I am in love. Not the typical, usual, I "met her at the club and she swept me off my feet" love. No this was far from that. I have seen this apple of my eye around for a long while. I thought nothing of her at first. However, for many a years I kept hearing about her.
I heard good things, like she moves very fast and does not demand much and she, amazingly given the subject matter, is very stable. I heard about her often enough to keep looking her up once in a while. Each time I "checked her out" she looked good, usually somewhat different but always more appealing than before. Each time I yearned though I had to flee. I'm shamed to admit, she still wasn't "easy" enough for me.
I know I shouldn't have been afraid. There were times when I made attempts to conquer her by putting forth an effort. I always ended up aborting and quiting because I could not get her to perform as I wished. Too much work... I wanted effortlessly Easy. Rather than digging in and trying harder at what I could master and for free, I found it easier to spend hard earned money to achieve the performance I desired.
For years the money left my pocket, I couldn't get what I wished without a steady stream of it parting my life. Worse yet, I was spending it on something short of what I actually desired... The shame. If only she were a little bit easier.
Finally, I became so disgusted I resigned with a "I'll just stick with what I got" attitude. Either I would make due with what was at hand, even if this meant my hands would be busier, or I would break down and put forth effort to make "her" perform. I was not going to spend anymore money on it. I was determined. Somehow I would achieve satisfaction.
As I mentioned before she had a nasty habit of always morphing her look and changing herself a bit. In fact she was so good at it the she would often earn a new nick.
(I know all of you guys out there are thinking "where did you find her?". Fear not and read on my chauvinistic friends, there is plenty of her to go a around and, lets not forget, free!)
I heard of her again when people we calling her "Feisty". I decided it was time to give this Ms. Ubuntu Linux another try. I really liked it. Simple to install.. Gui in most cases, no fuss... updates with a button click, and does seem very stable. Almost as soon as I tried her, she improved herself and earned the nickname "Gutsy". I don't know about you but that gets this Geek's CPU a serious need for some water cooling.
The RPMs on my hard drive and page file usage shot though the roof when I heard she had a slightly altered hybrid sister which seemed even more willing to perform as exactly as I desired. "Studio". Folks in the past three months, I have built 4 different Ubuntu boxes. Three of them right off the live CD using only the default install parameters. The people who have these machines and I are happy with them.
Loaded with the defaults off the live CD I feel they work very well. Gutsy and Feisty both came with the Open Office Suite. I have built 2 Feisty Units and one Gutsy. All functioned full well enough, using GUI only for most of my basic computing needs. Such as; Web, checking of e-mail (via browser), I also tried installing programs through the "synaptic" manger, all GUI. I also took one of the Feisty units and did the Internet update to Gutsy. Very nice indeed.
I like it enough to have built a box just for the Ubuntu Studio version. I did all the editing and posting of this article using nothing but this box. I also like it enough to start writing about it a bit more.
