Category: Microsoft

After about 4 hours of using Ubuntu Linux, I ditched it and installed Fedora Core 4. The main reason was that Ubuntu does not have a root user. This may seem odd to experienced Linux folks, but the intentions behind it are good. Unless you know what you are doing, you can completely hose a Linux operating system as the root user. So, in order to become as user-friendly as possible for Linux newbies, they require you to use ‘sudo’ for everything in Ubuntu.

To me, this was a slowdown. I decided to go with what I am most familiar with, and that is the RedHat-based Fedora Core 4.

More on my venture to discard Windows from my life will soon follow.

I got fed up. Fed up with a bogged down operating system. I got tired of viruses, spyware, licenses, etc etc etc.

Tonight I made the switch.

No, not to Apple. To Linux. Full-time, full-on Linux. Ubuntu, to be exact.

Within two hours I was up and running a smooth desktop, playing music from my iTunes library, browsing with Firefox, checking all my email in Thunderbird, and enjoying the feeling of being free from Windows.

The remarkable thing is that almost all of my USB devices work. My webcam does not, but a quick lookup found a tutorial on setting it up. Transferring all of my files was easy too. I just mounted my WinXP hard drive and whammo – it’s all accessible.

It’s still very early to tell how well I will adjust to this in my day-to-day working environment at home, so I will report back here on the matter in a week or two.

I made the prediction a few months ago that the beginning of the end has already started for Microsoft. They have shot themselves in the foot too many times, and others are picking up the slack. Linux will only play a partial role. Google, Apple, Mozilla, and the open source movement are the driving factors behind the falling giant.

This article has a lot of good points as to why they have already started tumbling:

* Financial growth has slowed and its stock price remains flat
* It missed the trends in Internet search and music download
* It’s still fighting anti-trust in Europe and Asia
* AOL instant messaging continues to dominates the IM landscape
* The verb for searching on the Internet is Google
* Alternatives exist to Microsoft’s core business

Add to that the fact that Windows Vista won’t be debuted until the end of the year (if that), and we see ample time for the recent trends to develop. Google OS, anyone?