With the release of Steam for Linux and the decline of my own video game playing (I seriously haven't touched a game in almost 5 months now) I decided to switch to Linux for my primary everyday desktop. This isn't a new thing for me, I've used Linux/Ubuntu/Debian for many years now. However today marks the day I make the final switch for my primary desktop. Games have always held me back, Steam for Linux solves this. Since I primarily watch Twitch/TV and play MTGO (already in a VM I might add) I really have no more uses for Windows.
To date I haven't really used Ubuntu since the great Unity fiasco. My laptop will continue to use 10.04 until it dies since the damned thing works. I've toyed with it in VMs for specific purposes and a server runs 12.04 with Unity for a friend but I hardly ever go into the GUI in that machine.
So I happily install Ubuntu deleting my now useless Windows 7 Partition.
First problem: Install failed. The hell? Just clicked next on the first screen and it froze. Ok, odd, since I couldn't get it to restart (tried killing all processes, restarting X, etc) I rebooted and tried again. This time it worked.
Second Problem: Grub installed to the wrong drive. In my nearly 20 years of BSD/Linux I have never run into this before from a major distro. Luckily I know how to install grub in other ways.
Third Problem: nvidia-current broke Unity. SERIOUSLY?!? Do you people not test these things? All I did was update the system, installed nvidia-current, rebooted and.... No unity. I.. I.. I have no words for this. This is just damned sloppy. I expect this from some student project distro not THE major Linux distro for the masses. Googling this issue has brought up a plethora of issues from everyone, including ATI users reporting the same issue. Every fix requires manually installing Linux headers. Why aren't these things now included in the main install by now? I swear Ubuntu has been the only distro to consistently not include the headers. With a new influx of Linux users coming specifically for Steam this seems like a pretty damned important thing to have working.
Fourth Problem: Multi-Monitor support still flawed. While it has been getting better, there are some minor things I've gotten acustomed to from Windows. The lack of duplicating the start bar/Unity Bar on every display (I have 9 displays.. eve player.. I don't need to see it 9 times). Even dropping down to 3 displays yields the same annoyance. I also watch twitch/VLC a lot in a secondary monitor, yet It can't remain full screen if I want to do something else? Shit, Microsoft added this in Windows XP SP1. You'd think people would use multiple monitors by now in the FOSS world by now. Googling for fixes yields HEX EDITING!?? Well, guess I'll watch all my videos in a VM.
Fifth Problem: Steam doesn't install from the software Center with an unknown error. *facepalm* Just *facepalm*
Props to both Spotify and Chrome. Both installs were flawless and my two primarily used programs. Love you guys, don't change.
I haven't had this many problems with a fresh install of Linux in years. Oh and Unity is ugly.
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