Pollywogs!

So I have this extra computer at work that gave me nothing but headaches, and a couple months later I got straightened out.  It didn't have an assigned home anymore, so I use it as a sandbox.

I downloaded and installed Ubuntu Edgy Eft recently and as usual was very pleased by the polish and presentation it provides.  If I wasn't into video games, Microsoft would be gone off of my home computer.  After installing a couple packages (ok, it was a complete pain in the ass), I had a fair replication of a Mac OS X…

I also recently downloaded Vista RC1 (see previous post), and installed that on this computer as well.  The install went very quickly, and was very polished.  The desktop itself was a pleasant suprise.  I thought of nothing more than Ubuntu:  polished, well organized, comprehensive, reasonably fast.  I have an old Geforce4 Ti4200 in this box (older 734-based VNF-250 with 512MB of whatever was laying around) so Vista doesn't give me the hot and bothered eye candy it is potentially capable of…

That said, do we really need Vista?  Does anyone need Vista?  What does it bring to the table?

Well, if you aren't so hot with computers, Vista forces you down a narrow path of organization and careful computing.  So, if you purchase a new computer with Vista, you are slightly less likely to accidentally break something, get completely borked online, or misplace those documents you downloaded last week, all while looking completely flash.

For me, it doesn't seem to provide anything useful over XP.  Which doesn't provide anything useful over 2000.  As hardware evolves beyond the current point, moving to a new OS platform will be inevitable…whether it will be a Linux based distro or Vista…I have a feeling that Linux will become a more signifigant option as time progresses, especially considering how far Ubuntu has come in such a short time.  Vista does provide a lot of interesting and useful items by default, items which feel lifted from Ubuntu (well, from Linux/Unix).  But forgetting the simple 'upgrade because we can' argument, what is wrong with Windows 2000?  What do I need to do that Windows 2000 doesn't let me?  Hmm.  Huh.  Err…hmm.  Well,,,…huh!  

Anyway, considering Vista versus Ubuntu, neither really supports video gaming at the moment, neither has great driver support, both are very polished and elegant, both seem reasonably stable.  Ubuntu has the amazing advantage of being 100% free and having an amazing library of useful and free software a click away from being installed, whereas Vista has the amazing advantage of a gigantic and rich corporation pumping Vista down the throats of the entire computer industry, ensuring hardware and software is crafted and optimized for their new operation system for years to come.  

What a shitty mini-review and 'funny ha-ha or funny queer' comparison.