Because I had the time, this week I played with all the latest ubuntu distros in a VMware computer. The guest computer had one core, 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB HDD. The host computer is an Intel Dual Core E2180 with 3GB of RAM and an ATI 3450 video card. I am interested in how productive I am while running the distros. Also I am interested in how efficient the hardware resources are used (but this is more for the geek in me).

Ubuntu installer is flawless and very fast. Overall in less than 10 minutes I had a functional computer. The installer gave me the option to auto logon and also told me that my password is too weak. Nice touches for someone coming from the windows world. The initial boot took around 45 seconds and the following ones took around 30 seconds. I am sure that my virtual ubuntu boots faster than my one year old real installation of Windows XP. The first impression is a very good one. A slick desktop with very few idiosyncrasies. I really liked the fact that I can add / remove software very easy. I didn’t like that I wasn’t able to remove Evolution and Gimp ( I understand that are deeply integrated into Gnome) but when my primary email is Gmail and for calendar I use Lightning I don’t need Evolution. Also Gimp for me is overkill because I am not doing any big photo editing on my computer.

Something that doesn’t make sense for an average user is the fact that I have to go in multiple places if I want to change the look and feel of the desktop. For the window content I am going to a place, and for window decorations I have to go to another place. Again I understand why for a developer makes perfect sense to do that, but for average Joe this is something that can be done in a better way. The fonts are looking as good as in windows with the exception of Firefox (even if I installed the windows fonts and made the changes). Other than that after I installed ubuntu-tweak life was even more beautiful.

Overall I was very happy with the way I can do most of the things that I regularly do on a computer (browsing, using web apps,  writing, downloading, chatting, listening to music and watching videos) but I was less happy with the fact that even if Ubuntu is very fast it seems a little bloated. I had anywhere from less than 200 MB up to 750-800 MB memory usage.

On a side note, while searching the forums for a way to remove Evolution and Gimp without destroying the Desktop I had the feeling that there are people in the community that are “hardcore” . Their take on the questions asked on forums was something on the lines of “If you don’t like it don’t use it”. Somehow this doesn’t relate well to the Ubuntu credo.

Right now I think Ubuntu 9.04 is a very good operating system and the changes that still needs to be done are minor and mostly usability related.

Next on the list was Xubuntu. Without copying the entire first part of the post I just have to say a few things.

• It’s very difficult for someone to say if you are running Gnome or Xubuntu by just looking at the desktop.
• Something that didn’t make sense to me was the fact that I still have gnome services running.
• The settings part of the OS is even more weird than Ubuntu.
• On a plus side, the apps are lighter and the system is even faster that Ubuntu. Something to be expected after all.
• Ubuntu-tweak is working on Xubuntu also, so I strongly recommend to install it.
• The compositing engine works even with the non accelerated default VMWare video drivers.

Overall I was happy with the OS but I still think there is a lot of room for improvement from usability standpoint. The memory usage was anywhere from around 100 MB to less than 500 MB no matter what I did.

Last on the list Kubuntu. KDE 4.2 looks amazing. I think is better looking than Vista but is so buggy. Kubuntu was the first distro where I didn’t felt the need to install a different theme or make big changes. I had to change the start menu to the standard version (years of using Windows XP) and I had to manually set the fonts to 96 dpi because the fonts were so big on my 1680×1050 desktop that I thought initially that my computer knows I had eyes problems (it was just another KDE bug). Again the settings seems to be all over the place but here the added bonus is that the add remove software is not slick at all. It seems more like synaptic from gnome.

Another surprise was the fact that Openoffice was still here. KOffice 2.0 beta is not installed and also KOffice 1.1.6 is not here. For a KDE based distro this is a little weird but somehow understandable ( 2.0 is very buggy and 1.1.6 lacks functionality ).

Not sure when, but someday KDE won’t have bugs anymore and at that time Kubuntu will rock. For the time being I wouldn’t recommend it for more than just testing, playing with it, learning and helping the community.

In the 30 months since I tested Ubuntu 6.10 a lot of things happened in the Linux world, but for an average user like me the most important aspect is the fact that I don’t have to use command line anymore if I want to do minor changes to the OS looks and functions