After a month or so living with Ubuntu Net Book Remix, it was time to move to Karmic Koala. Whilst normally I’d jump at the opportunity to get the latest and greatest I didn’t actually feel the need to update on the release date.
So far I have been really impressed with Net Book Remix. It seems to fit the screen very well, only a few functions didn’t seem to work well. Connecting an external monitor is one of them. I don’t use it often but when I did need it it wasn’t there. Other than that minor niggle (I’m sure there’ll be a way of getting around it but I haven’t had the time to work it out or visit the forums !!) it works brilliantly.
I still use windows on my net top (Acer Revo) and had the opportunity to upgrade to Windows 7 for a small fee and whilst it is a vast improvement over the Vista that it came with I’m starting question what strikes the OS’s apart. So far I have worked on the basis that….
- Both work – Fundamental really but worth pointing out
- Windows is a more polished product
- Ubuntu suits those who may want to tinker
- Ubuntu updates slowly in a continuous improvement / kaizen methodology whilst Microsoft produces innovation type updates – smaller steps versus bigger leaps (sometimes the leaps are in a wobbly direction)
- Software for Microsoft OS’s is great. Ubuntu is good but not quite as good for specialist software (Ham Radio Deluxe springs to mind). Yes, there are alternatives available and no doubt one day they will exceed the Microsoft versions but Microsoft just pips it.
Here’s a question, why can’t the OS’s work with everything? HRD on Ubuntu would probably seal it for me as Office runs under wine.
Fundamentally both the OS’s work for me, just in different applications. My netbook will carry on running Ubuntu. It is running Open Office and Evolution as well as XBMC and a few others like Fldigi on a small screen and it works well. The net top runs Windows 7 for MS Office and HRD, MCE and others. Crucially they both run Dropbox, Picasa and Firefox
I’m still waiting for the cloud to deliver what it promised and then I wonder if I’ll need an OS at all. Especially if it means long battery life and energy efficiency.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR)
For a year or so I’ve owned an Advent 4211. It’s been very good with one exception, the small hard drive is quite small and I / we use it to playback video on journeys in the car for the kids. I installed a simple interface that I used many years ago called myHTPC to make selecting media easier and it seemed to work well. For one reason or another and despite using AVG it picked up a bunch of viruses (virii?) over the year and occasionally fell over. This needed a reinstall of XP using the techguys method. Then after many hours updating and reinstalling software it was back to where it was.
Having done this for the third time in as many days I got the hump with XP and am now running Ubuntu Netbook Remix. A redesigned version of v8.04 with a fancy launcher and some tweaks to make it work better on Netbooks. Guess what it does – Nothing more needs to be said
As a long time fan of Ubuntu I thought about having a linux distro specifically fro ham radio. Sounds like I’m too slow. Shackbox seems to be floating about.
I think I’ll download a copy and see how it works under a virtual machine. Sounds like it could be worth a punt for the shack computer
Posted 21 May 2008 — by Alex
Category Radio
For those of us that are both Ubuntu’ers and ham radio fans there is a social group up and running on the Ubuntu forums
Feel free to join in a contribute to the discussions
A while ago I switched our main PC over to Linux. After a number of attempts with Mandrake, Xandros and a few other flavours I found that although I’m not someone who doesn’t spend hours having a go at Microsoft and I definately don’t hate windows (I do however find Apple a little rotten) I wanted somthing that was free, open and community supported and perhaps to lend what little support I could to open source stuff in general and the noble individuals who provide free software.
So my main computer had Ubuntu 6.04 installed and things worked out quite well for a while, then a few niggles where peripherals didn’t work and that little add ons took many hours of time to install and run and worst of all I couldn’t do what I used to be able to do with windows. So it was time for a short second stab. I now have 2 drives attached to the PC, one for Linux and one for windows. I plan to run all the radio stuff of the windows drive, things like Ham radio deluxe and other utlilities that I use infrequently such as Fair Use Wizard for when I want to watch my DVD’s on my Archos PVR. All with a long term view of switching over to Linux and it improves and my needs change.
First impressions are that it is still polished and still labour intensive but there are tools like Automatix2 which do a lot for you and it still has the same look and feel that i need to get used to again. but this time the bootloader give me the option of MCE or Ubuntu which is so much better and because there are physically 2 drives I can always unplug on or cut the power with a switch
