Time to Switch

On my laptop, I am currently dual-booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04.  I find the transition between operating systems to be tedious (save, then hibernate or restart), and Ubuntu always ran too slowly in VMWare to be a viable alternative.  However, after using a smooth-running pre-made Fedora VMWare image for a class, I’m now considering just booting Linux in Windows.

Ubuntu was the first Linux distro that I used, and I still run it on my computers.  This may now change given my experience with the (not-so) new Unity interface in versions 11.x+.  The lack of customization (which is a main factor of why people use Linux) is driving my switch.  A particularly annoying example: in order to stop the menu bar from autohiding, a fairly simple task, one must install a “flaky” configuration package.  Unity provides no options by default!  It is as if Canonical performed absolutely no user-testing before pushing out Unity.

In contrast with Tom’s decision to remove Unity, as I am writing this post, Linux Mint is being installed for a test run.