Ah-ha! I am having a brief return to Linux. I have found myself less inclined to boot into it for the last week or so. My Gutsy Gibbon boots quicker than the XP and Firefox, my preferrred browser on both platforms, loads a lot faster too. i can get going a whole lot quicker (possibly two whole minutes) with Ubuntu. It looks better and my media set-up is fairly inclusive. Apple's site was abit sniffy about letting me watch their promotional videos. idid manage to watch the Mac and PC skits ok but it decided all of a sudden that I was an OSX Leopard and needed Quick Tunes. perhaps they should do a skit where mac can't tell the difference between himself and an obviously different Linux character.

The reason I was visiting the Apple site was because I had found myself fantasiing about owning an iPhone - because Mac is such an awful snob Jobs and Mr O2 will have to forgo my wad of cash.

So why my floundering interest in Linux? is it crapping out on me again? No -not in the least. It has been performing well-grub has held out without any of the problems I had when I first started. I have suscribed to eMusic and their seervice is great because it all works really well on Gutsy. OK I've lost the ability to listen to BBC streams (and Resonancefm is abit flakey too) but pandora and musicovery work as well as on XP.


I think though it has improved it is hard to say it is better than XP overall. Linux has worked well because apart from eMusic remote every installed app is an approved package and I have used nothing like automatix to get other apps and media codecs. Ihave just used the most official routes to do things. XP however is stuffed with all sorts of odds and sods all of which work well (and are easy to learn and which run well). It has paid -for, freeware and opensource software all rubbing along together nicely. Any website or webservice will work with it (unless its got malicios intent). I can use the dreadful BBC iPlayer if I want. I can use the Napster subscriptiuon service if I want. I can install neat little utilitis like Piky basket - and it won't blow up my machine and can be installed in my sleep.

It gets longer to get going to be sure - but chugs along nicely (and generally looks a bit brighter and clearer) when it gets going. Even the incessant AVG updates are worth it for its mixture of reliabilty and flexibility.

(Oh yes - I enjoyed writing this in a VT using Vim with Gutsy Gibbon. That's certainly something I can't emulate on XP very easily.)

Well thats todays thought on the whole subject.