Comfortable with Ubuntu like Windows XP

I had mentioned in my post in May titled "upgraded-to-jaunty-jackalope" that my webcam did not work. I was using third party driver ov51x.jpeg for my webcam. After up-gradation, this driver did not work properly. The dedicated site of this driver recommended using gspca driver. I did install this through Synaptic Package Manager. It solved my problem. My Ubuntu is carrying out 100% production jobs for me. In fact, Gnucash in Ubuntu works better for me than in Windows XP. I am using Windows XP and Ubuntu alternatively for my productive works. There are still a few applications like Shockwave player that do not work in Ubuntu. There is a work around for this by using Wine. I am not really bothered about this now. Google Chrome Browser, though a developer version, is working fine. My default browser is Google Chrome.

I mentioned in my last blog that I am trying Fedora 11 as a virtual machine in Ubuntu. GuestAdditions was not easy. I had to dig a lot of sites and tried many suggestions and finally installed GuestAdditions. I was able to get full screen views. I was able to add usb devices too. Share folder worked. However, the sound was scratchy. I tried many a trick to solve. I was unsuccessful. The OS worked work very slowly. Though virtual machines are slow in general, it was dead slow. Updates in Fedora 11 VM were dead slow that gave me a lot of irritation. I tried reinstalling many times, the results were same. I quit using Fedora 11 as a virtual machine. I will try Fedora again only when I get a spare machine for full installation.

All variants of Ubuntu work well as virtual machines in VirtualBox. It is due to good integration of gnome with VirtualBox. I tried other distros also like OpenSuSe. They did not work like Ubuntu in VirtualBox. Now, I am testing beta version of Ubuntu 9.10. This is slated to be released end of this month. Initial impressions are good. Starting is faster though it is working as a virtual machine. I feel this version will make me lean more towards Ubuntu than XP. I find Ubuntu is less and less buggy. I find it is more stable. System recovery, if at all needed, is simple. Its repositories have more free softwares that meet all needs of either personal or business use. As more and more applications are converting to web-based ones and cloud computing is on the rise, OS may be losing its importance. Will Chrome OS is the future? Will it replace Ubuntu? Time only will answer.