So I have now made the leap from a Windows operating system to Ubuntu Linux. How I got here is a tale unto itself.
Back up your hard drive now. Back up your hard drive now. Back up your hard drive now. What I tell you three times is true. Go do as I say and not as I have done. I usually am the one preaching the gospel of backing up your data. But do I listen to my own advice? In this one (and vitally important lesson) I did not. Hence my silly time since before Christmas.
Shortly before Christmas, I noticed I was having difficulties with my laptop. It would freeze up during odd times. It wouldn't respond to keyboard commands and had to be powered down. Finally, I was faced with the dreaded blue screen of death. Grrrrr! Now what do I do? The system would boot up, come to my desktop and then promptly blue screen out. Too late to back up my files, the hard drive was dead, dead, dead.
Luckily for me, I was not without a network of people far more knowledgeable about computers than I. After letting Mark from my office (huge tip of the hat to you Mark!) take a look, he pronounced the death of my hard drive to be official. However, he thought he might be able to at least pull off my documents. Hurray! At least I wouldn't be without my pictures and documents. A quick trip down to Computer Direct Outfitters, a small payment, and out I came with a brand new Seagate hard drive.
The next step was to install the drive and decide what to put on it. I have my Windows XP disk some where. I am quite certain that with a little bit of hunting I could put my hands on it. However I have a golden opportunity! I have, essentially, a clean slate. I've wanted to experiment with a Linux operating system for some time. Now seemed like the perfect time to give it a try, so why not? So now here I sit typing away and generally speaking the transition is painless and almost completely transparent.
As I do more with this system, I will update this site, so stay tuned!
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1 comment:
It doesn't sound like you need any encouragement. When I switched, I knew I was never going back. I never liked Windows. It didn't make sense to me to have to learn new ways of doing things every time a new version was released. I didn't like the chaos of the aftermarket software. I had to install extra software (that probably need a reboot) just to see the seconds on the system clock. There was no order to it, it was a free for all.
After I switched some realizations slowly sank in. Using my computer all day long, loading and unloading programs into memory didn't faze my computer in the least. Installing and updating anything is shear bliss. Windows computers degrade in performance over time as a matter of being.
When I realize how needlessly difficult and expensive it was to run my Windows computer I get very angry. I'm so glad I have Linux.
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