Ah.. after a looong time..
and with a post on my “poor” computer..!!
My first brush with linux was in Feb 2006, for my TOC assignment on lex and yacc, which i manged not to complete and got jus 11 on 20 while most of the class got much more, not to mention an interest in linux. i was to remain a winbie for one more year.
Feb 2007 and with placements nearing, i started looking at installing linux.. and i came to know abt ubuntu’s free live cd and had got dapper drake last sept. I installed it and let it sleep on my comp for some time. I never used it then. after about a month, i decided to remove it and rather than ask anyone else, just formatted the partition .. it was ‘linux is so easy..!! no wonder my class tries all distros.. perhaps i shd install something else.’ The surprise was when i switched on the system the next day..
Formatting the partition had taken away the grub..!! then i used the live cd to learn what a grub is, but not wanting to damage the system anymore, i just copied my valuable windows files and got my comp mechanic to re-install windows. Enough of linux for a life time.
May 2007. Placements here. Even otherwise, everyone on the net was raving about feisty. And i had to use linux to work on an online judge. Thus began the second innings.. lots of apt-gets (and consequently bigger telephone bills) later, i have grown to being on ubuntu all the time.
And you wudnt believe what my comp has been put through last week.
Seeing this hype abt fedora moonshine, i download openSUSE 10.2 and Fedora 7 to experiment with. openSUSE installation was simple and it recognised the existing oses, so no problems wid it.. But like ubuntu, it dint have gcc/g++ and on trying to get it wid a package manager, it asked for extra cds tat i dint have.. well tat was the end of suse on my system.
On to Fedora.
I feared tat the earlierprob wid grub wud resurface if i simply format the suse partition, so i installed fedora on it.. :d . But no.. fedora doesnt recognise other linux versions.. too late, restarting the system after installation i have only fedora and other (windows). Aaargh, cant they make it easier for people for me?
Ubuntu’s live cd came to the rescue again and i re-installed grub from it wid some commands from the internet. But yes, i lost fedora now.. 
Since i could always recover wid the live cd, i re-installed fedora (ah!) and lost ubuntu again and recovered it again. So my system now has windows, ubuntu, a fedora i have no way of reaching and plenty of free space..!!
Then i turned towards the grub-splash-images and spent a happy friday night on changing images and rebooting. “poor computer” indeed!!
and was tat without side effects?!! no.. from yesterday i wasnt able to get the gdm to display.. after the line ‘ starting cupsd’ i had a blank screen.. it dint end with re booting, so i used the live cd (once again!) and reinstalled ubuntu’s grub.. Now theres no visible problem and im here blogging..!!
No fancy grub splashes for me for some time, but i got a nice desktop pic in my splash-image-hunt. A screenshot is here:
Nowadays i’m on ubuntu all the time (not tat im a power user, still a newbie only) and i like it very much here.. I wonder what i’d do without the live cd..!! 
In case you are wondering why this is titled ‘Woebuntu’.. ah well.. just for a catchy title!! 
p.s.: try as much i have not been able to download java 5 here, so no Kawigi Edit on ubuntu… . For TopCoder its windows only.
Filed under: general/musings | 3 Comments
IIRC Java 5 is in gutsy. Try to run linux on Microsoft’s Virtual PC initially, it will let you have the best of both worlds.
I tried running Ubuntu on Parallels in Windows. It was alright, if a bit slow. The upside is that wireless works in Ubuntu that way. Still have not got my wifi card to work, even in Feisty. Main reason why I haven’t ditched Windows yet.
Slow yes. Thats because it is a user level virtualization solution. When Windows Server 2008 is released, the hypervisior will make running multiple OSs seamless.