Bye Bye Windows

I have made a big decision - I am going to move my main desktop PC over to Ubuntu from Windows XP. Why am I going to do this?

Quite frankly, I have had enough of Windows. An organisation the size of Microsoft ought to be able to through enough resources at an OS to make it extremely robust and stable. Instead, I find things that just stop working, have to spend too long applying various anti virus and firewall patches, and constantly patch Windows itself.

I recently finished re-installing a friends XP machine that had been crippled with a virus that had wrecked the networking side of things, including internet connectivity. They had a Packard Bell computer, but lo and behold they had lost the XP CD that came with the machine. We tried different XP discs that we were able to get hold of, but none worked with their serial number printed on the label on the PC. Fortunately, another friend had a spare license from their Microsoft Action Pack subscription, so we were able to use that to rebuild their machine. This took more evenings than I care to count, trying all the different discs and serial numbers.

Now I find that my PC is going to need re-installing. The sound has stopped working, and no matter what codecs or drivers I install, nothing works. I have tried re-extracting the required Windows dlls but no luck. So the only thing I can see left to try is a re-install. But, lo and behold, I seem to have lost my XP CD as well! Despite being able to find every worthless bloody driver CD I have ever had, the time I need the important one, I can't find it.

So, I'm not going to bother. I have no intention of ever going to Vista - the prices Microsoft charge in the UK are way over the top for a system that seems focused on stopping you doing more things than it allows you to do. I recently installed Ubuntu on my music server to run Slimserver, and I like the look of that, so I have decided to kiss goodbye to Microsoft and their unreliable, insecure software, and say hello to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. Who knows, perhaps it will be no more reliable than XP, but at least I will no longer have the worry about losing license keys or discs or worrying about how many times I can install it without breaching the license.