It's been a long time since I wanted to try Linux. Finally, I installed a new release of Ubuntu 8.04 on one of my old desktops. The installation went very smooth and it took about 1/3 of the time which XP install would take me. Since I already have Windows XP Pro installed on this machine, Ubuntu automatically repartitioned the drive and kept the Windows stuff to itsself. Linux OS files are on a seperate partition now although I'm not sure how I would boot into XP again. But if I can't, who cares, this was an old machine and couldn't run XP at an optimum speed anyway. The performance in Ubuntu seems much better than when I was running XP on the machine. I'm just installing the Chinese language pack now. Will find out how good that is after a reboot.
You may be wondering about the name Ubuntu. It is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world. Ubuntu is a Linux-based software and includes the OS and its open source Office programs. It also comes with a movie player, lots of games including my old favorite Klotski (Hua Rong Dao-like game) and even palm sync software. This is only the first hour that I'm using it. I'm sure I will find more goodies as I go along with it. So stayed tuned if you're tired of Microsoft and its Windows products.
