So it’s been a month since I have been running Unbuntu (Hardy) on one of my PCs at home. I just wanted to give a short overview of my experiences so far and some of the things that bug me.

Getting Started

Getting Ubunutu up and running is a snap. The nice installer pretty much takes care of everything. I only had to enter my routers DNS details and I was up and on the Internet, Firefox no less, in probably 20 minutes. Beats the pants off Windows in that respect.

System Updates

Another thing I like about Ubuntu is the updates. They download regularly and install fine in the background. I’ve lost count of the number of reformats I had to due because of bad updates for Windows.

A Bit Of Trouble

Beyond that I am still learning. I’ve installed a few games like FreeCiv and played with my video card settings but nothing too advanced and certainly not without a step-by-step guide telling me what to do.

The one major roadblock that I’ve encountered was trying to install a Jave/JSP development environment. I thought since I was free of Windows and didn’t have Call of Duty or Visual Studio to distract me that it would be a great opportunity to dive back into some Java development.

I installed Java, Tomcat, and Eclipse with no troubles and played around a bit. My problems started when I tried to install Web Tools for Eclipse. I used the update tool built into Eclipse since it seem like the most fool-proof way of getting it installed. The install went fine and evrything finished but when ever I create a web project, class, anything…I get SWT error messages and Eclipse shutsdown. Short story, Eclipse won’t create a web project and I am a little upset.

Not Done Yet

Despite this set back I am pushing forward and determined to become a comfortable everyday Linux user. With Vista a flop and no promise of things getting better I’ll have my XP box for a while still since I couldn’t give up Call of Duty or some of my other favorite games but that is about all it will get used for.