. Browse software in categories including: education, games, sound and video, graphics, programming and office. All the applications are easy to find and easy to install.

"In terms of software; Ubuntu is like the IPhone. Almost anything you'd care to do, there' s an app for that" The Guardian

 You can easily find and install new apps or uninstall them with the Ubuntu Software Center.

Another cool side of the Ubuntu 10.10 is that it is totally user-friendly. I can say; It is even easier to use than using any Microsoft Windows operating system.

My Ubuntu Desktop

I highly recommend you to try new Ubuntu 10.10. I would get rid of Windows XP and install it as a primary operating system if Microsoft would have supported Linux platforms for dotNet. Thankfully, dotNet has MonoProject for Linux systems but still it is not enough. But Ubuntu really worths to install and use instead of any Windows OS, if you are not a software developer for Windows platforms or not a Windows PC gamer. But I have to say that there are great games for Linux platforms too. And there are linux applications like wine, cedega..etc that helps you to simulate windows games on linux platforms. (Well actually it is not Linux's fault, if game developers would create games with openGL instead of DirectX, we could be able to play all pc games on Linux systems)

You can check more features of Ubuntu here. Ubuntu has huge community groups, support, forums, pages..etc There is no problem with getting answers to your questions or problems. Also Ubuntu has a great technical documentation support.

Also you can localize the language and the settings of your Ubuntu. It supports more than 100 languages and includes high variance of cultural settings like metric systems, money currency..etc And you can locate your city and get your forecast notes live.

For now, I am totally happy and impressed with Ubuntu 10.10 but I have 2 problems at the moment;

I could not install my Creative Sounblaster live audigy sound card (I get bad voice) and Philips webcam (By the way; Skype has Ubuntu Linux version in the official page of Skype) properly. But these problems occured because of Vmware not Ubuntu. If I would install Ubuntu on my physical machine (not as a virtual machine) I could work sound card and webcam without any problem. I think I can solve those problems soon, I am searching vmware forums now.
(Update Note: I have solved the audio problem. If you have similar problem first enable "Pixar Audio Imaging" service at Vmware Removable Usb Devices section. Then perform the steps here. )

Well, as a result; You should try Ubuntu ! You can download Ubuntu 10.10 at Ubuntu's official page or at lots of mirror downloading sources (just google it) for Free. There are much more than I shared in this post.

References 

http://www.ubuntu.com
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk (News, tips, reviews for Ubuntu users. Real useful website)
http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation/index.html
http://hubpages.com/hub/Ubuntu-1010-New-Features
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases