In my last post, I detailed the specifications about the new box I built. The very box I am posting from at the moment. I am dual booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. Both of these are the 64bit variants. I have avoided using Windows Vista like the plague. In fact, aside from playing with it for all of 2 minutes at Best Buy once, I haven’t used Vista at all. So, the thing is, I built this box and I needed an OS. I wanted a 64bit OS because I put 4GB of RAM in it and I didn’t want it to go to waste. I don’t own a copy of Windows XP 64bit and, honestly, I can’t find my 32bit copy either. What to do, what to do.
Well, I downloaded Ubuntu and Windows 7 RC1. I installed Ubuntu first because these days Linux is just easier and faster to install. I started using Linux about 15 years ago. In those days it was a real nightmare to install the first couple times. Of course, I learned a lot about Linux from those early days with no graphic installer and no autoconfiguration. I started on Redhat and Slackware, soon became a Debian zealot, and finally graduated to the ‘compile everything for your box’ crowd with Gentoo. I would say Gentoo is still my favorite, but I just don’t want to invest the time in tinkering with Linux anymore. Therefore, Ubuntu gives me a super simple ‘it just works’ OS that installed from putting the new HD in to logging in and ***having my wireless PCI network card working*** in under 20 minutes. That is just crazy quick.
After getting Ubuntu installed, I moved on to Windows 7. Not nearly as smooth to say the least. I realize that this is not an OS that is actually released yet, so I expected to endure a little more hassle. Anyhow, it took the rest of the first evening and the following two evenings ot get everything working properly. The wireless card was a real nightmare. My recommendation to you, skip Linksys cards for Windows 7 until the OS is released. And then you may want to boycott them for not supporting there hardware with lines like “we don’t support prerelease OSs”. I had to revert to using generic Ralink drivers and that took some googling to find the solution. Also, I had to enabled broadcasting on my AP to get the connection setup. Once the I had the connection, I was able to turn SSID broadcasting back off and all is well.
I have been using Windows 7 for a couple weeks now. I really like and use the quick launch bar in Windows XP, so I am a little miffed that there isn’t a quick launch in Windows 7. Maybe there isn’t one in Vista either and people are used to this by now, but as I said earlier, I skipped that OS. Anyhow, once I figured out how to make the start menu bigger, all was right with the world. It has been pretty stable, although I did go through crash hell, over and over and over one night, but this wasn’t Micorsofts fault. I have a Pogoplug, which I love, but the driver for windows has some bugs in it. I was trying to get all my music imported into iTunes. Lets just say, after about the 6 consecutive crash, I gave up.
Ah, I almost forgot, the other issue I had was with my Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 2.0. Logitech isn’t supporting Windows 7 yet either. After much googling, I was able to get it to work.
So, all in all, I am digging Windows 7 for the most part. I think I will like it a whole lot more once it is released and has better driver support.
