You've come a long way baby...

I've been doing pretty well in my on-going effort to become an ex-Windows user. I've been working almost exclusively in a Linux virtual machine environment for a couple of weeks now.

I started out using VMWorkstation under Windows Vista to host my Linux installations, but after a short period of time, I stumbled onto an open-source software package named VirtualBox, developed by a company named innotek. This software is works incredibly well. I was able to install it on my Windows Vista based laptop and I created Fedora 8, Unbuntu 7.10, and CentOS 5.1 Linux virtual machines using this tool.

At this point I will not need to pay the $187.00 price tag for VMWorkstation. VirtualBox does exactly what I need and it runs on both Windows and Linux.

Once I make the complete transition to Linux on my laptop, I'll install VirtualBox on my Linux host and then create a Windows XP virtual machine so that I have a fallback option for any Windows applications that I absolutely must use. (At this point, I haven't found anything I can't do without.)

During the experimental phase, I started out using Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbons). After a short period of time, I discovered that there were minor differences in the underlying system administrative functions versus the Red Hat structure, which I am more comfortable with. Ubuntu roots are based on the Debian *nix architecture.

As I continued to pursue more of the typical ways I use my computer, I found myself installing various software designed to support my efforts as a web developer. (Apache, PHP, MySql, Eclipse + C/C++ extensions, etc.) This exercise was not particularly comfortable for me, since my Linux administrative experience has been primarily built using Red Hat and Fedora Core distributions.

One day I decided I had had enough struggling with the Debian style administrative architecture and I decided to start using Fedora Core 8 as my desktop system. This went well and I got all my developer tools set up and I was using Firefox, Evolution for e-mail, the Pidgin messaging client, and Skype very comfortably under Fedora 8.

Not too long into the Fedora exercise, I received an e-mail from a friend and it had a video file attached. The file had an MPEG video format... let the fun begin!!! (Not really!)

I had previously configured my Ubuntu environment to support video playback and it really wasn't that big a deal. Not the case with Fedora. It was a big deal. It seems that Fedora supports the idea of pointing it's users to commercial vendors to acquire codecs that will allow the replay of certain video formats. Of course, one must purchase the plug-ins that will support different codecs for different video formats. This approach didn't excite me too much. Especially since I had not encountered the same roadblock with Ubuntu.

So here I am again, back with Ubuntu. I've made my decision that I'll use Ubuntu as my desktop operating environment and deal with learning the new administrative architecture. This is not that big a deal, since there are significantly more software applications available that are Debian compatible. Actually, this will probably turn out to be an excellent decision when I look back 6 months from now.

Wrapping up, I've just finished installing Ubuntu as the default operating system for my Dell GX240 system at work. No Windows XP installed. (Of course I'll put VirtualBox on there and have a Windows virtual machine, just in case.)

This is a huge milestone. Having 'played' with Linux since 1998, I'm finally comfortable enough to say that I think it will work just fine for me as my primary operating system of choice. There is just one more step in this process and that is to install Ubuntu as the default operating system on my Toshiba Satellite P205-S6347 laptop. I suspect I'll take that task on in the next month or so. Putting Linux on a newer model laptop could be a bit risky, but I'm gaining a comfort level that there will not be any obstacles to being able to do it successfully.