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I’ve had Ubuntu installed on an old desktop computer and a Toshiba laptop for almost 3 years now. My wife has Vista on her Acer laptop. Last June I bought an ASUS netbook loaded with Windows 7 Home. My main computer was running XP until last fall when the hard drive croaked. I installed Windows 7 Pro 64-bit on it.

When I bought the netbook, after configuring Windows 7 and installing the only piece of software I need that I can’t replicate in Ubuntu, I installed the netbook version of Ubuntu 10.04. It works flawlessly. I use OpenOffice on it (and all my computers because I absolutely detest what MS did to the menu system but that’s another story) and I can do everything I used to do with MS Office. I can easily share everything with the other computers including Windows because OpenOffice is platform independent.

Some of the things I like about Ubuntu:

[*]It boots and shuts down much faster than Windows.
[*]Support for accented letters is much simpler. After defining a command key (I use the right Alt key) to get é used in French and Spanish (I write in both languages), I need only hold the Right Alt down, press the single quote key, release them both in reverse order and press “e”. In Windows I need to remember a key sequence like Alt+0223 using the keypad numbers. That’s more complicated when you don’t have a keypad on a portable computer.
[*]Security in Linux is excellent, more flexible and less obtrusive and invasive than Windows (especially Vista).
[*]And something I think is really cool. In Windows when you decide to reinstall the OS or install a new version, you have to reinstall all the software you installed. You have to look for discs or download new copies. It’s very time consuming. When I bought my netbook and installed Ubuntu some software like OpenOffice was included. For what wasn’t included I simply went to my laptop and issued a command that I found on one of the myriad Ubuntu support forums on the terminal (the equivalent of cmd.exe in Windows or DOS prompt command window). It created a list of all the programs installed on my laptop. I took that list to my netbook and, following the very simple (really) instructions, issued a new command on this list and sat back and watched TV for the next 2 hours while Ubuntu downloaded and installed the newest versions of all the programs. Afterwards, I just deleted any programs I didn’t want on my netbook. When I install a new version of Ubuntu, I’ll list my software first, then either update or reinstall from scratch. I can’t see how it could be simpler.
[*]It’s got a very nice GUI interface. Different than Windows and the Mac but similar.
[*]There are several desktops available and I can easily switch from one to another. I can be running Firefox on one desktop, OpenOffice on another while watching a DVD on the third. Why I’d want to do all those things at once is a good question but it’s nice to know I have that option and I have used it from time to time.

I don’t hate Windows (well, maybe Vista). I like Windows 7 but I find the security extremely difficult to work with. For example, since I installed it I can no longer access shared folders or my printer from my Ubuntu computers. I can access shared Ubuntu folders from Windows 7 so I can move files back and forth from it. Printing is a pain as I must save jobs in PDF format, go to the Windows computer, get the file and print it. I don’t have a requirement to do a lot of printing so I haven’t worried too much about it.

At the moment I’m on vacation in Costa Rica to escape the cold of Canada and writing on my netbook, in Ubuntu using Firefox. Every day I must boot into Windows 7 to download the newspaper from home. It’s the only thing I need Windows for on my netbook. Costa Rica and Ubuntu are similar in a way – easy going and life is good.

Having used every version of Windows (except Millennium) since 3.1, a couple of Mac OSs and several different Linux distros, realizing that older Linux distros were hard to use, I can’t understand why people continue to hate Linux. Or, for that reason, why people hate Windows or the Mac. They are what they are. They are all very reliable now and they all have both similar and different attractions. Before you shoot something down, take the time to learn out about it. They mind, like a parachute, only works when it’s open.

Did you download from SIW | Download?

Joe

Yes I did. To make a long story short, I downloaded it again and ignored Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). I ran an Avast! scan (I use both) and it came out clean. Then I ran MSE again and when it told me there was a threat I looked at the details. As it turns out, there was something in Avast’s quarantine that I hadn’t deleted. (A drawback having co-resident antivirus/malware tools.) It’s gone now and MSE is happy. So am I. To avoid confusion to readers, I’ve deleted my original post.

Ted, as a fellow retiree, for imaging a drive or partition, I’d like to recommend you try Clonezilla. It’s free and, apart from its somewhat silly name, it’s a great tool. I can’t tell you I’ve used it to image a Windows Vista 64 drive (or partition) but, from what I’ve read, it will image anything. It’s very easy to use but if you want to experiment with its options, the documentation is very good. You can even download and print a Quick User Guide. I was upgrading my laptop running Ubuntu 9.10 to version 10.04 and used it to back up my two partitions to my USB drive. It worked like a charm. After installing, I backed up my upgraded system, reinstalled the old one, tested it, reinstalled, the new one, tested it and everything worked perfectly.

Check it out at http://clonezilla.org/.

I used to use Ghost also and, I have to agree, it’s not the great tool it used to be. But even though Ghost was good, I can tell you from my small experience with it, Clonezilla is way better.