Reminder why I went to Linux

[picopir8]

Last night I upgraded to from gutsy to hardy. However in the process I TEMPORARILY installed windows so I could upgrade my BIOS (its a laptop and about 10 revisions had been made, several which improve power consumption so I wanted to upgrade). Well I was going to keep windows in case I wanted to run some other windows only software. However, the install went so badly that I reconsidered and wiped windows and vowed to never install it again (or purchase another HP computer). Let me break here and say #&$@ Microsoft and @$#% HP. When I booted with my HP restore disk, it took about 2 hrs before windows booted up, but then it kept installing other program and rebooting. IT TOOK OVER 4.25 HRS BEFORE THE INSTALL FINALLY COMPLETED. It there were prompts for user input at several point so its not like I could let it go and come back when it was finished.

After finishing around 2.30AM I left the ubuntu install until this morning. I was so fed up that I deleted windows and vowed to never install it on my computer again. I will live with any BIOS issues and rather than go to windows for even a second. I digress though. Ubuntu took about 30 min to format the hdd and install where as the stupid HP/Microsoft disk took well over 4 hours. It just confounds me that the restore disk could take over 8 times longer to install than ubuntu. And ubuntu runs better and is more powerful.

Thanks again to everyone who works on ubuntu, or linux in general. I promise I will never get complacent again.

[DahVid]

I flash my BIOS by putting my BIOS, BIOS flashing application, and a flavor of DOS on a disk and booting it.

[master5o1]

I have never used this but you may want to read about this and related projects such as open bios

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxBIOS

[Polygon]

I flash my BIOS by putting my BIOS, BIOS flashing application, and a flavor of DOS on a disk and booting it.

Most modern motherboards already have the flashing program on the motherboard, and all you need is the new bios BIN file and just go to the flashing program and specify where it is and it will flash it...

[Mreyebrows]

I just installed xubuntu on an old powermac g4 and it took less then an hour.

compared to the hours of wait time for the OS 9 install disk to arrive from the world of ebay, i am now thinking about saying screw you to OS 9 and sticking with xubuntu