I’m not a Linux fanboy in particular, but every time a new Ubuntu comes out I DL and try the live version out of interest. As soon as I boot up usually I find something that doesn’t work but should work, and I don’t feel it’s worth my time solving it because I shouldn’t have to be a techie to be able to use this software, so these trials normally last for about 45 minutes. (It doesn’t help that the thing which doesn’t work is usually the wifi, preventing google-diagnosis.)

With Heron, nearly everything worked. It was days before I realised where my problem was going to be (USB mass storage) and by that stage I was nearly motivated enough to try and troubleshoot it myself. By that time I had actually installed Ubuntu on a partition on one of my laptops, and configured firefox to my liking, got Wine working (can’t be without Foobar2000 for music!) and started to feel … if not at home, then quite settled down.

The main reason I’ve now got that laptop booted into Windows is that I’ve been using it for work, requiring a particular Windows app to run. There’s no reason why I won’t call up Ubuntu when I’ve finished the exercise in a few weeks.

My (subjective) impression is that Ubuntu very nearly works now. There’s still more improvement to do on it ( if nothing else, please change that horrid default font!), but it’s becoming a case of sweeping out the dust from the nooks and crannies, to move from a 90% smooth experience to a 98% smoothe one!

The strength of Ubuntu is its ability to be repackaged. We already have Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio and BabelDisc and that Walmart OS – where next? Once we get to version 9 or 10 then yes, Microsoft should be scared. More and more techies will start to like it. They’ll feel confident to recommend it to their aunties and grannies because it’s cheap and installs by itself and you can get it running without ruining their current windows install.

I think we haven’t seen Ubuntu’s full potential to catch on yet. One fine day, we will.