Well, that idea died pretty quickly.

Huzzah! New computer arrived!

But my glorious, optimistic and free spirited plan to install Ubuntu Linux has died a quick death. Installed, but could not get the OS to work with my Atheros wireless card.

There IS a way... surfing through any # of Ubuntu help forums last night showed me that... it's just whatever the way is, it's beyond my meager computer abilities. I am unable to build[?], compile and install new drivers for my wireless hardware in an OS and a computer language I barely understand. Which is a shame, because every other aspect of Ubuntu, in the six or so hours I played with it, was awesome. Slick, fast, intuitive... all the things Windows doesn't seem to be.

But since I had to repartition my hard drive in order to do the Ubuntu install, in order to set everything back up to Windows as the only, and the default, OS, the only way I know how to do that is to boot up from the recovery CD and start from scratch. I'm sure there's probably another way, but seeing as how the only thing I did on Windows yesterday was download and burn Ubuntu, it seemed the most stress free way to do it.

So when I get home today I'll start over with Windows Vista, from scratch, strip out all the crapware and bloatware and proprietary nonsense that came pre-installed, and start downloading the software I actually enjoy using. [Firefox, VLC, Open Office, etc, etc] Once I get that done and get the OS tweaked out the way I want, it should be functional enough. Next computer I get though, I'm gonna get Linux pre-installed...

Oh well, it was a good idea while it lasted.