Graham Doel
All About : Techy


I’ve made the switch!

By: Graham Doel, February 11th, 2007

Windows annoys me. The longer you have it installed the slower it goes. It costs a fortune, is difficult to reinstall and has loads of programs that also cost a fortune.

For the last year I have been intentionally switching to programs that are designed to be cross platform (ie you can use them on Windows, Linux or Mac) so that next time my computer needs upgrading I can migrate away from Windows. All these programs are free because they are developed by a community of people rather than owned by a company to make a profit (people do make a profit from them, but that is another story). My three favourites are:

  • OpenOffice: A complete office suite that is Microsoft Office Compatible. It does have some minor incompatibilities but I have been using it for over 5 years with no real problems.
  • Thunderbird: Thunderbird does e.mail.
  • Firefox: Firefox is a web browser.

There are others that I use, but more about those another time. So faced with a slow computer, and in need of a job to keep my mind active I backed up, formatted my hard drive and installed Ubuntu (more from wikipedia, take a peek).

I have played with Ubuntu before, it is installed on Isaac and Alice’s computer and it runs fine. It is free and well supported. Above all it works. I installed it on their computer and never had any problems. However, when I installed it on my laptop I have had two problems.

  1. I can’t get the wireless network to work (neither can my friend Matt for that matter). I think it is because the card defaults to off and for some reason won’t turn on. I will solve the problem by buying an external wireless card. However, for now I have a wire trailing accross the living room floor, at least it got me to finally wire up the network wires I installed when I rewired.
  2. The DNS settings seem to (for no apparent reason) reset themselves. I think I have found a fix here, but time will tell.
Read "I’ve made the switch!" in full. This post is filed in "Computers",

2 Responses to “I’ve made the switch!”

  1. Matt Fletcher Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 10:24 am

    Just to make it obvious, I can get my own wireless working perfectly. My Sony VAIO VGN-FS315E works like a charm. But I was unable to fathom out Graham’s machine.

    Good luck on your adventures with Ubuntu. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now, and many other linux distributions for years before it. GNU/Linux makes a fantastic operating system that is only improving as time goes on.

  2. David Says:
    October 25th, 2007 at 6:49 pm

    Give me a version of Linux that installs automatically and never ever needs you to enter anything via a command line interface and I’ll consider it.

    Until then I’ll stick with Windows.

    If you upgrade your PC every time Mr Gates brings out a new OS then you never need to worry about your PC slowing down.

    Mind you, you’ll have to remortgage your house, obviously…

Leave a Reply

Previous in category : Live Support?