A Look Back and Forward at Computers-

I remember my earlier experiences with computers. As I entered elementary school, the old Macs were being replaced by shiny new boxes that had Windows 98. I remember disliking the Macs because they were ugly, both the OS and the box, and the GUI was quite different than the Windows OS I was acustomed to back home. (Oh, how Mac's have changed) I think around 4th grade came the time when Internet Explorer really started to replace Netscape Navigator, and it was confusing. Schools are reluctant to switch software, mostly because they don't want to bother teaching or learning new software, but Microsoft was (illegally) squeezing out Netscape, so we had to anyways. Most computers had both programs and bookmarks and saved information was haphazardly saved. I remember the crappy library-teaching sessions we had, up into high school. I don't know if I was good with computers at a young age, but the programs seemed pretty easy to learn.

So I've been into computers for most of my life, I remember the first computer we had that I actually used was an HP. 133mhz pentium processor, 64mb ram, a CD drive (!!) and most impressively, 2gb of hard drive space! I was psyched, I could play Lords of Magic and Heroes3 on it. (kind of) After a few loyal years of service, the computer crapped out, conveniently just before the warranty ended, so I went with my dad to CompUSA to see if we could get the old computer repaired. I was probably around 10 at this point, and my older brother (in high school) said "If you come back with a cd-burner, I'll give you ten bucks." They couldn't fix it, so they gave us a free computer which happened to have a burner. He was so surprised, he had no money and ended giving me something like a coupon for a free frosty at Wendy's which I probably never used. This computer was a beauty, 533mhz processor, 128mb RAM, and to top it off, a 4x CD burner! This was our first non-Pentium processor, a Celeron, which became synonymous in my head for cheap-yet-semi-functional, along with names like Ford and GM.

We prolonged the life of this computer, probably too long, with hard drive replacements, added RAM, and other measures. It lasted about 3 years, until 2002 or so, when we bought a Dell. My father, who enjoys destroying things, took a hammer to the old computer of which I videotaped with my HP Photosmart digital camera. I can't remember the exact specs of the Dell, but I could call my family and check because it's still in use by my younger sisters. 1.6ghz P4 I believe, 256mb RAM (later expanded to 768mb) and a 16X-cd burner. Later added was RAM, a video card, (GeForceFX5200) a new ethernet card (lightning storm) and a DVD-burner.(courtesy of my brother around 2005) It's still running, albeit quite slow, it is badly in need of a reformat which won't happen for various reasons I won't get into.

In March 2006, in anticipation of my freshman year at Tulane University, my parents bought me a nice Dell laptop. 1.8ghz Pentium M, wifi, gig of RAM, dvd-burner, very nice overall. Great battery life (9-cell) and I can't complain about anything except Dell's mediocre design. Here at the IT recruiting firm I work at, I have an IBM Thinkpad, and their reputation is well deserved. It's light, efficient, and built well, if it wasn't for the price I would probably buy one as my next computer.

Since I was a young kid, I've been using Microsoft's operating systems because of their ubiquitous usage. I used 95, 98, XP, (avoided ME) and have dabbled in Vista. Being big into computers, I was often told to try out this strange operating system named Linux, or GNU/Linux depending on which side of the flamewar you're on. My first experience was Knoppix in late 2003, I loaded it up, thought it was neat, and that was the end of that. In 2004, my brother and I installed Debian Woody onto our old Dell. It took some configuration, it was difficult to get running, I never invested much time in it, and so it was unused. Eventually after several months I just wiped the partition it was on and used it as storage space for my media.

Until late 2006, I didn't really do much with Linux. I used a bunch of FOSS tools on Windows, Firefox, OpenOffice, Gaim, mostly the more popular ones. My usage of Linux and FOSS in general isn't really principled, it makes sense to include the code with a program but since my computer background is in learning-by-doing and computer usage as opposed to coding, it's not terribly important to me. I used FOSS moreso because I disapprove of Microsoft's tactics, and most importantly, because the programs were better than their proprietary counterpart.

In December '06, I installed Ubuntu on my computer with an old disk a friend had gave me. It turned out to be Hoary Hedgehog, a fairly outdated version of Ubuntu. (the second release ever) So I upgrade to Edgy Eft, 6.10. Ubuntu has made huge progress in the last few years as it recognized all of my devices with no configuration. (even had wifi work out-of-the-box) One of the most impressive things about Edgy is it's live-cd installer. Not only do you only need one disk, but you can try out Ubuntu and install it, all while browsing the internet and chatting online with friends. Even better, it can successfully repartition drives without wiping the data. (to carve out a partition for Ubuntu from Windows)

Since December '06, I have almost exclusively used Ubuntu. There is virtually no task I cannot do on Ubuntu (better, generally) that Windows has, and it is unbelievably customizable. (Gentoo and Debian users will probably scream at that statement, but coming from a Windows user, it's true) I since installed Beryl/XGL to do cool desktop effects, the FGLRX drivers to play UT2k4, SC, Heroes 3. (all which run flawlessly on Linux) In April, Ubuntu released another version. There was not a huge difference between Edgy and Feisty, but what impressed me most about it was how simple and smooth upgrading your OS could be! It took about 45minutes, I could use my computer the whole time, and obviously kept all my settings and data.

I joined the IT/recruiting firm I currently work for in May 2007 and was issued a laptop for my job. Not surprisingly, it is running Windows XP Professional. It is now, coming back to Windows (for work only of course) that I have really realized how superior Ubuntu is to Windows. It's so much better to run programs just by hitting Alt-F2 and typing the name in. Ubuntu's Beagle, a desktop search built into the OS, simplifies things immensely so I don't have to browse through folders to find a document. The look and feel of Ubuntu is better. Many programs are better. Probably the best FOSS program in the world (compared to the Windows/Mac equivalent) is Amarok. Simply amazing, it can put/take music to iPods, it has a great search (like iTunes only not a memory hog) a built-in music store, built-in lyrics, last.fm submitter, it is just simply an amazing program. I occasionally listen to music at work and iTunes (and certainly WMP) comes nowhere near its' quality.

I recommend Ubuntu to everyone I know. It is the distro for the commoner, user-friendly, simple, yet powerful. It has a great balance of GUI and command-line, you can do virtually anything either way. The GUI-package management system (Synaptic) makes it easy for people to click and install programs, with no hassle. It's NTFS-3g driver allows you to read/write to your Windows partition flawlessly, (if you have a dualboot) the codecs install quickly and painlessly. The amount of programs offered are more than anyone would ever need. Its' customizability makes it easy to gear it specifically for you, for example, it is easy to install KDE, Gnome, XFCE, or Fluxbox on one PC.

Ubuntu is an amazing Operating System, one I imagine I will be using for many years. There are a few flaws in it that I will point out, however, because I think it's important to discuss pros and cons. First, ATI cards do not work perfectly out-of-the-box. A small percentage cannot load the normal LiveCD, and most can't run both 3D hardware acceleration as well as composite rendering simultaenously, but you can run each separately. (Beryl+UT2k4=no) The wifi support is amazing (Network-manager was a great add), but a small percentage of cards are not supported immediately. (Broadcom) I haven't found a single USB-device that wasn't supported yet, but I imagine there are a few out there. Eventually I think all these kinks will be worked out, ATI announced plans to opensource their drivers (pushed by AMD no doubt) which will allow for full support, and with Dell selling Ubuntu I'm sure they will add support for all wifi cards.

I'm not going to rip on Windows because it's all too easy, just Google "Windows Sucks" and I'm sure you'll find a host of reasons. I will say I have very little interest in Vista (my short experience with it I was unimpressed) and have no intention of using Microsoft Windows for a long time. I don't find Microsoft evil, they just put out a poor product.

It's amazing to see how powerful and useful computers have come in my short lifetime, and I'm sure we have not stopped. A decade ago having 1GB of hard drive space was very good. Today, I have a 1GB flash card and a 4GB SD card bought for about $20 a piece. My old computer had a 133mhz processor, today's are more than 20x that, and that's not including dual and quad-core processors. I'm glad I grew up when I did, I think I really caught the computer revolution in its' prime stages and it's interesting to look back at. A decade ago sitting on my bed watching a DVD while chatting with friends online via wifi was a dream. Today, my younger sisters take that for granted. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for computers and technology, I for one can't wait.