Monthly Archives: February 2007

The Truth About Switching

By | Published: February 28, 2007

What it’s really like to move to Ubuntu

I saw a great article linked on digg and it rang some bells. Many of the points made apply to Ubuntu as well as Mac OS X. So here it is with thanks and apologies to Bill Westerman. For this to make sense, you should probably at least skim that article first.

Note: I say Ubuntu here because that’s what I use. Fact is most of this applies to most Linux distributions

01. People will ridicule you for using Ubuntu

I have been sat at work and had people actually laugh out loud at my laptop running Ubuntu. I’ve had people pick up the free professionally-made official Ubuntu CDs, sneer and throw them back at me. Once people try it out though, they often change their opinion. Even if they don’t use it daily, their respect for Ubuntu goes up after at least trying it.

Posted in Advocacy, Linux, Ubuntu | 50 Comments

Weekend Geek-out

By | Published: February 22, 2007

Well, as Tony points out, that time of year has come around again where we go to Brussells for this little thing called FOSDEM.

The special blend of geek lectures, friends and Belgian beer have previously made for a great weekend. I suspect this might be another good one. See you there Tony!

Posted in Advocacy, Fun, Linux, Ubuntu | Leave a comment

Linux has an image problem

By | Published: February 9, 2007

Or rather the people who use it do. This picture was pasted in the #lugradio on freenode today. It’s a parody and extension of the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” Apple marketing campaign used heavily in the USA and now popularised in the UK with top comedy sell-outs Mitchell & Webb.

I’ll admit, it’s a funny photo. The PC (Windows) guy looks “normal”, he’s wearing a smart business suit, clean shoes and sporting an inoffensive haircut. The Mac guy is clearly more casual, more comfortable in a t-shirt & slacks,

Posted in Fun, Linux, Ubuntu | 15 Comments

No I will not fix your Vista computer

By | Published: February 9, 2007

I have previously blogged about my gentle refusal to help windows users with problems on their computer.

However recently I have been getting extremely frustrated with Windows to the point where there is just no fun in diagnosing and fixing problems. I get almost no satisfaction out of reoslving Windows issues. I can forsee more requests coming in as people buy new machines, or upgrade existing hardware to Microsoft Vista.

So I have decided that rather than helping some friends & family, and not others, I will do the decent thing, and not help any of them if they choose to install Vista. I think this gives me a nice cut-off point, beyond which I have no responsibility for providing assistance.

Of course, if they install Ubuntu (or any other Linux variant for that matter) I will go out of my way to help them, and will of course continue to encourage them to do that.

Posted in Advocacy, Linux, Rant, Ubuntu | 11 Comments

Wireless on Windows can be just as painful as Linux

By | Published: February 9, 2007

Last night I got a call from my father in law. He recently bought a new laptop and wanted to get it on his wireless network. Rather than talk him through it over the phone, I went round and helped him directly.

I wont go into the details, because it’s not remotely interesting, suffice to say the Acer wireless and wired LAN connectivity tool is a pile of crap compared to network manager under Linux. The user interface is slow, bloated and inconsistent. On a brand new dual core laptop, it takes almost a minute at times to decide to do something as simple as bring an interface up. Anyway, enough of this.

Posted in Linux, Rant | 2 Comments