Good-bye Windows XP
I installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (version 7.04, an alpha release) on my ThinkPad T43 last week. I have a model 2668-97U and it’s had Windows XP on it every since I bought it January of 2006 – I thought it was pretty nice with Windows….
I really like Ubuntu. Everything, and I mean everything worked right “out of the box.” I was amazed. Windows can’t do that. There’s usually at least a dozen reboots involved in getting a new Windows XP installation up to ready-for-use. There were only two reboots for installing Ubuntu – one to get started and one to finish.
In addition, everything I needed for general office work plus a lot of graphics and entertainment was already installed and working. Open Office 2.2, Gimp, A slew of other apps. And how much did I pay for all this?
Nothing.
That’s right – no money down, no payments for the first… oh, ten thousand years. Or so. No, really – every piece of software on my laptop is free and open source. And what price do I pay for this if not in money?
Well, it did take me a few hours to get the system installed. But that was mostly because I took lunch halfway through. In another town. While the system finished installing.
Now, 7.04 is new, new, new and I wouldn’t put it on a clients machine – it’s a little shaky for an Ubuntu version: but hey! It’s an ALPHA release – there are hundreds of updates a day in this branch and everyone that uses it knows what to expect. Still, it’s more stable than XP was – no kidding.
And here’s a real kicker for you, this entire installation, with all the software I installed, and it’s pretty plush right now, takes a very mere six GB – yep, that’s a single digit less than seven. Hell, when I’d completely stripped my old Windows XP installation to the very barest of bare OS, minus all of my own data, it was still over 35 GB.
OH, YES! I almost forgot – Startup, shutdown, sleep, resume, login, logout: those onerous tasks? Only onerous in Windows – in Ubuntu they all take about two to three seconds. Yes, seconds.
You wanna try it out? Download their LiveCD and stick it in the drive and boot the system. You’ll be running a full OS off the CD so it’ll be a little slow – like my LiveCD ran at about 1/4 speed of what I’m seeing now. And it was still impressive.
Enjoy.