Image by bisceglie via Flickr

I love to play with new versions of OS's and will always have a special place in my heart for Ubuntu, but I was going to skip past "Jaunty Jackalope".  This was mainly because of the name, and because I was pretty happy with Window 7 Beta.  With the release of the Win 7 RC1 dropping in May, I had to start backing everything up and thinking about a wipe and upgrade.  As good as Win 7 Beta was, there was nothing really there to compel me to go through all the hassle of testing another Microsoft OS.  So having got everything ready to move and backed up, I decided to forgive the name and spend some time with Ubuntu 9.04.

I have been making some noise about data/settings portability and using the cloud.  So what better way to show off the flexibility of the above, than by switching from Windows to Linux.  Well, I'll give it a shot anyway, but first - lets get it installed.

Install
The evolution of installing Linux distributions has really come a long way, and I'm not sure if it is all for the better.  Back in the day, installing Linux involved at least 400 steps.  These included:

- Choose every hardware setting

- Set the Keyboard and time settings

- Choosing the type of install (Server, desktop, or different type of server)

- Choosing the packages to install (Did anyone ever install the educational ones?)

- Partitioning the Hard Drives

- Then resetting up the hardware, especially the network and video card

It was one of those jobs that was kept for those wet Sundays, but over the years the installs have been knocked down to only a handful of steps.  With 9.04 though, they have knocked it down to - choose keyboard and time settings, pick the hard drive for the install, and install.  Yes I though that it is a little short too, but one thing you can no longer be worried about is the install!

The Setup

It only took me a couple of hours to have Jaunty setup as my new desktop, including email, calendar, music player, media player, chat clients and all the other little things that you have to do to start being productive. This was much the same as Windows 7, though the "Software Installer" program that you get with Ubuntu does make the finding and installing apps so easy that you tend to waste time.

As most of my stuff is in the cloud, and run with free apps like Firefox and Thunderbird, I was able to setup and start using in the time it takes to download and configure the plug-ins needed.  Though I did need to do some looking around for alternative apps for a couple of the staple programs I had on the Windows box.  This is always a hassle when stepping away from Windows, but it has to be said that there is very little that can't be replaced.  I guess it must be seen as a bit of a personal challenge by the Ubuntu community to replace the Windows desktop, though good blog posting software might be one area they might like to look.  For as yet, Windows Live Writer doesn't seem to have a open source replacement, and unfortunately won't work with Wine.

Here is a list of what I used:

- Web Browser: Firefox, with x-marks plug-in.
- Email/Calender: Thunderbird, with Lighting plug-in, using Gmail and Gcal.
- Instant Messaging (Messenger): Pigin

- Twitter: Tweetdeck, Twirl (Adobe Air)

- Skype: Skype

- Bittorent: Transmission
- Media Player: VLC Player
- Music (iTunes): Songbird
- Photos: Picasa
- Office: Openoffice, and Google Docs

Part 2 will look at the first couple of weeks with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) and it's useability as a desktop for the modern online world.

Jason Remnant
...if it is broken, rename it....

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