If you're at all interested in Linux, you were interested in the new Long Term Support (LTS; you can read this as "best supported version") release of Ubuntu this month. I was pretty eager to try it because I wanted to see if my three/four monitor setup would work properly. Well, as far as getting three or four monitors working properly, the answer is, "No." However, I'm really rather liking this new release. I'm actually using Kubuntu and I'm planning on switching to the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint distribution when their update is available at the end of this month.
* It's more stable than the the last LTS version, 12.10. The most obvious way I see this is that I can restart my computer and ... it works. In 12.10, it was very possible for me to log in, play with Firefox for awhile, restart and get a funky error message or get a black screen. Hey, I didn't do anything and all the sudden I get errors? Ubuntu's not a Microsoft product, so it shouldn't do that!
* Peripherals work. It was extremely challenging to get my wireless Epson all-in-one printer/scanner/fax to work at all in 12.10 and I was never able to get the scanner part working. 14.04? Well, while Epson does have an overly difficult method to install the drivers, it works. It makes me think that I could actually connect a USB printer and the driver would automagically install.
* Chrome works better. It's not perfect, but it's better. I can actually open up a Chrome window on one monitor and move it to another without the need to refresh the screen. That's nice. (One of the reasons to use Chrome in Linux is because it has Adobe Flash built-in. Linux "natively" uses an old version of Flash and Adobe doesn't have an upgrade.) The one problem I've seen is that fonts still occasionally look a little ... off.
* I found one known-issue bug about a week after I installed Ubuntu 14.04: an error about language support not being completely installed. I found a post that said that this would be fixed, soon. It was.
* I mentioned that my biggest challenge was to get my three monitors and 37" TV to work in anything other than Kubuntu 12.10. So, after I installed 14.10, this was the first thing I tested. It still didn't work. I put way too much time in trying to make it work, so I went with a solution that does work: I got a new video card that supports three monitors. The card I got is an Nvidia GTX 750 Ti, but a GTX 6xx-series would have also worked. I sold my old video card. The driver install was relatively pain-free, too.
* I do need Windows for one thing: I've got a very old version of Macromedia Dreamweaver. There isn't any Linux equivalent. Or even an "OK" substitute, even though the version I have is 10 years old. So, I installed VirtualBox and put XP on that. Works great ... and I think VirtualBox is a bit faster than in Windows 8.1, too.
The one thing I really, really like in Windows 8.1 is the Mail application. I've got a half-dozen mail accounts and I can pop them all into the MS Mail app without a problem. I could have everything set up in Linux and use Thunderbird, but it's not as pretty.
Here's one really stupid Linux thing: I tend to adjust my sound balance a little more toward the left. I've got nice speakers, but the left channel's a bit quiet. Windows? Couple clicks and it's done. Kubuntu? You have to install a separate application for that. According to my research, this is built into Ubuntu 14.04. I dunno why they didn't bother with this in Kubuntu.
So, especially if you have a budget and some free time, I think we're getting a lot closer to saying that Ubuntu is an actual challenger and alternative to the MacOS or Windows.
* It's more stable than the the last LTS version, 12.10. The most obvious way I see this is that I can restart my computer and ... it works. In 12.10, it was very possible for me to log in, play with Firefox for awhile, restart and get a funky error message or get a black screen. Hey, I didn't do anything and all the sudden I get errors? Ubuntu's not a Microsoft product, so it shouldn't do that!
* Peripherals work. It was extremely challenging to get my wireless Epson all-in-one printer/scanner/fax to work at all in 12.10 and I was never able to get the scanner part working. 14.04? Well, while Epson does have an overly difficult method to install the drivers, it works. It makes me think that I could actually connect a USB printer and the driver would automagically install.
* Chrome works better. It's not perfect, but it's better. I can actually open up a Chrome window on one monitor and move it to another without the need to refresh the screen. That's nice. (One of the reasons to use Chrome in Linux is because it has Adobe Flash built-in. Linux "natively" uses an old version of Flash and Adobe doesn't have an upgrade.) The one problem I've seen is that fonts still occasionally look a little ... off.
* I found one known-issue bug about a week after I installed Ubuntu 14.04: an error about language support not being completely installed. I found a post that said that this would be fixed, soon. It was.
* I mentioned that my biggest challenge was to get my three monitors and 37" TV to work in anything other than Kubuntu 12.10. So, after I installed 14.10, this was the first thing I tested. It still didn't work. I put way too much time in trying to make it work, so I went with a solution that does work: I got a new video card that supports three monitors. The card I got is an Nvidia GTX 750 Ti, but a GTX 6xx-series would have also worked. I sold my old video card. The driver install was relatively pain-free, too.
* I do need Windows for one thing: I've got a very old version of Macromedia Dreamweaver. There isn't any Linux equivalent. Or even an "OK" substitute, even though the version I have is 10 years old. So, I installed VirtualBox and put XP on that. Works great ... and I think VirtualBox is a bit faster than in Windows 8.1, too.
The one thing I really, really like in Windows 8.1 is the Mail application. I've got a half-dozen mail accounts and I can pop them all into the MS Mail app without a problem. I could have everything set up in Linux and use Thunderbird, but it's not as pretty.
Here's one really stupid Linux thing: I tend to adjust my sound balance a little more toward the left. I've got nice speakers, but the left channel's a bit quiet. Windows? Couple clicks and it's done. Kubuntu? You have to install a separate application for that. According to my research, this is built into Ubuntu 14.04. I dunno why they didn't bother with this in Kubuntu.
So, especially if you have a budget and some free time, I think we're getting a lot closer to saying that Ubuntu is an actual challenger and alternative to the MacOS or Windows.
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