The OS Hokey Pokey

So recently, my XP system fell victim to a spyware infection. I battled hard, but in the end I decided to just reformat, mostly because I hadn’t formatted in 6 months or so. So I decided to try the new Windows Vista Beta. It installed fine, looked pretty good, but one little problem: it didn’t recognize my network card. Bummer.

So I figured its time to retry LInux. I give linux a shot once a year or so as a desktop OS and I can usually put up with it for a few months and then something I need to do causes me to go back to windows. This time I tried Ubuntu. The install was very good, and with only one problem: again my network card didnt work. However unlike windows, you can do something about that.

This thread told me to enable dmfe and disable tulip, and then my ghetto davicom ethernet contoller worked perfectly. So far so good!

The one other thing to do was get my dual monitors working. I thought this would be tough, but it was very easy. The nVidia drivers are just a checkbox away using the ubuntu package manager, and then I configured X to use a nVidia thing called “TwinView” that is working very well. It emulates on X “Screen” using my two monitors. I’m thinking about changing it to use 2 Screens because TwinView seems to have a problem realizing that my LCD is my primary monitor and so I can only get fullscreen apps on my CRT

In conclusion, so far so good! I think I might be able to get away with linux for a lot longer this time. Nice to see the community making some updates, although clearly linux still doesn’t quite pass the “mother test.” But its getting close!

Now my music is up (xmms), AOL (gaim) works great, and my browser (firefox) acts the same as windows.