Why can’t they just work together?

A couple hours ago my download of the Ubuntu ISO file finished. About an hour after that, I burnt the ISO file to a CD. About an hour after that, I booted my gaming computer from the CD, and installed Ubuntu. What a mistake. I’m sure that there are people that will tell me that I didn’t spend enough time working in Ubuntu, and maybe that’s true, I spent less than an hour working in Ubuntu, but even if I had spent 10 hours working in Ubuntu, I don’t think that I would have come up with any different of an opinion.

When I ran Ubuntu off of the Live CD, it connected to the internet fine, it was a little slow, but I attributed that to the fact that it was running off of a CD. I was wrong. After totally wiping my hard drive of my gaming computer clean, which, by the way, don’t do if you can help it, Ubuntu was installed, and I was ready to start up my new computer. When I started up my new computer, with it’s shiny new OS, I was pretty happy with myself. It looked good, it set up easy, I had a username and password on the system, and in general, had no problems. Yet. I started by checking around at the system, the games, changing the background, adding a screen saver- basic stuff, nothing very hard. The first problem I had though was that my screen saver lagged up. Now if you’re a gamer you’ll definitely know what that means, and if not then you may still, but for those of you who don’t, it means freezed up. My screen saver lagged up continuously. Again and again. That was pretty weird I though, it’s not like this computer is weak on hardware or anything. It wasn’t, but for some reason, the screen saver was still lagging up. Within a few minutes after that I realized that I wasn’t connecting to the internet. That was pretty weird, considering that when I was connecting while I was running the Live CD, it worked fine. At first, I attributed it to my computer running Win XP, I figured that for some reason it wasn’t sharing my internet. When I went and checked though, Windows was sharing the internet, no problems at all. I tried and tried to fix Ubuntu for awhile after that, but with no success. Apparently using a Windows machine as a router to a Linux machine doesn’t work. They just can’t work together.

By that time I was getting pretty frustrated with Ubuntu. I couldn’t use a screen saver, and I couldn’t connect to the internet. Not a good start to a new OS. Not a good start at all. And it’s not like I could just say, “Oh well, Ubuntu’s not working, I’ll just go back to my Windows machine.” Nope, couldn’t do that, because I HAD TOTALLY WIPED MY HARD DRIVE SO THAT I COULD INSTALL A FAULTY OPERATING SYSTEM. Right now, as I’m writing this, my other computer is running right beside me, 35% through the formatting process. This process will install Windows back on my machine. I am not missing Linux at all.

In the past, Ubuntu had recognized my Belkin wireless card in my gaming computer when Windows hadn’t, and if that was the case this time then the whole wired problem wouldn’t have been as big a deal. Too bad that it wasn’t the same this time. Ubuntu recognized the wireless card, but didn’t connect. Ubuntu recognized the wireless card, but didn’t recognize any of the wireless networks. None at all.

48% through the formatting process.

For some reason Ubuntu was really slow on there too, even it’s startup wasn’t very fast. Not as fast as when I had windows on my computer anyway. Strange. That’s the opposite affect that I would have expected after all that I had heard about Linux.

53% through the formatting process.

Maybe it’s just that I didn’t give Ubuntu enough of a chance. Maybe that’s it, but the way I was going, I don’t think that it would have mattered.

60% through the formatting process.

Almost back to windows.

I can’t wait to get back.