Ubuntu Lucid - a free gift

Every time that I upgrade my operating system, I feel like I’m receiving a whole bunch of gifts from people I don’t know – which actually is what’s happening! As I learn more about the Debian and Ubuntu communities, and Launchpad (which I’ve been working on for the past year), I never stop feeling awed at the amount of effort that is being filtered through Launchpad (in both directions) in terms of bug-fixes, new packages, translations etc., into end-products that rock!

Having upgraded my netbook a few weeks ago, over the weekend I decided to upgrade my work machine to test the latest development release, Ubuntu Lucid, and the only difficult part of the process was having to install Windows XP to update my bios (because Samsung, the manufacturer of my work laptop, only provide bios updates as win-32 applications). Other than that, it’s been a joy seeing all the improvements (like the open-source nvidia support – a few clicks and my dual monitors worked perfectly, something I could only do previously with the proprietary drivers).

So, whether it is heard or not, I want to say a big thanks to the millions involved for the gift – my Lucid experience has been wonderful.

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