Tuesday, March 27, 2007
X Marks the Blog
Welcome back to the continuing saga of Ben's desktop computer. When last we left our protagonist, a normal morning routine had been shattered by the absence of a BIOS and its accompanying beep. During spring break I went and visited my local computer doctor, a.k.a. the Invisible Dad, who quickly diagnosed the problem as a bad motherboard. This meant that I could potentially salvage all the data on my hard drives by reconnecting them with a new one. So, one Saturday morning visit to Ye Olde Computere Faire and a lot of hard work (mostly on Dad's part) and I'm back here at Old Ivy blogging from my desktop again.
Now the reason that so much work had to be put into the computer was that we bought a used computer running Windows XP and Dad needed to figure out the best way to manage all of the partitions on the various drives. In addition, given our mutual antipathy for our Big Brother in Redmond, WA, we decided to install an alternate operating system on one such partition. And unlike in the past, I decided to set the non-Windows operating system as my default.
Which is how I am here, writing this blog, not in Windows...as was previously the case, but in Xandros. Xandros is similar to Windows in many ways, at least in terms of appearance, but it runs faster then XP, is more stable than XP, and has none of the pesky hidden digital rights management issues that XP is wont to foist on the unsuspecting user. Furthermore, due to my preexisting love of open source software, most of my programs already run in Xandros. And if I want to find new stuff, there's a very easy to use interface that will download and install new software packages. Oh, and did I mention it has two separate desktops for your convenience? (If one gets too cluttered with windows, you can switch to the other one!)
Now it's not all perfect. Sometimes the official versions for download aren't up to date and you have to muck around with compiling the source files. But for basic day to day office type stuff, it works quite nicely. I have a full office suite, internet access, full multimedia capability (with the exception of Windows proprietary codecs...but I've been told that can be solved), and even good old Minesweeper. And if I absolutely have to, I can switch to Windows. It's the best of both worlds!
I'm in agreement with my friend at The Sleeper Cell. It looks like Linux is finally starting to give Windows a run for its money. I wonder how long it will be before everyone else notices.
Welcome back to the continuing saga of Ben's desktop computer. When last we left our protagonist, a normal morning routine had been shattered by the absence of a BIOS and its accompanying beep. During spring break I went and visited my local computer doctor, a.k.a. the Invisible Dad, who quickly diagnosed the problem as a bad motherboard. This meant that I could potentially salvage all the data on my hard drives by reconnecting them with a new one. So, one Saturday morning visit to Ye Olde Computere Faire and a lot of hard work (mostly on Dad's part) and I'm back here at Old Ivy blogging from my desktop again.
Now the reason that so much work had to be put into the computer was that we bought a used computer running Windows XP and Dad needed to figure out the best way to manage all of the partitions on the various drives. In addition, given our mutual antipathy for our Big Brother in Redmond, WA, we decided to install an alternate operating system on one such partition. And unlike in the past, I decided to set the non-Windows operating system as my default.
Which is how I am here, writing this blog, not in Windows...as was previously the case, but in Xandros. Xandros is similar to Windows in many ways, at least in terms of appearance, but it runs faster then XP, is more stable than XP, and has none of the pesky hidden digital rights management issues that XP is wont to foist on the unsuspecting user. Furthermore, due to my preexisting love of open source software, most of my programs already run in Xandros. And if I want to find new stuff, there's a very easy to use interface that will download and install new software packages. Oh, and did I mention it has two separate desktops for your convenience? (If one gets too cluttered with windows, you can switch to the other one!)
Now it's not all perfect. Sometimes the official versions for download aren't up to date and you have to muck around with compiling the source files. But for basic day to day office type stuff, it works quite nicely. I have a full office suite, internet access, full multimedia capability (with the exception of Windows proprietary codecs...but I've been told that can be solved), and even good old Minesweeper. And if I absolutely have to, I can switch to Windows. It's the best of both worlds!
I'm in agreement with my friend at The Sleeper Cell. It looks like Linux is finally starting to give Windows a run for its money. I wonder how long it will be before everyone else notices.
Comments:
Welcome to the club! I'm a fan of the linux world, though I'm not going to stick with Xubuntu for too long. I'm going to switch either to regular Ubuntu or something else at some point, once I get my next computer.
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