Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

My new Linux machine

I recently ended up building a new home desktop running Ubuntu - Intrepid Ibex.

I use this machine mostly for development work, but being a home "desktop" it also needs to serve as a great web browsing platform, play music and videos, have a word processor and other essential software, connect easily to other local machines, and support devices like a fancy graphics card, a DVD burner, a headset, and so on.

I considered buying a new MacBook, and just docking it at the house, but for the money the machine I could build far outperforms what I could buy from Apple. Don't get me wrong, I still really like Apple (fanboy, yes), but I ended up with a great Intel P45 chipset motherboard (Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R), 3.16GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB ram, a 512MB Nvidia 8800 GT video card, dual raided 400GB SATA drives (nice ones), a 1TB non raided drive, and the rest including a wireless keyboard and mouse, and 22" LCD monitor for under $1K (well under actually). I started from the Ars System Guide in terms of components, and then went off in a few tangents of my own. I couldn't touch that with any Mac product, much less a MacBook (it's not a fair comparison to the mobile machine, I know that, but I felt I could keep my old MacBook for going mobile and throw some horsepower at the desktop while using Ubuntu).

It's a long story as to how I wound up in Ubuntu land (see below), but suffice to say it has been virtually perfect thus far. Stuff just works in Ubuntu, much like OS X (98% of the time, they are both still computers after all). The only Ubuntu issue I have had is with a Wireless PCI card that it couldn't automatically handle (had to use ndiswrappers - but after the manual setup it works fine). Everything else was literally a click of a button, Ubuntu finally has the "desktop" polish that Linux has been in need of, in my opinion (printing was a snap for example, I recall that being a bizaatch back in the Linux desktop day - with Ubuntu it recognized my wireless printer over the network and found the right driver with zero intervention, nice).

I didn't really "kick" the Mac habit entirely, I still like OS X too, but being really solid AND an open platform is important to me, so I went back to Linux for the latest machine.

How I arrived at Ubuntu - the long version

I have used many PC operating systems over the years. I am old enough that the first PC in the house was an 8088 that ran simply MS-DOS. We also had an Apple IIe way back when, which was my brothers preference. I ended up with a 286 and Windows 3.1 in college, and more Windows from there (95, NT4, etc). In the early-mid 90's, when I was working for IBM and using a little bit of AIX, I also started wishing I could get some of those Unix utilities and that seemingly more robust setup in a PC too. That is when I installed Slackware on a PC at the house using 20+ floppy disks. I thought it was cool, but didn't really put it to work (and my colleagues, and boss at IBM at the time scoffed at it).

I continued to mess around with Linux at home, and, after being tasked with setting up some brochure-ware type websites on an SGI box running Irix at the office, also experimented with Linux and Apache. I first setup Screaming-Penguin.com running Red Hat in 1997-98, with some graphics and programming help from other like minded friends (it ran a custom PHP website framework and relied on MSQL - the Internet Archive only has TotSP back to 1999, but it was there long before that). The "penguin" as I call it has evolved over the years and now runs Fedora and Drupal (but still runs at the house).

When I left IBM to join a web company and become a developer for the dot-com boom, I worked a lot more with Linux, and with Solaris. At that time Linux was growing in popularity but was still pretty rough around the edges. I used Linux for DNS, email, web applications, and many other "server side" purposes for various customers - and still ran it at the house - but it never seemed to make the cut for me as a "Desktop." I did use Linux as a desktop at home off and on, and at one job back in the day, but it was never easy to keep up with updates and compile things like audio and video players and other desktop stuff. I really wanted Linux to be my desktop too (in addition to handling all the server tasks), but it just never made the final cut for one reason or another.

I never really looked at an Apple again, after the IIe, until OS X came out. A desktop that "just worked" and had all that polish, AND ran BSD at the core, was great in my mind, and I could still use Linux for the server (the open source nature of Linux mattered to me, I have earned many Windows, and other proprietary software scars over the years, suffice to say I believe strongly in open source for many reasons). After getting to play with OS X some, even though it was a closed platform, I decided to buy a MacBook. It was that good. I have used that same MacBook for 2+ years now (an Intel, but an old one, 32 bit Core Duo - not Core 2 Duo). It's been a great machine, I can't complain about much there (other than Apple being dickwads about Java 6 on OS X Tiger 32 bit, a different long story).

After starting a new job this year though I was brought back around to Linux on the desktop. My first day at the office I was asked "so do you want Windows or Linux"? No brainer for me, even with my past pains on the desktop. Linux. (Oh, and they also asked me to pick a hostname themed off of a beer - I thought, man, I made the right choice coming here.) That was how I formally met Ubuntu. I ended up with a Hardy Heron box that has worked really really well.

So when it came time recently to look at getting a newer faster personal machine, I had a dilemma. Ubuntu is pretty darn nice, and I can just buy a Dell or something and install it (UPDATE- I have been informed that Dell will sell you a machine with Ubuntu preinstalled too, I didn't know that previously), or get a new MacBook. I waited for the MacBook update announcements, but a new decent one was just too expensive (I want a video card this time, so need a Pro - even the refurb older model Pro, which would have worked for me, was $1400+USD). I ended up deciding I would keep the current MacBook for going mobile, and just build myself a new desktop at home that runs Ubuntu (since I already have another nice Ubuntu machine at the office, and I don't travel a ton). So far, good call.