{"id":188,"date":"2006-04-27T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T07:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shinnphoto.com\/andrewandlisa.org\/?p=188"},"modified":"2006-04-29T00:10:41","modified_gmt":"2006-04-29T07:10:41","slug":"the-switch-to-penguin-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=188","title":{"rendered":"The Switch…. to Penguin Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally did it. I’ve been contemplating it for several years now, but I finally switched our home computer from Windows to the free Linux<\/a> operating system. So resistant am I to change that I actually considered buying or pirating a copy of Windows XP to re-install on this computer. A quick look at Microsoft’s online marketplace<\/a> tells me that copies of Windows XP Professional run from about $400 to about $4000. That’s a lot of money to pay or steal. (I think if fewer people were stealing it, those who pay would pay less, but that’s a speculation best saved for another blog post.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, I decided to go with a version of Linux called Ubuntu. Besides being free and really fun to say, Ubuntu is reputed to be easy to install and use, and very stable.<\/p>\n

Installation was a snap. I backed up all my files onto an external hard drive, then installed away. The only decisions I had to make were:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. What to enter for my name (Andrew Shinn)<\/li>\n
  2. What to enter for my username (andrew)<\/li>\n
  3. What to enter for my password (like I’d tell you that!)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I had to make one other decision about hard drive partitions, but I just went with the default option that wiped my computer clean and started from scratch.<\/p>\n

    So, I really like Linux so far. Ubuntu comes with all the software you could possibly want, and easy access to more. All for free. I am now using Openoffice.org 2.0 as a better replacement for Microsoft Office (including Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint), Firefox as my web browser (same browser I used on Windows), and lots of other really cool software with funny names but great prices (free) and functionality.<\/p>\n

    Ubuntu is running faster and cleaner than Windows ever did on this machine, and I couldn’t be happier with it. The good people at Ubuntu will even send you an installation CD for free. Check it out at ubuntu.com<\/a>. Here’s a screenshot:<\/p>\n

    <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I finally did it. I’ve been contemplating it for several years now, but I finally switched our home computer from Windows to the free Linux operating system. So resistant am I to change that I actually considered buying or pirating a copy of Windows XP to re-install on this computer. A quick look at Microsoft’s … Continue reading The Switch…. to Penguin Power<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdZlL-32","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}