XP to UBUNTU back to XP

I have been a fan of Windows. I have used every OS they have made since Windows 3.1. Windows 2000 and XP are probable their best OS they have made. Built on the NT architecture. Compatible with everything now. XP is best for gaming. Usually stable. Sure you can get blue screens of death but I have not got as many as 95/98. XP has been around since 2001. We all have been waiting for something new. Something better. MS created Vista. There is some nice eye candy. A little more secure, but on the whole its not worth the wait for 5 years for. Its extremely bloated. Incompatible with a lot of hardware and software. The option of 6 different versions is just confusing for some and can drive you crazy. Sure you can get the Ultimate that has everything but is it really worth the cost!. They should have just stuck with the 2 different versions. Business and Home. Getting Vista Home Premium I expected the scanning and fax to be in but NOOO!! Only in the Business and Ultimate. This is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever seen. I could go on about Vista but I won’t.

So I decided to give Ubuntu a shot to replace my main OS. There are a lot of things that are attractive about it. Its free!. The eye candy with compiz blows away Vista and its very customizable. System requirements are not that much. Open Source so it has a lot of programs out there for it. I was surprised with the compatible it was. Everything work hardware except my HP scanner. Software there are some accustoms I have to deal with. One thing that I use all the time is sleep mode. I put XP to sleep with 1 touch of a key on my keyboard. PC sleeps in 3 seconds. I press my power button and the PC is up and running under 7 seconds. Vista sleep never worked for me and neither does the Ubuntu. All the same hardware so this is very frustrating. Also because the HP Scanner does not work in Ubuntu I either have to reboot into XP or run it in a VMware server Virtual PC. Since I don’t do a lot of scanning this would not be to bad but just annoying. Playing music is fine. The music player in Ubuntu does a good job replacing Musicmatch 9. Can’t play too many Windows games (wine or vmware) but since I don’t play that many and my son has his own PC this is not a big issue. How Ubuntu handles Pictures is not as nice as XP does. Both allow me to upload to my website fine but changing size and editing is not as nice as XP. Ubuntu’s security and lack of Virus/Spyware is a real plus for Ubuntu but as mentioned in previous article its behavor that prevents me getting this. Speed of Ubuntu is (well when I started) is really nice. The multi screens is really nice. I put Firefox in one screen. Switch easily to a wordprocessor in another, video in another. Its really nice. The default Open Office is nice and since compatible with MS Office is a plus. There are some applications that Ubuntu will not work (unless vmware). I use Foldershare all the time to sync files from home and the office. Logmein works but only in java mode. Also I can’t remotely control my home PC in Ubuntu like I can in XP. I could use VNC but I don’t have the flexability I do with Logmein. Backing up I use a program called Casper XP. I can copy everything to an external HD once a month or so and I take the drive to work. This way if something goes crash/fire or someone steals my PC, it would not be hard to get up and running again. I just attach the drive my PC and I can boot up just the way I backed up.

My Ubuntu was running very nice but something happened. I don’t know if it was an update or a program that I installed or a shutdown I did that was not proper but now my Ubuntu is running very slow. It gets to the login screen fine but after I login the screen and the menu bar takes 2 minutes or more to fully load. When its up the Internet seems sluggish and starting things like a terminal is really slow. With this last thing that has happened I have switched back to my XP as my main OS. Its compatible with everything! It boots at the same speed. Sleep works. I have been using the same instillation of XP since 2004. I have installed and uninstalled a ton of applications/utilities etc. I have 19 tasks running on startup on my taskbar let alone all the hidden ones. After all this it stills runs pretty quick. Not as fast as a fresh install but surprisingly is still pretty quick. Its also been very stable for me. I could go for a few weeks without ever restarting. I still run the sleep probable 4 times a week.

So for now I will stick with my XP. It works for me. Maybe someday when I have some free time I will reinstall my Ubuntu and start over again. Good to learn more on the install and configuration and someday I will post on my install procedure. I really like Ubuntu and I might switch back again. I also might get a new PC and install XP on this and configure Ubuntu on my old PC. will have to see.