I’m falling out of love with Ubuntu, which is strange because it’s as good as it’s ever been. And no, this isn’t one of those blogs. I’m not going to proclaim that it’s now too mainstream, or soulless or any other such tosh. It’s not. In fact, it’s very brilliant in many of the ways that matter, just not the one that matters to me. It’s simply not the Ubuntu I’d hoped it would become.

At the root of this statement is Unity. I’ve read all sorts of complaints about the new front-end, and to my mind they veer from wildly silly to outright daft. Quite frankly if you can’t suss out a new scrollbar, then evolution’s wasted on you.

My problem isn’t what Unity is, but what it represents. It’s a flashing neon sign pointing in the direction that Canonical’s taking Ubuntu – which would be very exciting, except that I’ve already been there. Twice. I currently use four machines on a regular basis. My work PC running Windows XP, my gaming laptop running Windows 7, my iMac running Mac OS X and my travel laptop running the various shades of Ubuntu.

My hope for Ubuntu was a bold new design built on reckless innovation. I wanted something totally different to current offerings — something fresh and new, something visionary

As somebody who happily straddles the Microsoft/Apple divide, I can say with confidence that I have absolutely no idea why anybody cares which of these last two they use. In terms of features they’re comparable; ideologically they’re inseparable.

Ubuntu stood apart: not just in terms of execution, but also in potential. When Mark Shuttleworth declared that Ubuntu would one day surpass Apple’s design by “doing something different and doing it very, very well,” I took him at his word – and why not? Ubuntu is built on the backs of thousands of passionate, talented people bubbling over with clever ideas. These are people dissatisfied with the Windows and Mac OS X treadmill, who are looking for something different, and are capable of creating it.

Design visionaries?

The day Shuttleworth told us he was “hiring designers, user experience champions and interaction design visionaries” was the day Ubuntu became a permanent fixture on my laptop, because I wanted to see what they came up with the very moment they came up with it. This was an experiment I wanted to be a part of.

And they came up with a dock. Not even a pretty dock. Not even a dock that was better than the one on Windows 7 and Mac OS X. Really, can anybody tell me which parts of Unity are the work of “design visionaries”?

Again, the caveat must be hollered because otherwise it’ll be ignored. I’m not saying Unity is bad, nor am I saying it’s not a step forward for Ubuntu. The old GNOME desktop couldn’t have been any uglier if the default wallpaper was Gary Neville’s gurning Manc face (Liverpool fan, sorry). It does a lot right — most notably the context sensitive menu bar and notification applets — but by taking its design cues from its two better known siblings it inevitably opens itself to unfavorable comparison.

My hope for Ubuntu was a bold new design built on reckless innovation. I wanted something totally different to current offerings — something fresh and new, something visionary. I love Scrivener because it took a category of software I thought I knew and showed me that I really didn’t. Firefox pulled the same trick with browsers, as did Chrome. If Ubuntu doesn’t exist to do the same with the OS, then why on earth does it exist?

Build your own OS

What really puzzles me is that Canonical isn’t building on Ubuntu’s best feature: the ability to basically create your own OS. My copy of Ubuntu 10.10 was personalised with the AWN dock and Gnome Do, while the main menu bar was shrunken to one pixel, so that it was all but invisible.

I ran Scrivener and Office 2007 through Wine, and immediately installed Chrome, Dropbox, Calibre and Tor. It was an absolute arse to set up, and tended to break whenever the weather was inclement or I wore the colour red, but it suited the way I worked.

I always hoped that Canonical would take this idea – this sense of freedom – and make it central to Ubuntu

In my heart of hearts, I always hoped that Canonical would take this idea – this sense of freedom – and make it central to Ubuntu. Imagine being able to visit the Canonical website and tailor your own OS: so the first screen would ask whether you used your machine for web browsing or photo and video editing, or office work perhaps, with a separate option to discover what kind of machine you used. This information would be used to decide what software should be automatically installed.

The next screen would then offer a design screen with a visual interface allowing you select the elements that would appear on the desktop. So there’d be a picture of a dock with an explanation, or a Gnome Do-type text interface, or a menu bar, or something utterly radical that Canonical’s big development brains had thought up, and you’d be able to tick a little box specifying which of these you wanted. After that, you’d just click a button and your brand new, personalised desktop would be downloaded direct to your machine – and just work.

This is something Ubuntu with its wealth of free software is perfectly equipped to do, and something Windows and Mac OS X will never, ever offer. And this doesn’t have to be complicated. Throw in a few pictures and even my dad would get it. It’s one idea, possibly unworkable, but at least it’s different. It would mark out Ubuntu as distinct, interesting — not merely treading old ground.

Basically, what I want from Ubuntu is whatever Microsoft and Apple will never give me. I want a totally unique experience that’s true to the promises Mark Shuttleworth made.

Ubuntu could change everything; could still become the OS I always hoped it would grow into. But it can’t do that with Unity, and not because it’s too bold a reinvention, but because it isn’t bold enough.

On the edge of a narrow bench sat a rattly-looking development unit – the kind of device phone and chip makers use to test hardware before squeezing it into the shiny, sleek chassis I’ve seen so many times over the past three days. But that’s not the interesting part: ARM was using it to demonstrate the benefits of multicore mobile processors, the sort so many of the new devices this year are set to employ.

The Texas Intruments OMAP 4 chip inside it is based on ARM’s Cortex-A9 architecture and in the video below it’s shown running Android 2.3 and Ubunutu 10.04 simultaneously.

That’s interesting from a technical point of view, you might think, but a little gimmicky right? Well, it’s closer to reality than you might think. The Motorola Atrix smartphone, launched to great fanfare at CES in January, boasts a very similar feature. Drop this in the rear of its ‘laptop’ dock and control switches to the larger screen displaying a desktop environment, allowing you to use the power of the phone just like a notebook. Motorola also has a desktop dock for the Atrix which allows you to connect it to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

ARM also showed us a quick demonstration of how much more power the latest dual-core processors offer over their single-core counterparts. This time two bare boards, each sporting identical Nvidia Tegra 2 chips (again based on ARM’s Cortex-A9 architecture), with one running at full power and the other with one of its cores disabled, are seen rendering a sequence of locally cached web pages.

The dual-core processor streaks ahead, understandably, but it’s the margin of difference that’s the real eye-opener. Check out the video below – it’s quite revealing.

ARM envisages a time when the only computer you’ll ever need is your smartphone and with Nvidia announcing it will be putting quad-core mobile processors into tablets by autumn and smartphones by Christmas, that prospect looks to be approaching faster than anyone expected.

Yesterday, something remarkable happened. Our entire editorial team migrated to Ubuntu overnight and – by and large – it was business as usual. The website ran as normal, magazine copy was still written, we (just about) fulfilled our day jobs. (You can see how PC Pro’s Ubuntu day unfolded here.)

Several of the many excellent comments on yesterday’s live blog suggested our day-long experiment wasn’t a fair test; that no IT manager worth his space in the car park would migrate an entire office to a new operating system with almost no preparation or staff training. They were right. Yet what our somewhat reckless experiment revealed is that Ubuntu could cope. On a rag-bag selection of laptops and desktops, installed as a Windows “app”, a dual-boot or within a virtual machine, Ubuntu worked (sometimes at the second or third attempt) every time.

What our test also revealed is that the underlying operating system is becoming less and less relevant: what really matters are the applications. So much of our working lives are now spent in the web browser – updating the web CMS, scouring websites – that it really doesn’t matter if it’s Windows or Ubuntu propping the browser up. The Chrome and Firefox sync tools are so well implemented that you’re up and running with familiar bookmarks, extensions, search history and passwords within minutes.

What our somewhat reckless experiment revealed is that Ubuntu could cope

The single biggest complaint was the lack of viable alternative to Outlook. The built-in Evolution was too unreliable, and Thunderbird refused to play ball with our Exchange server. Tim even attempted to install Outlook 2010 using WINE, but hit a brick wall (earlier versions apparently work better). Could we work long-term without a decent way to search our bulging inboxes or to schedule a team meeting? No. But solutions exist if we did plot a permanent switch to Ubuntu, such as running Exchange email and calendars via Google Apps.

So are we going to take the plunge, wipe Windows, and make PC Pro an Ubuntu shop from now on? No. For starters, it would be irresponsible for us not to run on the operating system used by the vast majority of our readers, and so much of our day jobs involve testing Windows-only software and hardware that it simply wouldn’t be practical.

But are the team breathing a sigh of relief and wiping their Ubuntu installations? Or are they tempted to keep experiment with Linux in their professional and personal lives? I’ll let them answer for themselves.

Tim Danton, editor, writes:

My day on Ubuntu can be summarised in three words: liberating, fascinating, frustrating. Liberating because it was actually enjoyable to be forced to use a different OS than Windows. Several weeks ago I downloaded 10.04 and burned the CD, but hit a problem (I can’t now remember what) when I tried to install it on a home system. Yesterday’s experience will make me try again with a little more determination!

And it was fascinating to see a different way of doing things; you realise the gaps in your knowledge, between being a computing expert and a Windows expert. I wouldn’t describe myself as either, but yesterday definitely filled in a few gaps.

Ultimately, though, it was frustrating. I generally get through all my email in a day, dealing with it then deleting it or filing it away. Because Evolution proved so slow as to be unusable, and Outlook Web Access on Firefox or Chrome so aggravating, there are 50 extra emails sitting in my inbox. When Outlook popped up on my screen this morning, I gave a very satisfied sigh.

Darien Graham-Smith, technical editor, writes:

I already use the netbook edition of Ubuntu at home, and I’ve been using Unix-type systems on and off since my university days – so I was expecting to breeze through the experiment. But even if you’re au fait with the basics, switching from Windows or OS X to a fresh Ubuntu Desktop installation is a disorientating experience.

The problem isn’t the OS so much as the applications. The lack of familiar office and productivity software doesn’t feel like a big problem on a netbook, but on a full-fat desktop you naturally want to make full use of your computer’s potential, and it’s painful to have to abandon industry standard applications in favour of more, shall we say, homely alternatives – if indeed such alternatives even exist. I love the responsiveness and stability of Ubuntu, and I’ll definitely be keeping it as my netbook OS; but if it’s to become a real general-purpose alternative it needs more support from outside of Canonical.

David Bayon, deputy reviews editor, writes:

The core Ubuntu experience was really rather refreshing. The interface is so clean and the workspaces so intuitive, and I love that the Software Centre gathers useful applications to pick and choose from – with no messy installations either. For a home environment, where a lot of what I do is browser-based, Ubuntu can certainly do the job, and I have every intention of putting it on my home laptop. I’ll dual-boot at first, but we’ll see how it goes.

Alas, work wasn’t quite so rosy, with one big barrier: email. Evolution proved sluggish and unreliable, and lacks all of the surrounding features that I’ve come to rely upon so desperately. Outlook is my email client, calendar, to do list, contact book and Twitter feed integrator, and – as I don’t delete things – an indexed directory of everyone I’ve ever had dealings with at PC Pro. I simply have too much invested to do without it. I also had big problems with the ATI graphics drivers when I tried to move Ubuntu to my work PC, meaning I couldn’t get my two monitors working properly.

Is it simpler to setup than Windows? I don’t think I could hand a clean install to my parents and expect them to get the kinks ironed out, put it that way, but I think they’d get used to the environment very quickly. And issues aside – or perhaps because of them – Ubuntu restores something that the ranks of sealed boxes in PC World are rapidly killing off: a genuine sense of exploration. And that’s priceless. Yet Ubuntu is free.

Jonathan Bray, reviews editor, writes:

Ubuntu day was a rollercoaster ride for me: up on top of the world in the morning, down by lunchtime, feeling sick by the end of the day. For the most part, I’m perfectly happy using it – at home it’s installed on a couple of laptops, the family has no problems with using either – but when it came to work everything fell apart.

I never managed to get the Evolution email client to play nicely with the office Exchange server, severely hampering productivity. Video playback is poorly supported – I had to boot back into Windows 7 to view footage from a camcorder I was testing. I managed to get it playing smoothly via MPlayer and the command line, but it never looked right.

So am I more or less likely to use it as a result of our experiment yesterday? At work, definitely not – I felt a joyful jolt in my chest this morning when that Windows symbol first appeared on my screen, not something I thought I’d ever admit to feeling. But at home, I’m going to continue experimenting. It’s quick, usable and nippy. I think, in time, I could even be persuaded to consider letting my dad loose on it.

Mike Jennings, senior staff writer, writes:

One day with Ubuntu taught me more than I’d ever known about the most popular open-source OS around today. It’s far more user-friendly than I’d ever given it credit for: the initial install was easier and quicker than Windows 7 and, once that’d finished, I found it incredibly easy to get going thanks to Chrome’s bookmark syncing, the range of pre-installed software and immediate internet connection.

Ubuntu certainly has its idiosyncracies, though. Every change I wanted to make to my PC was heralded by a little box that asked for authentication, and it sometimes wouldn’t disappear – and trying to activate the existing graphics driver meant my system wouldn’t boot. I wasted too much time  fiddling with drivers and the Terminal trying to get software to install, tutting at its strange UI quirks or simply rebooting my machine to see if an update had worked.

One thing that also struck me was the friendly, supportive community that rallied around the #ubuntupro hashtag. I was tweeting throughout the day, and every message was greeted with suggestions, tips, popular apps and more, with several problematic posts prompting three or four different solutions from knowledgable users. It’s by far the busiest day I’ve ever had on Twitter, and there was nary a negative message among the dozens I received.

It might be tricky for a novice, but Ubuntu is definitely getting better, which is why I’m considering installing Ubuntu’s lightweight laptop variant on my netbook, even if it won’t displace Windows on my work or home machines.

Every website story and review we write, every email we send, every picture we edit will be completed on a PC running the popular Linux OS. Click here for full details of the challenge.

We’ll be updating this blog throughout the day with our experiences – good and bad – of running our office on Ubuntu. You can also follow our updates on the PC Pro Twitter account, using the #ubuntupro hashtag.

The latest updates will appear at the top of the page:

6:30pm – Barry Collins writes: And that’s it folks. We’re calling an end to a fascinating day. Many thanks for all your comments and contributions on Twitter. Many thanks also to Jonathan Davies, the poor support guy parachuted in from Canonical to give us a hand. We’ll sleep on it, and come back tomorrow with a blog on the lessons we’ve learnt from our day of running PC Pro on Ubuntu.

6:01pm – Barry Collins writes: Microsoft (inadvertently, I should add) gatecrashed our Ubuntu party this afternoon, by coming into talk about the launch of Internet Explorer 9. I didn’t waver from our mission: Microsoft’s man bought his own laptop, and I watched him demo the new browser, while tapping notes into my Ubuntu laptop.

All was fine and dandy, until I’d just finished writing the IE9 launch story, when my browser suddenly started slowing to a crawl, and then suddenly the laptop crashed. Now I’m faced with a series of unintelligible error messages about a missing boot device every time I try and reboot Ubuntu.

So Microsoft comes in, and I’m forced back to Windows. There’s one for the conspiracy theorists…

5.49PM – Kevin Partner writes: So much more of my work is achieved these days using a browser (usually Chrome) that moving over to Ubuntu for most purposes has been easy today. For PHP programming, I’m using the excellent and free Komodo Edit (which I also use in Windows), TweetDeck works a charm, OpenOffice for word processing and spreadsheets and FileZilla for FTP.

I expected to have trouble setting up my Samsung CLP320N Colour Laser Printer over the Ethernet connection but it was actually easier than in Windows. Ubuntu is more responsive, boots up in 30 seconds and has the excellent Software Centre so it has a lot going for it for general purpose use. And it has the lovely swishy swashy window effect!

The stumbling blocks for me are image editing (The GIMP is idiosyncratic and idiotic) and the lack of a decent Flash development environment. However, I suspect I’ll find myself using Ubuntu for most work and switching to Windows only when necessary.

When push comes to shove, however, the fact remains that I could manage without Ubuntu but I couldn’t manage without the programs that only Windows supports.

5.46PM – Jon Honeyball writes: In the spirt of joining in the fun, I decided to install Ubuntu into a VMware Fusion virtual machine session running on my desktop MacPro. Installation is a breeze, and took a few minutes from ISO to running OS. All the drivers were there, and the only real thing I could criticise was the Zombie Purple background colour scheme.

However, I went to install the VMware Tools. This lets you resize the window on the fly, add in seamless mouse support and so forth. Normally you choose the menu item in the VMware Fusion app to do this, and it mounts a virtual CD-ROM drive containing the driver code and setup routine. With Ubuntu, I just got a .tar.gz file dumped on me. Opening this provided a SETUP program which did nothing.

Turns out that Ubuntu has the wrong sort of installer packages. Or VMware does. Or some other inane mind-numbingly boring excuse. Over in the AppStore, guided by Twitter friends, I found the open source VMware compatible installer which I ran. This installed fine, except at the end it didn’t tell me to reboot the machine. After an inspired moment of clarity, I rebooted the VM and everything came up just fine.

I could get to like this OS, colour scheme notwithstanding. But it’s hard to get excited about OSes by themselves. Sorry. And any glitch on basic setup, whomever is responsible, is simply not good enough in 2011.

5.10PM – Tim Danton writes: My biggest problem remains email. I’ve installed Wine and stuck my Office 2010 disc in (rather optimistically) but hit a brick wall saying it “requires that MSXML version 6.blah be installed on your computer”. Which, strangely enough, it isn’t.

I’ll be trying Outlook 2007 as a standalone install soon…

3.57PM – Mike Jennings writes: Ubuntu has several advantages over the likes of Windows, but two of the most important are its community and versatility. I’ve just seen a prime example of both: I tweeted using the #ubuntupro hashtag that my usual habit of pressing the Windows key to bring up the start menu didn’t work in Ubuntu and, within minutes, readers had flocked to my feed with potential solutions. @jgomo3, @jontheniceguy and @blazemore suggested Alt+f1, which brings up the application menu and Alt+F2, which unveils a search box, and @omahn sided with deputy reviews editor David Bayon and suggested downloading GNOME-Do, an app that allows you to quickly search for applications, files, bookmarks and more.

Linux legends @blazemore and @zeitan then stepped forward with a load of code to bang into the Terminal, before @benb3342 waded in with some more code to change the Windows key’s mapping. So that’s four solutions in as many minutes – I can’t argue with that!

3.51PM – Tim Danton writes: A couple of people wondered what graphics driver I was using and whether that might be causing the slideshow effect in the movie player. Turns out I was using the generic driver, but even the ATI/AMD “proprietary FGLRX graphics driver”, which is meant to offer better 2D and 3D acceleration, hasn’t improved things. In other news, now trying to install Outlook under Wine.

3.35PM – Darien Graham-Smith writes: As you’ll have seen from Barry’s photo below, I’ve installed Ubuntu on an iMac (just to be different). Rather than dual-booting, though, I’ve set it up in a Parallels Desktop virtual machine. Even though I’ve only been able to give it 1GB of RAM, everything seems to work well and very smoothly – a testament to both Ubuntu’s light footprint and Parallels’ impressively snappy virtualisation. Parallels even detected the OS version and automatically set up some nice features, including dynamic screen resolution (so I can have my Ubuntu desktop running in a resizable window).

Sadly, Parallel’s “Coherence” mode – which allows you to hide the guest desktop entirely and view applications on the host desktop as if they were running natively – only works with Windows. They tell me that a similar feature is available for Ubuntu in VMware Fusion, but Parallels happens to be the package I have here.

Since I’m doing hardware testing in the Labs today, I haven’t had much opportunity to put Ubuntu through its paces; but it’s good to know you can explore very effectively within the safety of a virtual machine. And of course, this approach isn’t limited to the Mac: see p152 of the new issue of PC Pro for a guide to setting up a virtual machine in Windows using the free VirtualBox host.

3.25PM – Mike Jennings writes: Not long after installing Tweetdeck, reader @davmor2 suggested that I try Gwibber, the social networking client that’s built in to Ubuntu – so that’s exactly what I’ve done. Like Tweetdeck, it works with several social networks, although Gwibber’s scope is far broader: as well as support for Twitter and Facebook, it’ll handle Digg, Google Buzz and Flickr accounts alongside less popular networks like Qaiku, StatusNet and FriendFeed.

Adding my Twitter and Facebook accounts was easy enough, and its interface is simply enough to decipher, too: messages appear in colour-coded bubbles, with your own updates on the left-hand side on the main window and updates from elsewhere slightly indented. I like the layout, too: people’s real names appear instead of their their handles, and different social networking accounts are displayed on the left-hand side of the window.

A few minutes with Gwibber also revealed that, when compared to something like Tweetdeck, it’s horrendously limited. Twitter can only update once every minute – an eternity for someone used to Tweetdeck’s real-time updating – and there’s no sign of multiple accounts, timed tweets or picture attachments, which are the kinds of features that I take for granted even in mobile apps these days.

It’s good to see that Ubuntu is included these kinds of apps natively, of course, but they’ll have to be a lot better than this if I’m going to switch from my usual software.

3.13PM – Tim Danton writes: As Barry mentions below, Jon has kind of sorted out my FLV playback problems. But not wholly. He installed a bunch of codecs from the “restricted library”, and that enabled me to view the FLV in Totem Movie Player rather than VLC. While I don’t get any of the horrible graphical glitches (see my 10.40am post) anymore, it’s still a slideshow and I still can’t check whether the video is all correct.

3:01PM – Barry Collins writes: Jonathan Davies (who we’ve been mistakenly calling ‘John’ on the blog all day, like a bunch of Del Boys addressing a foreign barman), is our Canonical tech support chap for the day.

Aside from being a thoroughly nice chap, Jon’s helped us with a variety of issues today, including Tim’s Flash video playback issue, how to use the command line to make HD video play smoothly on Jon Bray’s machine, and other minor issues.

He couldn’t solve Mike’s graphics card issues, nor coax my Vodafone broadband dongle into life – although we did pop a 3 broadband dongle into my laptop and it worked first time, which suggests the drivers for the ZTE K3570-Z stick may be wonky.

We ran out of problems for Jon to solve, so he’s popped back to Canonical HQ with our thanks.

2:56PM – Nicole Kobie writes: I’ve been using Ubuntu happily enough to do my work since this morning, but have run up a bit of an unexpected problem with screenshots. Using the “Take Screenshot” tool, I snapped the eBay homepage for a feature I’m putting online:

It took a picture of the screen, but inexplicably also captured a faint image of the screenshot tool window itself. Anyone have any suggestions for alternative screenshot tools?

2:52PM – Mike Jennings writes: After having a fight with the Terminal I’ve managed to get TweetDeck working, but my day with Ubuntu isn’t going as smoothly as I’d like. Evolution is so far behind Microsoft Outlook that its name seems ironic: my emails take eons to load, if they do at all, and I’m currently using webmail to communicate with my colleagues.

In the meantime, I’ve busied myself with installing Steam. That was easy: search for Wine in the Software Centre, click install – authenticate, obviously – and wait for it to do its business. Then download the Steam client and use Wine to install that. Easy enough, you might think, but I’ve just clicked on the Steam icon and been greeted with a message informing me that there’s no internet connection. Despite the fact that I’m using webmail and updating Twitter.

The friendly Canonical engineer has also been trying to solve my graphical woes. My ageing work desktop runs an AMD Radeon HD 4550, and every time I try to activate the existing driver the system reboots and greets me with a blank purple screen. The engineer stepped in, muttered something about “purging the system” and typed in a few odd-looking commands. My desktop then appeared but, when he tried to enable the graphical effects that numerous folk had told me were so impressive, the PC still wouldn’t play ball – and the driver still wasn’t listed as being activated. The engineer, John, has retreated for lunch, and I can’t say I blame him.

2:45PM – David Bayon writes: Thanks to @blazemore for suggesting I install Banshee. It’s not the prettiest of media players, but it sure packs a lot in.

Aside from basic music and video libraries, it’s great for podcasts and links directly to Amazon’s MP3 store and several radio hubs and guides. I already like it at least a hundred times more than I like iTunes, let’s put it that way. I have no idea if the Miro guide is a big thing, but come on Ubuntu people: just the one five-star rating? Where’s the PC Pro podcast love?

1:59PM – Barry Collins writes: One area that definitely lets Ubuntu down is its dual-screen support. Once you’ve downloaded the Nvidia graphics driver, Ubuntu can handle an external monitor for your laptop. But if, like me, you’re constantly yanking the monitor cable out to head off to another meeting with your laptop, Ubuntu fails to recognise the screen’s been detached and you end up with a weird double-desktop on your laptop. So far, the only way I’ve found to get around it is to reboot – it’s even stumped Canonical’s tech support chap.

It’s a good job Ubuntu doesn’t take long to reboot…

12:59PM – Mike Jennings writes: Things are looking up! I’ve continued along the open source theme by writing my Android App of the Week blog, and I’m now able to send email to my colleagues as well as wade through my 17,000-strong inbox.

Google Chrome’s superb syncing feature also means that I’ve got access to all of my bookmarks instantly, which is enormously helpful. My next goal is to get some of my other favourite apps running: Tweetdeck is a vital part of my working environment, and I might even install Steam to see what sort of gaming options are available for Ubuntu users.

12:35PM – David Bayon writes: I have to say, my instant favourite is undoubtedly the Software Centre. It’s like an app store made by people with brains who don’t find fart noises funny – and I’ll freely admit a good number of the obscure titles in there go right over my balding head. I’ve just been looking through the Science and Engineering category: star charts, protein visualisations, even cave surveying! I’m sure I could find these things online for Windows, but they’re right there for me, ready to go. I feel like there’s a little Ubuntu alien inside my laptop telling me to learn things and stop playing Solitaire – and that’s precisely what it makes me want to do. I’ve only skimmed through a couple of the categories so far, so throw your recommendations my way in the comments.

12.12PM – Tim Danton writes: Thanks to John, our friendly Canonical engineer, I can now view Flash on Chrome on my 64-bit installation of Ubuntu 10.10. I’d already downloaded the beta Flash 10.10 plugin from Adobe Labs, but couldn’t find where to put it. John created a new folder in the Mozilla Firefox Plugins directory and plonked the file in there. Chrome cleverly picked it up and now I can view our Flash videos in all their glory!

12:02PM – Barry Collins writes: So we’re coasting towards lunchtime, and despite migrating the entire office to an entirely new OS in a single morning – a task no IT manager in their right mind would undertake – it’s still pretty much business as usual. Yes, we’ve had teething problems (as you’ll see below) and John, our Canonical support guy, is currently working on solving Tim’s video issue as I type. But the website’s still up and running normally, the team can still pass copy to the production desk, everyone’s email is working, even if they do have to dip into Outlook webmail.

As nejode remarks on Comments below: would things have gone as smoothly if we attempted to migrate to a new version of Windows en masse. It’s certainly questionable…

11:39AM – Nicole Kobie writes: Our tech support from Canonical has arrived. His first challenge is sorting out Mike Jennings’ graphics card woes. We’ll see how it goes…

11:26AM – Mike Jennings writes: I was so close to writing something nice about Ubuntu. So very close. After my reinstall, everything seemed to be working. I’d received some handy graphics driver tips from Ubuntu veterans on Twitter, and I’d actually started doing some work inside the unfamiliar OS using OpenOffice.

I then attempted to install the 300MB of updates that I’d tried before. Figuring that it was the graphics driver rather than these more prosaic updates that were causing problems, I installed them – this time, a window actually appeared to tel me they were downloading – and rebooted.

Cue dozens of error messages, and another reboot – this time into the older version of the OS, where I can at least do some work.

11:02AM – Jonathan Bray writes: Just for the day I’ve installed the Linux version of TeamViewer 6, which allows me to get back into my main office PC for anything I can’t get running in Ubuntu today. It’s working beautifully so far.

On a side note, how good is Ubuntu’s keyboard layout selection? Bear with me: not only do you get a list of countries to pick from, but there’s also a visual layout to go with each entry, so you can check you’ve got exactly the right one. Much better than the Windows equivalent.

11.01AM – Mike Jennings writes: Ubuntu wants me to authenticate absolutely everything. Installing the latest version of the OS is easy: download Wubi, run the file, pick a password and wait for it to complete. It doesn’t take too long – about the same length of time as a fresh Windows 7 install – and while it’s loading I was able to watch a slideshow that demonstrates Ubuntu’s many talents.

Not that I’ve seen many of those talents yet. Updating graphics drivers, installing apps and downloading standard updates requires me to authenticate it every single time, even when I’m entering passwords seconds apart, and there’s no way to tell if the authentication has been successful; instead of disappearing, the box often just sits there, silently mocking my dependency on Windows.

Oh, and I’ve now reinstalled Ubuntu four times. It’s all the fault of the graphics driver. My modest work machine uses an AMD Radeon HD 4550, and a box informed me that activating the existing driver was only a click away. I authenticated, obviously, and it downloaded, before telling me to restart to complete the installation. Ubuntu then booted to a blank purple screen (a nice shade of purple, admittedly) and hung.

10:55AM – Barry Collins writes: Here’s something to give Steve Jobs and colleagues sleepless nights: Ubuntu running on a Mac, courtesy of Parallels Desktop.

(Image edited in the Ubuntu version of Google Picasa)

10:45AM – David Bayon writes: I’m up and running and all seems fairly straightforward, yet the single most irritating thing so far is also something Ubuntu is so praised for: security. Basically, I’ve had to enter my password at least ten times already this morning. I know that’s because I’m installing applications, and on a normal day this wouldn’t be the case, but it brings to mind the more logical approach taken by iTunes on my phone. There, once I’ve entered my password to authorise something, it remains authorised for the next few minutes, or until I lock the phone. That doesn’t seem to loosen security too much in my eyes. Can this be altered?

10.40AM – Tim Danton writes: This morning, I had one key job to do while travelling in on the train: to watch through some videos and make sure they were suitable for loading onto the website.

The first task was to load VLC onto my ThinkPad X100e before heading home last night, and it was an absolute pleasure: Ubuntu Software Centre is a brilliantly simple way to add software, far simpler and safer than downloading from a random site as you sometimes do in Windows.

Actually using VLC was less pleasant, as the screenshot below reveals:

While the video played fine when nothing was happening, as soon as someone started to move the whole screen was corrupted, making it impossible for me to check if everything was as it should be.

10:25AM – Jonathan Bray writes: After several weeks without a problem, the Ubuntu installation on the laptop I was intending to use for day  decided not to work this morning. So, like the sensible IT journalist I am, I decided to uninstall it in Windows (that’s the joy of Wubi), and reinstall again. Anyway, everything is back up and running again now. Oddly, though, when I attempted to install the drivers for the ATI graphics chip in the laptop again, like a small child refusing to finish dinner, Ubuntu stuck out its bottom lip, stamped its tiny open-source foot and refused to start. Fortunately, this machine has dual graphics, so a quick boot into Ubuntu’s equivalent of safe mode later and I’m back with the safety of Intel HD Graphics. Phew.

10:20AM – Barry Collins writes: Canonical have found out about our Ubuntu experiment, and are sending over a support engineer to help us through any tech difficulties. In the interests of full disclosure, we’ll reveal any problems the engineer solves and share them with you.

10:00AM – Barry Collins writes: We’re having all sorts of bother with IM clients. Nicole has Pidgin up and running, but her recipient isn’t seeing her messages. Meanwhile, neither Empathy or Emesene are playing ball for me. Emesene says “connection refused”. Does it not know who I am?

9:32AM – Nicole Kobie writes: Just a quick thought on Ubuntu’s looks: I’m not a big fan of the nasty purple theme, but I love the fonts. They’re much easier on the eyes than Windows’ default characters.

9:17AM – Nicole Kobie writes: It’s taken longer than expected for me to get write this first update, as I have no idea what any of my passwords are — the biggest pain hasn’t been using Ubuntu, but the fact that all of my settings and saved passwords are gone. Otherwise, this early morning news shift has gone surprisingly smoothly.

As I got settled in this morning, I realised I hadn’t figured out how I was going to communicate with Stewart Mitchell, our contributing editor who lives in deepest, darkest rural France (aside from writing news and trying to sort Ubuntu this morning, he’s also welcomed two new lambs). Normally, we use MSN Messenger. While pondering what I should download, I logged into my Hotmail account — only to have a cheerful “Good Morning” message pop up from Stewart. I’d forgotten Messenger is now built into Hotmail (or Live or whatever it’s called) so we didn’t need to download a thing. While we’ve now switched to GMail’s web-based messaging, does anyone have any suggestions for messaging clients we could try?

9AM – Barry Collins writes: So #ubuntupro day has got off to a bad start for me. I’ve grown used to logging in with my mobile broadband dongle and checking my email and the day’s news on the train to work. But I can’t get my dongle (a ZTE K3570-Z running on Vodafone) to work in Ubuntu 10.10. The software that comes on the stick doesn’t work, and while the Ubuntu Mobile Broadband wizard promisingly detects my modem and even allows me to pick my network and tariff (i.e. contract, prepay etc), I can’t make a connection. Anyone got any advice before I start trawling forums?

You can follow our live blog on running PC Pro on Ubuntu here

From 8am tomorrow, when the news team clock-in to bring you the early morning website news, to the time we switch off the last PC late in the evening, there won’t be a single blang of that Windows jingle heard here at PC Pro HQ.

Why? Over the past year we’ve been won over by the maturity, reliability and sheer quality of Ubuntu. Our recent Windows vs Ubuntu feature extolled the virtues of the Linux OS for business users, and the feature that goes on sale tomorrow reveals just how easy it is to install, configure and even run everyday Windows software on the cost-free OS.

So whenever PC Pro staff send an email tomorrow it shall come from the Evolution mail client or browser-based Outlook Web Access; whenever they write an article they shall do so in the bundled OpenOffice; whenever they edit a photo for the website, they shall crop and tweak in The Gimp rather than Photoshop or Paint.Net.

In other words, we shall be putting our business on the line for a day – and letting you know how we get on (warts and all) with a live blog throughout the day and regular updates on our Twitter account, using the #ubuntupro hashtag.

Now to explain that little disclaimer asterisk at the end of the first paragraph. While we’re going to make every effort to commit as fully as we can to our Ubuntu experiment, there are simply some business-critical applications that we can’t run on Linux (at least, not for a day’s experiment). Our production staff and designers use Macs to lay out the magazine with Adobe InDesign, for example, which can’t be transferred to Ubuntu. Short of sending them to the pub for the day, there’s nothing we can do but allow them to continue working as normal.

Likewise, our reviews team may need to test Windows applications, or devices with Windows drivers, which they obviously can’t do in Ubuntu (using the WINE emulator could potentially harm performance, which wouldn’t be a fair test). So they too shall be a granted an exception, strictly for reviewing purposes only. They will still be running Ubuntu on their desktops for writing copy, updating the website and all their other day-to-day duties.

So join us tomorrow on the blog to find out how we get on, and follow our progress on Twitter, using the #ubuntupro hashtag.

Well, now the PC maker’s had time to think the matter through, another page has appeared on the Dell website, condensing the whole Windows vs Ubuntu debate into about 100 words.

From Dell’s perspective the choice is clear. You should choose Windows if (and I swear I’m not paraphrasing here):

• You are already using WINDOWS programs (e.g. Microsoft Office, iTunes etc) and want to continue using them
• You are familiar with WINDOWS and do not want to learn new programs for email, word processing etc
• You are new to using computers

And you should plump for Ubuntu if:

• You do not plan to use Microsoft WINDOWS
• You are interested in open source programming

So, just to get this highly complex argument straight: you should use Windows if you’ve already used Windows or have never used Windows. And you should only think about Ubuntu if you’re an open-source programmer. Got it?

By the way, I’m writing a feature on Ubuntu 10.04 vs Windows 7 for the next issue of PC Pro, on sale 21 August. I’m not sure I can match the degree of sophistication in Dell’s carefully thought-out analysis, but I’ll give it a go…

(Thanks to PC Pro blog reader rob997 for the tip-off.)

The basic premise of Gnome Do is to reduce the entire desktop experience to natural-language text commands. So instead of opening the browser, heading to Gmail and typing your email, you just type “email mum” and your message into Gnome Do and away it goes.

Want to update your Twitter status? Install the Twitter plug in for Gnome do, and just type “Twitter” and your message into the application. Anybody’s who played with Ubiquity will be on familiar ground, but instead of being hedged in by the browser, Gnome Do’s tentacles stretch into all aspects of the desktop – allowing you to search, run apps and set preferences. In fact, pretty much anything you can do on the desktop is accessible through Gnome Do assuming somebody’s written a plug in, and given that it’s an open-source project they’re appearing at a rate of knots.

The really nice bit though is the dock. Previously, I’ve been an AWN user, which is brilliant but less stable than a three legged dog on a trampoline. Gnome Do’s dock is equally lovely but populates dynamically based on frequently used commands. So, typing in endless Twitter messages for example will add a Twitter icon to the dock. Nifty. A right click on the icons also brings up a menu of additional behaviours supported by Gnome Do.

Anyway, if you haven’t played with Gnome Do yet I really recommend giving it a whirl. Ubuntu users can get it through the Add/Remove command. Everybody else go take a look at the Gnome Do site.

His conclusion was an interesting one, principally because I haven’t heard it before. To paraphrase Tim, Linux will remain niche because open-source vendors don’t have the inclination to push it that extra mile, to front up for “the hassle-free” experience that users expect in their operating system. Not when they have a devoted, tech-savy user base already to hand.

It’s an intruiging point of view, but one predicated on a fallacy. If anything, Linux works the hardest for the hassle-free experience of any of the operating systems. Each alpha, beta and RC is passed through thousands of hands before it ever gets anywhere near an end user. Each line of code is mulled, every aspect of the operating system considered – by that I mean that unlike the revolutionary three years jumps of Windows or Apple’s OSes, Linux is in a constant state of evolution.

Its DNA is interchangeable. Open-source may be built on cooperation, but that doesn’t equate to a lack of competition. There are dozens of desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE being developed and tested constantly, and yet only one will ever make it into a final Linux release. But that doesn’t mean it will stay there. It’s the same with the bundled utilities, office packages, codecs, audo and display drivers, even the notification system – beneath the bonnet there’s a host of file systems and codec packs to choose from. A component only makes it into the final release if it’s “hassle free” because there’s always something to replace it with.

In effect, putting together a Linux OS is a process of natural selection dedicated to creating the best possible combination of parts. Where this has failed in the past is in “the pretty”. People who spend hundreds of hours typing code aren’t typically known for their aesthetic sense, and while they’re brilliant at coding shiny new effects there’s nobody taking charge of the overall look so that each aspect hangs together in a pleasing way. Linux-based OSes have always been utilitarian packages, with the shiny hidden away like some shameful secret. That has to change. We’re shallow creatures, and like it or not, the average user equates quality with beauty.

Assuming the average end user knows nothing about computers and you lay Snow Leopard, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 before them, they’ll choose the prettiest one. If you explain that with Ubuntu you get a fully featured Office Suite, the fastest OS and essentially an immunuty to viruses out of the box, they’ll probably still pick the prettiest one. Make Ubuntu beautiful and suddenly the landscape shifts.

This may sound ridiculous, but I’m not alone. Canonical supremo Mark Shuttleworth has pencilled in a visual revamp for the Karmic Koala release of Ubuntu, and has drafted in a full design team to make sure it happens. He wants an OS that reflects in its visuals the thousands of hours that go into making it. I think this is smart, and necessary.

Of course, all of this assumes that Linux is actually competing with other operating systems that are hassle free. Untrue. Vista was plagued by compatibility problems and while pundits argue that Apple’s OS X is the operating system Linux wants to grow up to become, they’re missing the point that it’s the most niche of all, and thus the antitheses of what Linux is evolving into. All of the major Linux distros have extensive device support; will work across lots of hardware and are suited for dozens of tasks – unlike OS X.

It’s not this that will hinder Linux’s surge into the mainstream. In the long term it’s the lack of a message that’s going to be the biggest hurdle. Linux thrives on its distributed developer base, but this means there’s a lot of voices rattling about, each with its own agenda. If Linux wants to penetrate it needs once voice explaining the benefits. Linux has many selling points, it needs to pick one or two and hammer them to retailers and PC makers. They want support, they want flair, and they want something they can easily explain to customers. Linux fits just one of these criteria so far.

Canonical’s already has some success with Dell, but there’s more work to be done. The battle for the desktop OS is still being fought and Linux has enough weapons to have its say. It needs a General though, otherwise it’ll be doomed to watch inferior OSes fighting it out amongst themselves. And that really would be a pity.

As is usual with Terribly Senior People, they were quite resistant to actually giving away any information that might be considered useful, but one thing came out loud and clear: initially Samsung did seriously consider a Linux netbook, but after speaking to retailers it won’t be dabbling with Linux any time soon.

I asked why, especially when Acer had such success with its Linux-based Aspire One. Over to Terribly Senior Person Patrick Povel, senior product manager of Samsung’s European computer operations: “When the mini-notebook launched it was 100% Linux-based and that was the reason why a certain community was very happy, but… the normal user is used to this XP thing and how to install a printer and so on.”

Did Samsung every consider Linux? “[Before we released our first netbook] we even started to develop in some Linux platforms, but once we had the product almost ready it turned out there was no demand from the customer.”

Just to be clear, in this context Samsung was talking about retailers like PC World being the customer, and the reason why they weren’t demanding Linux was very simple: the likes of Dixons were hit with return rates of something close to 40% when people found they couldn’t easily hook up their camera or install a printer onto their lovely, shiny new netbook.

But, as Mr Povel pointed out, if people on the street were demanding Linux-based netbooks “the retailers would be knocking on our door. [But] it’s a niche market and the big mass consumer doesn’t ask for Linux at the moment.”

Which brings me to the main question of this post: has Linux missed its chance of ever hitting the mainstream? I think it will struggle to ever break out of the enthusiast niche, and to a large extent because that niche is so comfortable.

If the prime target of your operating system is tech enthusiasts, you’ll tend not to go that final painful mile to make it a totally hassle-free experience. Even the most consumer-friendly Linux distribution of them all, Ubuntu, has occasional hiccups when trying to connect to external devices, and if you do hit problems your only support is via forums – fine for techies, not so great for the “big mass consumer” Samsung refers to.

So where does Linux go next? Is there anywhere else for it to go on the desktop? I can’t see it – if it was going to dominate anywhere, it would be cheap devices that had little expectation from buyers, but both retailers’ and consumers’ fingers have been burnt.

To a certain extent I guess that Red Hat’s chief exec feels the same, but he inevitably puts a more positive spin on it – that he really didn’t want to be there anyway. “The concept of a desktop is kind of ridiulous in this day and age,” he said. “I’d rather think about skating to where the puck is going to be than where it is now.”

He might be proved right, but wherever that puck ends up the end-user experience needs to be a pleasant one not just for the buyer of the product (and I’m not going to argue with anyone who suggests that Ubuntu has largely done this), but for the manufacturer and the retailer. And unfortunately both are too often forgotten when extolling the undoubted virtues of Linux.

I’d had thoughts of building a media centre machine, but that plan is, at this point, dead in the water. To get that build into budget I found myself cutting too many corners: reducing the size of the hard disk, settling for an even worse chassis and not being able to include wireless internet, for instance, felt like removing too many crucial features to make it worthwhile.

So, that means my machine will be a good old-fashioned desktop PC, albeit one without a monitor or speakers. My final shopping list has been tweaked, pennies have been shaved off prices, and I’ve spent most of the week calculating delivery charges to work out if I save money by ordering from one site or if I’d be ruined by City Link.

My list of specifications is now complete, though, so you have until early afternoon to try and dissuade me from making a terrible mistake:

• Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 – £57.60
• ABIT I-45V motherboard – £25.53
• Asus Radeon HD 4670 graphics card – £63.36
• 2GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM – £15.99
• 250GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA II 7,200rpm 8MB cache – £33.08
• Samsung DVD+/-RW – £15.25
• Eye T Warrior Silver Gaming Case – £18.39
• Extra Value Multimedia keyboard – £3.42
• Extra Value optical mouse – £2.91

This leaves me with £3.75 spare cash out of my original £250 budget and, if I were being sensible, I’d save this money to help me out should anything go wrong with my machine. I’m not particularly sensible, though, and it seems that less than four quid won’t get me very far if I melt my CPU – so I’ve earmarked that money on anything I can buy that will keep the finished machine cool, quiet and tidy – so it might mean a single case fan or a pack of cable ties.

I’m now left with nothing more than an empty wallet and a head full of anticipation. My choices of delivery – super saver on every site I’ve used, basically – means that I’m not entirely sure when my components will arrive and in what order, so my excitement at getting to build this machine will have to wait until I get a fateful call from the post room.

Nevertheless, I’ll still be keeping busy. There’s plenty of Ubuntu-related research to carry out and a huge number of useful Open Source programs to download if I want to make my PC the best £250 Open Source machine it can be.

And, of course, it needs a name. I haven’t been able to come up with anything decent so, again, it’s over to you – if you think you have a certain phrase that captures the power, versatility and (probable) incompetence of my machine then please let me know – I’ll be forever grateful.