And people say Linux isn’t user friendly.

Since then, I’ve also had some hardware issues, to the point where Dell came along to replace my motherboard, hard drive, screen (I have a laptop) and one of the memory modules. After that, out of the blue, Windows 7 did install without a problem and I’ve been using that for a while now. And I have to say, after rebuilding the taskbar, I rather like it.

The first thing I wanted to look into, was FreeBSD, and I did. After installing it and getting a wonderfull commandline, I started poking around. That was somewhat of a fail; I could get neither Wifi nor KDE to work properly. So maybe FreeBSD wasn’t just there yet, or maybe I just suck – either way I didn’t really have any preferences, so I decided to move on.

A while ago I read that OpenSuse is great. So I gave that a try. The installation went pretty smooth and most things worked. Except for one thing, the Wifi again. While it did technically work, there was some bug that led to there only being a default route going to the wifi card, if my wired-network was also connected. Obviously this could be fixed, and I found a bunch of work arounds. But since I still didn’t care much for what OS I was going to use, and I didn’t want an OS where I had to use work arounds to do basic things like connect to my wireless network, I ditched OpenSuse as well.

Next up was Fedora. The installation went very smooth and everything worked out of the box, except for things like Flash. (But thats the same for anything other then Windows and maybe OS X, so Fedora didn’t lose points for that.) I managed to install some of the basic stuff I wanted without issues and am now in the process of transfering everything from my Windows Vista disk to the brand new Fedora installation.

I still have a few things I need to install (IDE’s, a good torrent client (I love µTorrent), that sort of stuff) but it seems like with Fedora I have (finally) found a keeper.

for a while now, you have been promoting your new Windows 7 as the operating system everybody should use. Understandable, because Windows XP really does need to be replaced, and Windows Vista just isn’t what it should be.

As a Windows Vista user, I’ve been wanting to upgrade. Not just to Windows 7, but also to more RAM and a bigger harddrive. The logical thing to do, would be to combine these three upgrades. (Doing the HD upgrade and the OS upgrade at the same time also allows me to not destroy my Windows Vista installation – a big plus, because I don’t have to worry about forgetting to back something up.)

So, after buying two Corsair DDR2 2GB modules and a 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4, I downloaded Windows 7 Professional EN 64bit (from MSDNAA), burned the image, swapped harddrives and began the installation. Well, I got my laptop to boot from the DVD anyway. After the installer loaded the files and I picked my locale settings, it told me it was missing a “CD/DVD drive device driver”.  Obviously that message makes little to no sence, since the installer is on a DVD in said device, it there must be a driver available for it somewhere.

After searching the web a bit, it seems more people have this issue. Other people who also have a Dell Vostro 1500 seem to be able to solve the issue by installing completely unrelated drivers, reformatting the harddrive, or using an older image of the same installation DVD. I tried the first, can’t do the third and am to lazy for the second. Instead, I think I’ll just give something else a try. (I’m thinking of FreeBSD – I really like the idea behind that project and it seems to be making progress in the desktop area.)

With kind regard,

Jory Geerts

ps. I know you don’t care – its not like I’m even a paying customer. I just needed a reason to blog,