Hello world

I'd like to pretend that I'm doing something important here; something that will cause people to stand up and take notice of...well, whatever.

But, as you can plainly see, that's not what I'm doing.

I've started this blog in order to chronicle my switch from Windows to Linux as my primary desktop operating system at home.  I've been a Windows user since 1996, when I was first introduced to Windows 3.1 - previously, all my computer experience had been with IBM DOS machines, the Apple IIe, and the classic Commodore 64 (admittedly, that's going back quite a way).

Switching from one operating system to another doesn't really sound like a big deal, and in my case it isn't. I work in IT; I'm a desktop support technician at a college.  I have an A+, I have some Microsoft certification, I have some experience.  I can handle Linux, right?



I've tried it out before, about eight or nine years ago.  It wasn't quite as easy to use back then as it is now.  Some things didn't work, some things didn't make sense, and I really didn't have the patience at that time to give it an honest try.

I've tinkered with Ubuntu off and on over the last three years.  I've been impressed by what they've tried to do with it.  I've installed it on plenty of virtual computers, used it as the primary OS in a laptop or two, installed it as part of a crazy Win7-OSX-Linux triple boot configuration, and even carry around a live USB key of it for troubleshooting.

But all of that was just for fun, or for use as a tool.  Never for my own desktop.

You see, I do a lot of gaming on my PC.  It's nothing special, in fact it's getting pretty old at this point.  It's a Dell XPS 410, and I don't even remember most of the relevant specs.  I'm not a hardware fanatic, so as long as something runs I'm happy.  I don't overclock or do any other tweaks to try to squeeze out performance, that's just not my thing.  If I have to play a game at 1024x768 I'm fine with that.

So really, my challenge is to get my computer running on Ubuntu, connect it wirelessly to the network at home, make sure it has everything my wife will need when she's using it, and then get my games working.

I'm fully aware that not all my games will work perfectly, and in some cases they may not run at all.  For that reason I'll have my backup plan - I'll be dual booting with a Windows partition because there are a few games that absolutely need to run right 100% of the time, no questions asked.

Beyond that, I create the occasional youtube video, experiment with neat things I find on the internet, and generally use my PC as an entertainment box.

So...this will be my journal, in which I will document the steps I take, the things I try, and the random thoughts that enter my head.  If you're thinking about a switch, maybe you'll find some value in this.  If you're not, maybe you'll just enjoy reading about the things I'm doing for no reason other than you like to read about things people are doing, which is borderline stalker but hey - I'm the one putting this out here for you to see so I had it coming.

More posts will be coming along soon.  My current status:  Backing up important files, reviewing programs I want to try to install, and looking for interesting open source programs to try out before falling back to the Windows-based ones.