Linux, six years later
I've recently returned to the linux world. As a brief background, in undergrad I worked primarily in a linux environment, using the red hat distro for about three years. In that time, my workstation was linux, and I either had a dual boot or a separate computer that ran linux in my apartment. I was rather familiar with the flaws and limitations of linux for the standard consumer desktop, and was capable of running my own mail/web/whatever server without much problem.
In graduate school, I spent some time on a linux computer, but ssh-ing to a linux computer from a windows laptop was my primary work mode. I had almost no involvement in the administration or maintenance of the linux servers I worked on, as I had more buffers from that than I did in undergrad.
Fast forward to today. While I've ssh-ed into countless linux servers over the years, my last real experience managing and installing linux was back in 2003/4. My knowledge is, to be generous, rusty. But I find myself needing a linux server to accomplish some programming that I need done for my business, so I'm jumping back into the linux world.
I'll try not to bore you with silly details, but here are some observations I've had after returning to linux after six years.
1) Red hat ruled the roost back in 2003. Now ubuntu is the dominant distro. Back in 2003, I remember it as one of the many random distros available, such as mandrake, debian (of which ubuntu is an offshoot), suse, slackware, etc. Red hat, who focuses on enterprise linux now, released an offshoot called fedora back in 2003 or 2004, which has been in and out of favor over the years.
2) OS installs in general have gotten faster and more automatic. I remember old redhat, fedora, Win 95/98/XP installs that asked many often silly questions, and took over an hour to install. In the mid to late 90's, I believe I had a linux distro (caldera?) that while it was installing let you play a pacman clone because it knew it took so long. Now, both Ubuntu and Windows 7 go about their business installing an operating system quickly and with little need for user input.
3) Ubuntu linux has an awesome windows based installer called wubi. After you download wubi inside windows, you just double click on it to install ubuntu. First, ubuntu is automatically downloaded (~700mb), then it is installed onto your existing hard drive. You specify how much space to give it to operate, and it makes a file that size in windows (e.g. 15GB) that linux sees as a disk. After it is done installing, you have a true dual boot machine, but even better it (a) automatically mounts your windows drive so you can see all your windows files inside ubuntu (under /host), and (b) lets you uninstall ubuntu for whatever reason in the future under windows add/remove programs in the control panel. To be clear, this is a dual boot linux install, not a virtual linux install.
This install is not meant for serious servers, as it is susceptible to being corrupted by an unplanned powering down, but it is a great way to easily set up a linux computer to dink around on. I'm using wubi currently while waiting for my permanent linux server to arrive.
4) More things "just work" now than they did previously. Flash drives are automatically detected. I have a dual monitor setup, and it was really simple to configure in the monitor panel GUI. I haven't had to mess around with any drivers to make an ethernet card or video card work. It has been wonderful.
5) Much of the open source software packages have been greatly improved. Gnome, which is basically the (default) graphical interface for ubuntu, is beautiful now. The interface is sleek and intuitive, and looks professional. All of the "control panel" like settings have a GUI. You no longer need to know anything about the command line to install new packages. As always, firefox and thunderbird work the same in linux as in windows, so I have zero learning curve in that department.
6) Perhaps the second most impressive thing (behind gnome) is how incredible Open Office looks. I used to cringe when using OpenOffice.org (and StarOffice before it), because the interface looked and felt awkward. It had the basic functionality needed for an office suite, but the GUI was weird and I always felt like I had to struggle to use it. Now, the interfaces seem to be much cleaner, and I am seriously debating whether I need to have a copy of MS Office on all my computers as I currently do.
7) Installing and configuring many of the common apps that I needed is so much simpler. For example, I wanted an apache web server, with PHP and mysql (LAMP - Linux Apache Mysql PHP). This was done with a single command using apt-get. Many other critical applications, like mod_perl, R or firebird can also be installed with apt-get (I could use the GUI for these too if I wanted). Red hat had the rpm system, but I feel that ubuntu's apt-get (deb) packages overall have had a much higher success rate, and have limited the amount I need to configure things before they work. Again, things "just work" more often!
Anyway, I'm super impressed with the new desktop linux offering. If a few more critical apps would make it to linux (steam, illustrator, publisher/indesign, quickbooks), I would happily make it my primary OS, instead of just my programming OS.