First off, a big thank you to Conor & Lu, his awesome family and Bob & Des. I would like to think I’m too cool for thanksgiving but I can’t lie, I was slightly bummed that again I did nothing for thanksgiving with my own family because my mother and brother were both working. So it was really nice to get my mind off the that and get some turkey in me while sharing laughs with good people. Um… not once but twice yo! It was a nice long weekend with mucho good foods (yum!)

When I wasn’t eating I was getting to know my new Samsung net book. I recently had the urge to fiddle with linux so I installed ubuntu on the net book and rid myself of windows xp and I must say I am impressed. Once I am fully comfortable with linux and all it’s ups and downs I would even entertain the possibility of becoming a linux only household with a crappy pc around in case of emergency. Yeah it’s like that.

Why so impressed? First off, it is really easy to install: download ubuntu, make a usb installer, reboot with usb drive plugged in, test it out and install. That’s it! I will admit I was a bit frazzled watching windows xp go bye bye, hoping it went smoothly and that I wouldn’t be stuck with a bricked net book I just purchased. But it was fine and in a few minutes I was rockin and rollin in ubuntu figuring stuff out. Second reason is it works. It actually works, I thought I’d be hacking it to bits to get it how I like but right out of the box it works well enough for any seasoned mac or pc user to find his or her way around. And the most important reason I was so impressed was that it’s FREE! By free I mean free, zero dollars for a product that is in my opinion as good if not better than windows or mac (depending on your needs). There is something way gratifying about knowing that I’m running a computer that will in no way give any money to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. It is also gratifying to know that I am using a product that is put together by people who are working on it out of love for the technology and not for the money (sort of, I’m sure most of em have other paying gigs). That isn’t to say the good folks at windows and mac don’t love their jobs, just not enough to do it for donations.

So yeah, nothing but good things to say (okay, okay a few uber nerdy gripes but I’ll be okay) I will cover my particular net book model, ubuntu version and gripes in a later post in case anyone is heading down the same path.