While my girlfriend was visiting her sister in Rotterdam, I finally set up her notebook to dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. Before you think bad of me: I didn’t sneakily do this without her knowing, but instead because she once mentioned that she’d like to try out another OS.

Now you may wonder why I chose Ubuntu over Gentoo, but I’m afraid the answer is rather pragmatic and uninspired: I had a magazine CD of the current release, so I dind’t have to download an ISO. Also installation is fast and painless and there are lots of nice HOWTOs. Besides that I’ve aleady used Ubuntu to convert one of my non-techy friends to Linux and it has worked pretty good. To sum it up: I think Ubuntu is a decent distro, but I maybe wouldn’t use it on one of my own boxes.

Back to the original topic: I’m really curious to see how well my girlfriend will get along with her new operating system… So far it seems she’ll have a smooth transition. There are free alternatives for all the programs she uses on a regular basis and I found a nice explanation of how to share Firefox and Thunderbird profiles on a dual boot system (the link doesn’t contain anything surprising, but it’s a nice reference anyway). Additionally I’m really curious to see how she will like GNOME and if she finds it as user-friendly as I do.

Boomtime, The Aftermath 35, 3171 YOLD