Niels Christian's blog

Some days ago I was recovering my Windows XP system on my laptop, but something went wrong during the installation process and the windows boot loader was non existent. Then I searched the net for some solution for this, but the solutions I found didn’t really work well. So I came up with this home made solution. Put some Linux distribution onto the computer and trash Microsoft Windows. So I did.

When I bought my first computer (year 2001) it had Microsoft’s Windows ME pre-installed, at that time I didn’t know anything but basics about computers, which was what I had learned in school (most of it by myself due my curious mind). Thus I didn’t know anything but Windows systems, I didn’t even know anything else existed.

Then I started in high school and learned a lot about computers from my roommate. I got to know that there is something called OS (Operating System) and that windows was not the only desktop OS. I tried some Linux distribution, but I never really got the idea, I was too far down the road of Windows systems to understand this system, that seemed so strange to me. Occasionally I have been trying different Linux distributions since, but never got the feel.

What kept me away from Linux has mostly been hardware driver troubles and the fact that most games is only developed for windows. The wireless network drivers has been hard to configure and that, especially, kept me away.

Now that I installed Ubuntu(Ubuntu is a linux distribution), I had no problems with anything. Everything worked out of the box. So I am gonna stick with this. Applications doesn’t work for both windows and Linux, but some has been compiled to both systems, e.g. Mozilla Firefox and OpenOffice.org, which both are part of the ubuntu package.

Most importantly to note about this conversion, is that most Linux distributions are free. Actually, you have to look hard to find one that isn’t. And there is so much software for linux that is free. In windows I had some programs that I have used a lot and they dont exists for linux. But doing a little search( only a little search, it takes no more) and you have found an application that does the exact same job for you in Linux.

Conclusion

If you have any kind of troubles with Windows, just install Ubuntu, it works out of the box, and probably wont cause any problems if you work with it as a home desktop for internet browsing and office packages.

Just install it. In fact, you can now install Ubuntu as an application on your Windows desktop, so you have no longer any excuses not to try it it out

Note: I will keep posting about my ubuntu experiences when something comes up.

For a long time (several months), I have wanted to switch my textpattern blog to a wordpress one. So I happily started installing wordpress and everything was fine. I had read somewhere that wordpress had an import function that made it easy to keep your old posts from previous blogs. That, of course, would be really nice.

After installation I found the function somewhere in the wordpress dashboard, thinking, yes finally I get rid of this messed up syntax in textpattern. But no. The function was bugged. So I was disappointed and thought that I could make the script my self, but quickly I realized how much work it actually was. I gave that up.

Time went on and I still wanted to fix it. Meanwhile WordPress had moved from version 2.3.x to version 2.5.1. Somehow the import function now works properly for textpattern databases. That done, only thing left to do was editing all the links and pictures and stuff that were written in textile (textpatterns own markup language thing). Doing that in every post and figuring out relationships between pictures and posts was a nightmare. Unfortunately some pictures were lost in this process.

I now happily write this post in this same, but renewed blog that’s converted into wordpress. The process has been cumbersome and given me some headaches on the way, but I am sure it will pay back, since the textile you had to write your posts in in textpattern was such a mess, whereas wordpress has very much focus on the usability for the blogger. Now when blogging is so much easier, I’m a happy blogger.