are you sitting comfortably?
My dad is a computer geek, he used punch card computing in Uni, that sort of thing, so I don't currently understand why I ended up wiht a DOS box when I was a kid. I didn't know there was an alternative, so I had DOS, and win3.11 (I always used DOS, couldn't stand win3.11) until about 98 when someone "upgraded" me to win95 while I was out at a LAN party without my permission., Windows 98 followed and eventually 2000 and XP. So I have extensive windows knowldge and experience, having built and installed all my ocmputers from scratch from the age of about 10. At uni (you always dabble in things that are bad for you there) I was shown linux. It looked interesting and I installed mozilla on my windows box. I liked but wasn't ready for the switch, after all it worked didn't it? There were macs in the lab at uni but I hated them. Really really hated them. OS9 and the puck mouse. Gah that was awful. I was also a tinkerer, being able to open up my PC was important to me. I properly made the switch to Linux in 2005 (after dual booting for a year or so) after trying to install windows XP. I had a legitimate copy of windows, and I know what I am doing. After several hours I had a virus infected machine, and failed to complete the installation. That shouldn't be possible, should it?
I had a legit copy of XP Pro. I had got an external firewire drive, so decided it was time to back up date, and format my hard drives, clean install, and re arrangement of how my disks are managed. To start I needed to backup the data to the firewire drive. I wanted to format it in FAT32 for linux/windows compatibility. Windows XP refuses to format it as it is over 32Gb, after a bit of googling I decide I can either install win98 or boot into linux to format this hard drive in one partition (80Gb), annoying. It would appear that microsoft are trying to push people away from fat32 onto their sekrit NTFS, which no one else is allowed to fully support. oh well, in linux
$mkdosfs -v -F 32 -n external /dev/sda5
quickly sorts that one. And I backup my files.
First up for install Windows XP, as if I install it second it will refuse to add linux to the boot menu, whereas linux will happily add windows to the boot menu.
Booting off CD and wiping hard drives were surprisingly hassle free, entering the tiresome product key is always a pain, fighting to change the defaults from US to UK. But when you think it's all done, it really starts playing with you.
Knowing windows, I had already downloaded a firewall and antivirus software, and had SP2 on CD standing by. What I was not expecting was windows to inform me that my valid legal software key had expired because it had been used too many times. Well duh, I just formatted my HDD, of course I'm going to use it a second time. Cue me ringing microsoft to ask for them to activate it, for which it had to be online....
mistake
get the 54(!!!!) digit activation key, type it into the phone, get told it's wrong, get a NEW 54 digit key, get product (legal remember) activated.
Install AVG.
This PC has just had all the partitions wiped then formatted
It has been on about 5 minutes
AVG immediately on completion of install tells me I have Lsasser!!!
F**KERS!! I HATE YOU BILL GATES YOU USELESS C%NT. I HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN ONLINE YET!
W*NKER!
Quickly get firewall in place and install firefox, while installing SP2.
About an hour after windows has "finished" installing and I can get to downloading the updates from microsoft.
About 2 hours, 20 reboots and one trojan after I "finish" installing, and I've finished getting the box remotely internet worthy. Oh, and configure my hardware and plead with the gods of drivers to allow me to have a desktop bigger than 800x600
Install office, the rest can wait for now.
Welcome to the f*cking future, today.
Of course then I restart the PC after putting a Suse9.1 install disc in, and within 5 mintues it is installing away. 30 minutes later and it's almost done, but first it wants to download updates, fine. 20 minutes later that's all finished, and I am loging in and online. One fully configured and ready to rock OS. Oh look, it's already got a firewall configured. What's that, a fully functioning office suite? Already installed? A stable browser? A fully fledged graphics package? And wait, I didn't have to call Asia to plead with them to let me use my legit software, or f*ck around with 2 25 digit keys and 2 54 digit keys.
Maybe Windows isn't ready for desktop yet, and people were looking at me oddly when I told them that I was fully intending to switch to OSX as my main system with linux boxes to play with...
Just about the only things keeping me on windows (at the time, sort of) are an MP3 player which needs a bit of windows software, and. Nope, that's it. And for all I know there is linux software for it. So the MP3 player and familiarity. Bill, you'll never see another penny of mine.
Then all I had to do is convince windows that yes, really, there is only one version of windows on this pc, stop offering me two when you boot.
Since then, well, I didn't boot back into windows other than to put music on my createive zen MP3 player. The wide didn't miss it either. I found there was nothing we wanted to do on a PC that Linux couldn't do just as well as windows, if not better, and for free. I nuked the windows partition.
Not too long after that I bought a mac mini (mid 2005). I realised I hadn't upgraded the hardware for a few years, and it wasn't keeping up with what I wanted to do. Now I have everything I want. Great UI, good software, it Just Works, and it has UNIX underneath it. Perfect.