Set your installer to 'liberate'
Suffered the Black Screen of Death yet? It’s the new system crash favoured by chromatically challenged Windows 7 users. Originally pegged as an MS generated patch issue—an assertion since retracted by Prevx— there still appears to be no definitive answer as to why the problem is afflicting victims users of Microsoft’s shiny new operating system.
One suggested fix is offered by Windows7News.com though with no mileage guarantee. Unfortunately their fix doesn’t help the comparative security failings of Win 7 identified by experts Trend Micro. But worse still is that they expect users to revert to the command-line to complete the task!
As a Mac user I’ve developed a non-life-threatening allergy to the command line. Occasionally I try some desensitization therapy, though the results have been marginal thus far. Regardless – a decent GUI is practically a human right now, so why should I bend to the will of a computer OS?
Which brings me to Linux, and more specifically Ubuntu.
Imagine a free OS…I’ll repeat that for the hard-of-cash…A FREE OS designed for the average desktop user and which runs on any hardware configuration. Imagine it doesn’t suffer from virus or malware attacks, doesn’t eat memory, doesn’t cost your life as you wait for it to reboot (again), doesn’t lock you into a proprietary loop and which has a simple and usable graphical interface. Can you think of one?
It’s YEARS since I looked at Red Hat Linux (as it was then known). It was full of promise, but only if you loved your $linux ks=hd:fd0:/ks.cfg (what did I just do??) command line.
So it was a revelation when I tried the Ubuntu 9.10 live-cd on a cheap Tesco laptop that had been crushed by Vista for two years (seven minute bootup). All I ever wanted was a machine to connect quickly and cleanly to a wireless router, browse the web, send email, Skype and do a bit of word-processing. Not a big ask. Except, of course, with Vista on board it was a big ask.
The Ubuntu live trial was painless so a full installation beckoned. Was it a success? Well, I set the installer to ‘liberate’ and wreaked vengeance on Vista in thirty sweet seconds. Moments later Ubuntu was running, wireless was connected and Firefox was busy. And now the little laptop (which had previously been threatened with unspeakable destruction) is at the core of household internet access…with a boot time of just 90 seconds and a 10 second wake from sleep.
It’s just as well Microsoft have a sense of humour. But they can afford to…and we helped pay for it.
Not any more though.
