With the Ubuntu 14.04 Linux distribution confirming that Canonical are supporting tablets and smartphones, the Ubuntu Linux distribution will become a truly mobile operating system although the Unity desktop interface must go, it is a horrid desktop experience to use, there is no fast window switching and it is not configurable at all. I assume that Canonical will just wait for someone else to do the kernel work for them, as the power management issues need to be sorted out. I have a serious issue with Ubuntu 12.04, I suspend the machine and when it comes back, it asks for my password, but it will not accept my password, so I need to disable the password after suspend to disk is resumed. But there should be a solution to that problem I hope. Otherwise the Ubuntu 12.04 distribution is pretty good, the Gnome-fallback desktop is the best one at the moment, it gives you a nice Gnome 2 lookalike desktop and runs very fast indeed. Sure the Gnome Shell interface can be made to look like the older Gnome, but the Gnome-fallback interface is much faster, and it plays well with SDL games, whilst the Gnome Shell desktop does not. Otherwise it is an incredible distribution.
Fedora 16 ships with a version of Wine that is broken, Directx 10 would not install and I could not get Doom Builder 1.68 to install even, although it worked perfectly on older versions of Wine going way back. I will have to avoid upgrading to the newer release of Wine that has the bug and see if they can fix it. If you can not install Directx in Wine how are you going to get any Windows games running? But Fedora 16 is too buggy to use, there have been many users complaining, about problems with the distribution, I had a bug that stopped the distribution from booting, it would load up until the DBUS components where trying to load and then it would stop and nothing I tried would get it to load. I switched to Ubuntu out of indignation at the poor quality of that distribution and how the heck do bugs like that get into a supposedly good quality operating system? The year of Linux on the desktop seems to be far away in terms of the operating system replacing Windows everywhere. Still, with all the Malware around for Windows, running Linux in 2012 sounds like a good choice indeed.
Ubuntu 12.04 is a nice release. I have installed all updates and I have Firefox 10, which seems to have better compatibility with the extensions you may install from Mozilla. A Linux powered Smart phone sounds like it would be fun to have, since Canonical are targeting ARM platforms like tablet computers, I hope they keep a nice desktop experience for the PC users as well. Not everyone will want to use Linux on a Ipad styled device, and I wonder how you would play FreeDoom on one. Still they are the future, there are people that consider the PC and the laptop computer to be dead and they prefer the Ipad. Fair enough I guess, they are a nice PC alternative, but I would hate it if a tablet was the only choice in the future. Still, I really enjoy using Ubuntu and I hope that this Linux distribution will keep on going into the future. We need a free and open operating system like Linux, if the world only had Windows, it would be a different place indeed. And we would have no alternative to the Windows operating system at all. When Mark Shuttleworth first pitched the idea of Ubuntu, the other person wanted to get up and walk out of the room.
Thankfully, they stuck with it and now we have a free operating system distribution that anyone can get access to and install to replace Microsoft Windows. Ubuntu is the easiest distribution to install, there are alternative distributions such as Arch Linux, which you install as a base setup with not even a Xorg installation and then you install the other packages off the Internet to build up a fast and stable Linux distribution of your very own. Unless you want to use Linux from scratch and build every Linux program from the vanilla source code, this would be a good way to go. The Debian Stable distribution is another good choice, but if you stick with packages from the stable branch then your hardware might not be supported, although that is a good reason to install Ubuntu, the hardware support is very good and there are many ways of finding support for any problems you may meet during the installation process or later during every day use. A lot easier than the early days of the Linux operating system, but you could always use mailing lists to find help, that is what the Internet is for.
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