The Big Move

This is Lily Putian Skirt reporting from the cold Saskathewan Prairies. It seems that there has been an uproar in Foxxfyrre's Cave. You see his laptop was not performing as he would have liked. Try as he might, Foxxfyrre was getting tired of the CRTL+ALT+DEL tap dance to start the task manager to stop another random process that slowed, or stuck, or stopped, or found a cute hooker on the strip (that he didn't order by the way), or the process just blatantly said, and I quote, "I'm a lazy process and don't want to run today so suck it up buddy", and even one rude process that went "I'm a process specifically built for Windows Visa Service Pack 3.1.000033 BETA and you are confused as to why your computer won't run BWAhahahahahah." So Foxxfyrre, tired of all the work that went into what is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby said to himself, and I quote "Do I take the plunge and upgrade to Windows 7, or should I see what else is out there." Foxxfyrre was a faithfull Microsoft supporter from the old DOS versions right through all the Windows versions, but now he was too frustrated to send any portion of funds to Mr. Gates to get a new and probably bug ridden operating system.

Rebooting one last time, Foxxfyrre stareted up Firefox and sluggishly surfed through all of the info he could find on open source Unix/Linux versions that would work nicely on laptops. He found one version he liked for it was able to run from a burned cd over window, or on a partitioned drive for dual booting, or completely on its own. Carefully he downloaded the Ubuntu 9.10 Linux bundle and burned it to a disk. He also carefully used Windows back-up to save all of his work on an external hard-drive. He then tried to run the Ubuntu disk over windows right from the cd. It worked flawlessly running over Windows Vista. Foxxfyrre liked what he saw, and his laptop seemed to like it too, so he thought he would try to install it right to the disk and partition the drive to also run Windows when he needed to. Just as he was at the install option to set up a partition for dual booting, Foxxfyrre thought to himself, "Nah, sorry Bill I'm not going to worry about having to install 7 just to make half my hard disk run so TTFN." He then selected the option to partition the entire drive to run Ubuntu 9.10.

And Foxxfyrre hasn't stopped smiling since. His laptop seemes to be in hyperdrive. Web surfing is faster than any incantation of Windows has been able to do. But he did have a scare, he used the Windows Backup/Restore utility to make a backup of everthing that he had on disk. It's now in weirdly labled folders that are all zipped and popped and cabinet-ed and locked and user protected and and and. Not to get discouraged just yet, Foxxfyrre used some of the Ubuntu tools that came with the build to peek into those backups, and sure enough, Ubuntu was able to peek in and unzip all of stuff he wanted out of those billions of windows ziplock bags.

Then he though, "What about all the net stuff I have, Blogger, Google Docs, Messanger, contacts etc, etc etc." A little bit of lightning fast surfing put his mind finally at ease for all was still there and good.

Now that Foxxfyrre has a fully functioning computer again, he'll never have time to play Guitar Hero with his favorite apprentice reporter.

I'll be a Rockstar before Grandpa gets off the computer now.

Lily Putian Skirt signing out.