This story begins somewhere 3 months ago, I came to buy a new laptop, as the one i was using, was dated. Not completely useless, just basic. Cuo core, win xp but vista ready, 2gb ram, on board graphics, 60gb hd. So i decide to change, I find a really good offer, an Acer Aspire 5520, £299.  I, to be honest, still believe they had cocked up the pricing, but I’m not complaining. This laptop has 64 bit, duo core, turion tl-60 2.0GHZ processor, 160GB HDD, 3GB DDR Ram, Wireless, GeForce 7000m Graphics (not amazing but better than what i had). A good deal sitting in at the price, considering when looking elsewhere the lower aspire models, with worse specs, cost the same i paid.

So i use the laptop for a while, not doing much with it, just the basics, running vista 64-bit. Then i install the Sims 2, for both me and my girlfriend, then the problems began. Vista kept locking up frequently, crashes, random errors on files that didn’t exist (as i had removed them, personal doc files not system files) So i remove the sims2, the errors stay, so i restore back to factory settings using my acer disks. As with any computer user out there, i, for some reason, believe that this would make my new laptop run as before, oh how i was mistaken.

Windows Vista had decided, it would do a few things before i removed it, and then conflict with my restore, marvelous. So i removed it again, sick of the errors and slow running, and the fact my processor would not run to its potential.

So i revert to Windows XP, but no, vista does not like this, and even though it is gone, without a trace thanks to disk scrubber, it causes havoc, conflicting files and locking XP out of certain areas. So i dual-boot Ubuntu Linux, as i am a fan of Linux and a hater of windows, with passion. When running my Ubuntu side, everything worked as it should. I was loving it, but a problem arose, i still needed the XP side for my VB.Net course. Whenever i swapped i had major problems, until one day, XP decided, through encouragement of left behind restricted, hidden files from vista, that it did not want me to use Ubuntu, or itself. Error after error led me to a format. Problems then arose, even worse than before.

Windows had made a choice, a choice that would effectively end our partnership for all time. It would destroy my laptops behind the scenes, so i had to get rid of EVERYTHING, and i mean everything, luckily for me, i kept my documents, everything i needed, backed up on my trusty play.com USB stick. So, i tried to restore back to default, thinking i’m going to have to suffer with vista, and telling myself i would build a P.C and only ever use Linux, with no trace of windows, ever. As my day-dream came to an end, so did my restore, with the biggest error possible. During restore, it had came across an error, which corrupted my restore disk, oh dear.

I picked up my XP disk, slightly smiling, thinking, at least its the lesser evil. XP would not install. It had also joined a windows campaign of hate against me. Lovely.

So i use disk scrubber once more, wipe and remove both partitions. I revert to my old laptop, i download and burn an image of the Ubuntu Linux distribution onto a cd, and then install it.

I now, have 0 computer problems. I have windows virtualised, with so little of it installed, it only runs to provide Visual Studio for my learning, but cannot do anything else, i love it.

But its even better, when i click restart, or shutdown, or am even loading up my newly created Ubuntu system, i do not have to wait for hours on end for it to happen. Head over to my last computing blog, 10 Reasons Why Linux Beats Windows, where i began my campaign to spread Linux to the world. And for the main reasons i love Linux.

I hope this has touched someones hearts, the end of one relationship, the beginning of another with a bit on the side, what could be more beautiful than a twisted love story?

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Tags: Changing From Windows, Linux, Operating Systems, OS, Windows Sucks, wisted love story

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.