My computing life has improved exponentially with Ubuntu that I try to spend as little time as possible in Windows XP in my office PC. My office PC needs to run Windows because the newsroom uses InDesign and Pagemaker to lay out pages.

I now work faster on Windows XP—faster because I want to get work I can only do there over with so that I can use Ubuntu for other tasks. I can’t have them on at the same time on my office desk because 1.) I was allotted only one LAN cable, 2) the Wi-Fi signal doesn’t cover my part of the office, and 3) I have to “reuse” (that’s a mild way of putting it) IP addresses to connect to the network.

I recently switched my blogging workhorse, an MSI s260, to an Ubuntu-only system after months of running Windows XP. I said in my post that I haven’t stopped saying “wow” up until I posted the article two days ago. Let me update you: wow, wow, and wow.

I haven’t been gushing this profusely since I met my wife. Ubuntu is such a wonderful operating system to use. As I write this post on AbiWord running full screen, Coldplay sings at the background while the system checks for updates. On my “browsing” virtual desktop, Firefox is downloading two files with more than ten websites opened in tabs.

Once in a while, I’d get the urge to rotate my desktop cube just for the heck of it and the playing of the song isn’t interrupted nor is the rendering of the four desktops jerky.

Looking at me working on my laptop, you’d think I’m using a Core Duo unit with more than a gigabyte of RAM. No.

Ubuntu seems to do much with less hardware power. When this laptop was still running Windows XP, I tried to limit the number of websites opened in Firefox because I’d notice the system slowing down, especially if I’m writing a blog post while listening to music on Songbird.

Now. I get uninterrupted music while writing a blog post, updating or installing applications, downloading files, and opening a lot of websites all at the same time.

And here’s the perplexing—for an Ubuntu newbie—thing. I’ve read about how software crashes in Linux desktops don’t take the operating system with them. Well, a couple of days ago I got a notification that the system “has reported a crash.” In Windows XP, this would have caused the freezing of the system–you can’t move the mouse, you can’t switch windos–to the point that all you can do is restart the computer or switch it off using its buttons. In the incident several days back, after the crash report I opened the tons of applications I had on and found that I could still open them. I rotated the desktop cube and the rotation was as flawless as ever. I minimized windows and they still burned on their way down. Whatever crashed I do not know (I didn’t check the logs) but this I know: the system didn’t crash with it.

Multi-tasking? I never experienced the multi-tasking I’ve been doing these past few days. Not with Windows XP.