Yet Another Linux

I got another laptop, a medium speed Core Duo guy but with 2gig memory and 300gig disk. It came with Vista. That did not last long. After about 20 minutes of Vista (after a much longer question answer session before it finally booted completely) I noticed that certain things were being installed which I did not have the opportunity to say YES or NO.

To me, that is called SPAM/Malware/Spyware/Marketing, and it really soured my first true experience with Vista. It was only Vista Home Basic -- not much of an experience at best, anyway.

I immediately grabbed a CD with openSUSE Linux, which so happened to support all the hardware on this laptop (Dell Inspiron 1520). I wiped out the entire 300gig disk and replaced it with Linux. Now I have a screaming system that computes the hell out of data and has every damn software thingy I could imagine.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND DOING THIS!!! Although I have a great machine as a result, it took my many years of experience with computers, networks, Unix, Linux, XP and all the various wires and vast differences between them. I think that is the real reason Linux will never be a household word. It is just too hard for Mom and Pop to grok.

There are companies that will sell you completely installed versions of Linux for a slight fee over the cost of the machine itself. But I have no time for that. I just do it myself in a few hours. All the frustrations are good for my heart -- pacing around between machines. Good exercise.

Ubuntu Linux Rocks

I have invested about one whole day to installing Ubuntu Linux 7.10 on my wife's Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 laptop. We had it repaired from a burned out fan and disk so there was nothing to salvage from prior systems. I did, however, install XP Pro first, since she would need that no matter what else happened, as do I on my own computers.

The installations went OK until I tried to get a flaky Ethernet connection to work. I finally had to go into my office, right next to the router, and directly plug it in with a short cable, and that gave me straight Internet -- wonderful. But, Linux nor XP could use the Wireless Card. It must be faulty. I have a Wireless game connector (Wireless G via Ethernet) which I am using at the moment-- that worked because Ethernet worked and Linux or XP neither had to think about a different device.

I like Ubuntu Linux. So far it has been easy to install, has a lot of nice features, games, tools, every sort of doohickey that a programmer like me needs.

I install g++ and was able to make some hello world type programs. I have OpenOffice for all that stuff and Evolution email, Image editors, movie/music players, some kind of Skype like thing, and so forth-- everything I could ever want to buy -- all for free.

Since I am an old Unix hacker, Linux seems like a modernized dream version. But to my wife, this is a nightmarish Non-PC that requires too much re-learning. I understand. I didn't necessarily like re-learning programming on PC's after Unix, either. It was a definite step down. Microsoft has some adequate tools, and billions of add-ons and helper programs made by them and 3rd parties. But mostly MS is about paying through the nose for everything -- especially if you are a business.

The dual boot works, however I'm not sure how to make XP the default instead of Linux-- it is my wife's machine, after all.

I'll figure it out. Must be a way to edit that Grub file or whatever it is.