I know what you all are thinking. "Daniel's gone insane(I know you knew that already dad), Windows 7 just came out and he's just jealous that he can't have it, he doesn't really know what he's talking about" and on and on it could go. I admit, many arguments
may have a foundation on truth, but that's not at issue here. (or is it)
To tell you the truth, I bought a netbook about 6 months ago because it would serve me as my college note-taking and paper writing platform. I has done very well so far, but there are a few things that would just bug me all the time. Foremost among my hate for some things windows is the insane time it took to boot the operating system. It was way to cumbersome(under my standards) to boot the stupid thing in class. Other reasons to hate the thing is that Windows(I was using XP) would have these crazy seziures all the time. I don't know what was going on there, but it just wouldn't handle a certain number of programs running all at once, have a coronary, and keel over. How did I remedy said problem? Reboot. Microsoft might even say the same thing. I heard a funny joke a few years back.... or was it a true story based on fiction... anyways, the most seen fix for most windows issues is of course, format and reinstall. It's true, if you got something unfixable, you can just try to back up all your files and blow away what you got going on, and start over, and repeat ever 1-2 years. There, your set for life.
But, hearkening back to my swingin' computer nerd days(I'm a geek now, but most don't realize that there is a
fundamental difference between them)when my brothers and I would play around with lots of different Linux distros and UNIX or BSD, I looked into Ubuntu linux, found out my dad and another brother were running it, and looked into it. Turns out they have an OS optimized just for netbooks. I looked into some more, here and there, and finally decided to take the plunge. Turns out it was great. As you can see from the screenshot taken from my machine, the desktop layout for netbooks is way different from what you would normally see in most(even linux) OS's, the model for norm being taken from Windows and Mac. The desktop layout has been optimized for the screen size of a normal netbook. It makes it so everything is displayed cleanly, but also adds the practicality we've come to expect from normal GUI interfaces. Everything looks clean, is extremely customizable, and if you dual-boot with windows, will even automatically port all of your documents and desktop settings from windows.
As you remember, I was most concerned with the Windows boot time being tediously slow. Now don't just tell me that "you've got a netbook, Daniel, is just gunna do that to you." Well, I reject you reality, and substitute my own! My very first boot into ubuntu took just under a minute from pushing the on-button to checking my email. Now tell me netbooks are crap. I'm also pleased that I can go to class and start taking notes on this rig just as fast as if I were using a real pen and paper.
For all of you now intrigued, but not willing to give up on windows, you can partition your harddrive so that you can boot both windows and ubuntu. As a matter of fact thats what I did.
You can read a very good review on the latest update of Ubuntu, now at 9.10,
here at technewsworld.com.
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