cibby
July 27th, 2007, 01:46 AM
I recently was convinced to try Ubuntu by some friends in the IT dept at Uni. When they said 'Try Ubuntu' it was easy to ignore them, but when I actually saw them running it, I was cowed by how clean and robust is seemed.
Then they told me about repositories and it blew my mind.
I double-booted Ubuntu and XP. I needed XP to play games, though I was only playing Dwarf Fortress (free and oh-so-amazing (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/)), but it was reason enough to keep it on, as I planned to install KOTOR 2 later.
In XP, my antivirus scanned my system and deleted a bunch of viruses and Trojans, which felt very liberating at the time.
However, the next time I started up, XP loaded, but explorer.exe didn't. That means, no start bar, no desktop, no nothing. Just a blue screen. It was Windows, but with nothing running on top to interact with the computer.
By Crtl-Alt-Deleting, I could get to a command line, from which I could run Dwarf Fortress, and command my dwarves to build a moat to protect my fortress from stampeding elephants.
But I couldn't really do anything else.
And the more I though about it, the less I wanted to reinstall Windows. After all, for basic functionality, Ubuntu gives me everything I need.
Now, though, I've accidentally created this impotent version of Windows, which can't do anything except command line-functions. Though it's a massive waste of space, it feels GREAT.
Thank you, over-anxious virus protection!
Then they told me about repositories and it blew my mind.
I double-booted Ubuntu and XP. I needed XP to play games, though I was only playing Dwarf Fortress (free and oh-so-amazing (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/)), but it was reason enough to keep it on, as I planned to install KOTOR 2 later.
In XP, my antivirus scanned my system and deleted a bunch of viruses and Trojans, which felt very liberating at the time.
However, the next time I started up, XP loaded, but explorer.exe didn't. That means, no start bar, no desktop, no nothing. Just a blue screen. It was Windows, but with nothing running on top to interact with the computer.
By Crtl-Alt-Deleting, I could get to a command line, from which I could run Dwarf Fortress, and command my dwarves to build a moat to protect my fortress from stampeding elephants.
But I couldn't really do anything else.
And the more I though about it, the less I wanted to reinstall Windows. After all, for basic functionality, Ubuntu gives me everything I need.
Now, though, I've accidentally created this impotent version of Windows, which can't do anything except command line-functions. Though it's a massive waste of space, it feels GREAT.
Thank you, over-anxious virus protection!