My week with Linux... Part 3

A week on from first installing Ubuntu and each day I boot into it with less and less apprehension. I said my next test would be video playing and thanks to VLC (installed from the Ubuntu Software Centre of course) I was playing every video (in various formats) I threw at it. Burning ISOs also is a doddle thanks to the built-in software. The only item left to try is to install the Java SDK and get some code writing done in Eclipse, but as the software is near identical to the Windows version I can't envisage any issues.

I've also spent a small amount of time using the bundled office suite 'LibreOffice' which comprises of Writer, Calc, Impress (presentation tool), Base, Draw and Math (an application designed for creating and editing mathematical formulae). Each application seems feature packed and was quite happy opening my Microsoft Office created documents. But as I tend to rely on Google Docs for most of my day-to-day productivity I don't think I will have much use for an office package on my install. If you want a review of LibreOffice then try here.

Oh one final point, I said when I installed Ubuntu that the speed of install was helped due to the lack of a million Windows updates... Well Linux/Ubuntu isn't excluded from such chores (362 updates! See right). At least it was happy to run in the background and didn't impede my use of my laptop. Also it updated everything that was installed through the Ubuntu Software Centre (or at least seemed to). That is one benefit of the centralised software repository.

My week with Linux... Part 2

I'm a few days into my "Week with Linux" and so far I have yet to find a reason why I wouldn't want to stick with it. So today I decided to throw it a challenge that even my Windows install has had trouble with in the past... my printer!

It is an HP3900 series which for some reason has trouble installing on about three different Windows 7 based machines. Not to say I didn't get it eventually sorted... But not without a bit of faff.

And so up stepped Ubuntu... Printer detected... Printer Installed... Huh?! Within seconds I was printing a test page. And as you can see other than what seemed to be a huge waste of ink, it printed without fault.

So another challenge met with very little fuss. I really did think this was going to be a real show stopper. Next in my challenge bag will be video playing, an often popular sticking point for some operating systems. Stay tuned.