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I recently, sorta by accident, blew out my Windows install on my main computer while attempting to install Ubuntu along side Windows. I was smart enough to make a backup of my Windows partition prior to attempting this modification, but in the process I decided to try something different. I ended up installing only Ubuntu on my main machine. I was rather worried in the beginning, because a lot of the things I do in Windows have not worked well in the past on Ubuntu. A few examples include: watching HD movies off of my file server, watching my recorded TV, gaming, triple monitors, and administering Windows servers. I can safely say that Ubuntu in just the last release, even though it doesn’t appear to have changed has made huge strides in making their OS as usable as possible.

Wine has done some truly amazing things in the past few months. With version 1.0 of Wine finally having been released a budding and maturing piece of software jumped into the spot light. All my major games are supported and running under Ubuntu without a problem. My only complaint is a drop in frame rates, but I think this is a small price to pay.

Second, video support is fully there when you need it. I used to spend hours tinkering with settings and config files trying to get my HD and SD movies to play on Linux. With Windows you have many options like the CoreAVC Codecs and Nvidia PureVideo codecs to name a few. Linux doesn’t have these advantages and took a bit longer to overcome some of these obstacles. I have been a long time MythTV fan for my video watching and TV recording, and can say that I’m proud to have been running a MythTV box without a single problem for over 3 months now, and to be completely honest I don’t think I could ever go back.

Another big problem I faced initially was administering some of the Windows servers I watch. The problems here start with such things as Remote Web Workplace which is only supported by Internet Explorer. My current solutions for these types of problems is a VM. Keeping a VM of Windows on hand has done a swell job of doing those little things that you have to do on Windows. The irony here is that I used to think Linux belonged in a VM running under Windows, and now here I am twisting that around.

The last issue I was facing is a more recent development, I finally procured a second graphics card and a third monitor. I had never attempted to set this many monitors spanning multiple graphics cards up in Ubuntu. This was the only thing that took some tinkering, two monitors is brainless, three takes a little work. I started by using Xinerama, which has been around for a while, but showed its maturity by working immediately. The only downside to Xinerma is that your desktop and all other 3D accelerated objects are forced into a 2D only mode. So, all those cool effects we have come to love in Ubuntu don’t work, and video games are rendered on the CPU rather than offloading their work onto your expensive GPU. The fix for me was to run TwinView on my main two monitors and a separate X session on my third. At first I was turned off by this solution because you can’t drag windows across X sessions, so it was like having two separate computers with their monitors next to each other. After playing around for a while, I realized how wonderful this setup could be and started using the separate X session for a MythTV frontend. I can now watch TV, play a video game, and surf the web all at the same time on one machine. Now, try doing that on Windows.

I can definitely say with absolute confidence that I have gone from willing Linux to be great to actually seeing a great Linux. No longer do I worry about setting up thousands of options, instead I have begun to dream up more. I see a bright future for Linux with much success to come in the future.