As of December 1st, 2006 my computer will never boot windows again. It is Linux from here on out.
I have always had an interest in Linux. I really don’t know why. It could be because it is free. Maybe it’s because of the open source principles of Linux. The fact that I think Microsoft is the evil scourge of the tech sector probably has something to do with it. It’s more than possible that’s its because I’m fascinated by new technology. Either which way, Linux has always been something that I have wanted to learn and use.
About five years ago I made my first run at it. I got my hands on a copy of Red Hat Linux and away I went. I read through manuls, tutorials, how-to’s, I documented all my hardware, read up on Linux commands, spent hours combing the internet for drivers, installed Linux, and got it to dual boot with Windows. I was in. The only problem was I had no idea what to do with it. At the time Linux was not a very friendly OS. It had bugs, not all hardware worked with it, and it didn’t have a lot of useful programs that were written. That’s not really fair to say; It did have a lot of useful programs, just none that were useful to me or were good replacements for my Windows programs. Over time I found myself more frustrated with the whole thing than anything else. I began playing around with it less and less until I eventually forgot it was even installed on my computer.
Fast-forward to a year ago. There is a new kid in town, Ubuntu. Ubuntu is what I would call “The People’s Linux”. In my opinion it is made for people who are not Linux pro’s. You don’t have to understand the Linux command line, or be a master programmer to use it. It is simple, to the point, looks fantastic, and it runs like a champ. However, considering my last burn with Linux I wasn’t sure if I was ready to jump on board again.
I continued to watch as Ubuntu made headlines over at Digg. But the question that kept me away was “Why would I want to switch? What is the advantage?” I mean most things that I can do in Windows works. I’m not having any (major) problems, so what is the point of switching to another operating system that is completely different from the one I am comfortable with?
Another 6-8 months rolled by and Ubuntu is still gaining speed and momentum. Dapper Drake had been released for a while, and Edgy Eft was being talked about. (A new version of Ubuntu is released every six months and they give it a new name with the next letter of the alphabet). Right around the time of Dapper Drake, I desperately needed to do a clean sweep of my computer. That is, I needed to reformat the whole thing and start with a clean install of Windows. I decided that since I was going to do that I might as well partition some space off and install Ubuntu at the same time. (You can read all about that day in my post entitled “Adventures in installing Windows and Linux“) I got Ubuntu installed but right off the bat I couldn’t get it to dual boot, and when I could boot it, using the Super Grub Disk, my wireless card wasn’t recognized and therefore I didn’t have the Internet. I don’t know if anybody has ever tried to fix a problem, especially a driver problem, without having the Internet, but I’ll tell you right here and now — it sucks. You have to boot to Windows, find what you are looking for, then boot to Linux to see if it works, find out that it doesn’t, boot back to Windows, look around some more, and so on and so forth. I messed around with it for about a total of probably 7 or 8 hours before I once again said the hell with Linux and forgot all about it.
Roughly two weeks I decided to move my computer downstairs. I felt kind of isolated from the rest of my house, and it was time for a change. The place that I moved it to just so happened to be right next to my router. Since Ethernet is much faster than wireless I decided to just use Ethernet. Once I get everything up and running, I have an idea. “I wonder if Ubuntu will detect an Ethernet connection?”. I boot to Ubuntu, and sure enough it does. I like to call this moment the turning point.
I spend the next few days playing around with Linux because I really have no idea what I’m doing. I get everything running thanks to the excellent community support that Ubuntu has. I get a basic idea of the commands, settings, how to customize everything, etc. At this point I’m really thinking, “wow, this is really nice.” It runs fast, it looks very nice, any program I could ever want is only a click away, and most importantly I’m not losing anything by switching to Linux. What I mean by this is that in older versions of Linux there weren’t programs to replace the programs that you use in Windows. Let’s take Microsoft Office for example. I really think it is the work horse of any computer. Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. Who doesn’t use at least one of these? Well many moons ago such programs didn’t exist for Linux, and now thanks to OpenOffice they do exist. There are many other programs in Linux that can replace Windows programs. If you are really interested in switching and need to know what programs you will need, take a look at The Table of Equivalents web page.
My journey to Linux has been a long one, but I’m glad I finally made it. There are some things I’m going to miss, like World of Warcraft, but it’s probably best that I don’t play that game anymore because I think it was stealing my soul. There are some things I still don’t have working. For example, the multimedia buttons on my keyboard refuse to work, but I look at it is a challenge now because I know there is a way to do it. I also know that in getting them to work, I’ll learn even more about Linux and that’s what it’s really all about.
Further Reading:
Why do people switch to Linux?
10 Reasons to Switch to Linux.
5 Things You Should Know When You Switch to Linux
I love to read articles like yours. Thank you. I switched to GNU/Linux (you can tell I\’m somewhat fanatical because I use GNU/Linux instead of just plain Linux) about 18 months ago. I\’m not sure what finally pushed me over the edge, constant worry/maintenance of the firewall/anti-virus/spyware cleaner, finding \
Great article.
When my daughter went to university, she took the older family computer. Well, a few months into the year it developed problems and I went down to see if I could re-install Windows and get it working. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I wasn\’t able to, I had the wrong windows disc. So I took it home and promised to work on it. Well, I had a few Ubuntu discs lying around and I thought I would try and to install one of them. It worked and worked well. I had no problems with hardware, the os found the dvd and the cd-rw drives as well as the ethernet card and the video card.
A few days later I installed Dapper Drake. What a joy. I downloaded a few programs and now the machine does everything the windows xp machine used to do- play and rip cd\’s, burn discs, watch dvd movies, make programs, surf the Internet… you get the idea.
She\’s coming to visit in December and I promised to have the machine ready. I think the big thing will be to sell her on the idea of keeping it a Linux machine. The only problem and perhaps I need help, is playing games. She\’s a SIMS fanatic and I don\’t know if there is a way to get sims playing.
Back in April 2003, someone who told me that Linux was “about to” revolutionize and take over from Windows as the main desktop OS. I offered the following points to ponder at the time.
- The OS is an important factor in making the computer work, but the User Applications are what’s required to make the User work.
- Open Office might look and work similar to MS Office, but until it can seamlessly run the complex Excel formulae and existing Access database managers that most businesses have developed and use, it won’t make inroads.
- What about all those vertical market applications specific to each industry that are all developed for Windows? Who’ll replace them with Linux versions?
- People forget that Linux is not the only OS where you can get free software. You can get probably more choice with Windows developers.
- People say MS is anti-competitive. But take a look at the enormous number and type of user applications that are out there that have been developed by thousands of companies and individuals. If MS were anti-competitive, these products could not exist. But they do. And together they make the Windows user experience far better and richer. It’s actually very handy to have a standard operating system and suite of core applications that third-party developers can build on, rather than having to struggle with translating their software for multiple platforms.
- If Microsoft had any nouse, they’d make their products even more global by drastically dropping their prices and making development tools more affordable and less restrictive. If MS keep increasing prices, they will only continue to drive the push towards Linux.
- Don’t get me wrong, I think Linux can become a major player in the workstation stakes, but it depends on their commitment to the user, rather than to the back-end where they have been predominant.
- And therein lies the problem. The Linux industry is dominated by technical people. It took Microsoft a long time to develop mass-market user-friendly applications because of their originally technical background. Microsoft, being one company, was able to refocus development with the user in mind by employing staff without technical backgrounds and using them in the development and user acceptance testing phases.
- It will be much harder for the Linux community to do the same as there is no “one-company” situation. In fact, there are hundreds of ditros - adding more confusion for consumers.
Users need one graphical user environment, not 15
different ones. Is it to be KDE? X-Windows? Or
something else?
I have zero problem with using Linux systems as
background service operators. That is where it truly excels - webservers, proxy/cache servers, mail servers, even file servers as a replacement for Windows servers. You can have
technical staff available to administer them. But in proportion to the number of workstations in use by users around the world, these Linux servers make up a miniscule percentage. Making the move to Linux on every workstation is proportionally as big a step - or even bigger.
Let’s not kid ourselves that it can happen quickly.
That was early 2003. Not much has changed. I believe the solution lies in the development of browser-based platform-independent applications that are capable of the same functionality as OS-based applications. They’re still some way off.
You can play World Of Warcraft on Linux with Wine. http://appdb.winehq.org/
It works flawlessly in the majority of cases.
There is plenty of info on the Ubuntu Forums about the install process.
& In response to the comments by Parallel above. I think there are Linux solutions out there for everybody and having a bad experience with Linux revolves around the fact that most people have been taught to use a computer the way microsoft wants you to use it. I would say that for someone who has not ever been fully immersed in computers, (aka grandma) a friendly linux distribution such as Ubuntu is just as capable for their tasks and perhaps easier to learn on than a windows system.
I agree that there are some areas in which Linux must still improve itself, but the rate of new developments is much greater than with a slow corporate entity such as MS. Right now, it does require some technical knowledge to get your desktop to exactly where a windows desktop is on the initial install.
With Linux, progress is made every single day, and the desktop environment will soon be ready for everyone. Especially once they realize it\’s 100% free.
i like reading success stories like this one. it makes me think of the time when i made the very same choice as you way back when. however, there are one or two things that i have to keep a xp home image around for (only to run in qemu). it\’s a lot of hassle to go and run xp. it\’s just way behind the times. so is vista. but in this case, it\’s less hassle for both myself and the people to communicate if i can run that one application that is closed off from the open world.
icq push-to-talk.
i currently am learning to speak some russian, there is someone on my contact list who does not mind helping me out, so we can sometime communicate via icq… icq do not appear to be an open protocol, and the friend does not use anything but icq… it\’s a sad tale…
i sort-of agree with ubuntu being for the non-pro, but on the other hand, i dont. ubuntu is a distro that does sit on the fence. there are somethings that are ideal for the home user, and there are other things that are suited for the server room. however, one thing does not suit either is the continual updates… debian stable is certainly a better ideal.
openbsd, releases every 6 months, this i think is something that both ubuntu and debian should adopt for stable releases.
Welcome to the world of Linux and Ubuntu.
Putting in a router (instead of dial-up or USB ADSL modem) and at least one plain wired Ethernet connection seems to be one action that makes Linux suddenly possible in very many cases, such as yourself.
Since I\’d recommend (for Windows or Linux) broadband and a real router, and usually recommend setting up so that at least one machine is close to the router and has a wired connection, it seems to be an obvious enabling step to take.
Bonus feature: nearly all Linux LiveCDs will also pick up and connect to the \’Net if there\’s an Ethernet connection to a router available. That means that if you ever do have a serious problem/non-functioning system, you can use a Live CD to boot from and find the solution on the \’net, with or without a Windows dual-boot on the machine.
Extra bonus feature: booting from a Live CD is great from a privacy and security point of view, if you ever want to browse the internet and know you\’re not leaving a record of the session on your PC, then a Live CD is the way to go (the more paranoid amongst us disconnect our hard drives first!). Not only that, but I will be impressed to see the first malicious website that can compromise a system running from a read-only CD and survive a reboot. Highly recommended for those times you might wish to walk on the wilder side of the \’net.
Congratulations GL, you are officially a nerd now.
I\’ve thought installing Linux but just never got around to it and reading this post kind of makes me wish I hadn\’t given away my old computer.
This is lame - who cares about the Linux desktop which has no apps that people actually need. Yes you can get and use all the open source apps that teenagers are interested in, but nothing for the pro\’s. Linux is good for grandma to surf the web and not get viruses, but for the rest windows is the best
@Dug: Hah, that\’s very interesting. You\’re trying to say that linux isn\’t for \’pros\’, and that it\’s good for grandma and the computer-illiterate? That sounds completely backwards to me, and it should sound completely backwards to any real developer of any sort.
Almost the entirety of the source code of Ubuntu (and in fact the entire source code of linux) is available, and ready for modification by whoever wishes, and that\’s part of the reason there is so much variation. Configurability is unparalleled, because any feature can be written or rewritten at the raw source code level, and in fact this behavior is encouraged. There\’s a reason linux hosts 90% of the web: it has awesome stability and security built-in (any website that guarantees 99.9% uptime is almost certainly running some form of linux), and it\’s completely configurable. Despite what you appear to think, a real understanding of linux requires much more than knowing the GUI. The actual power comes from the command line, which can be (and in some cases must be) used to do configuration of the OS, something that most lay-people would be unable to do.
Security, stability, speed - the only thing that windows really outperforms linux in is gaming, and that\’s only because commercial developers don\’t develop games for linux. This is changing, though, and many great modern 3D apps - Doom 3, Google Earth, Half Life and its mods, World of Warcraft - run on linux (some natively), sometimes faster than windows.
World of Warcraft will still work in linux. I use Cedega, but others have had success using Wine. If you have 3D working with your video card, then you probably won’t have much problem getting WoW to work in linux. GL.
keegan is so right dont knock something or someone for something your mind cant grasp or understand. when you open up a business you better have lots of money to pay micro$oft for all the software you plan to use.
World of Warcraft? You\’re going to be missing that?
Oh wait someone mentioned it already. Well I\’ve already started writing this so… yeah go check out wine in case you feel you\’re missing anything. Cause Wine Is Not an Emulator and it can run many of the \
Well Dub,
Glad to hear that someone out there still wants those viruses running on their desk, isn\’t interested in browsing the web, and thinks their a pro with no kids. I was begining to think trolls like you were a scarce comodity. Of course any brows of Digg or Slashdot, probably even fark, should have disabused me of that notion.
Odd that someone claiming no interest in browsing the web would read an blog then go to the bottom of the comments, potentially reading each, and enter a comment. I guess that\’s just the way tolls work.
It is clear that Dug does not speak for all of us, I am one of many satisfied Linux users (Ubuntu specifically), sure there are the odd technical problem with Linux in terms of software/hardware issues but what OS does not have them? I think we should leave doubt behind when it comes to Linux and other free software and open source software in general because when it comes to discovering new software which could potentially be better then previous software titles then we need to take our chances and try them out and see what we feel about them.
On my final note I would like to personally congratulate Linus Torvalds as well as the entire open source community for their wonderful contributions over the many years of open source and free software development.
try gentoo
Great Article!
Dug your ignorance is killing me! You are telling me that you are honestly PLEASED paying hundreds of dollars for an operating system with a half life!? c’mon, have you even tried Ubuntu? yes I’m sure you’ve given red hat or fedora a try a long time ago late at night in your basement so your friends wouldn’t know but Ubuntu is a whole other world! To be honest I’ve heard your rant a hundred times before but it is generally people ignorant to the power of open source who say such things, people incapable of understanding what Linux is really capable of. I have played with my fair share of distributions and I agree some just don’t make the cut. But if you can’t understand Ubuntu then maybe give symphony or dream Linux a try, you might learn something.
Great read because my story is identical to yours. I started dual booting Linux back with Redhat 6.0. I gave up many times never because i didn\’t want to learn it, but mostly hardware problems. My first successfully install was Suse. Then i installed Ubuntu dapper. Now i use Edgy, and have totally wiped windows clean! Everything i need has been replaced. If i ever do feel like peeping into windows i can use Vmware. I run XP with it now, and i think Linux runs windows faster then your computer can depending on how much memory you allocate. Linux and open source is truly amazing!
Good read, but im still not convinced to switch to Linux. a) because it\\\’s still doesn\\\’t offer everything Windows does, there are special programs that I really enjoy in Windows such as Google desktop, my favorite IDE developer \\
WoW works with edgy and latest wine for me, no problems install, updating, or running. (it\’s better to run it in opengl mode, google it)
Downloading Ubuntu right now.
Hi GL,
Great to see someone of simeliar thoughts and history. I was a long-time user of Mandriva (the then Mandrake) all the way from (9.1, 9.2, 10. 2006 and 2007. I recently got a laptop (AMD64) of my own and tried Kubuntu Dapper and now has Edgy.
Really loved Kubuntu. kudos for kubuntu…
p.s. wireless does’nt work as yet
major pain is random freezes and reboots…
I have come to the conclusion that if the Linux distro suits you out the box great.
If not lots of luck.
Linux is for the most part custom done by computer programers who are nutcases akin to artists.
Self driven. Hard to manage. Beat to their own drum.
This is great for originality and ongoing development of the product and to keep Microsoft in check.
However just try to do something diffirent that is not in that particular distro like set up a wireless card.
However it is always impressive to watch what a real Linux user can do in short order .
For your keyboards multimedia buttons. Look into a program called “lineakd”. Here is some info from the webiste about it: LinEAK is a utility designed to enable the use and configuration of those special
keys on Internet, Easy Access and Multimedia keyboards in Linux.
It consists of three programs:
lineakd: this is the daemon that listens for incoming key and mouse events.
lineakconfig: this is the GTK+ GUI, which provides easier configuration
Klineakconfig: this is the KDE GUI which allows you to define keyboards, and configuration mappings for easier configuration. If your keyboard is not directly supported by lineakd, klineakconfig provides an easy to use graphic interface to both getting your keyboard working, and submitting your keyboard for inclusion into lineakd.
I think the learning curve for “proper computer use” is way too high. Ridiculously high. My folks went through a dozen major crash and burns that they could not recover from. Viruses, corrupt registry, hardware that just went missing and software that would just freeze everything. I gave up on XP and loaded them up with Ubuntu. They love it, it works. No more Nortons, YIPPEE!
Congratulations on quiting WoW!! I have also left the game after 2 years and the 1st thing i did after uninstalling the game was installing Fedora Core 6
I missed Linux bad.
Doug:
That must by why all of the engineering software that I use at work that we spend thousands on per year is Unix software that I run on Redhat…
Because pros use Windows for things like Cadence and Matlab, right? No, we haven\’t been using Unix and it\’s irk since the 70s and 80s, oh no, that\’s for certain. That must be why Cadence doesn\’t even support their software on windows… because pros use Windows and I\’m only an ~80k/yr salaried hobbyist.
Wonderful analysis, Doug.
You have just given me the inspiration i needed to run Linux! I was fed up of microsoft a long long time ago, but at that point of time i did not manage my switch to Linux! Thank You, Here I come Ubuntu!
If you can\’t get your wireless to work try search for the ndiswrapper and utilities on synaptic install them and then use your windows driver to install your wireless card it worked for me on a number of systems
I’m a recent convert to Ubuntu myself. Once I discovered Automatix and was able to seamlessly install the apps that I really wanted and needed, I decided to run it exclusively on my laptop. The only real major issue that I had with it was getting my wireless NIC fuctional, which eventually required me to buy a mini PCI internal, as this was almost the only way to buy one with a known chipset. Edgy Eft supports WPA, so after that I had no issues. I’m quite happy with Ubuntu so far.
I had a similar experience, only six years earlier. I made the switch to Linux in Oct 2000. I now use ubuntu and I am very pleased. I have all the oss software I need.
I really like linux, though I´ve never have the nerve to install it… I really want that linux gets better and better so one day I can just move away from windows.
But until I can´t use Adobe Photoshop on linux (and not GIMP), there is no way I´m going to make the switch!!
I tried open office a while back, I had it on my laptop for about one year, my girlfriend used it mostly… but it had some bugs, and some things that just didn´t work like MS office, and she had to remember to save everything again in MS format when she needed to send a file to someone… all this little things together were a major turn down.
We gave up open office when I bought a Palmtop, that can read MS Office files right out of the box…
I would buy a mac, but would not use linux… too bad..
Nice read! I too am making the pilgrimage to linux. Recently a friend of mine began talking about OSX x86 and how cool it was, it sounded good to me so I dug out my old WinXP Vaio laptop and went to work. (this laptop was not being used for anything anymore) After all was said and done, OSX would not recognize the ethernet port, PCMCIA slot, or the sound card, and no amount of googling would glean the required drivers… so after much head scratching, my friend says hey, if you want something REALLY cool you should try out Ubuntu!
Long story short;
My laptop has a new life! Ubuntu roxxors my soxxorz!
Ubuntu had no problem at all recognizing everything on my laptop, I am lovin it.
If/when I can get Cedega or Wine running my training will be complete, I will cross over to the dark side and be a sith lord, like my father before me!
You can play World of Warcraft. Get a Cedega subscription
Anyone who thinks linux isn\’t ready for primetime now is just an Apple or Windows fanboy. It has been my daily driver for months…
I\’m an intern at a national lab. We have one of the fastest super computers on the planet, and I am constantly neck deep in the command line. I use a variety of distros. Ubuntu is the one that gives me the least amount of grief when I install it.
That being said, a few weeks ago my mother called me up to complain about windows problems. She loves her sweepstakes and had picked up a virus so nasty that I couldn\’t locate it. It was systematically rampaging through her system eating programs and making the computer unusable. Now was the time to strike. Sure I could reload windows, but there would be another virus that would come along soon and destroy everything all over again.
I had her already using OpenOffice for windows. So I grabbed up a copy of KUbuntu Edgy and loaded it up for her. I choose KUbuntu because it is even more user friendly then gnome, with lots more gui tools. The configuration on it is simpler too. So I installed it, walked her through a few simple how to\’s. We barely covered the terminal, just enough to make sure she could get to it in case I had to have her type something in. She was loving it!
Now my dear ol\’ mother only uses her computer for a few things. Email, majohng(sp?) the game, general web browsing, digital photography (She absolutely loves digiKam), and from time to time writing documents.
Two things I didn\’t do that came back to somewhat bite me. My father had bought a new computer the day that I did the install, so she wasn\’t hooked up to her printer, or her digital camera at the time. I left before testing these things. Suffice it to say, I got some emails. When I came by the next week I was amazed to learn that the printer had been configured and was able to print a test page, but stopped working after that. I set it to the local and user default and it just started working again. The camera too was working and had its pictures already uploaded to the directory I set up! Those wily parents of mine had gotten it to work in my absence. A quick changing of a link was all I had to do to make web links in thunderbird point to firefox instead of konqueror.
My mother is happy and enjoying her new OS. I was expecting to have to change everything back to windows. My father even seems to like it, even though it took him 5 years to finally migrate from Windows ME to windows XP MCE (when he bought the new computer).
Great article.
I switched to Mandriva Linux a year & a half ago. I will never go back to Windows. It took me only a couple of days to get used to it, and there is a Linux application for everything I do. I’m not a gamer, so I don’t know whether that would have affected my choice.
But everything just runs so well - I haven’t had a single crash in 19 months.
Also, no need to run anti-virus. No daily anti-spyware updates to run. No waiting for the next round of patches to plug all of the security holes that come with Windows.
And, an update of the operating system at least once a year, not 5 years like Micro$oft.
Windows will definitely never be taking up any space on my hard drive. Getting rid of it is one of the best decisions I have ever made.
You\’ll be back! They ALWAYS come crawling back! Wahahahahahaha! Mahahahahahahahahaha!
What I find interesting is how he had to abandon wireless to use Ubuntu. This is a shame — people shouldn\’t have to ditch functionality to accomodate Linux.
I use both Ubuntu and XP and it did take several days (really, weeks) to get wireless to work. But once I did it was well worth it.
With Ubuntu Linux it is often the choice of the wireless card that can make your setup life with Ubuntu Linux easier.
Some wireless cards including the Atheros based A/B/G cards set up on the fly naturally in Ubuntu.
No fuss. No muss.
Re: Multimedia Keyboard.
Lineakd is ok, but I have found Keytouch enabled more of the mm keys, particularly when the keyboard is plugged into PS2 rather than USB.
The Debian packages are “keytouch” and “keytouch-editor”
I imagine Ubuntu would be the same.
Ubuntu is for those who are new to linux world or eaven computers itself, but for those that are confident with it, obvious next step would be something more sophisticated, like Gentoo. Gentoo fits your computer like a glove, works even faster than Ubuntu (at some price) and is very rewarding to work with.
People usualy miss the point of all GNU/Linux - if you miss something, then you can always write that missing application by yourself! Or you can always improve existing ones by commiting your own code.
Linux is a personal OS, with its lovely community. It`s like yor garden which is prepared by other people. So stop complaining that there are no flowrs in your garden, plant them and share them with others!
Well I have been using linux since the mid 90\’s starting on x86 and then going to DEC Alphas and now back to x86s w/ some Alphas still running. I can say whole heartedly that there is no need for windows for most PC users. Those who are having wireless problems check out ndiswrapper and fwcutter.
My first install of Debian was in 1995. I used it as a server for the next 8 years (with the multi-year uptimes you might hear stories about), but since I\’d been using SunOS for 3 years before that, the Xwindow system, Netscape browser and other standard UNIX environment tools gave me a working desktop even at that point (1995).
I got Win95 on my next machine a year or so after that, and used it. I was able to get Win95 working very cleanly, had tried Win98 but MS had obfuscated things and I just couldn\’t turn some stuff off. So Win95 was the last version of Windows I had on my own machine. In late 2000, Win95 finally melted down.
I erased Win95, put on Debian with KDE (and TWM, GNOME, IceWM, WindowLab, etc), and have been tracking the Unstable branch ever since.
I have never had the \
..and next week we’ll get another “Why-linux-isnt-ready-for-the-desktop” article to enjoy!
I didn\’t read so many posts here, but I can see that
some of you are mixing up free software with software for free.
It has nothing to do with the costs , but with freedom to use and all that stuff.
I can\’t beleive that peoplea still use windows at all after the mess it does on the Internet, and all restrictions that apply to the user.
Just reading the EULA for windows will make me puke and power off.
/birre
I\’m somewhat baffled by the wireless card comment too. I installed Ubuntu when my hive got corrupted (the hive…isn\’t that what the Borg live in?). Anyway my Dell Inspiron 8000 with a D-link wireless PCMCIA card came up without a hitch (this was with Hoary Hedgehog). I\’m now up to Dapper Dan. I have graphics, office suite, Cisco VPN, newsreader, web browsers haven\’t paid a dime except to donate (which I strongly suggest you do on occasion).
As the manager of the IT resources for a Division I have moved the mofority of our stuff to SUSE SLED, the boxes just run and run and run. I\’ve been involved with Linux since 1996 and am absolutely impressed by the maturity of the current distros. My peers and I are all pushing on our CIO to seriously evaluate why we stay with MS (XP, Vista, Exchange, Office). SUSE, Redhat and Ubuntu are all ready for prime time and have commercial, professional support available (ever try to get support from MS?).
Just MHO
CONGRATULATIONS!
It\’s really feels good to see someone coming out of the darkness/mental-enslavement that is caused by a closed, proprietary profit-driven corporation.
I celebrate Jun 18, 2005 as my Independence Day. That\’s when I turned off the Win machine as my main desktop, and started using SuSE (KDE). It\’s amzing to me some of the productivity gains I saw. Yes, I did have some issues, but those were more entertainment related and acceptable.
I took a longer approach than you. I started simply, first Firefox…nothing broke, then a month later, Thunderbird…no smoke anywhere, then (and biggest) was changing over to OpenOffice.org. I kept a copy of each file and updated both for a few months. After about two months with no issues (and a lot of backups just in case) I deleted all of the DOCs & XLSs and never looked back.
Several months later, SuSE 9.3 was coming out so I installed it on a laptop, which I used for several months until I decided to switch one weekend.
Near the end, my Windows box was getting really hit with malware, and I wasn\’t able to keep it clean. It was a nervous decision for me, and I\’m in the technical field, so I know Mary & Joe Windows-User are even more nervous about this kind of change over.
Anyway, it was a nice read, and congrats again on your liberation
I switched to Linux in 1994.
I haven’t looked back since.
Companies are starting to sell preinstall desktop Linux.
http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/
Thanks for your comment on my post earlier. I agree with you, it’s just articles like these that perpetuate the animosity between the Linux Windows camps. There is room for both and people should really be recognizing linux for the great product that it is without needed to bring down Windows to do it. I love them both.
JB
Hey, I\’m a Linux noobie, and I was wondering if anyone knew of a good site with instructions for someone (me) looking to run a distro such as ubuntu on their intel core 2 duo imac.
Shit, she buried him in and the ñåêñ âèäåî ÷àò îíëàéí girl and hit.