It has begun. From the depths of the underground, it has seeped into my computer as I now wear the mark of the Linux Kool-Aid mustache. Flavor: Ubuntu. I must say, it's quite tasty.

Now if you are one that knows me personally, I over glorify every new piece of technology and only a few end up sticking around. From new browsers, to text editors, integrated development environments and even development platforms, I'm all over the board. But this time is different or at least it feels like it.

Last night, I decided to take the plunge. I went and downloaded Ubuntu. However, things didn't start off so gracefully. You see, I had what I needed from Ubuntu, but I didn't have any CDs to burn the OS too! Ah, The horror! So, I tried to put it on a flash drive and set my BIOS to boot to it...nothing. Not wanting to drive to my local Wal-Mart, I decided to ask the advice of my best friend (although I'm not sure he/she looks at our relationship the same way), Google. I mean come on, there's nothing like having the world at your fingertips from the comfort of a leather executive computer chair, especially since a gallon of gas costs me a weeks pay. After a quick few punching of keys, there it was, my solution...UNetbootin.

UNetbootin allowed me to put the Ubuntu distro on my flash drive, while making it bootable, all in a step-by-step process that was extremely simple. It worked without a hitch and for that I can't thank Geza Kovacs enough. If you'd like more information on UNetbootin you can find it via the help section at Ubuntu's website

So now that I had everything I needed, setting up this dual boot system should be a breeze, right? Well, for the most part it was, but since it wasn't a standard install (I always have to make things difficult) made things a little bit trickier. Setup was going great and that's when I came to the partitioner. While I kind of made it more difficult than it needed to be (told you), I wanted to make sure I didn't overwrite my Vista partition. I was presented with 3 options and wasn't really sure which one to choose. The first one was "Guided resize and used free space". The problem with it...I was making a dual boot machine, but with two separate hard drives and wanted each OS (Vista/Ubuntu) to be on it's own disk. This option only allowed me to resize the Vista HD to make room for Ubuntu. The second option was "Guided - use entire disk", which I ended up using, but didn't want to at first since I wanted to install Kubuntu on this disk as well, making it a triple-boot system. What made me use this option, is the fact that I could install Kubuntu later, using the first presented option, resizing the Ubuntu partition to allow room for both OSs. Anyways, the third option I got was "Manual". Let me tell you that if you don't know what you are doing and are new to Linux, as I am, if you choose manual you should research the options presented. I had no idea what type of file system to select and didn't want to mess chance messing anything up. However, if it's any help, I believe Ubuntu defaults to the ext3 file system, as that's what it used for my "Guided - use entire disk" install. Also, I should have mentioned this sooner, but please make sure you back up ALL information, from any and every hard drive before partitioning, as you should expect to lose this information. While this likely will not take place, it's better to be safe than sorry.

Moving on, after the partitions were created, I setup my user account and password and before I knew it, I was a Linux-Ubuntu user. And this my friends, is where the joy came into play. You see, after you format and reinstall a Windows OS system so many times, it gets old. It seems like it takes forever and once you're done you still have a bunch of drivers to go and install. Oh, and you a few hours of updates with numerous restarts. With Ubuntu, this was non-existent, which is funny because before I even started the install, I had no idea where I was going to go and find all the drivers I needed for my hardware. Well luckily, IT DID IT ALL FOR ME! I had immediate network connectivity, proper video card settings and sound. Boy was I sitting in the presence of a new found glory. I grew so used to the ongoing battle with drivers and updates that I began to expect it. Upon logging in, everything worked with Ubuntu. Oh, it did have some updates though, 83 of them in fact. At that point I yelled out "ah-ha!", because I knew it couldn't have been this easy. But before I could even finish the "ha", the updates were finished and I only needed to do a single restart.

Now that the install was finished, all I had to do was find a new theme (not that the default one was bad, I just wanted to make it my own) and figure out how navigate this new beauty.

A day later and so far, so good. But since this post is getting rather long-winded, I'm going to save the usability portion for another blog entry in the near future. We'll see if I still have this same impression after a few more days of "testing".

Until next time, keep on taggin'.