the corner office

It's not that I hate Windows XP, it's just that some parts of it really grate me. I'm sick of NAV freaking out because my virus definition subscription has expired. It's been over a week, gotta sort it out, I have a spare license somewhere here, but it's a mission to dig it up. I have Norton Protection Gulag blasting me with warnings every time I boot up because I choose to review Windows updates before installing them, and every time I shut down, some random Acer utility program won't close gracefully.

All of this means one thing: time for Linux again. I agonised a bit over Gentoo vs Ubuntu, but Ubuntu won. We'd used it on Ronwen's machine for a stretch last year, and it's nice and easy to set up and use, and I can do with easy right now.

I cleared a spare partition, and installed Edgy Eft this weekend (maybe I didn't hug enough bunnies as a kid, but I have to say it: Ubuntu's naming is naff). Anyway... I've never used Linux on a laptop, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Remarkably, the touchpad worked like a charm, even the fancy scrolling-down-the-side feature. The screen resolution is woozy but apparently there's a tool for that. The deal-breaker, though, is that my wireless card isn't working. Being a wireless newbie, more homework is needed. That, and an ethernet cable to my ADSL router. Since the router is behind a mountain of boxes in the spare room, that ain't going to happen for a while.

So I'm sticking with Windows for now. Bugger.