Full Circle Magazine FR

I started with Ubuntu in 2005 on “Breezy Badger” 5.10. Until then, my wife and I had shared a home computer, but, when we bought a new computer, I decided to extend my horizons a bit and experiment on the old one. I had been exposed to SuSe at work but now I had read a bit about this new distribution of Linux called Ubuntu, and, being a good South African, was as much attracted by the name “Ubuntu” as by the idea of running Linux. So I asked for the free disks from Canonical and installed them on the old computer, and have been hooked on Ubuntu Linux ever since. I have tried every version of Ubuntu, but, since 2010, I have stuck to the Long Term Support releases for my main machine and have loaded the intermediate releases on a test machine (which was originally the machine that I first used for Ubuntu until I bought yet another new new machine last year and they all moved down a rank). Why do I love Ubuntu? The reasons are long, and complex, and not always logical. But, first of all, I buy in completely with the concept of Open Source software. I started in computers in 1966 as an assembly language programmer working on operating systems maintenance (and later, operating systems development), and in those days it was impossible to even conceive of the idea of not having access to the source code of all systems software. Then, slowly, software became big business, and source code became hidden from the customer. (I sometimes secretly wonder if that is not because the code is of such a low standard that the software companies are ashamed of it). It is not that I want to change the software; it is that I – illogically – want to know that I can if I want to!

And then, I don't like paying a lot of money for stuff that I don't use very often, and I don't like piracy. At the moment, Microsoft charges over R2000 for a copy of Microsoft Office. That is insane when LibreOffice costs nothing. Using Ubuntu, I have access to a whole world of free software that covers nearly everything that I can possibly want to do with my computer. Best of all, I can try something, and, if it doesn't meet my requirements, I can throw it away at no cost except the time that I have used for the experiment. I seem to have so much more control over what happens in Ubuntu than I ever had using Windows. (Actually, I still help lots of people with their Windows machines and am constantly annoyed when the system wants to do things its way rather than my way). But I think that what I really love about Ubuntu is that the user community is so enthusiastic about helping people with their problems. Ask any question from the experts and, instead of being told to try Google, there will be three or four responses. I have never had a problem which the community has not been very helpful in trying to solve. (And, let's face it, some of my problems have been pretty infantile!)

The only problem that I have not been able to solve or work around is that I never managed to get my old Canon laser printer to work on Ubuntu. I am biased enough to think that this is Canon's fault and not Ubuntu's. I switched to the Unity interface with 12.04 and like it a lot. I do have the problem, though, that Gimp does not run well under Unity, and so, being a heavy Gimp user, I have been forced to run Xubuntu as well as Ubuntu, and now I run both Xfce and Unity. Not really a problem, but I wish that the problem would get solved so that I could settle on a single interface. I live in a large retirement resort in the South African country. I must confess that my attempts at evangelising Ubuntu have not been too successful. I have been much more successful in promoting the concept of Open Source software. (If anyone has a problem with Word, I immediately install LibreOffice for them!) Slowly, slowly …