I have an older Dell Inspiron 6000 that I recently decided to go true-blue dual boot with Ubuntu v8.04 and Windows XP Professional SP3.

For those interested, the system specs on my laptop is that is has a 15-inch LCD screen with a native 1680×1050 resolution monitor, 60GB hard drive, 1GB RAM and a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron M processor.

The reason I decided to install 8.04 now instead of waiting for 8.10 is that I specifically want to see how easy (or not easy) the upgrade process will be from an older Ubuntu to a newer one – which I’ll find out when the 8.10 OS is released 10 days from now.

I put "from a blogger’s perspective" on the title of this article to indicate what I use a computer for. I do a ton of writing and also produce audio and video content.

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Per the installation of the Ubuntu OS I decided to go 50/50 with the hard drive space. I gave Windows 30GB and Ubuntu 30GB. Ubuntu’s partitioner made the adjustments without any complaint.

I was able to get WPA2 Wireless G connectivity to work without a hitch and ran the updater which downloaded 156 updates. It took a while to grab all this stuff over wireless (would have been faster if wired) but it all downloaded and applied without issue.

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Per the actual blogging stuff:

The first thing I found myself dealing with is that I can’t use Windows Live Writer in Ubuntu (and no it will not work in WINE). Those that blog quite a bit such as I do understand that WLW is an absolute requirement to have if you write a lot on web sites.

As I’ve said before, even the Mac fans love WLW.

In addition, Ubuntu fans want it also.

The software is just that good.

PCMech is WordPress powered. While it’s true you can do all your blogging from within WP, once you use WLW you just can’t go back. The only time you use WP is if you absolutely have to and not by choice once you’ve used WLW.

Per the user experience:

Using Ubuntu literally feels like you’ve got a brand new computer all over again. The interface is fresh, inviting and just looks awesome.

The function follows form as well. It’s easy to find stuff in the OS, easy to configure and you can get working quickly without messing around with settings – and you don’t have to do anything in the Terminal either (unless you want to).

Per the video editing experience:

With screencasting you’ve got software called recordMyDesktop which does the job, and when you throw the GUI front-end it’s easy enough to use. In addition this software will also record audio as well.

The only problem is not the video part but the audio. You basically have zero audio editing capability and have to "pick apart" the recorded file afterwards, bring the audio into Audacity, perform your edits (usually noise/hiss reduction), then "piece back" the video and audio together and cross your fingers that it synchronizes properly.

Camtasia this is definitely not (which has all that stuff built-in).

With regular full video editing, there really isn’t that much at your disposal for doing the job. Yes, there are basic editors and other software titles for crafting DVD menus and such, but the way in which it’s done is just too separated.

I’ll put it to you this way: You want to record a video off your webcam, do some quick editing, save the file and manually post to YouTube later. Windows Movie Maker or iMovie does all that easily from a single application. Ubuntu has no single (keyword there) application that will do all that – and it’s desperately needed.

Yes, I know there’s Cheese – and it’s good – but not as good as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie.

Per "regular" document editing:

Ubuntu has OpenOffice. It works awesome and always has. The new OO 3 can read/write MS Office 2007 files too so you’re all set in that department.

OO will also take care of all of your PDF publishing needs as well.

For those wondering about PDF readers, just search for PDF in Add/Remove; there are plenty to choose from.

Per image editing:

Ubuntu has GIMP. GIMP is awesome.

You can pretty much do anything Photoshop can in GIMP. It is a full-blown pro image editor that has the oh-so nice price tag of $0.00.

GIMP’s problem – if you could call it that – is the same it’s always been. The interface isn’t friendly. Those who use GIMP for the first time get completely confused at the multi-window environment, the "crunched" set of icons to do functions and have no idea what "Script-Fu" means or what it does.

Personally speaking, I can use GIMP for simple edits, crops, resizes, PNG transparencies and so on and that’s basically all I need it for.

To note: Linux is the only one that has an image editor as powerful as GIMP for free. Windows and Mac don’t have anything that comes close without a price tag on it – and a hefty one at that.

Per instant messaging:

Whether you go with Pidgin, Kopete, aMSN or otherwise, the IM spectrum is covered in Ubuntu.

I do have friends on IM that I communicate with and I’ve never had a problem with IM on Linux ever since Gaim (what Pidgin used to be called).

Pidgin is still the best IM client for Linux. I would give the top spot to aMSN but unfortunately it only does MSN/Windows Live protocol to the best of my knowledge.

Per photo editing:

Picasa for Linux. Hate GIMP? Use this. Very easy. ‘Nuff said.

Per overall speed/performance:

There are some things XP does faster and some things Ubuntu does faster.

When you use Firefox v3.0.3, XP is faster. I have the exact same set of plugins in XP for Firefox as I do for Ubuntu. Both launch at the same speed, but when you encounter "heavy" content on a web site (big graphics, video, Flash content, etc.), it chops/stutters on Ubuntu when you scroll. However with v8.10 there’s supposed to be some fixes to take care of that – particularly with Flash.

App switching is faster on Ubuntu even with Compiz features enabled. When you Alt-Tab between apps you almost never see a screen redraw on Ubuntu whereas on XP you will from time to time.

Boot-up is faster with XP, but shutdown is faster with Ubuntu.

Hibernation is much faster with XP both going in and coming out. I use the hibernation feature on my laptop a lot and Ubuntu is a bit slow on the draw in that department. It works fine but it is slower. This may also be something addressed with v8.10 when I get around to using it once released.

With Ubuntu your hard drive "thinks" a lot less. Anyone who uses XP is very familiar with the hard drive "grinding" for absolutely no reason with the OS just sitting there doing nothing. What is XP doing? No one knows, but it’s doing something. Ubuntu doesn’t do this. Ever.

Wireless connection time is the same between Ubuntu and XP.

Ubuntu has screen zooms ("Super" key, trackpad-up). XP has no such feature. For screencasts and showing people from a distance what you’re doing on-screen, this is extremely handy to have.

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In the end, the only reason I don’t switch to Ubuntu as my primary OS is due to lack of apps I need to do what I do specifically.

But I’ll say that Ubuntu is so.. so.. close to being my primary. There are basically just a (very) small handful of apps I use that keep me on the Windows side.

I like Ubuntu enough to where I dual-boot my laptop with it. Every time I load the OS I totally dig the interface. Very clean, very cool, very functional. XP looks very dated compared to the Ubuntu user experience with GNOME.

It’s true that I could run Vista on this laptop to get a fresh/updated Windows but it would crawl at molasses speed given the specs of my Inspiron. Yeah, I could bump up to 2GB RAM but I still only have a 1.5GHz Celeron M – which is barely over the minimum requirements for the Vista OS – so Vista is a no-go due to that limitation.

Ubuntu happily churns along with the older processor and 1GB of RAM, so unless I have some major hardware failure with the Inspiron I’ll just go right on using it dual-boot style.

And when (yes, when – not if) the time comes that XP gets so old that it’s unusable in modern computing, I can just format the drive and run Ubuntu full time on it.

Believe me when I say it’s nice knowing that.

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