BBC's 24 hours with Ubuntu! Really?

This is in response to BBC's review of Ubuntu on its blog, spending only 24 hours with it, that too after they made erroneous statements about Ubuntu while advertising Windows 7 on their breakfast show. This follow-on for reviewing Ubuntu by BBC, after that faux pas on the show, was initiated by Canonical.

Most of it has been said, I'll try to say some things that got left out. Not one person made a point about how simple Ubuntu install can be for a Windows user who wants to try his toe in the water: wubi (ubuntu installer for windows)! Just download wubi.exe, run it from Windows, define how much space to use for Ubuntu, choose login creds, take a coffee/ lunch break, return to your comp with a dual install! Days of Linux install have become simpler since Knoppix launched a live CD that announced vocally on what devices are detected and installed! Just when I thought it doesn't get any simpler than that, Ubuntu gets better with each release.

Microsoft is so greedy, that when I bought my Toshiba laptop, I was forced to buy it with Vista, with a caveat that said "Installing any other OS voids the warranty". Even if I wanted to have dual boot, I couldn't do that in warranty. Funnily enough, any reinstall of Vista and other Windows flavours arrogantly overwrites any other OS! Why?

For almost everything that Linux can do with a command line for a desktop user, Ubuntu can do with GUI. Another thing about people who just hate to use keyboards are missing a loud point even in Windows GUI: all those menus have keyboard 'short'-cuts! Sometimes, keyboard is faster than the mouse.

If you've tried detecting and transferring files between XP and Vista on your network, that would tell you why expecting all your Windows machines to just popup on your Ubuntu map, without any protocol setups, is plain bias.

MrFaulty talks of WiFi install issues as a techie. WiFi on Vista has been a pain for me; it gets some godforsaken IP on a DHCP mode and I need to hardcode it to work well! Windows should have perfected it by now, but no; OTOH, it works smoothly in Ubuntu. And he also talks of RAID 0 when the article is about a layman desktop user. What you can do with Win for RAID, a similar experienced person on Ubuntu can do it in a jiffy too. But then again, if you are a technology person, you ought to mention developers, rate at which bugs get fixed on Ubuntu and umpteen development tools that come free, all of these things beat down Windows to death.

Getting hold of Wine to run Spotify is not as much of a bother as needing to get hold of Win7 pro version to do something as simple as getting an XP app/ device to work! The latter means shelling more money out to get Win7 do something that your XP did initially, which you'd already paid for, and MS made you buy Win7 instead. The former means installing Wine with a couple of steps and you're ready to go... simpler than buying local wine! :)

Finally, Rory, I think Ubuntu survived your 24 hours with it. Had you been a Linux user as long as you were using Windows and had to spend 24 hours with Windows 7 instead, I'm certain you'd have flushed the Windows netbook/laptop by now! :)