I hate to say it, but I gave up on Linux. The dual booting kind of jerked my PC around and just generally annoyed me. I purged Ubuntu from my system, but not the idea behind it. Trying out Ubuntu opened my eyes to the Open Source community. I’ve come across some really great programs that were free. No need to feel guilty about stealing using a paid program because they are genuinely free. However, the support for some of these programs can cost money. But generally there are community forums for all the help you could ask for. They may take a bit of warming up to, but here are some programs worth looking at:

• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Graphic Editor: GIMP
• Guitar Hero PC: Frets on Fire

Well, I dusted off the SNES… actually, I dusted off my SNES rom collection. I started playing some classic RPGs, namely Super Mario RPG. I was surprised by one specific situation that occurred. In one of the towns, a crocodile was mugging the villagers. The mugging crocodile ran swiftly past a Mushroom Person sentry and promptly left the village. Mario questioned the sentry why he did not stop the crocodile. This was his response:

WHAT?! Yeah, that was my reaction, too. Actually, I was surprised to discover the weapons technology of Mushroom People to be that advanced and violent. I like to think that it was a bazooka that launched flowers or mushrooms as projectiles. Or perhaps the word ‘bazooka’ was translated incorrectly from the Japanese version of the game. No? Oh well. I guess if you believe in Mushroom People to begin with, your bound to come up with some crazy ideas.

I’ve made the big jump! I am now using Ubuntu to do all of my computer related tasks. How does this affect the output of my work? It doesn’t! At least, not as a hindrance. If anything, using Ubuntu will now speed things up for me. That is, once I get familiar with using a Linux OS. And I like Ubuntu more every day I use it.

But for now, I am still learning and getting comfortable using Ubuntu. I like the layout and the way things are done. It has a nice crisp design and I can do anything (and more, perhaps?) that MS can do. However, because it isn’t MS, there are some drawbacks. For example, Adobe Shockwave Player doesn’t support Ubuntu. But Ubuntu does have an application that can run MS based programs that do use Adobe Shockwave. That’s the beauty of it. Oh, I forgot to mention that whereas MS can cost $200 and up, Ubuntu (and virtually every Linux OS carries a price tag of $0, aka FREE! So definitely worth checking out.