OK, I promise to drop the subject soon enough. But the adventures from yesterday need to be remembered. By me at least.

So, after having read the installation instructions the night before, I started installing yesterday. Well of course the it all froze at a certain point. Why? It was related to some BIOS settings, Enhanced Mode/Compatible Mode something. Apparently SLES needed the Compatible Mode.

So, I got some help and I started installing Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9. Cool distro, old though. Really old for my hardware, no it did not work. But I managed to install it and see how cool it was (it practically did everything on its own, click-click, next-next, just like Windows).

The masters have then gathered and discussed what I should try next. A newer distro, first of all, friendly with the uninitiated. Yes, right now I am a typical user. I can't be bothered with commands and terminals. Basically because I don't know them yet. So we then got an Ubuntu CD.

This time, it all went great. The installation procedure of Ubuntu is a very smart one I think. Extremely easy, everyone can do it. It is also performed from a Live CD. So while you install the distro (as it can take a while), you can also experience it: surf the internet, play a game, whatever makes you happy.

Personal likes:
- the Synaptic Package Manager! Imagine this, you update it to have all repositories up to date. Then you simply search through dozens of packages for any software you might like. Select, thrn install :)
- the great theme color: orange, a really nice orange. The theme color is also applied to other installed software: GAIM, Firefox and Thunderbird all have an orange bar.
- Thunderbird instead of Outlook (after all the issues I have encountered with Outlook on my Windows XP installation, this is a true blessing).
- A lot of pre-installed software which means less wasted time. Open Office is not my personal favorite, I have to give Microsoft what's Microsoft's: Word, Excell, PowerPoint still rock.
- more workspaces (i.e. desktops, more of them)
- the fact that it is all so new and challenging and because I feel this crave to learn more.

Personal dislikes (Disclaimer: I am a newbie, if some of these things exist or are fixable, I might change my mind later):
- what happened to Arial??? Where is it???I want it back!!!
- the fact that I know so little about it
- GAIM is pissing me off really bad at times. Until I figure out stuff, with help of others, of course :)