After having a few data corruption issues in the last few weeks related to the Windows system I use for work, I decided it was time to give Unbuntu a try. I have been playing with the Unbuntu 5.10 that comes with VMWare player and have been very pleasantly surprised. The distro seemed to have a nice interface and was easy to configure, so why not give it a try on a machine.

Last Friday I setup an old Dell 4100 to be my Ubuntu 5.10 Linux workstation. The installation went pretty smoothly, all the hardware was detected, no problems.

So I have been using the machine as my primary workstation all week and I gotta say, I'm sold on this distro. First off, someone has finally got the user inteface right on Linux. Is it as slick as a Mac? No. But is doesn't need to be. It just needs to be consistent and easy to use. Ubuntu is both. You do an apt-get install gftp, the gftp package gets installed on your system and added to your menu in the Internet folder. Want to add that program to your quick lanch bar? No problem, just right click the icon and add it. Need to change a preference? Click System -> Settings and there your are. You can pretty much configure everything right there.

My experience with the Red Hat and SUSE based distos was never that smooth. The menu's were always hosed. It was tough to add new packages, and adding an icon to the quick launch bar was beyond mere mortals. Everything was funky in a bad way. I had played with apt on some of these distros, but it never worked as advertised. It is just cool on Ubuntu. Now I can see why people have raved about it so much. Installing and updating applications is a breeze.

Anyway, if you have been looking for a good Linux distsro to get your feet wet, check out Ubuntu 5.10. It just rocks. Its fun to use Linux again!

Well I haven't posted much recently. I decided a couple of weeks ago to give World of Warcraft a try. With 5 million subscribers, a number of podcasts on the game, and lot's of posts about it, one gets curious about what all the buzz is about. From the title of this post, you can kind of gather the conclusion I have come to about the game.

Don't get me wrong, I think the game is great. It is a lot of fun to play and from a tech standpoint, it is amazing. There you are playing in a virtual world with thousands of other people. You can chat in real time with other players. Play against other players, or team up with them, whatever. And it all works smoothly and seemlessly. Heck, you could spend the whole time looking at all the rendered environments, its beautiful!

But its just too time consuming for me. With each level of experience you reach, the next challenge becomes more difficult and more time consuming. You are in a constant cycle of getting more money and experience so you can get more money and experience! (Kind of like real life!) I must have spent 20 or 30 hours a week for the last two weeks either playing or reading and researching the game. If I could spend say 2 or 3 hours a week playing with friends, I could see continuing to play (Like poker night, just geekier.) But I think to do well, you probably need to spend 10 to 20 hours a week playing. Plus I'm not sure I could stop myself from taking only one hit a week from the Warcrack pipe. There is always that next problem to solve. You tell yourself, "I'll spend just an hour leveling up." Three hours later you wonder where the night went.

If I were a major TV network, stuff like this would have me shaking in my boots. The game is social, less expensive than cable TV, and much more interactive. It is still very early in the evolution of online games, but I think this stuff is gonna be huge (if it isn't already.) By next year, XBox 360 and Playstation 3 will be widely available and both will feature social networking features. I think the way we entertain ourselves is in for a big shift.