Well this year is my 10th official year as a linux user, it is a time of reflection and a time of celebration so at the end of each month I will pick a subject and discuss it in at least two pages worth of material in LibreOffice.
This months subject: My journey from XP to linux
Windows XP, for many this was the first operating system they used but not for me.
My first OS was DOS all the way back in the late 90's, but I never owned a home computer until the year 2000.
This was a big year for the world, the start of a new millennium but for me it was the start of a new life.
My family moved out of my grandmothers house, we got our own home and also a cheap old computer with windows 95 on it…
Yeah that didnt last long, with support being pulled for it we got a proper desktop with windows XP in 2001.
XP was easy to use, for my family it gave away the fears we still had of computers.
For two years XP was our OS of choice, with our mighty E machine we braced into the age of the internet and we liked it…
Until we got windows XP service pack 1.
SP1 was a total disaster for us, it barely worked and we had to get a computer repair person to help us.
At the same time I was learning how to use a computer, how it worked and functioned.
It wasnt that hard I learned, aqnd at the time I started hearing about linux.
The fist distro I tried, the long dead Yoper Linux however was a disaster, I nuked my PC by mistake and I had to reinstall XP.
Next try however was a little better, in 2003 I tried openSUSE 9.1 and while it didnt exactly work the way I wanted it to it did teach me some of the ropes.
In 2004 I stumbled on another distro, this time Mepis linux and my gosh I loved it
Mepis.png
A image of Mepis when I first used it,,, not my screenshot though
Not only was it easy to use and install but it worked with my hardware and was a very nice distro to use.
In 2005 however I decided to get my own computer, I got a HP computer and it came pre loaded with XP
In this time however adobe dropped flash support for linux the first time, so I mainly still used XP.
In 2006 however I finally decided to dump XP as my experience with windows XP SP2 was just as bad as SP1.
This time however I jumped onto the Ubuntu train, and I have to say it was certainly not a mistake.
Ubuntu for me was a godsend, I know Ubuntu for many is a crap distro but we all have our roots and my roots in linux are inside debian and Ubuntu.
So my escape from XP was complete, my first year as a linux user was underway and 10 years on I look on those days fondly.
So here is a brief text review of Ubuntu 6.06, I did give video review of it not so long ago but hey this is my anniversary and I will do what the heck I like.
So here is my experience with Ubuntu 6.06:
Ubuntu 6.06 was the first ubuntu I used full time, and my first obstacle was getting used to its two panel layout. For me my first linux UI was KDE and while it did have differences to windows XP it was comfortable enough as a XP user to get used to.
Gnome? Not so much.
Its not like Gnome was hard to use at the time, it was just a matter of user convection that threw me off.
It wasnt that bad, sure as heck was not as bad as that rotten piece of crap called gnome shell but as a XP user I was just so used to my menu being in the bottom left corner.
I honestly wish I had pictures of my desktop still from this period but safe to say I made gnome look like XP all without the help of transformation packs.
Within a few months however I did revert Ubuntu to its defaults so there is that.
Ubuntu however was still quite easy to use, there was no linux mint at this time but Ubuntu was still easy for the most part.
Codec installation however was… messy.
There was no real third party software for it and you had to manually install packages .
This was a rather tedious process and could take a half hour to set up depending on connection speed.
Otherwise Ubuntu 6.06 was smooth as ice, it was ugly but did the job well.
I used 6.06 until Ubuntu 6.10 came out, 6.10 was actually a lot better for me so I stuck with it until 7.04 but I am not here for my Ubuntu progression now am I?
But I did go back to 6.06 when Ubuntu 7.04 came out as it had serious issues with it.
I used 6.06 again until 7.10 and 7.10 was actually quite good.
Ubuntu 6.06 however was a great start for me using Linux as my primary OS, it would begin my off again on again relationship with Ubuntu but began my more permanent relationship with Linux.
