Well, in a week’s time, I will no longer use Ubuntu for my work laptop. I really like the clean efficient experience I get from Ubuntu but my corporate support and the applications I need for work just don’t give Linux the same credence that comes to Windows XP. The downfall came in three parts:

• I need good blackberry support (both sync’ing and use as a tethered modem)

• while it is theoretically possible to use a Blackberry with Ubuntu, it is difficult at best and some things like a full resync and updating certificates is a Windows only proposition. The same is true for using the Blackberry as a modem (unless you are a *nix God).

• I need my documents to look perfect when I share them with colleagues and executives

• no matter how you cut it, an OpenOffice document is not 100% the same as a Microsoft Office document and the same goes in reverse. It is this last bit that was one of the fatal nails. I could not reliably round trip a document or presentation with coworkers and worse, if the presentation went up to an executive, odds were nearly 100% something would look wrong.

• I need my heavy use apps to work and be supported by corporate IT

• the two most used applications in my office are Lotus Notes and Lotus Sametime. They both are available on Linux but neither is 100% as functional as on Windows. I realize that Ubuntu is not yet supported by the Lotus products but that just means every issue is answered by “sorry”. And I know some of these exist on Windows but I can’t do much about that until I switch back. I have lived with so many PITAs that shouldn’t exist - and this is not just “the first Linux release”, but after subsequent releases.

The good news is that some of my favorite things will travel back with me. Tools like GIMP for graphics arts work; Thunderbird as my blogging client; SystemRescueCD (installed on the HDD or course) as my full image backup strategy; and while I can’t take my very clean TAR-GZ daily backup solution back to Windows, I will take the strategy and implement it with DataSafe Backup or Comodo Backup.

There will be some things I will miss. But it’s all about productivity and Windows for my corporate life has provien too difficult to rebuff. Fortunately, Ubuntu remains on my personal laptop. <yippie>

Related tangests ...   Watching old television on a media player   Big bird is back !   Backing up a multi-OS testing PC

Posted in Linux, Microsoft, Thinkpad T60p, Ubuntu |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.