Andrews Family

Last week Jenny and I watched the movie Super Size Me, which is a documentary about a guy who ate only McDonald’s for 30 days. I don’t think anyone would argue that eating only fast food is a bad idea, but it’s an interesting and entertaining movie. It’s also a interesting look at personal responsibility versus corporate responsibility.

That got me thinking about what I could try for 30 days. A couple of weeks ago I was ‘accosted’ by several Mac fanatics at work and they were trying to convince me that a Mac is the best solution for a typical home user. I’m still not convinced, and I don’t think I’ll ever be convinced. Like it or not, Windows has the vast majority of market share which means that most things geared toward typical home users are predominantly Windows. It would be pretty hard to change my recommendation from Windows to something else that I have to pay for. Give me something free and easy to use and then we’ll talk. That’s where Linux comes into play. Follow the link for info on what Linux is but it is an operating system like Windows and Mac, only it is free and open source (btw, Tux the penguin is the official mascot of Linux). The problem has been that Linux hasn’t been as user-friendly as Windows and Mac so it has only been used by techies.

Well, I had recently heard of a distribution of Linux, Ubuntu, that was very user friendly. So I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to try it. And what better way to really evaluate Linux than to use it exclusively for 30 days. Well, OK, I have to use Windows at work, but I was committed to using Linux exclusively at home for 30 days, trying to use it for all of the common tasks of a typical home user. Jenny wasn’t so keen on joining me, but said I could do it on the laptop and leave her the desktop.

So I burned a Live CD, which allows you to boot into Linux and try it out without having to install it, and booted my laptop into Linux. I was impressed! Everything just worked and the live CD was able to find and use all my hardware, even my built in wireless Ethernet. That was pretty impressive to me since most laptops require specialized hardware drivers and I didn’t know if trying Linux on a laptop would really be a fair test. After being impressed I ran the Linux installer and things took a turn for the worse. The installer was easy to use but when it went to install, it hung. Some troubleshooting determined that the partitions on the hard drive that it created were not correct. Long story short, I spent 3 nights trying to get it installed and never succeeded. I even made my own partitions with Partition Magic. After 3 nights of trying, I decided that Linux probably wasn’t going to be able to make the grade on the tests I had planned to able to be used by a typical home user. I was disappointed, but rather than spend more time on that project I decided to scrap it and work on something more useful.

But all this has made me hungry. I think I’ll run to McDonald’s for some fries.