This all started when I noticed 4GB of Corsair XMS2 only cost $114. You see I can remember surprisingly vividly how cheap RAM was when it was 8MB for $375.

I figured, what the hell it’s 2008 and I’m still using an OS from 2001. 2001! How bad can could Vista be I asked myself, I mean it’s been out for a year. Surely it’s matured enough.

Oh, how I can be so very wrong.

Personally I try to stay out of the Operating System Holy Wars, because I believe good computer scientists don’t really care about anything other than what it can do, and certainly not if it’s from Redmond or Cupertino. And let’s be honest, technically they’re all about the same. Good computer scientists may have a favorite but that doesn’t cloud their judgment or ability to pick the right one for the right task or cause them to make asshats out of themselves because they feel very strongly about their favorite (on Slashdot, or more recently Digg).

Anyways, so there I was. I had my Windows XP 32-bit OS running just fine. I bought more RAM. I backed up and installed Vista 64-bit. After I reached the desktop, which was running at 800×600, I launched IE to download the Nvidia drivers. It crashed. Not just the app, but the entire friggin’ system. Must have been a freak problem I figured. Not so. After about 50 hard reboots (holding down the power button for five seconds, and no I’m not exaggerating, it was at least 50), I managed to get all the drivers and software in place the stability of the system was…better. I was still getting random crashes all the time.

And seriously Microsoft, I heard Aero would be pretty neat. I’ve never been so underwhelmed. That’s the best you got in five years? And what the fuck did you do with my control panels. Things that used to take 1 or 2 clicks to navigate to are now buried behind 5 or 6 clicks.

Frustrated I thought about trying XP 64-bit instead. Then I thought, “NO, fuck that shit Microsoft. You’ve blown your chance and I’m not paying again for an OS I already own. We’re done, do you hear me?”

I need my desktop PC for three things: virtual machines (to run development servers), storage, and games. That last one it turns out pretty much mandates I use Windows, but for better or worse I decided to risk not being able to play Counter-Strike: Source or Call of Duty 4. I read about the rapidly maturing Ubuntu Linux beta Hardy Heron on Arstechnica and researched getting games to work on Wine, a Windows compatibility layer.

So I downloaded Hardy Heron (in just a few minutes, thank you Yahoo bandwidth). It fits on a CD unlike many other Operating Systems out there. What’s really different though is the way you install it. You pop the CD in the drive boot from it and instead just installing right away it boots into the full OS as a live CD. On the desktop is an icon to permanently install it, but you already know if it’s going to work…because you’re actually using it. So I started to install.

While I was installing, unlike any other OS, I could actually do whatever I wanted. No crappy interface at 800×600 that told me how awesome Microsoft shit was going to be. No, I was in the actual OS I would be using running at the full resolution of 1920×1200, which it picked automatically, and browsing around in Firefox 3 (as you can see above). And it was snappy, no slowdowns as it installed. I actually wrote part of this during the install.

Remember how underwhelmed I was by Vista and Aero? Even Mac OS X (which I really like) isn’t graphically anything special anymore. Ubuntu uses something called Compiz which has a real wow factor to it. You will instantly get attention when someone else sees you move a window (I can’t promise girls though, you’re on your own for that one).

The one really awesome thing about Ubuntu is how automatic it is. Any time you try to do something that it doesn’t know how to do, it loads some software to do it for you. Download a torrent file? It automatically downloads and installs an application that can do bitttorrent. Trying to watch a movie that’s encoded with something you don’t have? It loads a codec. Plug in a new device, it grabs the drivers for you. It doesn’t ask you, it just works. Even if it has to download something from the Internet to do it. It’s a very nice philosophy for a consumer-oriented OS.

Which brings me to another point. Yes there was a time I had to touch the command-line. To get DVDs working I had to enable DMA (direct memory access) on my DVD drive, using this command:

sudo hdparm -d1 /dev/cdrom

Other than that Ubuntu is really getting close to being 100% ready to be used by your mother. I hope it eats away Microsoft’s marketshare as the OS becomes less important and software becomes much more web-based. The best part is Ubuntu is developed on a six month schedule so I don’t have to wait 5+ years to get something better (or a steaming pile of crap in the case of Vista).

So I got Hardy Heron up and running. Did I mention it’s just a beta? It’s rock solid for a beta. And I’m not regretting it. Hell, I even got Counter-Strike: Source working. Transmitting voice doesn’t work out of the box but I haven’t tried to get it working. I’m sure a simple Google search will solve that. It’s very playable at 1920×1200 and honestly it’s more stable than Vista.

Microsoft, even if Windows 7 is the second coming, it’s already too late.

P.S. My one question is, Apple how did you do that 64-bit migration so painlessly I didn’t even notice? I didn’t even realize it until Microsoft fucked it up so badly. Kudos Apple for a job well done.