Day one went well but now the real work starts, initially I did some work on OpenOffice, using both Writer and Spreadsheet. I've used both programs under Windows, however under Linux they do seem to fit better and are a bit quicker. This may of course simply be as a result of the changes in the new version 2.2. Both successfully open Microsoft Office documents with no hassle, reflecting the originals accurately. However I did have one minor problem with Spreadsheet. I copied and pasted a hyperlink from Firefox into a cell, however I couldn't find any easy way of removing the hyperlink and leaving the text. In Excel I believe that you can simply right-click and select 'remove link'. However with OO this didn't appear to be possible, I checked all of the right-click options and the Cell formatting dialog to no avail. In the end I used the paste-special command to achieve the goal. Other than this minor problem OO seems to be an excellent alternative to Office for basic word processing and spreadsheet work. I'll keep you all updated on how things go on this front.
I have decided to continue to run Windows for the time being whilst I migrate. As you know I'm dual-booting with WinXP. In addition to this, I though that I would like to run Windows in some sort of visualization solution, so I can use it without leaving Ubuntu. I've used VMWare and VirtualPC under Windows before so I decided to use VMWare. Unfortunately I couldn't get VMWare server running, so I decided to take another tack and use VirtualBox which was available for install via Automatix. After playing with it for a few hours I am really stoked, the performance seems to me far faster than that of either VMWare or VirtualPC running on the same machine, albeit under Windows. I've got Windows up and running and working just great.
Whilst I'm at it I think it may be useful to share some of my current issues with Ubuntu - all of which are fairly minor.
Wireless & Hibernate - the hibernate feature in Feisty seems to work very well on my Dell Dimension 5100. However on two of the four occasions that I have restored from hibernate mode the wireless connection hasn't come back up correctly. On one occasion a reboot sorted it, on the other reconnecting using the icon in the system tray and re-entering the connection details fixed it. I'm not sure whether this is a bug or some sort of configuration issue, at best the wireless works intermittently when returning from hibernation. A look on Launchpad reveals that there are at least two bugs relating to this issue.
White line on Restoring - on restoring from hibernation the Ubuntu screen (with the logo) shows a 2cm thick white line across the middle of the screen. I'm not worried by it, although it isn't attractive and looks out of place!
Desktop effects - for some reason I am unable to enable desktop effects. Selecting "Enable Desktop Effects" results in an error "Desktop effects could not be be enabled" (note the typo!). Again I'm not too worried about this issue at this point, since I know that Compiz and Beryl are still emerging.
Monitor blanking on Start - on either starting or restoring from hibernate there is a few seconds before the login screen shows where the monitor goes blank and shows the message "input not supported". After the message the login screen appears at the correct resolution. I've no idea what is causing this and I'll take a look at it sometime.
These four issues all seem relatively minor, but overall my impressions of Ubuntu are excellent. It seems perhaps on balance to be a little quicker than Windows, with VirtualBox being the star - it really flies. I will post more tomorrow on Day 3.
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