A first-timer's travails with Ubuntu

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

ABOUT a month ago, my aging notebook PC was waylaid by a worm called Brontok that skipped past the defenses of my otherwise reliable antivirus AVG. To make the story short, I had to move all my data files to a secondary drive, reformat my primary drive where Windows XP is installed to snuff out Brontok, and install a new copy of the operating system.

I wrote an entry about that experience in my weblog, and it attracted a number of comments. Some suggested a superior antivirus software, which I eventually did; Maryanne Moll and Dominique Cimafranca, alumni of the prestigious Silliman writers conference, on the other hand suggested something else -- abandoning the virus-prone Windows for Apple and Ubuntu, respectively.

Now, a Mac -- which I understand is the preferred weapon of choice by artists -- would be fantastic, except that a new laptop is out of the question these days. Much of my salary have already been “obligated” -- to borrow the language of a budget guy like City Administrator Frank Mendoza who doubles as acting budget officer of the Naga City government.

That left me with Ubuntu -- which claims to be “the Linux for humans -- as the other fallback. Which is not exactly a hard choice to make, as I happen to believe in the open-source paradigm.

Taking away the part which had me backing up my files into another hard drive, and clearing enough space to allow a dual-boot system on a my 40-GB hard disk, installing Ubuntu actually was quite seamless and painless. Well, I have to qualify that “painless” part: it was so with my laptop but not the office desktop which I used as guinea pig the first time around last Thursday.
The relatively old desktop, powered by a first-generation AMD Sempron processor, appeared to have hit a blank wall when the installation progress bar hit 84%. So I cancelled the entire thing, and ended messing it up -- and the Windows XP system already in place. So I had to reinstall XP, and Ubuntu after that, and a little patience eventually paid dividends because for one reason or another, it is able to read even the partitions containing the Windows system.

The version I had working right now is the so-called “Dapper Drake,” and its interface and stability certainly gives Windows XP -- and come to think of it, even Apple -- a run for its money. And it had everything the office needs mostly to get its job done: the OpenOffice suite that handles its Microsoft counterpart with aplomb, and more because of its capability to save documents in PDF format; as well as the Firefox browser, which is superior to the Apple Safari for Windows Beta that I have also been trying.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu remains hampered by Windows' tremendous edge in third-party support. For instance, the Konica Minolta laser printer I am using is unsupported. And so is the onboard Conexant-made modem of my laptop. (I will have to shell out $20 to download a fully functional driver file.) Which is why on my first day of using Ubuntu, I am writing this piece in OpenOffice Writer and will save it on my flash drive. But once done, I switch it off and go back to my good old virus-prone Windows XP so that I will be able to log on to the internet and email it to May France, who is already laying out this issue.

I guess this dual-boot scheme will be staying on with me for quite some time.