Maheriano
December 16th, 2008, 08:09 PM
About 3 years ago I got my first taste of Linux when I asked online what the best distribution is and was pointed towards Gentoo (huge mistake!). So I downloaded an install CD and spent a week or two sorting through command line documentation to try and get it loaded onto my machine, finally it worked!
:guitar:
Then I went through the headache of trying to modify my .conf files to try and get dual monitors working, adding extra hardware, configuring those, make, install, it turned into a nightmare and I went back to XP after a short time. Then a year later I decided to try again and someone pointed me towards Ubuntu so I tried that and it worked okay, I think it was version 6 or so (2006). But eventually it was still too much of a headache to get working seamlessly with all my hardware so I ditched it and again went back to XP.
This time I made a third attempt and after getting a Live CD off a friend for 8.04, I realized how simple and painless the install could have been......why did I not find the Live CD before? Anyway, I love my machine now! I installed 8.04, did the upgrade right away to 8.1, SPDIF and AC3 passthrough worked with minimal effort, I ditched my DVD player so I play all my DVD in my computer now on a 720p projector. Updates come automatically via Package Manager (never had that before), installed emulators for NES, SNES and all my favourite gaming consoles so now I can put those in the same closet as the DVD player, setting up the Wiimote as a bluetooth/infrared mouse, setting up my Blackberry as a remote control, set up Apache2 to serve small websites, set up MythTV (and I just heard about the wonderful world of MythWeb) to run my television stuff, Elisa to run my stored media, some scheduler to perform backups, setting up ZoneMinder (hopefully if it's not too CPU intensive) to run security.........AND IT'S ALL FREE! AND EASY!
Wow, thanks to everyone who contributed to get me here, I'm real happy with the advancements in Linux over the last 3 years. Although I do still run Windows on 2 other systems, here's why:
I have a car PC which runs all my media and most of the applications for it run on Windows XP, plus all the addons people write for it. Linux touchscreen and GPS just aren't where they should be for that so I haven't switched over yet. And my laptop runs Vista simply because I use Photoshop for work and it took me a long *** time to learn where everything is and become so good at it. I don't want to have to learn all that again in The Gimp so I still run Vista. But my Ubuntu desktop is my main machine.
):P
:guitar:
Then I went through the headache of trying to modify my .conf files to try and get dual monitors working, adding extra hardware, configuring those, make, install, it turned into a nightmare and I went back to XP after a short time. Then a year later I decided to try again and someone pointed me towards Ubuntu so I tried that and it worked okay, I think it was version 6 or so (2006). But eventually it was still too much of a headache to get working seamlessly with all my hardware so I ditched it and again went back to XP.
This time I made a third attempt and after getting a Live CD off a friend for 8.04, I realized how simple and painless the install could have been......why did I not find the Live CD before? Anyway, I love my machine now! I installed 8.04, did the upgrade right away to 8.1, SPDIF and AC3 passthrough worked with minimal effort, I ditched my DVD player so I play all my DVD in my computer now on a 720p projector. Updates come automatically via Package Manager (never had that before), installed emulators for NES, SNES and all my favourite gaming consoles so now I can put those in the same closet as the DVD player, setting up the Wiimote as a bluetooth/infrared mouse, setting up my Blackberry as a remote control, set up Apache2 to serve small websites, set up MythTV (and I just heard about the wonderful world of MythWeb) to run my television stuff, Elisa to run my stored media, some scheduler to perform backups, setting up ZoneMinder (hopefully if it's not too CPU intensive) to run security.........AND IT'S ALL FREE! AND EASY!
Wow, thanks to everyone who contributed to get me here, I'm real happy with the advancements in Linux over the last 3 years. Although I do still run Windows on 2 other systems, here's why:
I have a car PC which runs all my media and most of the applications for it run on Windows XP, plus all the addons people write for it. Linux touchscreen and GPS just aren't where they should be for that so I haven't switched over yet. And my laptop runs Vista simply because I use Photoshop for work and it took me a long *** time to learn where everything is and become so good at it. I don't want to have to learn all that again in The Gimp so I still run Vista. But my Ubuntu desktop is my main machine.
):P