Ubuntu and Digital Freedom: Part I Posted by Susie

A couple weeks ago, I was having trouble with my computer. Programs were crashing left and right, I was annoyed. Needless to say, I started thinking about alternatives. Being the geek that I am, I turned to Linux for an answer. I decided to try Ubuntu, a nice distribution for new linux users.

The install was a breeze, and quick! Changing settings to make the computer generally usable was pretty easy, the main snag being mp3s and DVDs. If I had never used a computer before, or if mine had been totally demolished (along with all my back-ups), it would have been a great computer. But, after using it for a day, I had to start working again. I'm a graphic artist (right now) and I mainly use Photoshop for my editing. Well, Photoshop doesn't run in linux. Neither does Flash or MIC or any of the other programs that are made for Windows.

We tried everything we could think of to get around this difficulty. We tried WINE, an application that tricks programs into thinking they are on a Windows machine by supplying them with library files. But it was glitchy and constantly crashed when certain actions occurred, like resizing the Layer palette. Next we tried a real emulator. But it ran excruciatingly slow (I could cook breakfast in the time it took to save one photoshop file). I also tried Gimp, the linux image editing tool. It was hard to work with since I didn't know my way around, and it also crashed while editing files.

Deadlines started creeping up on me, and I had no way of finishing the projects. So I gave in and installed windows on the other half of my hard drive.

Oh, and there was no way to play my .s3m files . . .

See part Two for the rest of the story - and why Linux is actually cool.