Okay, It's Pretty, but What Can it Do?

This is Part 7 of a ten-part review of Ubuntu Linux.  The series is designed to give you a rough idea what it's like to try Linux.  It's not a how-to, and it's not a blow-by-blow recount of my experience.  For your convenience, links for each part of this series are located at the end of the article.

After I learned how to change the eye candy, it was time to delve a little deeper. Keeping my original goal in mind, I decided to start out with an AntiVirus evaluation. The two top-rated packages were Avast and ClamTK. I decided to try Avast first, since I'd heard of it, and it has a good reputation in the Windows community. I was able to install it without difficulty, but it crashed every time I tried to launch it. So much for a flawless experience. Having no luck with Avast, I went to ClamTK. Like Linux in general, it took me a bit to figure out how this worked. I figured that a good test would be scanning my Windows hard drive. After all, the original intent of this experiment was to find out if I could use Linux on a USB drive to quickly and effectively scan a Windows drive for viruses. I am happy to report that ClamTK did successfully scan my Windows drive. It also found some temporary Internet files that it flagged as potential malware. Unfortunately, the process took several hours... approximately twice as long as if I'd scanned the drive from another Windows machine. Bear in mind though, that I was running this scan from a USB drive. Any OS running from a USB thumb drive will fail to perform as well as the same OS running on a hard drive.

Scanning for viruses is all well and good, but the majority of people trying Linux are more interested in different aspects, such as web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, audio, picture and video editing, and so forth. One of the first things any user will do is browse the web, so let's talk about that for a moment. If you're thinking about Linux, chances are you've tried web browsers other than Internet Explorer. Firefox is installed with Linux, and it works just as well as Firefox in Windows.

If you want to do word processing and spreadsheets, you're in for a bit of adjustment. Ubuntu comes with LibreOffice pre-installed. LibreOffice is similar to MS Office, but it's not 100% interchangeable. LibreOffice has the same problem that other open-sourced productivity suites experience... LibreOffice can open and edit Excel spreadsheets and Word documents flawlessly, but it's not seamless going the other way, meaning that Word or Excel has problems with documents that are created and/or edited in LibreOffice. I can't prove it, but I have a hunch that this is a result of Microsoft's refusal to play nice with other productivity suites in an attempt to keep people locked into Office. On it's own though, LibreOffice (specifically the writer) has been a positive experience. Most of the shortcuts, hotkeys and so forth are the same as MS Office, making the learning curve much easir. In fact, this entire review has been written in LibreOffice writer, and copying/pasting the contents of a LibreOffice document is superior to doing the same from MS Word. What I've written in LibreOffice has gone to the blog perfectly, but when I write a post from MS Word, I frequently have to re-tweak things after pasting the text.

By far my favorite application has been Remmina Remote Desktop Client. Remember, I'm a System Administrator/Engineer. A large portion of workday is spent remotely monitoring, configuring, maintaining and troubleshooting servers and workstations. In order for me to work with Linux on a day-to-day basis, it MUST have a good remote desktop application. Remmina more than fits the bill. In fact, I think it's superior to Microsoft RDP. Remmina will allow you to connect to a remote computer using RDP or VNC. Furthermore, the client is tabbed, similar to Firefox, allowing you to quickly and easily switch between multiple RDP sessions. This is great for people who frequently run multiple, simultaneous RDP sessions! I was also able to customize the display resolution, so that client, toolbar and so forth were all able to fit into a full screen.

System and network monitoring tools, included with a standard installation, are also handy and straight-forward... another must for us IT-types.

I spent a little bit of time playing with GIMP, the photo editor that is loosely compared to Adobe PhotoShop, but I don't have enough experience with either program to make a fair evaluation. For the most part, my time with the various applications has been good. If you plan to leave the nation of Windows and live on your own little island of Linux, communicating with the outside world only through the web, you'll be fine. But if you plan to spend a lot of time actively collaborating with Windows users (writing and editing Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and so forth), be prepared for some heartache.
Part I, The Grand Experiment

Part II, So Many Flavors

Part III, I'm Kind of Slow to Commit

Part IV,  ASmall, Short-Term Commitment

Part V, Diving Below the Surface

Part VI, A Different Animal

Part VII, Okay, It's Pretty, but What Can it Do?

Part VIII, Okay, I'm Committed, But It's Not all Puppies and Rainbows

Part IX, Unity

Part X, Parting Words