I have finally decided to take the plunge: my laptop is now running Linux instead of Windows XP.
I got tired of trying to debug the mysteriously long boot times, purchasing yet another update to Norton’s Anti Virus, and generally just being mystified at how slow a 2 ghz laptop could act.
This morning (in fact, right now, as I type this) I’m running Fedora Core 3 on it. It’s not without its problems (as yet, I’ve been unable to get my Belkin 54g card working with it) but overall I’m fairly happy. It even works with my scanner and my cheapy IBM webcam.
Here is to lowering my cost of ownership.
From a recent post to a Red Hat Usenet group:
There are 2 add-in IDE controllers that won’t bang into the on-board
controllers of almost all modern motherboards. One of them works
well, the other works badly. The Promise ATA-133 works well, and the
Siig card works badly. The Belkin has issues even with a pure windows
environment. Belkin went acquisition mad last year and bought a bunch
of iffy card manufacturers and slapped Belkin signs on everything.
Apparently the Prism GT chip works well with 2.6 kernels, if you find yourself up the creek. NewEgg has one here.