Why I've dumped Windows 10 for Ubuntu Budgie and maybe you should too

I find using Windows 10 an incredibly frustrating experience.
As a web-developer, I switch between different machines for testing and development purposes. I have a Macbook but it's only got a 13" screen so I do most of my work on a Samsung laptop that has a 17" display. Swapping between the Mac and the Windows laptop makes one thing very obvious - Windows 10 is slow.

From cold-boot to being logged in and actually able to work (and by that, I mean not waiting for an application to load because Windows processes are hogging my CPU and hard-drive) it sometimes takes me minutes. There there's the obnoxious updates process. Out of the box, Windows seems to think it's okay to lock up your computer every time a large update is released. There's been a number of occasions when I've needed to get on the computer to email a client or check something and I can't get on it because Windows won't boot until it's finished applying updates. Microsoft seem to forget who the computer actually belongs to.

Anyway, I decided enough was enough.

Installing was simple

I downloaded Ubuntu Budgie as an ISO image, formatted an 8Gb USB stick and applied the ISO image to it using UNetbootin and booted from the USB stick to install it to my laptop's second drive.

If I'd wanted to, I could play around and give it a test drive without installing it as it runs beautifully from the USB drive but I already knew I wanted it on my laptop. :)

Once I'd finished installing it (which was a pretty rapid process compared to installing WIndows), I rebooted and expected to have to configure a few things. I was delighted that I didn't have to configure anything. It just worked. It was fast to boot (incredibly fast compared to Windows), beautiful to look at and stunningly responsive. The browser opened almost immediately - no lag at all.

Installing Ubuntu on the same drive as Windows 10

If you don't have a second drive to install to, you can opt to install it to the same drive as Windows 10. I recommend you take a look at this webpage for more information.

Updates that don't get in your way

I was offered some updates but they didn't interrupt what I was doing. They installed quietly in the background and then a message popped-up, politely suggesting that I restart to complete the installation. I wasn't press-banged or nagged into restarting. It was just a suggestion. I carried on working. The updates could wait until I was ready. I wish Microsoft understood that.

Is Ubuntu Budgie for you?

I'm a big fan of Linux. I have been for years. There's an amazing range of free software available to install from the Software Centre that will enable you to do most things and there are more and more commercial companies offering their products on the Linux platform (Corel's AfterShot Pro, for example).

If you just use a computer for word-processing, spreadsheets, browsing the Internet and so on, then yes, Ubuntu would suit you just fine and you might even prefer it to Windows simply for the speed improvements and the peace of mind that your computer isn't constantly sending data back to remote servers about what you do with your computer. If you must use Windows 10, make sure you've checked your privacy settings.

Some software suggestions

General Documents (word-processing, spread-sheets, etc)

General word-processing and spreadsheet creation is more that adequately covered in the free LibreOffice suite that comes included as standard with Ubuntu Budgie. Then there's Google Docs & Sheets in the cloud (you just need your Google account). Do you really need Microsoft Office? Probably not.

Image Editing / Creation

Adobe Photoshop will not work on Linux without some tinkering and I'm approaching this article with the average computer user in mind.

There are alternatives though. [Inkscape[(https://inkscape.org/en/) is an excellent (free) vector-graphics package and The Gimp (also free) provides many of the features that Photoshop provides. The name is short for GNU Image Manipulation Program, incidentally.

Darktable is an excellent (free) RAW processing application, somewhat similar to Corel Aftershot Pro or Adobe Lightroom.

Finally, Krita Paint (free) offers excellent natural media painting for the more artistic amongst you.

There are plenty of tutorials online to help you get used to the interfaces of these applications.

Video Editing and Animation

There are some excellent video-editing applications that are also available (for free) too. Although I like Flowblade, it's worth looking at the page on It's FOSS for a more detailed look at a number of options.

As for animation - did you know that Studio Ghibli helped to create an open-source animation application that is Open Source and free for you to use? It's called OpenToonz. You can find out more here.

Web-development

I use PHPStorm for my development work. Although it's commercial, I've found it the best of all the tools I've used and it's completely cross-platform. The license I bought permits me to use it on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux just as long as I'm not using them all at the same time.

If you don't want to pay for an application, there are other options. Before I bought PHPStorm, I was using Oracle's Netbeans (PHP Version) and found it excellent.

One of my favourite things about using Linux natively on my laptop is that I can install a full LAMP stack in my native operating system seamlessly so I don't have to fiddle about with virtualization to test my sites. This is a real time-saver. I don't like doing this in Windows because Microsoft make doing so difficult and the environment doesn't match the hardware that the end-sites are hosted on.

Summary

I'm delighted with my return to Linux and this version of Ubuntu that uses the new Budgie as its desktop looks and feels exactly as I've always wanted my operating system to. It's lovely to look at but doesn't slow the system down with needless effects, it's responsive in use and so far, every just works on my five-year old laptop.

I've offered you some suggestions about software if you wanted to give Ubuntu a try but the options go way beyond what I've offered here. You can find out more about the range of applications on offer by visiting AlternativeTo or It's FOSS

The best way to try Linux safely

If you're on the fence about ditching Windows for Linux, the best way to give it a try without losing your Windows laptop is to install Ubuntu on an older laptop. Many of us have old laptops in the attic or under the bed that we abandoned when we upgraded. You can also pick-up second-hand laptops very cheaply from second hand stores and e-bay.

As I mentioned above - my main work-horse laptop is five years old. It was pretty well-specced (Intel i7, 16Gb memory) when I bought it and it's still going strong now but my point is that Ubuntu is more than happy to run on older hardware.

A note about other Linux distributions

You've probably noticed that I've mentioned Ubuntu quite a lot in this post. This is largely because that's what I've installed, I like Ubuntu and to be honest, I think it's the easiest for new Linux users to install and get used to. I'm an experienced Linux user and I still love Ubuntu (probably because I don't have the time for advanced configuration and tinkering).

I have absolutely no problem with mentioning that there are many different Linux distributions, each of which looks very different and is aimed at different user groups with varying degrees of technical expertise. Enter the rabbit hole here