Monday, September 03, 2007

A Linux newbie ...and the story begins

I've been a Windows user since 1999 .. At that time i was a real newbie in the computer world.. I didn't know that other operating systems exist ! Well I took Windows for granted.. And now i blame the hardware companies for it.. Because once we buy their product , we just find MS.Windows in it and we don't have the choice to pick the operating system that will take care of our hardware!
Anyway, I grew up with windows, I used Win98 for a long time.. as i was young i was a videogame addict so i found many problems and system instabilities that i had to deal with : Virus, Fatal errors, weird system behaviors...and i had to format and reinstall the system several times because it was , in most times, impossible to fix the problem without formatting.. In all windows versions that i used i found the most instable version is Win2000 and the most stable is WinXP...
Time comes by, and i started to hear about Linux until i saw i video clip in youtube that shocked me ! It was a demonstration of the XGL/Compiz 3D desktop running on ubuntu.. I was estonished because I've never saw such windows that get burned once we close them, Desktops presented as 3D cube.. and this is an example of it:





So i thought i have to find out how could it be possible ! I thought it's in the operating system ( I didn't know that there is several desktop versions) I googled ubuntu and i was also astonished how things work with it.. First of all i liked the fact that I could ship CD's for free !! not only this but they're praying me to share their copies with my friends! It was completely the opposite of what i saw with proprietary software that i 've been using for years! I commanded the CDs and i was so glad to get them.. it was the ubuntu LTS 6.04 i run the "safe graphic mode" and it was so useful because i makes you try it because you install it.. It was using the GNOME desktop so it wasn't a 3D desktop.. i didn't find what i was looking for but i discovered another world of operating systems... I found many features that was equivalent to windows and sometimes better.. I liked the OpenOffice . It was easy to manipulate... then i tried to play an MP3 stored in my disk but the file type wasn't known for ubuntu the same thing with .MPEG and others and that freaked me out ... Because i was thinking what if become a Linux user what will happen to my songs libraries, films , games, and all what i enjoyed
doing with windows ? And that's how i turned down the idea of installing ubuntu..

How does ubuntu started to take over Windows with me ..
I returned to the windows, and i talked to my friends about that ubuntu version..One of them was excited to know that it contains a safe graphic mode because he had a problem with his hard disks , they don't work anymore.. and with ubuntu he could run his computer by booting the whole system in his RAM ! I was so excited to see him back in our forum happy to get over his hardware problem and that was thanks to ubuntu Another event that maid the image of ubuntu get bigger. It was my cousin who was preparing his PhD and he had problem with his old scanner that only worked on WIN98 .. The drive CD doesn't contain driver for XP.. So he came by trying to look in the internet for a driver to get his work done.. We spent hours and hours looking for this soft! We found a website that offers it but we had to vote and watch and click on several products and my e-mail box got ravagated by spams, it was such a pain in the ass! While the driver was downloading i suggested to run the scanner with ubuntu in my brother's PC.. and imagine what happend! once we connected the scanner a windows showing the logo of tha scanner constructer showed up and a message saying that a scanner has been connected and ready to work.. And that's what we did!! We started scanning the pictures that he needed and editing them and we finished the work before the downloading was finished !I gave my cousin a copy in case he needed to scan more picture.. and i had more proof that Linux ubuntu is better than windows...



What comes next ?
I'm really concerned about the Internet connection because I'm using an aDSL modem , its CD doesn't contain a Linux version of the driver.. I found in the its website how to run it but it looked a bit complicated with codes i didn't understand. Second, I'll setup WInE to run windows applications specially games !
Hopefully it won't be complicated.

Related links :
Ship ubuntu CDs for free
Visit ubuntu.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ubuntu sure is the best start for Linux for a newbie. I too saw the capabilities of this open source free OS and switched to linux.

Mostafa Berg said...

Great that you loved ubuntu !

it's really easy to get help with ubuntu and get to install new software.

about gaming, you better use Cedega, Wine is not capable of making games run!
cedega is available as a debian package so its very easy to install in ubuntu.

you can also run windows inside ubuntu, or any linux distribution using VMWare, or Virtual Box !

have fun and feel the freedom of OSS:)