Hello world!
No, I'm not picking programming up, though I would like too, and Python sounds really appealing, I'll have to look into that another day. No, this is me saying Hello World from my new Acer Aspire One featuring WinXp Home edition and Kubunto 9.0.4!
My primary machine is a Dell E1505 Core duo, and it gets the job done when I need to write a big paper, while listening to music, play a huge media file, or jump into a fee MMO (side note: Fiesta is a rather fun one) but after a few years it has become cumbersome to cary around. I have no intention of getting rid of it, no no, I like gaming too much for that.However, because of all the possabilities that computer has, I get easily distracted, and as I have said before, I want to write a book. Part of my motiviation in getting my Acer Aspire One netbook was to have a system that was so minimalist that if I chose to sit down and write a paper (or book, chapter, short story, etc.) on it that I wouldn't have any distractions. Thus far it has not dissapointed. I have not been able to write anything on my book, but that is because of my Intensive course I'm about to enter into and am forced to do homewokr for (that and my wife and I got Heroes seasons 1 and 2 for graduation [err, we bought them with a giftcard we got for graduation]). One side effect of my Aspire One that I had not realized was its hard drive size. I got the 160 GB version, this sucker has more HDD space than my computer, my wifes computer, and our tertiary backup external HD. I am not an audiophile, so with no mounds of music or games to take up this 160 GB monstrosity that fits in any of my wife's purses (impressive, considering she dislikes bucket style bags) I was forced to look elswhere to make use of the space.
Enter Linux. I've had extensive experience with Redhat/Fedora Core and Gentoo linux (I'll never use Gentoo again, thank you very much. Its a great setup, if you have the time or inclination to keep it all running, which I no longer do) in the past, but recently I had been hearing a lot about Ubuntu linux and how user friendly it is. I decided to look into installing it on my little netbook, which I thought shouldn't be terribly difficult considering the first several generations of netbooks ran exclusively on Linux based OS's. My main obstacle was going to be a bootable flash drive and installing linux from that. I did some searching, and found hints that someone somewhere knew how to install Linux from inside of windows. Brilliant I thought, even if it requires a CD drive I can emulate one from Windows, run the Linux ISO and have myself a dual boot setup before you can sneeze. Well it turned out to be a LOT easier than that. If you follow the link attached to this article/blog/post you'll find yourself on the WUBI installer homepage. WUBI doesn't actually install Linux on its own partition, it installs it under Windows, inserts an entry into the Windows Boot Loader, and makes Ubuntu think it is its own drive (which it really is, but ir requires zero mucking about with your partitions, which is a god-send) it is exactly like installing any other software within windows, and can even be un-installed the same way if you don't like it.
So anyway, here I am, less than 3 hours from start to finish (95% of that time was dedicated to downloading the ISO, which WUBI does automagically) and I am using Kubuntu (WUBI lets you choose, vanilla Ubuntu with Gnome, Kubuntu with KDE 4, or another flavor with XFCE).
The coolest thing? Kubuntu configed everything on my Aspire One properly, and I do mean everything, right down to my keybard's Fn keys. I haven't tested the wireless hardware button yet, but I'm impressed the wireless worked with zero configuration on my part, and the odd 1024x600 display res didn't phase it in the least.
Anyway, if you have ever been the least bit curious about Linux, Kubuntu has a very windows like feel to it, and is fully functional and easy to install (you can give yourself a linux 'partition' of anywhere between 5 and 30 GB) check out WUBI, it'll be less painful than the last service pack you had to install on windows.