I'll try to go back a little while and to remember what was MY first impression of this operative system the first time I used it, that is around a month ago or so. I guess that if you are a Windows or Apple user and you're thinking about giving Linux a shot, you could find this post interesting.
One thing I remember clearly, and it's that when I shut down my computer after the first logon I was amazed!
Of course my first impression has been influenced by who I am, my background in the computer world, and my computer too...so I'll start with that:
Context
I'm a 24 years old student in electronic engineering, I like to learn and to explore new things, and I'm sure that this approach to my daily life influenced a lot my reaction to the Ubuntu experience. Since I study electronic engineering I had some knowledge of computer technology and programming, I know how to code in C language, and consequently I was not scared of the shell (in Linux you can work without touching your mouse if you want, in fact you can do everything with the command prompt).
My computer is pretty terrible, it's an Asus laptop, the X50RLseries and there are its characteristics:
- Intel Core2 Duo T5450 processor
- 2GB RAM
- 160GB HD
- ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 graphic card (obscene)
Installation
If I want to talk about the really first impression I need to start from the very beginning. I found the ISO for the installation on the official Ubuntu site, where they also explain step-by-step how to do install it, and following the instructions I burnt it on a CD and restarted my laptop changing the BIOS option to make it boot from CD.
An installation wizard then guided me in the installation process (there's also an option to test the operative system without installing it) and it is designed to make it easy even for the less expert users, the common people like me let's say. At this point I already understood why Ubuntu is known for being user friendly, especially compared with other Linux distributions, but also with Windows.
An installation wizard then guided me in the installation process (there's also an option to test the operative system without installing it) and it is designed to make it easy even for the less expert users, the common people like me let's say. At this point I already understood why Ubuntu is known for being user friendly, especially compared with other Linux distributions, but also with Windows.
The first day
Once the installation was over I started exploring the new environment: the default colors aren't amazing, I didn't like the orange-violet theme, the desktop is clean and the main bar is at the top and not at the bottom like in Windows. The left side of the top bar is organized as follows:
Under System you can find all the system utilities to manage the appearance, the sound, the network, time and date...etc more or less like in the Windows' control panel, under Places there are links to the most used folders like Desktop, Documents, Music... and finally in Applications there are all the installed applications. An interesting thing is that the applications are organized in function of their type: Games, Office, Programming, Internet, Graphics, Sound & Video...
As you can see in the previous image there are some icons (the terminal and firefox in this case) that you can add simply dragging the applications from their menu onto the bar.
One other amazing and unexpected thing is that everything worked immediately starting from the wireless connection, to the microphone, to the webcam...etc I had nothing to do to make my system work properly! I have to say that I was lucky, sometimes some work has to be done, but it depends on your computer.
Under System you can find all the system utilities to manage the appearance, the sound, the network, time and date...etc more or less like in the Windows' control panel, under Places there are links to the most used folders like Desktop, Documents, Music... and finally in Applications there are all the installed applications. An interesting thing is that the applications are organized in function of their type: Games, Office, Programming, Internet, Graphics, Sound & Video...
As you can see in the previous image there are some icons (the terminal and firefox in this case) that you can add simply dragging the applications from their menu onto the bar.
One other amazing and unexpected thing is that everything worked immediately starting from the wireless connection, to the microphone, to the webcam...etc I had nothing to do to make my system work properly! I have to say that I was lucky, sometimes some work has to be done, but it depends on your computer.
Ready to go!
In addition to the fact that all the peripherals were immediately working I want to underline the fact that Ubuntu comes with everything you need to start working immediately: firefox to surf the internet, OpenOffice, Evolution (mail client like outlook) with calendar, Empathy for internet messaging (you can use it instead of MSN), Rhytmbox for your music, and so on...
Finally, I don't know if it's just my laptop or if it's common, but Ubuntu seems way more responsive than WindowsXP, giving me a more pleasant feeling while using it.
NB: in this first exploration of the OS I never touched the Terminal, the command shell that can be so scary for the less nerdy users but that can also be really comfortable!
I think this can be a sufficient overview of Ubuntu, but I need to say that this is just the friendly side of this operative system, in fact it can offer much much more to the people who want to understand it and do the effort to deeply interact with it!
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