When I bought my new pc in March, I was ambivalent (yet hopeful, if that makes sense) about the preinstalled copy of Vista which was to be installed on it. Since my current hard disk was more than sufficient for all things productive (linux), I left the new drive with windows for my games. I like games. I had a few troubles with the onboard sound with the linux kernel, so I bought a cheap SB Live! card which was perfect - hardware mixing and 5.1 sound. The caveat? Of course, the product is now so old that it isn’t supported by Vista. Sad, because it truly is one of the most reliable products that has ever hit the pc market. I was stuck with archaic stereo sound for games which was a shame, but something I was willing to live with.
So back to the topic. For the last 3 months I’ve come to totally hate that operating system. It’s flashy and fun for 3 weeks or so… Oh, hell, I’m not going to complain, there are many more complaints out there on the web. To the crux, it couldn’t even do what I wanted - play games! (aside from a few, that is).
Today I wiped out the drive and reinstalled xp, which boots in fractions of the time, supports my soundcard, plays my games well!
Here’s a word of warning. If you plan on doing windows installations, remove the power from the linux disk before you start and save yourself a potentially disastrous situation of formatting the incorrect disk. The partition manager for win xp setup is notoriously bad. Also, after the installation is finished, don’t forget to repower the drive. Otherwise, if your CD drive is on the same IDE cable, the slave jumper settings may confuse xp and totally mess everything up (like freezing the machine on cd access - this stumped me for an hour or so).
The entire process left a poor taste in my mouth, one which I’m far to familiar with. I’ll be glad when (or if…) I can play all I like on my happy kubuntu installation.
