Well, I gave it a shot. I’ve been running Ubuntu Linux on my home rig for the last month and basically been productive. No dual-booting was allowed, I wanted total immersion. And ya know? In general it went very well. Ubuntu is certainly easy to install and configure and I can’t claim I ran into anything that I couldn’t do. Sure, sometimes I had to search the forums, but the answers are out there.
It wasn’t all roses though. When I initially installed Ubuntu 8.10 it felt a little sluggish but I figured it was just me… I did some tweaking and tried to speed things up but never really saw much improvement. I can’t quantify it either. Just that normal things, like scrolling down a web page in Firefox, weren’t snappy. Mouse clicks didn’t always “take” either; there was like this weird and barely perceptible mouse lag going on.
One other issue was, ultimately, the deal breaker though. Late in the evening when all the work is done and the family is in bed I become an unapologetic gamer. I have my old games that I like and was able to get them easily working with CrossOver Games. It worked great, but did terrible things to some of the games. For instance, zoning in Everquest went from a few seconds to sometimes as long as a minute. Now that is something that’ll drive you bonkers quickly! Like, “hurl the machine out the window” bonkers.
I really missed Windows Live Writer too. That caught me by surprise. Great blogging tool.
So, after a brief dalliance with Mandriva One, I opted to go back to Vista. Mandriva is probably what I’ll use next time I need a Linux distribution. Looked good and felt slimmer, but not enough to tempt me this time around.
To introduce new challenges, I went with the x64 version of Vista (free!) for this install but so far that hasn’t caused issues. Took a few hours but the rig is all patched up and my apps are loaded. My games are working great too 
Am I still a fan of Linux? You bet! Am I total Microsoft marketing tool? I don’t think so. It’s really about horses for courses, right? For what I want on my home machine, Windows works best. Now, my work machine might have some changes coming though…
Possibly Related posts:
November 27th, 2008 
Tags: 
I agree. I’ve got many friends who are in the tank for Apple. And while I’m no “Microsoft marketing tool” either, there are some things it does better.
I love the Unixes, and enjoy my time using them. But I’ve got Vista at home because it “just works” better in this application.
[...] mentioned that I went back to Vista a few weeks ago and so far everything seems to be working just fine. Upon reflection, I think I can [...]
[...] home machine has been running Vista 64-bit for a couple months now. Initially I didn’t bother to install an antivirus program, but since I [...]
i installed ubuntu on the whole hard disk and i know im not getting my files back that were on vista but how do i get vista back on even though i installed ubuntu on my hard disk? i tried but it said it needed to be labeled as ntfs files or something im not really sure but please someone help me out.
That, presumably, deleted all your old vista files.
When re-installing Vista you’ll need to pay attention to where you’re putting it. If you explore the options, you’ll see that you can delete the existing partion (presumably solely used for Ubuntu) and the create a new NTFS one in place.
NTFS is one of the file systems that Vista will use. It needs to have a compatibly formatted partition for installation, and it cannot use a Linux file system. So, your choices are to either use Ubuntu to create a new partition for Vista, or re-install Vista over Ubuntu.