This is the first post I've ever written from a Linux OS. To be honest, I never thought I would ever make one. But, just on spec, today I took an old laptop I use occasionally, and installed the latest version of Ubuntu.
The whole installation process took me less than twenty minutes, and you know what? Everything I thought about Linux is wrong. This machine (a Sony Vaio P3 with 512 mg RAM) has a few weird components in it - I assumed that I would have to screw around and look for mouse drivers and do lots of command line typey-typey stuff. Ring up Stilly and ask him what the 'secret word' was to unpack a tarball kind of magic But nope - nothing.
Everything just worked.
Wireless, USB, Graphics, sound, all drives - everything. No hassle. And it looks brilliant! Kind of like a cross between Vista and OSX. Easy. Intuitive. And fast, too. This old machine performs brilliantly - better than it ever ran any version of windows.
And because nearly all my stuff (bookmarks, mail, documents, feeds) are all online and browser based, I haven't had to install or restore anything from backup. My world came with me. It's really never been easier to switch your OS.
Microsoft lost an awful lot when they lost the API war.
And I'm sure they couldn't really care less, but it looks like they've lost me, too.
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Congratulations on making the switch - so many people are these days!
ReplyDeleteUbuntu is a great Linux distribution with a great community - pop over to www.ubuntuforums.org for some friendly advice. The next version of Ubuntu, "Fesity Fawn", will include fancy graphics much like Vista and OSX in the form of Compix (www.go-compiz.org).
Enjoy your time using Ubuntu and be sure to explore its many strengths!
Jon Cooper - UK
Hey Gordy, you should have asked, I would have told you!
ReplyDeleteLinux is not too bad!
It still has some room for imporovement and you'll probably find small problems over time, but it gets better all the time.
I've been using it on my Toshiba Tecra 9000 laptop for a few years now and, to be honest I get a bit bored with the fact that I don't have to fiddle with stuff to make it work, and I very very rarely have to recover from crashes.
I keep wanting to change to a different distro just to get have something to tinker with!
Pepe