I installed Ubuntu on my laptop last night using Wubi, and I’m not sure why I didn’t do this sooner. Wubi is a Windows installer that lets you run Ubuntu sort of like running a Windows program.
My initial reactions are limited, because the install finished sometime after I went to bed last night, and I only had a few minutes to play this morning. But I was surprised that Ubuntu recognized the volume buttons on my Dell (I accidentally uninstalled the Windows driver for them and have never bothered to find it again), although I was a little disappointed that it seems to like to turn the volume on when I’m not logged in, which drives me nuts.
Also, I couldn’t get onto my wireless network. But I’m not positive I have the right password. I’ll have to play with it tonight. Of course, the wife comes home tonight, so I should probably do a bit of cleaning. I did some yesterday, but not everything.
In any event, I would much rather be at home playing with Ubuntu than sitting at work, checking for Section 508 compliance in our web application. Although at least this gives me an excuse to get rid of some of the awful, awful code generated by Visual Studio. If you ever hear anyone try to sing the praises of Microsoft’s .NET environment, I want you to kick them in the teeth.