I was originally going to do a few blogs; one for gaming, one for Linux/IT/work stuff, and one just for personal stuff. Instead it all got glommed into this one! Probably a mistake, but whatever…
I was reading an article on Linux.com about some guy’s experience with Gentoo and why he moved to Debian. I recently moved from Gentoo to Kubuntu for many of the same reasons.
Nazguul, a guildie from EQ2, asked me why I stayed with Linux when it gave me such frustration. I said the first thing that came to mind — I programmed in BSD Unix back when I was working for Digital Research and just loved how easy and obvious everything was. Great community as well. Using Linux now reminds me of those old days a decade before the Internet went public.
But… there was one incident that pushed me over the edge, after which I vowed not to use Windows ever again. I had bought DVD player software so I could legally play movie DVDs on my computer. Everything worked fine. Some movie I watched installed a new player on my computer and I liked that even better! So I used that.
Using Windows meant my computer was under constant attack whenever I used a web browsed, but even more insidiously, this new DVD player software was reporting everything I watched back to its master’s secret lair. Ad-Aware detected it and removed it — and then I couldn’t watch movies any more.
The software I bought refused to function — it just loaded up a browser page asking me to buy it again. Emails went unanswered. The DVD player software that came with my DVD drive only played movies in 16 colors!
Not to mention the tons of spyware and adware that wouldn’t constantly batter the browser.
I didn’t want to say goodbye to Windows until then. I’d bought a lot of software. I’d bought image manipulation software to make the screenshots I used for my EQ guild’s news warm and vibrant. I’d bought lots of stuff for that but it just wasn’t working well for me anymore.
Linux would have everything I had bought and also everything I had gotten maybe not the best way, like Microsoft Office, for free. Free and legal. Windows programs wanted me to log on with my pocketbook open. Linux said, hey, no problem, it’s free. Take what you need.
I tried many distros and, like the author of the linked article, settled on Gentoo. It worked fine until I botched an upgrade. Before my trip to New Hampshire, I needed to get a Linux distro on my laptop and just didn’t have the time to make that distro Gentoo. I installed Kubuntu on it and later replaced Gentoo with it on my non-game machine, and I am totally pleased and happy with it. I did have a slight graphics issue and Kubuntu was confused which of my two optical drives I did what with, but both were easily corrected.
Didn’t pay a penny, either.
