Making progress with Ubuntu

My endeavors with Ubuntu have been very favorable. In fact, I’ve gotten apps to install that I never thought would work. First, using Wine 1.1.40 and PlayOnLinux I got Notepad++ running. A small accomplishment, but Notepad++ is a fantastic editor. Then I moved onto something more impressive and got Digsby to install and connect correctly. It installed without incident and let me connect to Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail. Not bad at all.

Then came the Uber test. Using PlayOnLinux I actually got Office 2007 to install and run. I was able to use Word and OneNote within Ubuntu. Word seemed to run flawlessly, while OneNote had some issues at shutdown. It seems to crash on exit, which is noted on the WineHQ site, but it doesn’t seem to lose any data. I’m note sure I would actually use Office in this configuration, VirtualBox seems safer, but it was one heck of an experiment and incredibly interesting to get it working.

I’m starting to get the hang of Ubuntu. By no means am I versed in it’s workings, but I’ve been able to install a ton of useful software and it seems there’s plenty of ways to get some old Windows app to run on it as well. Again, VirtualBox seems the smarter bet, but as I get more comfortable with the platform I become more convinced that I will be replacing Windows 7 in the not too distant future.