I have been a Windows user since my first computer The IBM ps2 that i bought for $125 , came with ms-dos 5 and
Windows 3.1 .Despite the fact that al i could do with the machine was play Solitaire, i was hooked on Windows.
Briefly, my next computer ran 3.1 also. Then we moved up to Win95 , and it was so fine we bought Win 98SE
before we had a computer that could run it. Thirty-two megabytes af RAM was, wow, a lot of RAM.
Of course at the time i was building computers and re-conditioning systems for other people. so i became
very familiar with Win98 . I had no interest in WinMe, or 2000 . Just about any equipment maker you can think of
had Win98 drivers for download on their website..those were the days.
My first experience with XP was on a new PC at work. My main concern was teaching my self the basic functions.
and locating the utilities. Nah. I stayed with win98 at home. I knew the interface pretty well.
Then, i bought XP and it would not install. It kept telling me that my code number ‘no good’ .
I could not ‘activate Windows’ . Strike One. a few years passed, and then came the inevitable discontinuation of
support for win98 . Due to my concerns for ‘security’ , i gave XP another chance.
My home computer had everything necessary to run XP. I just didn’t like it. Like 1,000s of other people,
I thought Win XP sucked. The things that kept me interested were the upgrades -
like Direct X and IE that you could not get with 98 . So before XP service pack 3 came out, I was pretty well on my way
to ‘suffering through’ XP on a daily basis.
At the time, i learned to dual boot Win XP and Win Me . Just an experiment, but i still liked the interface of the older windows better.
Partition formats, and file systems didn’t mean anything to me. XP was more like an ‘arms race’ - keeping up with everyone else.
With the end of support for Win Me, I started looking at Linux. after all, i started with ms-dos, so i was not afraid of a command prompt.
At the time, I had several old IBM laptops, so I looked for a Linux distro that would work on a Pentium .
The first choice was DSL Linux (damn small linux) . That was a piece of cake to install. Then the reality; it wasn’t
a graphical user interface .
And so, my second choice for Linux was Vector Linux . I first downloaded it in January 2008.
It only required a P II to run a GUI . That was great.
Then , I discovered that the minimal style and ‘no nonsense’ approach was exactly what I was looking for.
I do not need some ‘fancy’ looking desktop, or office software, or anything else that Windows offers.
About the only reason i stayed with Windows was for playing Risk on my computer..seriously.
I also downloaded and tried Ubuntu, but i didn’t like it. It took me about 15 minutes to decide.
Never gave it any chance. Then i tried Vector Linux 5.9 . I didn’t like that either. Vector Linux 6.0 , nope.
the nice thing about Vector Linux 6 is that everything is up-to-date.
But after 5.8 , they dropped everything I liked about Vector Linux. They tried to jazz it up with too much
focus on looks. I opened the filemanager, and i could not even find the hard drive in VL 6. Time to format.
So, i re-installed VL 5.8 , this time without the Office software.
My needs are so simple, that all i really need are : a paint program, a word pad program, firefox,
a html editor, a music player, a video player. and a simple interface . I’ll be fine.
Goodbye Windows. Maybe.
The one problem i have is flash player; because there are no more updates to VL 5.8 i can only go to
Flash version 9 . Aftert that requires a few ‘system files’ that VL 5.8 does not have.
Yet the ‘one and only’ website that requires Flash player 10 is MySpace. There are others -
such as Hulu.com and other video websites - but nothing that i visit regularly.
I have updated browsers, Java, and all the system updates. I even fought through a few design flaws,
with help from the VL forums. I have learned how to tweak the looks and it only takes a few clicks.
The sound is comparable or better than Windows. I’m not saying the sound is better, but it does sound better.
The graphics are good, except watching video on YouTube. It’s very bad.
The annoying little things, such as the lack of fonts in web browsers i can live with.
Mounting the floppy drive before I can use it doesn’t bother me.
And one weird problem - i can’t listen to CDs from the CD drive . I haven’t figured that one out, yet.
But I don’t listen to CDs on my computer, regularly. It’s just something I will blow a weekend on,
trying to figure out why .
While using Linux, I realize that there is nothing on Windows that Linux cannot do.
Now that Risk is playable online, i don’t even have that excuse.
Now, i am watching for the ‘next big thing’ : a newer version of Linux.
It could be MintLinux,www.linuxmint.com/ who claim that they will be releasing a new version this month (May 2010).
I haven’t tried the ‘new’ ubuntu, either.
So, i am about to turn the corner, leaving Windows Updates, Security Threats, and Anti-Virus behind.
I got the hint. Somebody ‘out there’ either doesn’t like Windows, or they try to exploit their software.
The only way to rid yourself of the problems, is to rid yourself of MS products.
I should be safe. No one is going to spend their life hajacking VL 5.8 . Are they ?
It’s a 3 year old Linux Distro that maybe less than 10,000 people still use ?
Far less than that. Probably less than 100 by now. But it was popular for a few months in 2007.
So who knows how many people use it on occasions.
It’s cost effective, too. I do not have to pay hundreds of dollars just for a shiny new paint program.
Or a new word pad - the old ones work fine. And the Linux versions are fine. Maybe better, because people still
work to improve them. Not just make them prettier.
An old review of Vector Linux 5.8 at - http://en.revilinux.org/2007/08/vector-linux-58-soho-or-kde-at-light.html
