New year, new start for my computing ways. With the imminent release of Microsoft Windows Vista, I've finally decided to install and run Linux as my main OS (Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy) and to get away from the whole MS world of computing. The install was straightforward and very painless, have so far only opted for a dual boot machine, so I do still have windows XP installed, but as soon as I've backed up all my files from Windows, I will going for the full thing.
The only minor niggles with the installation was a lack of internet connection, due to out of date firmware on the router, a quick update of that and I was up and running on the web. Next, had to install codecs for 'non-free' encryption codes, MP3 MPEG etc, as they are not natively supported in Linux, going against the whole 'it's free' ethos. As with the install this was very very easy and painfree.
The only thing I still need to sort out is getting the wireless connection working, this however may never work, as my laptop has a bcm4303 wireless chipset from Broadcom, and it seems as if Broadcom are just as anti-linux as MS is, there are some 'tricks' that seem to get most people up and running with this chipset, but so far I've not had that luck, I'll keep trying and plugging away though.
All in all, Linux is just as user friendly as Windows, and I would even go as far as to easy it's an improvement, more options to control the computer than you get with Windows, a huge amount of online help/support, so far I'm impressed.
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2 comments:
Youre ditching winXP, eh? Which is the only (fairly) stable MS operating system btw.
Just stay the hell away from Vista 64 bit! (64 bit means "will never run another 32 bit extension" in microsoft speak) 32 bit version runs reasonably now, but its gonna be a while before all the 3rd party extensions are compatible.
I know, even though XP is their most stable system to date, my laptop still has application errors daily, and crashes at least once a week...had enough of it now...so of to linux we go, hi ho.
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