The next step

I've moved up to a full installation of Ubuntu 10.10 yesterday.

I got a desktop with Windows on one partition and Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat installed on its own partition.

Up till now, I had been using the Wubi installer to get acquainted with Ubuntu and, although I'd seen enough to know it would be well worth further exploration, it was clear a real test of its performance couldn't be had in such an environment.

Why didn't I go with release 11 Natty Narwhal? Well, a few reasons:

• I still haven't really taken Maverick through its paces. Now that it's properly installed on its own partition, we can get a real feel for what it can and can't do;
• Maverick will be supported until April 2012, which is plenty of time to test drive and decide whether to invest the time in getting comfortable in the Ubuntu world;
• issues with Natty Narwhal will work themselves out with updates etc., by which time I should be comfortable enough in the Ubuntu experience to face that learning curve;
• my next computer should be a Mac anyway, so I may not have to bother with the Natty at all.

To date I've been generous and forgiving because I couldn't know for sure how Ubuntu was performing in its unnatural test environment. Now that we're full on, I can be objective and also tougher on the things that really are not cool. I've already begun to appreciate that Ubuntu certainly isn't for everybody. It may not even be for me - we shall see.