After all the good years Microsoft and Windows have given me, I feel it's time to say a little public thank you. Recently, Microsoft did the nicest thing imaginable for me. What might that be? Well, bear with me through this brief story.
About six months ago, I bought a new computer, a cheap Compaq desktop to use at home. It came with a free upgrade to the not-yet-released Windows Vista. When I got my upgrade software in the mail several months ago, I tried it out with great anticipation. It's a very pretty OS, and after gazing upon it fondly for about three seconds, I decided to get down to business. Several hours later, I was able to figure out how to use a few of the fancy new features that distinguish it from the previous version, Windows XP. I then decided to make sure all my old stuff still worked (I had done an upgrade install). It didn't.
Thus began the joyous task of reinstalling all of my software. When I got to my anti-virus program - a version of Symantec provided by BYU - I was not surprised to find that it would also need reinstalled. I was, however surprised by the fact that I was not even able to remove the old software because it was not Vista compatible. It was then that I remembered that during the last of the dozen or so reboots that had gone on during installation, I had been given an option to boot into the new Vista, or the old XP. I determined that I would simply reboot into XP, delete the old software, reboot back into Vista, and install the new. I rebooted, but after the basic system startup screen saw this most promising of messages:
No Operating System found.
I was so excited. After trying every option unsuccessfully, I ended up doing a fresh install of Vista, which came with the undesired side effect of losing all of my old data (fortunately I had backed it all up onto my external hard drive). Once Vista was running again, I decided to play around a little more before restoring everything to make sure I really wanted to run it, and not something else - and here is where I owe Microsoft so much thanks. Windows Vista still didn't run right, and crashed my system every time I shut it down. That's when I determined to try out Linux.
After some experimentation and trying out several different distributions, I am now happily running 100% Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, and trying to convince my wife that we need to do it on the desktop as well. I am very happy with it despite the few glitches that I've encountered. And that is why I say, "Thanks, Microsoft. If you had written a better operating system, I never would have discovered the other options."
Ubuntu is free, easy to use, more flexible, more stable, more secure, and more advanced than Windows Vista. Here is a screenshot of my current desktop.
Once again, my thanks to Microsoft.
5 comments:
We have so many things to thank Microsoft for, don't we? If they had written a better OS, I wouldn't be such a happy Macintosh customer. :)
If I could afford one, I'm sure I would be a happy Mac customer too. I drool over them whenever I see them (and I look at the site frequently). But for now, this will have to do.
I look forward to hearing how Linux works for you.
R.
Me too. Before long they're going to be pushing everyone to switch, and I might not want to do that.
It's constantly amazing to me how Microsoft, with all its resources, constantly turns out stuff chock-full of sweet features...that don't ever seem to work right. Seems to me they really aren't interested in giving customers a good, trouble-free experience, whatever their marketing might say to the contrary.
How is Ubuntu more stable/secure?
E.
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