I'm tired of Windows. Another virus here, spinkle a few slow downs over there, and I just want something easier. I checked out XGL demo's and thought, well it certainly looks cool, so why not try it again?
I started out with Fedora Core. Installation was a little trickey as I had no idea what I was doing. First thing I noticed is that the C:\, D:\ drive designation is out, and I have hda sda1-8. I chose sda5 (which was correct, the second partition on my drive) and started installing. Installation took it's time and after awhile I got into the desktop. I noticed right away that I only had one monitor going. Ok. I flip on my external hard drive. It says that my hard drive was formatted in NTFS so it can't read it. I start browsing the web. My back button on my 4-button mouse doesn't work. Mildly annoying. I try to enable XGL effects so I could have something cool to spur me on. I click the button and nothing happens. I guess my video card isn't supported. Screw this...
I go to Ubuntu. The CD image fits on one CD which is nice. The LiveCD installation is freaking sweet. Instead of just waiting for it to boot up, I surf the web while Ubuntu takes care of the installation. By far the easiest to install, I even create a ext3 partition, AND a linux swap partition (300MB's). Sweet. Looks like I might have a winner. I get it all going and boot up for the first time. My second monitor is blank. I work for awhile and find that you have to manually edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get it up. I manage to kill the entire X-Windows system. I reinstall, and go at it again a little more carefully and I get it going! I restart the machine and was about to go edit some stuff and noticed, holy crap it worked!
Score one for us noob linux nerds. I get brave and install a bunch of programs that I've always wanted to try like Mono and WINE and other junk. Then I install Nvidia linux drivers. Now the pain begins. My system starts to lock up. I mean to a point where I can't do anything. I try to exit to the command prompt (that I now learned is CTRL+ALT+F1) but end up having to hit my reset button. I troubleshoot this for about 4 hours. I'm modding my xorg.conf like crazy to get it to stop locking. I manage to get it so that it locks after a few hours. I go into a GUI to change up my mouse options. After a lock, I reboot and X-Windows won't come up. I try editing via the cryptic VI editor to no avail. I reinstall and my master boot record becomes corrupted. I trying fixing with a WINDOWS CD and I'm screwed. I reinstall windows and notice Windows ate the "My Documents" folder. I load up my data recovery app to recover the lost files. I'm a little pissed so I say goodbye to Ubuntu (for now).
I try Slackware. The installation process starts out with a prompt so the first time through I just hit enter. It asks something about my keyboard and if I want the US layout. Sure. Enter...uh...did I not hit Enter? I press it again. My keyboard's dead. It just worked a second ago. I reboot and try it again. This time I ask for more instructions, and I put in some commands. I get the same prompt. I look at my num lock key and mouse laser "glow" die as if from some sick joke right before it asks me to hit enter for the US keyboard layout. Well, F U 2 slackware. Onward!
The next one I try is OpenSUSE. The installation was by far the shittiest but it worked. I had to go into the "Advanced" settings to setup where I wanted to install it. The default was to format my entire drive and erase all my partitions. I'm amazed I got it to install correctly, but it did. I let the computer sit while it installed and went away. I came back and noticed that I now had to enter a ton of options like time zone and keyboard layouts and other crap. Couldn't I have done this before? Ahh well, I boot up - dual montitors ring to life upon start up. Sweet. External drive comes up. My displays are backwards though. My left display is showing empty space and the right has the main desktop. I try for half an hour to switch them up. I notice that my right display is also "cut off". I try to fix this too. Nothing works. I try to install stuff. Ubuntu's nice installation interface isn't around. I'm stuck with RPM and SH commands, and I'm not getting anywhere. I install NVidia's drivers and try to get the 3D effects, nope. I try to share my files across the network, nope. Sigh. My 4th mouse button still doesn't work.
I'm thinking about troubleshooting it more but for the weekend I had had enough of Linux. I went back into my fresh install of WindowsXP and my mouse worked, dual displays came up properly, my external drive was fine, sharing files was simple and all I had to worry about are viruses and stuff. I'm still looking at MEPIS and Mandrivia (MEPIS has the nice LiveCD installation) and Mandrivia looks smart (they include 32 and 64 bit versions on the same computer), but I'm already determined to accept MS's Vista and get to installing it.