I have a spare box kicking around at the moment, not too well specified but OK. So I thought that I would install Ubuntu 8.10 on it. That goes well as long as one choose the option to use the entire disk, and in fact it did. Then I get a popup telling me that some of the hardware drivers necessary may not be free. They are free for Windows users. Ha.

Rather than wait for Ubuntu to discover updates, I manually started Update Manager. Two hundred and ninety one updates, in numbers 291. No wonder Ubuntu is served as a roll up every six months. Also, there is hardly any real difference in the builds apart from a kernel revision because the earlier kernel was susceptible to who knows what.

I was advised that I would have to use an nVidia video driver that was not part of or supported by Ubuntu but that had been tested by the Ubuntu people. Say what?? It is asking for a restart. Isn’t this one of the bad points that Linux users level at Windows. it has been running for over an hour and so far, all I have done is install updates and had to reboot twice. After the second boot because of the video driver, I now had only two resolutions available, 800 x 600 having been lost. I don’t have these kind of problems with Windows. A few more failed attempts and reboots while getting Ubuntu to recognize and make use of the nVidia FX5500 have made me give up. It is time to write zeros to the drive, definitely the best way to shoot a penguin, and set about installing an operating system which works. In the case of this machine, it will not be Vista because of memory slot limitations, but XP or 2000 will run well and, in the time it has taken me to complete the exercise in futility as briefly outlined above, I could have a Windows computer, up, running, fully updated and productive.

How anybody could talk a Windows user into dumping their OS in favour of Linux just baffles me. There must be a law against doing so, and if there isn’t, then there should be a law passed. Linux trolls harp on about Windows being caught by open source operating systems, but the only way this is going to happen is if Linux uses roadside bombs. Linux is a ‘one percenter’ desktop environment because that is all it deserves presently. It is strictly geeks only or for people who consider 24/7 problem solving to be ‘productive’.