I also use Ubuntu, but I hope that you agreed to support this customer for the next year…for instance when they try something more difficult, like installing their new camera or camcorder software, or that new game that the kids want to play.

A quick look on store shelves shows you just how many Linux apps are available from retail. OS Times are changing, but for the general public the time is not yet (not without a friend to lean on).

I’ve never been so frustrated with an operating system in my entire career as a repairman. I have to say it was probably the *least* intuitive layout for…a lot of things that I have ever experienced. I’ll save the space of the details…suffice it to say, that after much, much frustration (mostly with generic, useless error messages) it was finally discovered on some remote forum that the drivers for this guy’s hardware just don’t work in Vista – although they install fine, and appear to work – they do not. Just for kicks, I popped in Ubuntu Feisty (while this guy was standing there) and when it booted up fully functional and ready to go from the livecd about four minutes later, his jaw dropped – then he started asking “can you do internet” – showed him firefox – “can you do AIM, though?” – showed him GAIM, and he was confused about the lack of advertisements filling his screen when he signed in (which made me chuckle a bit) – “can you do email” – showed him evolution, which I don’t like and he didn’t either, so I showed him how to install Thunderbird – and it was after he witnessed how incredibly easy it is to install new software in Ubuntu (through that handy little Add/Remove thingy that Ubuntu added at the bottom of Gnome’s application list) that he just asked me to install that instead of Vista (I also mentioned that he wouldn’t have to worry about viruses, spyware and all that jazz, just some common sense – which you don’t really even need very much of to keep linux secure)… It’s just too bad he had already opened his copy of Vista and can’t get all that money back now….oh well, such is life, I suppose. (At least I got paid!!) It’s nerve racking to think of all the problems I’m gonna have to figure out how to solve in clicky clicky land (since the command line is pretty much useless in Vista it seems – it at least doesn’t have the same basic functionality that XP’s did i.e. No telnet?! Come on, already… What the hell kind of OS for a networked computer doesn’t come with telnet?), but that’s another rant all together.

Sad that the link is gone but we knew it would eventually happen.

I used windows vista for 3 months and found it a disapointing experience to say the least. ubuntu 7.04 feisty on the other hand I can recommend to any desktop user. truly innovative!