Well I’m almost windowless… And after 10 days of fiddling, all I can say is it’s about frikken time too!

Several days, many hours and 5 versions of Linux later, and I think I’m finally just about sorted.

‘Course half of it is my own fault, I will insist on using a laptop, which was half the bother, some versions didn’t have any mobile support (or they weren’t picking it up on my computer) so I had some systems that couldn’t run a laptop display, some that couldn’t read the laptop battery and others that couldn’t run the built in wireless network card.

And lets face it, what good is a laptop if you can’t cruise the internet while sat on the potty?

Heck, I’ve written some of my best journal entries sat on that very utensil…

*cough*

Sorry, that might have been too much info… :asbestos:

So I started with Mandriva Linux (previously Mandrake) I have to admit, I’ve tried moving to a linux system several times before, but never with any great success (or effort I have to admit) and I’ve always ended up leaning towards Mandrake as my system of choice.

It’s designed for a halfwit to install (always a good thing) easy to follow and pretty straightforward to use once it’s up and running.

Only downside, it wouldn’t recognize my battery, so I’d never be able to actually use it as a laptop. It also wasn’t able to read Windows NTFS partitions, so no easy access to all my existing files.

The retail version (yes I shelled out) does have the licences for programs such as Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer etc, making life much easier. No good for me, but would be perfect on a standard desktop machine.

Then I tried Ubuntu, a nice little single CD affair, nice display, pretty simple to use, but a bit of a pain to install, no nice graphical interface on that one.

Then I tried their KDE version (Kubuntu) GNOME and KDE are the two main linux graphical user Interfaces, I just find I work better with KDE… That and I love the multiple desktop setup, since i tend to multitask a lot and hate having dozens of windows clogging up my workspace. With KDE I just flick to a fresh desktop and let the running programs do their thing on a different workspace.

Both of those had the same issue, neither would recognize my wireless network card, and were a bit of a pain to setup a cabled network too. I got it in the end (not the wireless bit though) but not exactly easy for the linux novice.

Then 4 days of downloading Debian. 2 DVD’s worth of stuff, more than any other I tried, and they couldn’t even come up with a graphical setup system, just text. 2 hours of selecting packages and I was cross-eyed!

I wouldn’t have minded so much, but I don’t even know what it needed 2 discs for, no graphical setup, no mobile support (or again it just didn’t pick up anything on my machine) no NTFS windows partition reading skills.

Not a happy Fraggle!

Finally I tried Suse, which is what I’ll be sticking with.

It had a partial graphic setup system, but not as easy as Mandriva, the package descriptions aren’t as good, so it’s much harder to decide what you need/want installed and what you can ditch.

Still I got there, and it picked up the battery immediately, and the wired network. It took several attempts to figure out the wireless setup, but again, got there in the end.

I did give in and buy the retail version again, simply because I like the added ability of Adobe, Realplayer etc. But the download version worked just as well.

I’ve found a program to let me install my computer game so I can play that on Linux, I’ve got my usual browser on already, and found a program that will let me use my other windows programs on linux, so I can use my normal photo editing and Desktop publishing packages.

Only problem is that something broke in that program so it doesn’t run on the version of Suse I have, at least not until they get it fixed…

Why does that not surprise me? I should have known things were going too well.

Still I can use windows in the meantime, and linux can read my windows partitions, so even in linux I have access to all my files.

It’s not actually as difficult as it seems, moving to linux, but on the other hand, if I’d realised it was going to be so fiddly, and so little instructions, I may have given in and just stayed on windows, performing system reboots every couple of hours along with a lot of muttering and cursing.

Ahh well, too late now