Good Bye Billy!

Just like many windows users, it’s been a while since I’ve got the feeling that there’s something wrong with my computer. Weird things have been happening here, and its almost like the PC is haunted; it’s not that it crashes, but it has disconfigured my cd burner, the internet becomes incredibly slow from time to time and many of my microsoft products have been… well, misbehaving. Also as any windows user, I know this is a sign that it’s time to reformat the disk-which really has to be done periodically when your computer runs on windows. The prices practiced by Microsoft in Brazil are simply absurd, and I haven’t been able to update myself to the vista yet. With all this in mind, pissed the hell out with my PC, I started shopping around the internet for a user-friendly Linux version.

The fact that I find the ideals behind the open-source development higly noble was never really enough to drive me into changing to Linux. Every single computer expert I’ve ever met claimed that Linux is by far a better and safer system to use, and I actually experienced using the Ubuntu for a while because it was running on the machines of my university labs. Yet, I never used it for nothing more complicated than opening documents, editing texts and such. On the other hand, I’ve been a windows user since childhood, and I already know how to do mostly anything a laymen may need in there, and I was afraid to make the change and suddenly become unable to find my damn files again – like it happened on the first times I used Ubuntu, due to it’s different directory structure.

Now, I’ve finally grown some guts to put my computing were my ideals are. On a user-friendly system such as Ubuntu, how hard can it really be to become proficient? Certainly, it does not compares to how hard it was to it’s developers to bring this beautiful software up, completely free for our benefit. It really moves me to know that there are people out there working on a product that actually makes possible for poor countries like mine to have running computers on schools and houses, not hostages to the good wills of the big paid companies. The generosity of these people astonish me, almost as much as their competence in programing.

Since I can’t burn my own CDs now, and since my internet connection is rather slow, I ordered an Ubuntu CD on the internet last night. It will be sent to my very home, free of charge, thanks to the support and sponsoring provided by Canonical. To tell the truth, it’s been a while since I first thought of making that order, but it felt abusive to let them press the CD and pay it’s posting since they are already giving the software free for download at the site. Kinda got my conscience heavy, but with all the problems I’m experiencing with my windows, and fearing it’s “suckability” (not instability, because that could be considered defamation) may keep threatening my activities. Plus, I’m pretty traumatized about the time I lost over 50 pages of reports due to one of these “weird things” going on here.

Mr Gates… count me out!