| I'm a long time Windows user
starting with Windows 3.0 back in the day. I have recently taken the
plunge and installed Ubuntu Linux on my eMachine T3410 in a dual boot
configuration with Windows XP Home. I feel I've been using Ubuntu long enough now to offer some observations on where it differs, and where it is the same as Windows. First off the obvious, they are both multi-tasking operating systems with Graphic User Interfaces. Both have a menu system and shortcut icons on a desktop for starting programs or accessing files. A Windows user would be right at home in Ubuntu for tasks like surfing the web or reading email or just about any other usual activity that involves editing files or viewing or listening to your multimedia collection. Program windows in Ubuntu have a familiar feel and have the usual elements including the minimize, maximize, and close buttons in the upper right of the title bar. Program menus and toolbar buttons are in their usual places and work the same, no surprises there. When editing files many of the familiar keyboard shortcuts are the same as in Windows. For example CTRL-C copies whatever's highlighted, and CTRL-V pastes the clipboard contents to your file. Now for some differences between the two. The first most obvious thing I noticed right off was that Ubuntu boots faster, opens programs faster, and changing between running programs is much faster with no waiting on the screen to repaint. It doesn't have a lot of things starting up on logon which sap precious resources. To be fair I have been using Windows XP for nearly two years now, and have installed many, many programs and lots of them have components which load at startup. It seems every program you install in Windows wants to add it's update manager to the startup so it can check for updates while you are on the net. Add to that the program I installed to customize the clock in the system tray and it all starts to slow things down. In Ubuntu software updates are handled differently because software is installed on the system differently than in Windows. In Windows, you surf the net looking for programs to install. You have to trust that the web site you are downloading your new software from is trustworthy and isn't serving you malware, viruses, or trojans along with that software. As I can attest from being a member of many computer discussion lists and newsgroups that address computer problems, Windows users quite often fall victim to getting their software from the wrong source and getting infected. Also in Windows you install the software yourself with an installer program which allows you to pick where to put the program and where to put menu entries for it. In Ubuntu you don't have any control over these things during a software install. The system decides where to put the program files and menu entries for you. You can use Menu Editor to rearrange your menus if you wish, but Ubuntu arranges them logically by type of program to begin with so it's not necessary. This is done by a program called Synaptic Package Manager which is your interface to installing software on the Ubuntu system. To install software you start Synaptic and search for the type of software you want to install with it. As you find packages you want to add to your system you check mark them. You can select as many programs for installation as you wish at one time and when you are done selecting packages for installation you merely have to click the Apply button and Synaptic downloads and installs all of the programs for you automatically from a central repository of virus free, reliability tested software designed specifically for your version of Ubuntu. Try installing more than one program at a time in Windows and see where it gets you. 8-) You also do not get a nag about "Please close any running programs while you do this install" as in Windows. Ubuntu is perfectly happy to install software while you run other programs although I don't try to use the other programs while using the package manager. You can of course surf the web and download Linux software to install to your Ubuntu machine, but it is best not to do this if you can possibly find the software you need with Synaptic Package Manager, as it has an advantage to manually installed software. Remember me complaining about every program you install on Windows wanting to add it's update manager to the start up? Well, as long as you install software on Ubuntu with the package manager, it takes care of checking for updates to all of the software you install on your system with it. When new versions of the software you use become available in the central repository Ubuntu politely notifies you that updates are available, then waits for you to run the Update Manager to actually install them. With the update manager you can inspect the descriptions of available updates and decide whether to install them or not. With this method of installation viruses and other nasties become a thing of the past. Did I mention that only around 1000 viruses total have been written for Unix/Linux systems? Compare that to the many, many thousands of variants of malware floating around out there for Windows. Why this is, is a mystery to me, as Microsoft Windows source code is closed to the public, and the Linux operating systems source code is open to the public and available for anyone to examine. It seems to me virus writers would have an easier time of coming up with exploits with the source code available to examine, but for some reason they prefer the challenge of hacking the secret code of Windows. I've always ran my Windows machine from an administrator level account and have no experience whatsoever with creating and using limited user accounts so I can't comment on any differences there. Ubuntu on the other hand won't allow you to log in as root [administrator] at all in the normal course of events. Instead Ubuntu always asks for your password before you can make any changes to your system including installing software. If you need to make changes to a restricted system configuration file you have to use the sudo command in Terminal in conjunction with the command line program you want to do the changes with. This causes a prompt for your password, and then temporarily raises your privileges to root for the duration of making that change. If you want to use a GUI program to alter a system file you have to start it from the command line in Terminal with the gksu command in front of it. This works the same way, prompting for a password, and temporarily raising you to root until you quit the program. In Windows I can bring up the property sheet for a read only file and change it so it isn't read only and can do this with no interference from the system at all. Changing or deleting system files can be done almost casually in my normal administrative account. Ubuntu files on the other hand have permission levels which dictate who can alter them. System files, and indeed most of the Linux file system, has it's permissions set so that only a root user can change them. The only place you can create and alter files at will is in your home folder, and sub folders of it. This includes attempts to change permissions from a files properties sheet in Ubuntu's File Manager, if you aren't the owner of the file you aren't allowed to change it's permissions. Then we come to the registry, that place where Windows and most of the programs installed on it store settings for everything under the sun. There is no registry in Ubuntu. Configuration information in Ubuntu is kept in varying places around the file system in text files! Program settings are kept in the programs folder in it's own configuration files. Ubuntu doesn't have to load that humongous registry file into memory to check for a setting, instead it loads small text files only when needed to look something up. The Windows registry is a database and as such, once it is loaded into memory, looking up any setting in it is nearly instantaneous as every setting is addressed in a manner which allows going directly to it. But... it's huge and when not in use at the moment probably gets paged out to virtual memory. One thing I always hated in Windows is defragging the hard drive! I've always thought that this was a lot of wear and tear on my hard drive for little or no benefit. Well, come to find out, in Linux there is no need to defrag the hard drive. Linux handles writing files to disc in a different way than Windows and never needs defragging. Another difference is that Linux will allow you to move a file while you are downloading it, it doesn't have to be finished downloading, if you change your mind on where you want it, go ahead and move it during the download. Next we come to switching between running programs. In both systems there is a task bar which gets populated with running program titles on buttons as you start programs. To change between programs go to the task bar and click the title of the program you want to bring to the front. Again in both, you can also use ALT-TAB to switch between running programs as well.This works well until you get a lot of programs open and then it gets difficult to read the buttons as they've become too small. I can change between two program back and forth fairly quickly on either system, but let me try to bring to the front a program that's been in the background for a while, while I've been using the other two, and the Windows screen refresh lag hits and it takes forever for it to come to the front. In Ubuntu this never happens. No matter how long I mess with one or two programs, changing to any other open program that's been in the background for a while is still nearly instantaneous. In Ubuntu as well the focus follows the mouse pointer so if you have overlapping programs, pointing at the one in the background causes the one in front to fade to invisible. This is handy for having two files open at once and you need to glance at the one in the background while editing the one in the foreground. Just mouse over it, have a look, then mouse back over the top window to bring it back. You just need to make sure the two windows don't overlap exactly so there is always part of the other window sticking out to point at with the mouse. This next thing is something I've never seen in Windows, and that is multiple virtual desktops. In Ubuntu you can install Compiz Fusion which gives your system all kinds of nice eye candy tricks like windows burning away when minimized, or exploding into little rectangles when closed, and best of all the ability to have four or more virtual desktops to sort your running programs between. To change from one of these desktops to another the simplest way is to point at an open part of the desktop and rotate the scroll wheel on your mouse. This causes the animation of the desktop rotating to the next desktop. You can rotate this cube of desktops either direction by scrolling forward or back on the mouse. This rotation is very fast and has become my favorite way of changing between programs. Instead of maximizing all windows like I did in Windows, I leave them sized so there is a small strip of open desktop across the top of the screen so I can point and scroll to change desktops, and I put one or two programs on each desktop. To see examples of the eye candy and the great rotating cube effect have a look at these YouTube videos of people manipulating their desktops with Compiz Fusion's predecessor Beryl. Windows Vista Aero versus Ubuntu Beryl Beryl Ubuntu Desktop I've never seen anything approaching Compiz Fusion in Windows so there really is no comparison. On the other hand, I haven't found a reminder program for Ubuntu that will read out loud messages I type in either like the one I have in Windows does, so my reminder program in Ubuntu just pops up a message box. It can play sound files as a reminder, but it can't read text messages to you. Ubuntu does have less support for hardware. Everyone writes their drivers for the big commercial operating system Windows, but there isn't much incentive to write open source drivers for Linux. As a consequence my Lexmark Z845 printer doesn't work with Ubuntu as there is no driver for it. Oh well, that printer always feeds the paper sideways and jams anyway so I'll just shop for a Linux compatible printer soon. HP is one manufacturer who has made a commitment to supporting Linux so all of their printers work with it. Here is a Wikepedia article on that subject. I don't advocate getting rid of Windows as there are advantages to having two operating systems on your computer, but for the most part these days I boot into Ubuntu as I can get so much more done in a set amount of time with it. Now, the last comparison is cost, with Windows being very expensive unless you get it bundled on some branded mass manufacturer's system, and Ubuntu being absolutely free including all the software you could ever need. The good folks at Ubuntu will even send you a Ubuntu Live CD which allows you to try it, and install it if you like it, free, with not even a shipping charge. For more reasons to go with Linux instead of Windows, have a look at Why Linux is Better. Like this page? Link to it from your own website; just copy/paste this HTML: |