Ok, so I’m going to finally give in, after the move I’m putting my money where my mouth is and going to Linux for at least the summer. No windows, no going back before I have to make sure everything works for Lauren go to school.
Who’s With me?!!?!?!
Seriously, does anyone want to try out my summer of Linux fun. I was thinking if a few people who had their interest slightly tweaked whenever they hear about a free operating system wanted to try it out, now is the time. You get an official computer geek to help you out, one who doesn’t mind reading forums, spending hours on the phone with tech support, knows lots of ways to back up your system so if it all goes to the pot we can just restore, and is not afraid of the command line.
So what do you have to loose? That’s right, NOTHING! So join me in my capitalist dance of free software, as I shake off the oppressive closed-source chains of the twin operating system monoplies.
All joking, or weird computer nerd ideologies aside, I have an actual reason for doing this.
It starts with the new Windows, called Windows Vista. I have seen the future my friends, and it looks pretty, but under it’s hood it is anything but.
Windows Vista looks like it is going to contain a lot of great improvements. But this thing is a monster. Think buying a Escolade with even worse gas milage. Sure it has lots of nice things inside, pretty things that are very nice, but try to parallel park the thing and your in for trouble.
Microsoft and Sony got cocky. MS, with windows XP, and sony with everything. Now, they are both in trouble. When the technology was being announced for Vista, back in it’s early days of conception, it looked great. But OSX quietly borrowed those ideas (as well as adding their own) and came out with their annual releases, all while Vista kept getting delayed, and delayed, and delayed. And now we won’t see it until early 2007, and it is going to miss half of the good features it was supposed to have. (the sony mention was just to point out that the PS3 is going to cost $600 and that is stupid, and sony is stupid…but that is another rant).
This new MS operating system also wants all of your computer, and it wants some of it that isn’t even there yet. It wants a higher end graphics card, it wants 1 GB + of ram on a 32 bit system (which most of your systems are), and even more than that for a 64 bit system. It installs off of a DVD and the downloads for the betas are weighing in at 3 to 4 GB, so you better have a 200+ GB hard drive. Own a laptop? Had it for a while (a year maybe)? You better believe your gonna need to stick with XP. Any older hardware, especially sound and graphics cards, that the manufacturer does not produce BRAND NEW drivers for is not going to work.
Again, looking forward MS does not have a bad product on their hands, they just have a big, power-hungry product that is not going to be good for anyone who isn’t buying a brand new computer late this year or early next year.
Also, Linux now has most everything MS has that is useful. OpenOffice is great, and saves in PDF as well as MS office formats. Firefox for web browsing, which you should already be using. (if you are using IE right now, I’m sorry) Thunderbird, or Evolution for email. Both of those do a great job. And, the distro I’m going to use, Ubuntu, is easy to install. Probably as easy, or easier than MS stuff.
Linux is easy to get rolling now days, but it can be hard to mess with for some hardware.
I’m a little concerned about my printer and my ipod. Also, my bluetooth stuff for my phone. I know that sometimes if one of those things doen’t work out of the box, it is pretty tough to get rolling.
If your interested in doing this though, we will scour the internet ahead of time, checking on your hardware, and making sure there is support in Ubuntu for it.
So, any advice my more linux-savy friends have would be welcomed. Also, any comments from anyone remotely interested in the idea. I’d like to hear your thoughts or reservations.