Ubuntu’s 5th Birthday Today – What a Crazy 5 Years It’s Been!

My first ordered ubuntu cd was 6.06 I tested it (because it was free), and decided that it was nothing for me then, but I was impressed with the default software set. I kept this in mind and educated myself further about opensource and the whole linuxspirit. But everything was okay with my windows and I haven’t touched the working system. Until (of course) the blue screen of death a while later occured, where I had to make a decision, either to reinstall windows with all the pain with drivers and additional software, or to install ubuntu without the need of additional drivers but everything right to start “out of the box” for free and without hours of tweeking.
The funny thing is that I am the computer guy in our family, and all other family members had to accept my decision, to use ubuntu 7.04 as the only choice :D
And it was the greatest decision i have could made, because I had no escape to windows I forced myself to understand linux, and I never looked back since then.
Karmic is awesome and I’m looking forward to the next years of my favorite distro!
Happy birthday indeed!

My very first *buntu was Kubuntu Hoary. I’d been using Debian previously, and while I loved it to bits, I was commenting how difficult it could be to use (which I kind of dug in a way). A friend suggested Ubuntu, I downloaded Kubuntu (preferring KDE at the time) and put it in dual-boot. My first impression was not a positive one, and I got rid of it.

That computer was unfortunately reclaimed by Windows. My next venture into Linux was Xubuntu Dapper (this was a very old PC, and I though Xubuntu would be more appropriate). I put it on, and I loved it. It was a very clean, attractive interface. I approved, and used Xubuntu on that computer right up until its end.

That came not too much later when my family broke the GHz barrier and bought a brand-new PC. Dual core and everything. Crazy. I’d been reading about some very impressive (though experimental) capabilities of the Linux desktop, and so I downloaded Ubuntu Edgy.

I put it on its own little 5Gb partition, got the drivers all installed, put XGL and Compiz on there (do you remember the transition to AIGLX?) and marvelled at my wonderful new spinning cube desktop. I made it snow, threw my windows around with reckless abandon (often leading to them literally falling off my desktop) and other very impressive things. Love at first sight.

I moved out then, and got my own PC. Edgy was on it the day we got the Internet connected. I’ve been upgrading steadily ever since, and made converts of two family members.

I remember running Beryl, when it was the thing to have. I remember loving the freedom of expression: for a while, all my windows were fetched and removed by transporter. When it was finally reabsorbed by Compiz, I was pleased to see this freedom remain.

I ran AWN during the period when every screencap worth seeing had it. I downloaded and applied Mac4Lin when everyone just had to have OSX without the expense, and went out of my way to find new GTK+ knockoffs. I had Screenlets when it was the coolest thing to happen to the Gnome desktop since its inception.

I remember finally switching to 64-bit for Intrepid, after years of being perfectly happy with 32-bit, and finding the experience almost identical. I remember waiting in anticipation for the release of KDE4, and find myself still using Gnome a year and a half later (Karmic’s the one, I swear!). I recall spending a lot of time planning my partition sizes to make room for Windows, and now I just give it an expandable VM drive.

Looking back at it, it has been a lot of changes. Ubuntu’s come a long way (as have all its Linux-based competitors). I wonder what my desktop will look like three years from now.

Time flies, I started using Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty when my Vista crashed on me. I am still very much a Linux noob, never got the hang of tweaking the system, compiling programs, writing scripts, and so on– basically just a computer user, and a happy one.

For the last 2-1/2 years, Ubuntu saves me from the agony of blue screens, constant re-installation of Windows every 6~12 months due to degradation, and not to mention virus cleaning. Thanks, and now Ubuntu is on 3 out of 5 of my home computers (balance 1 on Windows, and another on Asus Linpus).

I still boot into Windows XP occasionally at home, but very much restricted to games, and with the latest Virtual Box Direct3D support, I am hopeful that Ubuntu will occupy the whole hard disk in my dual boot PCs one day.

I am now on 64 bit Jaunty, and love it even more as 64 bit applications in Ubuntu (Linux generally as a whole) is very matured. My initial worry of not able to run many applications was immediately wiped off when I started keying my first apt-get on the terminal :-) In comparison, I do face many applications problem on Windows 64 bit as the Windows world is very much still stuck on 32 bit.

Happy 5th Birthday Ubuntu!