Tuesday 30 November 2010

Ubuntu, here I come...

For many many years, I've promised myself I would learn a flavour of Linux. After suffering some more Windows pain yesterday, a few contacts suggested Ubuntu, which has been on my short-list for a while.

I have my old laptop which has been a bit of a trusty work-horse (except for the frequent blue-screens), so it's now dual-booting into Ubuntu 10.10 - in fact I'm writing this post via Ubuntu!

First impressions - wow. While I can see the learning curve will be a little steep at times, it seems that releases such as Ubuntu have reached a level of maturity that will hopefully see a larger uptake from professionals around the world - particularly (I suspect) from University students whose brain will be like a sponge.

I may liken it a little to all the benefits of the simplicity of an iPhone, with the flexibility of an Android - let's hope that stays true.

I'm in the process of attempting to install Oracle 11gR2 with the following instructions (thanks Pythian). I've come across my first of many hurdles...

In the meantime, I'm downloading the Debian package for OracleXE, see if that's a little easier for my baby teeth to bite into.

I've registered for the Ubuntu forums, and will always welcome further advice.

ScottWe

1 comment:

oraclenerd said...

Scott,

Welcome to the club. I got into Ubuntu for similar reasons, I had always tried but could never find a flavor (which flavor?) that I could actually install.

I've been on Ubuntu for almost 2 years now. I use VirtualBox for my "work Windows" and I've never been happier. The biggest benefit that I found, was that many of those resources that Windows hogged were no longer there; I went from 1 GB RAM being used OOTB, to under 200 MB with 9.04 Ubuntu.

I try to be diligent in tagging my posts, but if you're interested, you can read a few here.