The Disappointment of Hardy Heron

We waited for six months for Canonical to produce Hardy Heron, the 8.04 version of Ubuntu Linux.

What a disappointment.

Friends I had convinced to make the switch to Linux from Vista are switching back, experiencing buggy, unreliable performance under Hardy that never should have been allowed out into the open daylight.

Problems include:

* The included browser is a beta of Firefox 3 - not a final release. An update is available, but newbs will never figure out how to upgrade to the latest and leave the included browser behind. The new release has not been packaged for Hardy Heron.

* The video driver from Nvidia does not yet support the Linux kernel version. In newbie language that means that video is unreliable, desktop effects are screwed up, and people are getting pink everything from drop shadows on their desktops to blank screens and no functionality at all.

I'm very disappointed in the quality of this release. I cannot say I am totally surprised. Linux is free, and that price tag means something: it's not as polished as a professionally developed operating system.

What I'd really like to see for the PC is Apple's OS X. I know, the whole secret to its stability is locking you into Apple's short list of supported hardware.

My pennies are going into my jar to save up for my Macbook Pro. A review coming after I get it. Hardy Heron has fully convinced me to jump ship from Microsoft. After six months of surviving without Windows, I'm ready for something smoother, easier, more toaster like.

Apple looks like the viable alternative.