The only driver I download just the nvidia graphics driver, but that’s only took few clicks away and you only need to download it if you want to enable 3d and desktop effects. To be honest, I kinda like desktop effects/eye candy, multiple desktop + 3d cube, wobbly & 3d windows, etc. Two of my friends already asks me to install ubuntu on their notebook, just by looking ubuntu’s visual effects. Apart from visually appealing, multiple virtual desktops proven really useful for me.

To install additional things such as codecs to play various type of audio and video files, flashplayer, java virtual machine, etc also relatively easy, all the guides can be found on ubuntuforums.com . Maybe I will compile all essential guides on my blog sometime later.

Performance wise, it does boots faster than my windows vista x64 sp1. But since I got quite large amount of ram, running applications such as spreadsheets, email client, internet browser, etc feels the same on both OS.

Stability wise, both os has similar results on me. I never got any unexpected crash on both OS.

Security wise, it seems ubuntu is the winner. I don’t need to use any antivirus software, since most viruses and malware are written for windows systems. This not means that linux is not vulnerable to malicious code though, it’s just got much less chance to get infected/compromised.

Office Application wise, this one windows seems still the winner. Altough there is OpenOffce suite installed default in ubuntu, I still have not found replacement for Excel 2007.  I need this for work, as I’m using some functions which only available in Excel 2007.  To overcome this I’m installing Windows XP and install Excel 2007 inside Vmware in Ubuntu. I tried to install Excel 2007 on wine, it does run, but the excel often crashes, especially when I clicked on save. One more thing, I have not found a way to sync my Windows Mobile 6.1 PDA with linux, so I still need Windows in Vmware to sync my contacts, appointments, etc.

UPDATE: I got Office Word & Excel 2007 instlaled in linux using wine! The guide can be found in ubuntuforums.org. But when working on large excel files, sometimes the application just crashed.

Games wise, of course windows still the best, but I don’t games often so it is not a problem for me.

Value wise, ubuntu is free with open office installed as default, in my opinion it’s comparable with Microsoft Office 2003. Ubuntu also has large application repository, with access to thousands of free and/or opensource applications. Just enable the additional repo, browse using synaptics, select, install! So ubuntu is the winner.

In addition, I’m also found a way to sync songs my jailbroken iPod Touch in linux wirelessly using rythymbox, something you can not do yet on windows (or mac maybe?) I found the guide from the net, with few modified lines in the scripts to allow passwordless mount.