DarkWyrm Unabridged

As if I needed further confirmation. Right. I just got a new toy: a Dell Latitude D620, used for eBay for $250. Definitely a great deal for the price. Once I got it last night, I proceeded to wipe it and install XP Pro and Ubuntu Karmic. The Karmic install took about an hour with updates and extra programs that I use. It still needs a few tweaks, but it's basically done. 3 hours later, the XP install is now downloading updates for Office 2007. I really don't like Office, but seeing how this laptop is for my use at school and I teach a class on Office, I kinda have to have it. Personally speaking, I'd rather not bother with Windows at all. 1 hour vs 3+. Hmmm. Once again, Micro$oft can't seem to get it right.

I've been really disappointed with Ubuntu Karmic Koala since just shortly after its release last October. My main computer at home runs Jaunty after a nice fiasco of upgrading, playing with it actively for about two weeks, and then downgrading . I have a couple other machines that run it so I can see if it has improved any. I can safely say that in the months since its release, it hasn't really gotten much better. Need some examples? I just installed Karmic using Wubi this weekend. Guess what? Updating her machine rendered it unbootable. SuperTux, a fun mario-like game, works great under Jaunty and crashes merrily under Karmic. The "unstable" development version, however, runs just fine. How ironic. Grub2, despite being a beta, is the default bootloader for clean installs. In the years of Ubuntu use that I've had, I've reluctantly learned enough about the first one to do what I need -- which is nothing fancy. Now it's been made even more difficult for Joe ...