Seriously thoughtful Thinking of ditching Linux for Windows 7

[tulsa]

Was wondering what you Windows 7 users think!

Ubuntu 10.04 bricked my Dell, ruined my hard drive and generally riled me up.
I had already planned on purchasing a new computer.
As a long time user of Linux, I'm almost ashamed to say I'm thinking about going back to Windows.

What do you all think?

[poohbear_nc]

Oh no - never retreat to Windows!

Errmmm... how did ubuntu brick your hard drive? Yes it can wipe out your partitions, but your hard drive??

[tulsa]

Well, Ubuntu notified me of the new 10.04 upgrade. Sooo.. I upgraded.
After the upgrade, Firefox would not work. It would open and then crash when navigation ensued.
The "bricking" happened, when I "updated" 10.04. It updated everything. When I went to reboot, I got nothing but errors and the OS would never load.

I've tried various live linux CD's to wipe the drive, repartition, etc. But I can't get anything to install. It's maddening!

Luckily, I was able to back up all my data to an external hard drive, before everything went kaboom.

I even went back to ntfs and tried to reinstall my original windows disk. I only get the blue screen of death... lol. go figure.

I'm writing this on a gentoo live CD right now. Only thing that will load and let me get to my internet.
I wish I knew what went wrong. I really liked using Ubuntu.

But.... my new computer will come with Win 7. I've heard decent things about it, so thought I'd give it a go.

[phenomshel]

I like windows 7; but my husband is a die hard Linux user. It all depends on what you want to do. I ran Linux as my primary O/S for about a year, and then went back to Windows. And with Windows 7, I don't think I'll be going back to Linux anytime soon. But that's me - there are people around who would rather be shot in the foot (or other more painful places) that go back to Windows, and again, it all depends on what you need to do with your computer. Try Windows 7, if you don't like it you can install whatever variation of Linux you please on the new machine

[poohbear_nc]

Or partition your hard drive, and run them together - and see which one you like best.

[tulsa]

Thanks for the advice/comments all. It's been a very frustrating weekend trying to get this hunk of junk running...

When I get the new computer, I'll spin around with win 7 for a while and see how it goes.

I've had my eye on LinuxMint for awhile now... might have to try a dual boot with that when I get the Linux bug again.....

[MJK2111]

I've had Win 7 running on a Dell Studio 17 for almost 9 months. I've had one problem, which was resolved by letting Win 7 search for the solution. Great O/S (finally!!) from MS.

[tulsa]

Originally Posted by MJK2111

I've had Win 7 running on a Dell Studio 17 for almost 9 months. I've had one problem, which was resolved by letting Win 7 search for the solution. Great O/S (finally!!) from MS.

So it's never crashed on you?
My concern is that it will be like most Windows systems where the OS will slow down a lot after several months worth of using. Then the only option is a long process of reinstalling/updating.

[bzImage]

Get a mac, you will have then a Unix machine with a good user interface.. OS X its what Linux wants to be.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by bzImage

OS X its what Linux wants to be.

You have that backwards; 3/4 of the Mac OS is open-source.

That's okay though, Jobs has been taking credit for others' work since he cribbed Xerox's GUI concept 30,000 years ago.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by tulsa

Was wondering what you Windows 7 users think!

Ubuntu 10.04 bricked my Dell, ruined my hard drive and generally riled me up.
I had already planned on purchasing a new computer.
As a long time user of Linux, I'm almost ashamed to say I'm thinking about going back to Windows.

What do you all think?

Win7 is the best version of Vista MS has yet released.

Originally Posted by tulsa

Well, Ubuntu notified me of the new 10.04 upgrade. Sooo.. I upgraded.
After the upgrade, Firefox would not work. It would open and then crash when navigation ensued.
The "bricking" happened, when I "updated" 10.04. It updated everything. When I went to reboot, I got nothing but errors and the OS would never load.

I've tried various live linux CD's to wipe the drive, repartition, etc. But I can't get anything to install. It's maddening!

Luckily, I was able to back up all my data to an external hard drive, before everything went kaboom.

10.04 has been giving a lot of people a lot of problems. Ubuntu has suffered from a raging case of Windows-itis lately, trying to be all things to all people and achieving only mediocrity. Dell on the other hand never achieved anything but mediocrity ever since their nonstandard power supplies started burning up motherboards back in 2001.

Originally Posted by tulsa

I'm writing this on a gentoo live CD right now. Only thing that will load and let me get to my internet.

Check out a distro called Toorox; it's a Gentoo LiveCD (installable) that uses Knoppix hardware detection and takes all the pins 'n' needles out of using Gentoo. It has a whole bunch of "just works"; I reviewed the last version HERE (shameless site plug) and was pretty impressed with it. Regarding your current hard drive, my hunch is that the MBR is jerked and needs redoing; shouldn't require any hardware replacement. HTH

[MJK2111]

Originally Posted by tulsa

So it's never crashed on you?
My concern is that it will be like most Windows systems where the OS will slow down a lot after several months worth of using. Then the only option is a long process of reinstalling/updating.

It bluescreened once, I allowed the recovery program to search Microsoft's website, and it found the fix. Sorry, but I don't remember the original error.

I haven't seen the usual slowdowns that occur with age, but I have been more diligent about keeping the system lean and clean.

My only complaint is the fingerprint reader; since the switch to 7, it's a little clunky - I don't think the driver is optimized for 7...

regards,
Mike

[EowynCarter]

No problem with upgrading.
re-install however. Ouch. My PC have sudenly decided it woudn't boot on USB. Gotta remember to mail dell support, as the bios seams to cause this.
Somehow no burning DVD-RW.
Finally, i burned a good old cd-r. And no more problems. Windows is still happy there.

I like linux only games gets me to start windows now.
Still on XP. Vista makes an anoyance of itself. Win 7 is rather good though. But will wait until i buy a new PC.

[Dusty Bottoms]

They all have positives and they all have negatives, but none of them will ever be halfway as good as BEOS was back in 1999. And on that note, the Open Source BEOS clone, Haiku, has just reached RC1 Alpha 2 and can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.haiku-os.org/news/2010-05...aiku_r1alpha_2

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

They all have positives and they all have negatives, but none of them will ever be halfway as good as BEOS was back in 1999. And on that note, the Open Source BEOS clone, Haiku, has just reached RC1 Alpha 2 and can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.haiku-os.org/news/2010-05...aiku_r1alpha_2

Really? I loved BEOS! I think I still have the original disks somewhere. Wow - blast from the way past!