I’ve always defaulted to Windows as my operating system, mostly for the facts that it’s what I grew up with, and because Mac computers tend to die within 5 minutes after me touching them. Something having to do with not being able to handle the multi-tasking load that I would put it under. Granted, those were from 8 years ago when I was in high school, G4’s at the most I think, and I got banned from the computer labs during lunch hour because I crashed one to the point where they had to reformat it. YESH! I’m sure there are still a few people that remember that particular incident. In any case, I’m pretty much as anti-Mac as they come. Don’t have an iPod or anything, and I think Apple’s greatest idea has been to switch to Intel processors and allowing Windows to be installed on their machines in place of OS/X or whatever operating system is standard for them these days.
Linux, on the other hand, was something that I was always aware of, once it became a little more mainstream… probably around the time I LEFT high school… but never had the mind to try simply because of how difficult I had heard it was, and that, as a gamer, there are very few, if any, games that have been developed for Linux based operating systems. But lately, thanks to the fortunate timing of a coversation with my boss, who is an avid computer geek, and an article on “The Register“, an online IT news site that I frequent (mostly for tales of the BOFH), I’ve been inspired to give it a whack. Right now I feel like I’m diving off the deep end, with no clue how to swim, but in reality I’m probably only just dipping my toes into the shallow end to test the water.
I certainly have the spare computers to work with (read: destroy), and so I’ve downloaded Ubuntu. So far I’ve tried running it on a virtual machine using MS “Virtual PC 2007” (Failure – no mouse support), copying the CD to a thumb drive and getting it to boot off of that (Failure again), and then finally managing to find a blank CD-R that had enough space (First one I found was a 650 Mb dinosaur – Ubuntu ISO is 695 Mb), burning it, and booting off of that (Success!).  My first real guinea pig, so to speak, was actually a laptop that I was repairing for a friend that needed the hard drive tested. With no other operating system available, I threw the CD in, installed it, then followed up with WINE, and with no issues, a celebratory pizza for supper.
Sooo, now I’m planning on taking it a step further by prepping MY laptop for it’s much needed wipe, and then I’ll install Ubuntu, possibly dual booting with Windows XP eventually, since I’ll be needing it for my next trip to the great sandbox.
