I’ve decided to move my XP box to Ubuntu and build a new XP box. This will allow for a top of the line linux desktop experience being as how my XP box is a Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz with 4 gigs of DDR ram and a really nice gigabyte motherboard which I swear by. So Joel helped me pick out some new hardware for my new system, being as I am not hip to the newest and most dependable desktop hardware. I went with:

Coolmaster case w/ 550w power supply

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel motherboard

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor

OCZ Platinum Revision 2 2GB RAM

I also picked up a 24” widescreen to complete the project. Current setup below from Right to Left: Dell laptop Ubuntu 7.10, new 24” Ubuntu 7.10 and my Samsung 21” with XP.

I’ll post more pictures and comments when I start building the box. Only things left to get: one more hard drive (bringing the total for both machines to 1.3tb) and a good linux compatable NVidia video card. ATI’s isn’t too hot with ubuntu yet.

Being as how I hate Windows Vista and will never upgrade I needed to find a solution to replace XP in the future. I’ve used XP for years and years and its always worked great for what I needed it to do (photoshop, mail, ssh via putty, ftp, trillian, etc…) I’ve used Linux since Red Hat 5.1 on our first server (IBM PC 704) in 1998 which was nicknamed “The Beast” and hosted sites like tumyeto.com, skateboard.com, zeroskateboards.com, toymachine.com, etc for many years. Ah the glory days…

Moving along. I recently (thanks to Joel’s influence and help) started playing around with Ubuntu. I installed it first on a system we made out of a graveyard of parts in the office. I played with it with for a couple of days and decided to take the leap and install it on my laptop which I use almost daily. For some reason none of my systems (both Intel or AMD) would boot off the Live CD (which is very rare I’ve heard), so we used the alternative text install mode. I haven’t used a desktop Linux distro in a long time and I was completely impressed at how well it worked. Wifi worked from the start (including WPA2) and holds a very stable connection to my Linksys router and all the APs I have tried. So far every program has worked that I wanted: Thunderbird, IM, Firefox, DVD support (only with Compiz disabled for some reason), sound, Skype, TrueCrypt, Synergy, etc. I was able to import my 5gigs of mail over to it without any issues. I was even able to get my Verizon XV6800 via DUNN without any issues for those mobile hacking sessions. Not to mention the Synaptic Package Manager is beyond easy for finding and installing the mass collection of useful programs that makes any PC or Mac seem useless. Not to mention the 3D cube effect with Compiz is pretty fun.

Dell is selling both desktops and laptops with Ubuntu pre installed. The desktop looks pretty appealing and should be on my desk in the next couple weeks. Just need to pick a matching monitor.

So long story short, I found my Vista killer and I have no idea why I didn’t force myself to do this earlier. I guess work has been so busy that I never wanted to try anything crazy.

I am still keeping my main desktop box on XP to run my Adobe products and my financial software, however everything else will be linux. One day it would be nice to do everything open source. I don’t think I can watch anymore keynotes about bloated fashion technology. Although I would love to run linux on mac hardware, cause I do admit it’s pretty as hell and well thought out.

More later…

- MGMT, a band a never thought I would like, has put out a great record. Album stand out for me is the track “Kids”. Give it a listen.

- This month is my do taxes and finish all open projects/paperwork month. It’s gonna be a long one, but at least March ends with some traveling.

- If you haven’t checked out pickrset.com lately. Do it!

- I recently upgraded to Verizon’s new XV6800, which I love. Full review coming soon.

So, I’m going to make an effort to start updating this a bit more. So here is some things I’m excited or have enjoyed.

- Arrested Development movie talks? YES!

- I’ve been watching all 3 Karate Kid movies this week and I’m amazing happy about that.

- Saint Valentine’s this year will involve When in Rome and Dom Perignon 1999. Hells yes.

- Zeropresence.com will actually be updated this week. Yes yes a full year late. Well at least we focus on our clients more than our actual site. So there.