My MS XP home gave up the ghost. Actually, the NVidia video drivers mangled the video and trying to reinstall XP, setup said no harddrive existed. So, I downloaded Ubuntu due to the wireless card in this laptop. Worked right out of the -internet-. Ugh, other distros did not have the divers and to load it took me the entire weekend only to completely fail. Its the instructions written by weekend techs. I don't speak nerd.

Now, to change the font because I can't take an operating system seriously if it looks cartoonish.

Well, I got everything but "distros" - distributers? I wasn't cool when I was younger, and still ain't. That's life.

There on "Sale"

Desktops | HP® Official Store

I went through pure hell trying to upgrade my Fedora 16 server to 17, then 18. There were no video drivers for the onboard video, and I simply had no desire to buy a video card so that I could run a hobby server that I VNC into when at work.

The whole thing became a hideous debacle. I finally punted and switched to Ubuntu. Apart from some fairly opaque instructions on how to install the VPN (which doesn't work from work anyway) and VNC, and the effort to deter you from SUing, it's been very good.

"Distributions", ie. "flavors" of Linux:
Red Hat
Fedora (free Red Hat)
Suse
Ubuntu

to name a few.

They all have different features and emphases, such as security, drivers, user interfaces, etc.

I'd used Fedora for literally YEARS until a couple of months ago, when I tried to upgrade and found that support for the onboard video drivers for my server's motherboard had been arbitrarily orphaned. I switched to Ubuntu and again have a working server.

That's why I have a son with A+ certification, and a computer tech. at his high school. He starts computer technology in college in August. He takes care of all my issues. (with my computer)

Linux Mint is my go to distro.

wyo-man

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Live free or die

I'm finding Ubuntu to be idiot proof. It comes with one window manager and no xterm (command prompt). Off to load more WMs.

One word, Apple. I am a professional geek, dyed in the wool Corporate Intel, Microsoft, IBM blah blah blah, got so sick of hand loading drivers. Then I got an iPhone, the gateway drug for Apple. About 2 months into my first Macbook pro and loving it, recognizes anything I can plug into it within seconds it's as plug and play as you can get.

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Back to back World War Champs.

Your PC is NOT DEAD, it merely became the doorstop it was meant to be.

Take the plunge, get into mac systems, they even run PC emulators better than PC machines run themselves!

Chuck

Get an Apple Mac and live happily ever after

+1^^^. Couldn't agree more. Switched to Mac 2 years ago and never look back. Simple setup, FREE system updates, no VIRUSES, very intuitive, the list goes on and on!

Bill

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"What does this button do..."

I became an Apple convert 2 months ago when I bought an iMac. Go Mac and you won't look back!

I have a bootable dvd with Knoppix 7.0.5 on it. I have rescued the data from friend's windows hard drives using it and other bootable linix versions. I use it to save their data, then wipe it clean and attempt to go back to the origional configuration of their PC.

The biggest problem is that the rescue disk is stored on the PC hard drive when it is new and people do not create a rescue disk.

A large problem with older versions of windows like XP is that all of the updates created by microsoft bloat the OS until the resorces like memory are overwhelmed and the PC runs very slow.

You can buy a basic PC now for few hundred dollars. Walmart has a refrbrished Dell online for $212 with no monitor.

I have no problem with macs except for the price which is excessive.

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Corripe Cervisiam

Nvidia does not play nice w/ Linux. Ubuntu (and Mint) generally require the least work to get going.

Apple? They are the biggest control freaks in the tech world!

Actually, there are several available terminals. Without them, there are a substantial number of things you cannot do (as well as problems you cannot solve).

Some versions anyway. I believe that the real problem is Gnome, some versions of which no longer support older Nvidia drivers. That's what caused me to switch from Fedora to Ubuntu. My Ubuntu install works just fine with my onboard Nvidia display adapter.