After talking The Talk, I finally walked The Walk.

I'm writing this blog entry from a newly resurrected "laptop" computer, which has just recently been imbued with the powers of Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex, if you are curious). This was the first system bought for Allison to use as her own, and served us well for a while, but then bad things started happening to it. The right side screen hinge anchor broke, the keyboard lost some functionality, and it got replaced with a slightly updated Sony Vaio. It was also having intermittent hard drive issues, which were ended when I used it to experiment with digital video capture from the DVR, and forgot to limit the file size. The hard drive was not usable after that.

When Allie's Vaio up and died before we had fully scoped out her replacement laptop, we had nothing better to do, but to see if we could get ANYTHING up and running for her. This effort serves multiple purposes: It gives us our first stab at using Linux (our router doesn't really count) for determining if we can use it on the next laptop, it "bridges the gap" until we purchase the next laptop, and can perform as a computer for the kids later on. What it needs (and is on the way now) is a new keyboard. I'm using the wireless "lapboard" stolen from the XBOX, which had originally been used for playing Half-Life 2 on the TV with the old HTPC, sitting atop the laptop's built in keyboard. When the replacement keyboard arrives, it may grace somebody's lap once again. It has a few upgrades inherited from the Viao: like a faster processor, and twice as much RAM.

Ubuntu has been a joy to use for the most part. There have been a few hickups, but I haven't had to undo anything. The biggest pain in the butt has been figuring out how to correctly administer permissions. For those of you who might be unfamiliar, the common model of usage with Linux is that you don't USE anything with root (overlord master of all) permissions, and those permissions are only invoked when specifically needed. I can understand that just fine, but have had a hard time finding the CORRECT instructions for my particular needs. The hardest thing for me to do has been to get Flash working on Flock. It is a simple process, but was hard for me to find the right set of instructions, so there were a lot of wrong instructions for me to try out first.

Of course I now have Flock set up with all my favorite Firefox Add-ons, and have installed WINE to enable some of our favorite Windows games from Silvercreek Entertainment (Solitaire, Hearts, Spades, etc.), so in the software sense we are good to go. Ubuntu has set up ALL of the hardware available to the laptop with a minimum of effort, including our networked all-in-one printer. All I had to do was tell it to look for a printer, and it was immediately found ALL BY ITSELF!!! I don't know if Windows Vista can do that, but I know Windows XP can't. Similarly, the scanner was already known when I opened up the scanning application. I can't shout enough praises for these last two, as we have had a good amount of trouble from the HP software for Windows. This rocks!! The only other little nibble was that the volume control keys were not mapped to the correct device. This problem was fixed rather quickly though, as it was simple to find the correct control to change.

So for anyone wondering if they can make the leap, and isn't attached to proprietary devices and files they are worried about losing (Hi, iPod. I'm looking at you), try out the latest release of your friendly neighborhood linux distribution. You don't have to commit to it, as you can run many distributions from the CD to try it out.

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