It’s my 18th birthday!!!
Yup, I’ve turned the big 1-8 today. Marissa (my new laptop) is now up and running, though admittedly not under Windows. I decided to go ahead and install Mandrake 8.2, and I’m very impressed. The CD autoran in Windows, and gave me the option of either booting from the CD (didn’t work) or creating a boot disk and using that. Although the boot disk creation was a little difficult (I had to read the documentation to find out what to do), it was done quickly and I was able to boot into the installer.
The installer was great – the ‘express’ option take about 30 minutes and was nice and easy to understand – there was plenty of help available and no confusing dialogs. The partition manager was excellent, though I did have to say goodbye to Windows XP due to the fact that Samsung had chosen to use NTFS, which, although it is recognised by Linux, isn’t supported. But it is a new system so I wasn’t going to lose anything.
I’m using KDE as my desktop – not KDE3, since this isn’t yet included – but 2.2.2 (I think). It also comes with a full office suite, more web browsers than you can shake a stick at (including Mozilla, which loads much more quickly than its Win32 counterpart) and various other tools.
There are down sides – I couldn’t get the sound to work, and I won’t be able to use the internet for a couple of days until NTL get their act together (I’m on Marianna, the old machine), but on the whole, I’m pleased with what the Open Source community has done here.
My other presents included a laptop backpack – or rather the money for it, though I got one today from PC World. It’s great – not only will it carry the laptop but the transformer, extra mouse (which also works in Linux, despite the fact that it is USB and has a wheel) and Ethernet lead, and a great deal else. I also got a wallet (to complement my proof of age card, which arrived this morning – nice one, Portman Group) and more money. The rest of my presents will be here tomorrow when my grandparents and cousins come over for dinner.
Anyway, I’m off out for my birthday party. See you later!