Well, it is official: I moved to Ubuntu Linux. Of course, this isn’t my first time using GNU/Linux. I’ve used GNU/Linux extensively since about 1998 or so, either as my desktop environment or on servers around the house. In fact, I wrote my doctoral dissertation in LyX on a cheapo-PC running gentoo, and used that machine for a while, until I had a ‘real job,’ at which point I bought a dual-processor G4 powermac. I was using that mac up until recently, when I got fed up with it.

I got fed up because the machine was getting slow, despite adding more memory and HD space. I got fed up because of the lack of a passable virtual desktop system (yeah, I tried all of the different ones). I got fed up because using fink or darwinports was only a barely passable way of having the software that I was used to on my machine. And so I ran over to NewEgg, grabbed the parts, and built myself a nice AMD64 PC for $600, which, speed-wise, kicks the shit out of my mac. Of course, I wouldn’t think of adulterating the machine with Windows, so I installed ubuntu’s 64-bit dapper drake on it, and I’ve been happier than the proverbial porcine in the muck since.

Ubuntu is in all honesty the best GNU/Linux distribution I’ve used. And when you throw in the excellent Automatix package for installing things like Flash and DVD codecs, you can have a rockin’ system in no time. I can say this: in the 4 years since I’ve used GNU/Linux full-time as my desktop environment, things have improved dramatically. The installation on the machine that I built took about 20 minutes, and everything worked (though, admittedly, I did build the machine for compatibility).

In sum, though I still have to use my mac for podcasting because there are no linux drivers for my firewire recording interface (MOTU 896HD), the move to GNU/Linux has done a lot of good for me. I find it to be the most productive environment for getting work done, and the system responsiveness is remarkable. The other upside to moving to Linux is that I agree with the politics of openness: Linux does not lock you into proprietary formats, encrypted with DRM, and smothered in corporate control. You have full control over your data, and many of the formats are completely open. This is important if, like me, you plan on accessing what you’re producing many years down the road (and as a writer and academic, this is doubly important).