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I am almost free of M$ taint.
Jan. 13th, 2009 12:06 pmAside from Windows Media Player, I've been using nothing but open source software on my computer for about a year or so. I've tried various Linux versions before, SuSE and earlier versions of Ubuntu being the main ones, and I've had one problem or another with figuring out how to get the stuff I need installed. I'm not a big hacker or anything, I'm just a basic user, word processing, spreadsheets, internet, email, and music and movies. I don't really do any PC gaming to speak of. I don't need anything with the power of Linux, but I don't do anything that absolutely requires Windows, either.
But this weekend I was shopping around for new notebook computers, and I couldn't find any I liked that were either with XP or had an option to NOT come with Vista, which I hate. Hell, I stayed with Windows 2000 for years, but I finally upgraded to XP. Frankly I was pissed, and tired of having to pay for new Windows shite, (included in the price of the notebook computers).
So yesterday, I downloaded the newest version of Ubuntu, just to see if it had improved enough where I could switch to it relatively easy. It has, in spades. It shrunk my Windows partition easily, and right now the laptop is dual-booted. I checked the Windows partition afterwards, no problems with it. I got my wireless connection working on it after connecting it to the internet with a wire in under 2 minutes, and it was extremely easy to get the codecs I needed to watch some of my movies and tv shows. No problem with the mp3's or pdfs, the other stuff I use regularly, at all.
I already have Samba working, so no problem maintaining the home network with the other Windows boxes. The only thing that I still need to work on is the speed of the internet, but I've already found a fix for it that might work, I just need to try it when I get home from work. Once I work that out, that should probably be the last major hurdle. I'll keep the Windows partition for a few months, just in case, but I don't anticipate using it much. After that, I'll probably shitcan it, and never have to bother with paying for Microsoft crap again.
But this weekend I was shopping around for new notebook computers, and I couldn't find any I liked that were either with XP or had an option to NOT come with Vista, which I hate. Hell, I stayed with Windows 2000 for years, but I finally upgraded to XP. Frankly I was pissed, and tired of having to pay for new Windows shite, (included in the price of the notebook computers).
So yesterday, I downloaded the newest version of Ubuntu, just to see if it had improved enough where I could switch to it relatively easy. It has, in spades. It shrunk my Windows partition easily, and right now the laptop is dual-booted. I checked the Windows partition afterwards, no problems with it. I got my wireless connection working on it after connecting it to the internet with a wire in under 2 minutes, and it was extremely easy to get the codecs I needed to watch some of my movies and tv shows. No problem with the mp3's or pdfs, the other stuff I use regularly, at all.
I already have Samba working, so no problem maintaining the home network with the other Windows boxes. The only thing that I still need to work on is the speed of the internet, but I've already found a fix for it that might work, I just need to try it when I get home from work. Once I work that out, that should probably be the last major hurdle. I'll keep the Windows partition for a few months, just in case, but I don't anticipate using it much. After that, I'll probably shitcan it, and never have to bother with paying for Microsoft crap again.
