Rig 4 is back on Ubuntu

[techieMoe]

I had been running XP service pack 3 on Rig 4 until this weekend when I got a fun little dialog with a "Generic Host Process for Win32 Services Error." When I rebooted, everything looked like Windows 98 (themes were gone, window borders were minimal), my wireless wasn't detected, and I couldn't launch any programs. I did a restore and the restore blue screened. I rebooted and that time it froze.

XP usually doesn't just randomly go wonky on me like this; I generally cause it by fiddling with stuff. This time I can't for the life of me figure out what I did. At any rate, the laptop is back to Ubuntu 8.10 for the time being, and may stay that way as XP seems to no longer find my laptop worthy.

[b2bwild]

Good for your Laptop's health.

[bigtomrodney]

My Dad is a long time Windows user. He's been trying to switch to Linux because of his trouble with viruses and malware amongst other things. The funny thing is that even though he's stuck using Windows for a lot of stuff, he alway says of Linux (Ubuntu in his case) that he loves how it just works and wishes Windows would do the same.

Man I remember that argument used to be the other way around!

[minthaka]

I admire you TechieMoe!
You installed Ubuntu 8.10. That's a great mistery for me! You gave such a high opinion for it in your rants, I still don't understand the reason why. When I tried to use, I've encountered so many errors in it that I gave up. Crippled printing system, tray errors, fake wireless-card drivers...

[techieMoe]

I admire you TechieMoe!
You installed Ubuntu 8.10. That's a great mistery for me! You gave such a high opinion for it in your rants, I still don't understand the reason why. When I tried to use, I've encountered so many errors in it that I gave up. Crippled printing system, tray errors, fake wireless-card drivers...

An OS is only as good as the hardware it supports. Some distros don't work at all (or poorly) on my laptop, but I've never had any issues with 8.10 on Rig 4. Good thing there's not just one distribution out there or those with incompatible hardware would be up the proverbial creek.