OS Upgrades...

A little while ago I bought a second hard drive for my desktop computer. I decided to give the Ubuntu OS a try on that system, more specifically the Kubuntu derivative.

For the most part the experience has been wonderful when I booted over there. The operating system boots way faster then Microsoft's Windows Vista and just seems to make better use of my systems resources over all (IE: No disk thrashing/taking forever to load things). I only run one anti-virus on my Window drive and don't load very many things at all during startup. I did check Vista's MSCONFIG to be sure.

Out of the box with Windows you get an Operating System, Media Player, Web Browser, email client, and a basic paint tool and some other things. With Ubuntu I got all that plus a full office package, photoshop like paint program, and access to tons of games. Plus I also got access to Wine which lets me run some Windows programs in Linux w/out Windows.

There thats my Linux sales pitch, now for what happened to me last night. Yesterday the new version of Ubuntu came out (8.10 I believe). You can either download the CD, buy it, or request a free copy. Unlike Windows, I found a nifty feature that let me upgrade the OS directly over the internet.

So I started the upgrade process and by morning my Kubuntu 8.0.3 install turned in to a Kubuntu 8.10 install. Everything appears to be working, I found no compatability issues unlike with what I found when I went from XP to Vista. The operating system did its job and upgraded the necessary packages to keep my system performing without a hitch.

With the updated Kubuntu I got the newest version of KDE desktop. Oddly enough the new KDE desktop looks a lot like the new Windows 7.0 screenies I saw on some news sites. I noticed the system tray on the new Windows 7.0 screenies reminded me of my Linux desktop with how some of the icons looked Linux'y and were on a Vista like interface. The only difference is the Linux version doesn't make my system choke trying to load different things or search.

Maybe Microsoft will get their OS to the point where it does things without spinning drives like crazy and bugging users with the (C)ancel or (A)llow question all the time some day. :P