I use Google as my homepage, customized with several of their little gadgets, one of which is a set of news articles related to science and technology. So last week an article appeared that caught my eye. I don't remember what it said, but it was about Ubuntu's Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). After I read the article, I followed the links to the main Ubuntu site and downloaded the live cd suited for my cpu.

I had tried out a few Linux distros before. They mostly seemed about the same and most of them had a few pieces of hardware that weren't supported at the time for one reason or another. 

I continued to read the features that were available, looked over several screenshots and decided to burn the cd and check it out for myself.

I rebooted the computer and the self-boot disc took over and booted straight into Ubuntu. Since there wasn't any users set up, it booted right into the OS. It had a nice clean look to it. It comes with Firefox installed with quite a few extentions available from the disc. Installing new components, thankfully, doesn't require a reboot, which is a nice change from Windows. 

There are a few visual effects that are available to machines that are Vista-capable. Having a Vista-capable machine, I decided to activate these effects. Some of these effects included sticky windows, which are windows that stick to the edges of the screen and stretch and bend when you drag them away, various transparencies, animation effects on popup texts that kind of *boing* into place, alt+tab live window previews, and my favorite, the windows-key+tab window switching, which shows the open windows in a 3D view and flip as you tab through them.

I installed Wine and copied over my MUSHclient directory from the Windows partition and it started up as expected. The fonts had to be reset as the default fonts through Wine didn't quite look as good as what I was used to seeing. After fixing up a few other settings, MUSHclient works just as well in Wine as it does in Windows. There are some oddities with it though; the command line is black and text typed into it appears in an Arial-like font despite resetting the font settings and is written in black but highlighted in white. The built-in notepad also has a black background. I haven't tried using the notepad so I'm not certain if it has the same font settings as the command line does.

Also installed is the Pigeon instant messenger which makes a fine replacement for Trillian. Although, if you have multiple accounts on the same messenger service, it will import all contacts for each account multiple times (once for each account.) So if you have three AIM accounts, like I do, then each AIM contact will appear 3 times in your buddy list. A little pruning and this is fine too. It also allowed me to get rid of all those AIM bots that the AIM network insists I have on my buddy list.

The only real problems I've had with Ubuntu 7.10 is that it has completely locked up on me twice, both times while using Firefox. I'm not certain if that's related to the lockup or not, but that's what I was using at the time of the lockup.

Other than that, I've been pleasantly surprised with the way Ubuntu operates, its appearance and ease of use of most of the applications.

It's funny though, but the Linux distros are the only OSes I've been able to find good versions of Majong to play.