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Official: I am leaving Ubuntu for Windows Vista

By David Young 3 November 06

It’s official. I’m leaving Unbuntu Breezy Boxy for Windows Vista RC 1 and after. That’s it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a Macintosh user for my primary machine. But my piece of crap Compaq Presario V2000 will no longer be running Ubuntu Boxy Bitch. It is now and forever a Vista machine. Why? Simple. I just want a browser. Wireless works out of the box. I didn’t have to screw around with configuring my network. Yeah, sorry, its true. I could configure the network with Ubuntu Boobie Barbie, but why should I bother. It’s not my Mac, so I’m just looking for a machine that I can use when my Mac is charging and I need to sit and have a good Pappy Poopy. Know what I mean? And the dialog boxes in Vista are kinda sexy. Like ghosts they just “show up”. “You called master?” And Vista has much better support for WebDAV. Hello Bingo disk!

Here’s my essential list of software.

1) Internet Explorer 7. Preinstalled. No, its not Safari. Doesn’t seem to eat up all the RAM on the system…though I haven’t asked it to load my treasured “adult links”.

2) Windows Media Center. I don’t know what this is for. But the start up sounds are great. Simply perfect. Its like the thing on the Apple that takes over the screen. Combine this with a tuner (which my laptop doesn’t have) and we’re golden.

3) Glass? Aero? Whatever, the windows look great. And I’m using a piece of crap laptop.

4) Hi, Robert Scoble. RSS rocks.

5) You can’t believe how cute the goldfish icon for my user account is. Seriously. I have two goldfish I take care of. They crap in the water all the time. I’m changing the filter almost weekly. Cloudy water. I feel a sense of liberation when I walk out of my bedroom in the morning and one of them is swimming upside down. Trouble is: they’re joshing.

6) Thank (your) god. A DVD maker. Right in the OS. Holy rip!

7) The widgets. Better than Apple. In the same pane as the user. Only a clock and an RSS reader, and a slide show viewer, but that is sure to change.

Oh, and the performance is good. Serious.

Flame me. I’ve been drinking vodka and I’m covered in marshmellows! and yeah, I’m serious. No more Ubuntu. Hello Vista. And the activation people in Mumbai.


  1. I’m headed back the other way. My Vista RC 2 box kept freezing all the time and the network died a lot.

    — Joe    566 days ago    #

  2. @Joe: maybe you should downgrade to RC1. That’s what I’m running. What kind of hardware are you running on? I’m on a Compaq V2000 with 1GB RAM and a Turion64 from AMD.

    — David Young    566 days ago    #

  3. Does this mean the Connector will have 34 different editions?

    — Jason Speck    566 days ago    #

  4. @Jason: no just three editions: $15/$50/$100. However, the excellence of Vista will ensure that Connector, and Joyent Core will work without any configuration of Vista (unlike Ubuntu Barley Heardy “just vi your /etc/conf/conf/conf/.conf/file”). All 34 editions of Vista. I can’t say that for Ubuntu, out of the box. That’s the point. Thanks for sharpening it. I need to get you a boot of beer at Suppenkuche.

    — David Young    566 days ago    #

  5. Not that the latest Ubuntu would solve all your problems or be config free. But having used Breezy, Dapper, and Edgy, I’ve found each time it’s been easier to configure. You are running the version of Ubuntu from 2 releases previous. In Windows terms, that’d be, what, Windows ME? :) The main thing I’ve had to configure so far with Edgy has been the recently added eye candy, which I now have set up in a way that I like much better than Aero Glass, using Beryl/XGL. If you haven’t checked it out (it’s really recent), I suggest a looksee, at least for those that eye candy is a big draw.

    — Dan    566 days ago    #

  6. Ubuntu Barley Heardy “just vi your /etc/conf/conf/conf/.conf/file”)

    Snort!

    — evariste    566 days ago    #

  7. There’s a huge satisfaction that comes form spending hours trying to get the Wifi driver to load against a new kernel, WPA supplicant to not get confused when you switch between networks, and KNetworkManager to not conflict with a persistent dhclient, and a Ruby script to work around the confusion that ensues after a suspend/resume.

    I can’t imagine why anyone would give that up!

    — Assaf    566 days ago    #

  8. Windows Vista on a piece of crap laptop? I’ve tested it on a Nect Versa M350 notebook (not very new, but not extremely crappy) and it would use the hard drive like crazy.

    I’d suggest upgrading your RAM to at leas 1 GB. 512 MB clearly aren’t enough and even the guys and Microsoft say “Vista has been optimized for 1 GB of RAM”.

    Other than that, I assume you’re moving to Windows due to Ubuntu’s fallacies. It’s your right to purchase Windows and ditch Linux. As long as you keep your Mac :)

    — Andrei Maxim    566 days ago    #

  9. @Andrei: Except ofcourse for the Basic Starter edition, which won’t address more than 256MBs of RAM… :/

    — Marten Veldthuis    566 days ago    #

  10. “And Vista has much better support for WebDAV. Hello Bingo disk!”

    I’ll keep that in mind. I’ve found that my WebDAV connection on XPSP2 has been spotty.

    — Jonto    565 days ago    #

  11. I’m no Linux fanboy (I’m a Windows developer, actually), but Vista makes me nervous. Have you seen the license terms? http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/420

    — Eli    565 days ago    #

  12. Wait. Why don’t you just get another Mac? Plus, then you could run Parallels if you have to – Vista RC2 runs fine on my Intel mini.

    — Kevan    565 days ago    #

  13. Kevan, how much RAM do you have?

    XP is practically killing my Mac Mini with the frequent disk access and I’m considering moving to Vista…

    — Andrei Maxim    565 days ago    #

  14. @Kevan: I’m going to stick with RC1 for the time being. Let others find the bugs in RC2. Maybe upgrade in a couple months. ;) And I didn’t get another Mac because I already have the Compaq sitting around.

    — David Young    565 days ago    #

  15. Wow. I’ve just left OSX for Ubuntu. Maybe if you used a newer version, you’d like it better? Ubuntu’s come a long way since Breezy. Besides, it’s Vista. Seriously…

    — wanderfowl    565 days ago    #

  16. I believe that with RC2, you cannot upgrade to the fully released vista version, you need to do a clean install…... Just a thought…..

    — Rob Elkin    565 days ago    #

  17. I wonder how long before he installs Visual Studio …

    — BryanY    565 days ago    #

  18. Can you expand on Vista having much better support for WebDAV? Is it any better than what’s provided in XP? I’m a little irritated by the fact that Web Folders can’t be made to act like a mounted drive without add-on software. It would be great if WebDAV got upgraded to mounting as a drive letter with full Windows Explorer integration.

    — Ostertoaster    565 days ago    #

  19. Ostertoaster, did you know you can actually mount WebDAV on a letter in XP? Can be done via ‘net use’ inside command line (yes, you heard right). That said, WebDAV in XP is a piece of crap really.

    — Filip Hajny    563 days ago    #

  20. @Filip: Thanks for the reply. I’ve tested this, and it looks like it only works for non-SSL WebDAV. My hope is that Vista will end up supporting SSL as well.

    — Ostertoaster    563 days ago    #

  21. Thank God for posts-pointing-nowhere like this. How about a “whatever”?

    Joyeur, oh, come on.

    — angelday true    560 days ago    #

  22. XP works fine. Firefox 2. Thunderbird. Cygwin. I did have to pony up for WebDrive to go with Bingo.

    — Geoff    560 days ago    #

  23. ... go Edgy.
    This didn’t work out as you expected. You were expecting gazillions replies, but no… this will not put you up in Page Rank.
    Try installing Edgy from zero and then compare it to Vista. But include the pre-installed software on the comparison. Otherwise you are being foolish, or vodka drunk. But i guess steve balmer will kiss your ass with crap like that you posted… . So, we’ll talk in a few weeks when Vista is crawling and virus full…

    — Moon    551 days ago    #

  24. hmm vista virus
    a few weeks have past
    no vista virus….
    as i see it there are more osx virus than vista.
    and in 6 mnths there will be more vista users than the insecure little mac users

    — lazy1    547 days ago    #

  25. WTF?! Are you high?! You’re going to put Vista on that piece of crap?! LOL! Doesn’t seem to eat up all the RAM on the system” If you knew anything about Linux, you’d see thats the way it works… it caches all the ram… clown.

    — Mike K.    528 days ago    #

  26. Not being funny, but any Microsoft OS is gonna have the one piece of software responsible for OS death by spyware. Internet Explorer. I’m happy with Edgy, I can watch DVB TV and listen to DVB Radio, I can play Quake 4, and for the most part I don’t even have to go searching on the net for the programs I use :)

    — Tom M    524 days ago    #

  27. I’ll try VISTA today.

    But Ubuntu with Beryl installed looks impressive.
    Also with fish:// and webdavs://-support in editor and konqueror.
    As webdeveloper, this is essential for me – Lets see if VISTA can catch this :-).

    — DracoBlue    520 days ago    #

  28. I don’t understand all this buzz about windows vista… I’ve installed WinVista RTM but they didn’t impressed me… They are tooooooo slow…. Games and apps are running slow… I prefer ubuntu edgy with beryl…

    — menace    519 days ago    #

  29. Have you tried Ubuntu 6.06 or 6.10? Its the most stable ubuntu version than the previous versions.
    Tell Me can windows do the “window cube” effect” of XGL. I don’t think so

    — Noel    503 days ago    #

  30. Did Microsoft bribe you with a nice laptop like they are all those bloggers?

    — Ryan    498 days ago    #

  31. yeah, I’m with Ryan. I can’t understand how anyone who isn’t getting a pay check from MS, can possible say that any version of Windows is better than Ubuntu. Maybe some other Linux distros…MAYBE. But Ubuntu is so damn easy to use, and EFFICIENT. My computer runs faster with beryl and 20 browser windows open than it ever did on XP.
    “Mac OS—for people who don’t want to know why their computers work.
    Linux—for people who want to know why their computers work.
    MS-DOS—for people who want to know why their computers don’t work.
    Windows—for people who don’t want to know why their computers don’t work.”

    — DrSaamah    441 days ago    #

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