It's be a year (to the day I believe) since I've installed Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop and it's been a fun ride. So, if you have a few minutes, let my tell you my story.

Last winter we had a bit of snow here in Denver that left us with little we could actually do outside. After the first few weeks of January, cabin fever started setting in and I began playing around of the idea of putting Linux on my computer. I can't remember exactly how or why, but I ended up downloading Ubuntu 6.10 and tried the LiveCD on my laptop. It worked wonderfully and I decided to do a dual boot with XP so I could see how it actually functioned day to day. Well, I dun f***ed up the dual boot and ended with a PC that would do anything. Can you say nOOb!

I have been a practitioner of the backup for years, so after a few minutes of utter panic, I calmed down and remembered everything was backed up on an external drive. (OK, I did inevitably loose a weeks worth of emails, no great loss.)

As luck would have it, having been an experimenter and no great fan of MS, I had moved onto programs that where all cross-platform (Thingamablog, Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird) but one (MS Money). Thus, I thought, what the hell, maybe I should just install Ubuntu by itself. So I did.

It was shocking once Ubuntu was installed. I have media buttons on the front of my laptop, they worked. All my data for Thunderbird, Firefox and Thingamablog was easily loaded. All the function (Fn key) keys on keyboard worked. It was amazing to me, I never expected this all to work so well. I was sold.

I did have some problems, suspend had issues and there was the problem with no wireless. I spent some time on the Ubuntu forum and after some time of trial and error the wireless kicked in. Honestly, I still have no idea how I was able to get the wireless working, all I know is, boom, it worked one day and has ever since. Suspend came around after a month or so.

I spent the next few months perusing everything Linux. I learned cool commands to run from the Terminal. I played with installing and removing programs from the Add/Remove manager and the Synaptic Package Manager. I screwed things up and re-installed 6.10 a few times. The first time I did this, I was amazed by the fact that quite a few of the settings in my /home folder (set on a different partition, something I started doing way back when from my 2-3 re-installs per year of Windows to keep it clean) kicked right in. Things like Tomboy notes where all there, KeyPass knew where to look for its database, JAlbum and Thingamablog where able to start without having to re-install them. These kind of things where unheard of from my Windows days, it was re-install everything and update all settings to my liking.

Then, along came 7.04. I promptly upgraded to it. Oops. Then I downloaded and did a fresh install. Much better. The first few weeks it acted a little funny, issues mainly with suspend. Once a month went by it was smooth sailing. I spent more time on anything Linux or Ubuntu. I downloaded and tried other distros LiveCDs, spend more time exploring the Linux OS and even tried to help out on the forums (I never really did learn enough to be much help, but I tried).

With the other distributions, I found no reason the change. I was happy with how my laptop worked, so why change. I spent some time on Gnome-look and figured out how to change my splash screen, login in screen and themes. In all I was settling in quite nicely with my new OS and how it worked.

As October was coming closer I was getting excited with the prospects of 7.10. Once it was released I promptly upgraded. Oops. Then I downloaded and did a fresh install. Much better. The first few weeks it acted a little funny, issues mainly with suspend. Once a month went by it was smooth sailing (hmm, sounds familiar?) I played around with the new graphics for a while, installing software for widgets and desktop toolbars. In the end, I removed Compiz as I am happy a simple UI and don't need the fancy graphics. The Panel with shortcuts on it works just fine for me and I never really did like things all over my desktop (see). This also explains why I never switched to a KDE distribution.

Of course there was that Load_Cycle_Count issue. For me the fix was removing Tracker, something I didn't use anyway.

So now I am just waiting for 8.04 to come out. I've learned to wait for a month or so before I install the upgrade. Actually I will probably do a fresh install, I never have liked how upgrades go whether Windows or Linux. Once it is running I probably will not upgrade again, what, with 8.04 being a LTS version. For this laptop it should be just fine for it's life.

All in all, it has been a fun little adventure. I'll keep running Linux and helping all my friends with their Window boxes and laptops. I doubt I'll ever be one to get anyone to switch to Linux, Windows works for them and there is no reason tor them to change right now. Maybe when XP is no longer supported the time may come. However, I will do what ever it takes to keep them away from Vista.

I'll keep perusing Ubuntu forums and the various Linux sights - I especially loved finding the flame wars between Linux and XP/Mac, KDE and Gnome and the various distributions. The second two seem so ironic to me, isn't Linux suppose to be about choice? Occasionally I might throw my 2 cents in, but I think pretty much I just be user from here on out. I have found an OS that works and I don't have to worry about.

I am one happy Ubuntu camper.