My First 60 Days of Ubuntu - Experiences, Thoughts, Advice

[galacticstone]

Being a recent refugee from Windows and being new to Linux, I thought some other newbies (and perhaps even some of the Devs) might be interested to hear some unbiased thoughts about Ubuntu.

I chose Ubuntu because I have some social media friends/clients who use Linux and they suggested Ubuntu based on it's ease of installation and use. One of these friends is a veteran IT professional and expert programmer and Linux guru - I respect his views on all things relating to coding and technology in general. So, I took his advice and decided I was going to install Ubuntu as my first Linux installation.

The target PC was a brand new Lenovo Ideapad laptop (model 81CW). It is powered by the Intel 4415U CPU (4 cores, 2.3ghz) and has 4gb of RAM and a 500g HDD. I received it on Christmas Day 2017 and it had Windows 10 pre-installed on it.

All of my personal files from my previous laptop were backed up onto a micro-SD memory card. I also had a 8gb USB thumb-drive ready with a bootable Ubuntu installation on it, ready to go (thanks in part to some advice I read in this forum while doing my homework beforehand).

First, I had to go into the default BIOS and change the boot order, so the Windows-powered Lenovo machine would recognize and boot the USB stick. There was a slight thrill knowing that this action would be my last time seeing Windows - I had already made up my mind to complete erase Windows. I have no need or desire to dual-boot with Windows. This flight from the Land of Microsoft had been long planned out and I had no reason to look back or have regrets.

So,, let's get to the good stuff....

The USB boot worked, and the installer for 16.04 LTS greeted me. Based on advice I had previously received, I decided not to update during the installation. The installation process worked painlessly and flawlessly. Nothing crashed. Nothing hung up. Nothing acted weird. The laptop touchpad and touchscreen worked during the installation. The install worked the first time and without any hitches. I was greeted by the Unity Desktop and it looked welcoming and inviting to a newcomer thirsty for something new after decades of Windows.

In the interests of brevity, I will now condense my experience since then...

After kicking around for a day or two, I decided I wanted to try Gnome and to use the Flashback-Metacities desktop - to free up some precious system resources on a PC with only 4g of RAM. The switch was done easily and I liked the result. After going back and forth between Unity and Gnome for a couple of days, I was leaning heavily towards Gnome. Then I read that new Bionic Beaver LTS was ditching Unity, I decided to go ahead and embrace Gnome myself in anticipation of the upcoming switch. I have been using Gnome exclusively since then and I am using it now.

Once I got comfortable with Gnome, I did some tweaking to get it looking and feeling the way I wanted it to - theme, panels/taskbars, workspaces, desktop, etc.

I uninstalled the chaff - Thunderbird, Firefox, and a couple of other packages I have no personal or business use for. (and ones that didn't have critical dependencies).

Then I installed a few things I would need : VLC, GIMP (new 3.0 is out now), Chrome, and a few assorted minor packages - mainly terminals, a DOS emulator, a game, and some system tools.

This machine is now my daily driver. I have it used it daily for work and personal purposes for upwards to 10 hours a day. On a typical day, the machine is only booted/shutdown once or twice.

So far (*** knock on wood ***) - zero crashes. Yes, zero. There have been no major issues, glitches, or crashes.

A few packages I downloaded and tried, did not work. But, none of these were major issues. I did prefer Chromium over Chrome, but had to go with Chrome to use some streaming services and the Chromecast device. (Which, BTW, the new version of VLC supports Chromecast and other similar devices).

It took me about two to three weeks total to get everything configured the way I liked and transfer over all of my old files. I am now tinkering around in the terminal and with the command line, while waiting on the new LTS version to come out - at which time I will do a clean install of the new version with the benefit of this current experience to start with.

My only piece of feedback I would like to give the Ubuntu developers is - well done. Really. You did good and have a good thing going with Ubuntu. Keep it up.

A piece of advice I would like to give to Windows fence-sitters who are thinking about making the jump to Linux - don't hesitate, make the jump.

Now, hopefully I can come back and update this with a report for a clean installation of 18.04 LTS.

[wildmanne39]

Thread moved to Ubuntu, Linux and OS Chat, a more appropriate forum.

[QIII]

The Devs don't hang out with us!

[hadewa]

Virus, i can't see you

[galacticstone]

The Devs don't hang out with us!

I didn't know if they did or not. I just figured they might lurk around. I lurked around a bit while I was Googling stuff and landed here. You never know who might be watching.

I guess Canonical keeps their people pretty busy - so not much time for hanging around in forums.

[pauljw]

Well done and welcome to the family. I'm a relative noob, only been using linux exclusively for 12yrs., but I've never regretted the switch.

[galacticstone]

One foot note. A recurring minor issue I was having was with my Bluetooth mouse. The computer would recognize it and they would attempt to pair, but the pairing would only work sporadically. Also, if I could get it to successfully pair, any long period of inactivity would cause the mouse to go into a power-saver mode - I could not get the mouse to wake up and repair with the PC.

It turns out that my bluetooth settings were not optimized. I download a better Bluetooth manager from the Ubuntu repository and once the settings were properly tweaked, I have no more Bluetooth issues.

With Windows, your various system settings are a little more black and white - on or off, enable or disable. I am learning that anything can be tweaked in Linux - it's just not always obvious at first.

[mg2003]

60 days out, what's the biggest thing you're missing from Windows or the hardest part of transitioning?

I switch back and forth every year or two and even sprinkle in MacOS on the laptop, and for me the answer is mostly keyboard shortcuts. I can windows-key + "snip" for a screenshot in under a second and when I switch to Ubuntu that sort of thing slows down. But, of course, the flip side is stuff like not having apt-get to quickly and easily install programs when I give Windows a try.

[vasa1]

... I can windows-key + "snip" for a screenshot in under a second and when I switch to Ubuntu that sort of thing slows down. ...

You can do the same with most screenshot tools in Ubuntu as well. What can't be done, AFAICT, is to capture areas not visible on the screen; apparently, there are some Windows tools that let you do that.

[DuckHook]

Your experience is very rewarding for you, but it is also remarkably smooth and trouble-free. Not all users are as versatile and well-prepared as you, and some conversions are more problem-plagued. As a long-time Linux user, I would only caution new users to replicate your preparation and to harbour realistic expectations. A useful link is in my sig: Linux is Not Windows. It's a worthwhile read, especially with respect to setting proper expectations.

There is nothing wrong with dual booting. It gives the best of both worlds. Another option is running Windows within a virtual machine for Windows-only apps, though, to be honest, I haven't had any real use for my Windows VMs in years.

A few things you said put a smile on my face:

So far (*** knock on wood ***) - zero crashes. Yes, zero. There have been no major issues, glitches, or crashes.

The way you say this—as if it's a wonderous surprise—is very heartwarming. Once people get past the initial issues, they find Linux to be rock solid. Say goodbye to BSODs, Antivirus, hour-long updates, weekly defrags, restrictive EULAs and having to pay for all of the above.

To be fair, there are also drawbacks. If you are a gamer, or must use apps like Photoshop, AutoCAD, Quickbooks, iTunes, etc, then Linux is of limited value. And while Ubuntu can be tweaked to your heart's content, most of that power lies in the command line to which many users have a severe allergy. Graphical tools are much more complete and better developed in Windows.

Just a few suggestions:

1. Once you reinstall, you may wish to consider running VMs of Ubuntu. You can explore, tinker and even break those to your heart's content, yet easily recover by reverting to an old snapshot. It preserves the integrity and simplicity of your default install while allowing you to go nuts experimenting in your newly discovered Linux world.
2. Check out the other links in my sig, especially Resources for Newcomers and Security Basics.
3. Further good introductory resources:
   
   • http://ubuntu-manual.org/
   • https://linuxjourney.com