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[Ampersand]

I haven't seen my best friend in what seemed like over a year until yesterday afternoon. He's moved several miles away and we just never really found much time to hang out a lot. We made time yesterday, after I heard through his father that he recently got a benign golf ball sized tumor removed from behind right eye.

He's a pretty well in shape guy; lifts weights often, played football and baseball in high school, and no one really suspects him to be the type to have a bookshelf dedicated to rare comics and graphic novels. Hardback copy of Frank Millers Dark Knight, the first appearance of The Punisher in Spiderman, The first appearance of the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four. Countless others. Nor would they expect him to have another book case stuffed ceiling to floor with dvds, or for him to own a reel to reel projector to watch films from the early 1900's on, half of them soundless.

So it's all quite impressive if you also happen to like fine films. I wanted to show him another obscure example online, but only his laptop has connection to the internet, and it's bugging out. I tell him, there's some good news. I happen to be a certified technician, and can fix it up for him. We open it up, boot to Vista. The lap top's hard drive screeches at us like some sort of hellspawn demon every couple seconds in a way that gets us both to instantly stop conversation and look at eachother, then the machine, and back, mystified.

After downloading Malwarebytes anti-virus onto the machine and scanning the whole system, I determine that it had been infected, if the insanely slow pace of the machine wasn't evidence enough. Hell, a control panel window for Defragmentation and Disk Error Checking opened the second vista booted, and couldn't be closed. Obviously, something is wrong. Very wrong. Malware bytes finds the infections, but they're so deeply ingrained that they prevent Malwarebytes from doing anything to remove them, and probably locked out other antivirus programs as well.

I tell him there's nothing I can do in the amount of time given, tell him to bring it over tomorrow, and let me reformat it. I explain that since he uses that laptop exclusively to access the internet, and access multimedia, Ubuntu Linux would not be the worst way to handle the problem. Having already used Linux as a way to ensure people unfamiliar with the internet's dangers from acquiring viruses in the past, it was a simple logical leap in this case. I tested his hardware with the live cd, and everything checks out fine, so I show him around, and he enjoys it. Likes the interface, Ubuntu's brown-ness blending in rather remarkably well with the brass shade of the laptop's frame, and is overall similar to Windows XP.

Yet when I sit down and install the OS, something happens. The Harddrive wails unearthly sounds once more, and the installer warns of an Input/output error, the entire drive is practically unreadable. The screeching then is what I feared most. Catastrophic hardware failure, not just the virus making it overwork itself.

We discuss it, and decide to acquire a replacement. Only 80 dollars, which is really nothing huge for him; a Journeyman Electrician, who works for a company that does work for several large corporations based in the city. While not rolling in it, he can spare plenty.

We take the replacement back. I've never replaced a Hard drive on a Laptop. I'm glad to find upon opening the bottom panel that it's very simple over all. I replace the faulty one with the new drive, retry the installation of Ubuntu, which cruises along without a hitch, and eventually, it's installed. He's happy. I'm happy he's happy with Linux. I demonstrate it's features, set up ad-block plus on fire fox, DVD support and Flash. All done, he heads home.

As he drives away, and I close the door, I turn around, put my hands on my hips and all I can think is...

Another victory for Free Open Source Software

☭

[Armok]

*Applause!*

[Zironic]

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

You must be one with the system to be more with the system!

[NewoTigra]

Your friend reminds me of Vin Diesel. Although Vin could probably fix any problems with his computer just by growling at it. Scary Guy.

[Hungry]

FlOSS

And now it keeps your teeth cleaner....

My job here is done.

[Dasleah]

FOSS didn't do shit here. All you did was replace a buggered hard drive.

[Strife26]

I just downloaded Open office, and I'll say that the seconds I don't procrastinate on it are much better when compared to works.

[Dasleah]

I just downloaded Open office, and I'll say that the seconds I don't procrastinate on it are much better when compared to works.

you know

i heard that closed source proprietary software once shot a man in Reno

just to watch him die

[Blacken]

I guess I'll say it.

Open source software (no, much of it is not "free," stop buying into Stallman's bullshit, the only free software is under the BSD/MIT/X11 licenses or in the public domain) didn't do anything here.

Your contention that "Ubuntu Linux would not be the worst way to handle the problem" is correct only because Slackware exists. Mind you, I'm no Microsoft fanboy--I've done a good chunk of open source programming, and I've done a LSB build. But Linux on a desktop? There's no good reason to foist a substandard, borderline-unmaintainable operating system on somebody who doesn't have the experience to work with it. Essentially, this post is bragging about being irresponsible. You sent somebody home with an operating system they don't know how to use. Aren't you are supposed to know better when people come to you for advice, not pimp your substandard software because you're on an ideological tear?

What's he going to do when a kernel upgrade kills his video drivers? (It happens, still, on 9.10.) What's he going to do when he wants to actually run applications besides "I tried to compete and I failed, so have some source" OpenOffice? Learn to use bash and WINE? (Ew. I mean, hell, I've been using Unix for about a decade and I won't waste time with WINE.) What's he going to do when he runs into the metric shit-ton of hardware--like, say, a digital camera--that doesn't respond when he pokes it with F-Spot or whatever because of a lack of drivers? There's barely any reason for somebody who fully groks Linux to use it, what reason is there to put it on the computer of somebody who has zero experience with it? Or, hell. What's he going to do when 10.04 comes out? Dist-upgrades in general barf half the time. Are you going to run to help him whenever that happens? 'Cause if you're putting yourself in the position of being his computer janitor, why even switch OSes?

(I wonder how he likes the entire system chopping to a halt when Flash is used. Common problem on not-Windows operating systems that Macromedia/Adobe have never fixed. Even on OS X, the Flash runtime has serious issues with eating all your cycles. OH BUT HE COULD USE GNASH THAT'S A GREAT IDEA)

He already had a Vista license, obviously. So it wasn't cost. Instead, it was your ideology taking the place of good decision-making. It would have taken no longer to install Vista, MSE, and MalwareBytes, and if you were feeling really ambitious schedule a weekly (or more often) scan with MBAM; MSE takes care of itself.

It's not about "victory" for some particular software methodology. It's about giving the client the best possible tools.

As usual, Linux Hater (a KDE developer, as it so happens) nails it.

[Nadaka]

In fairness, he didn't know how to use windows either, as evident by the load of viruses installed.

[Blacken]

In fairness, he didn't know how to use windows either, as evident by the load of viruses installed.

I agree. Which is why a "certified technician" should, instead of advocating a pet OS that requires a great deal of rather low-level knowledge to operate, set it up correctly. I mean, if I can set up a computer such that my twelve-year-old brother can't infect the thing with a raft of viruses, there's no reason that a "certified technician" should be unable to do the same.

[KaelGotDwarves]

You underestimate the stupidity of people.

As the saying among tech guys go, "the best anti-virus is Commonsense pro insert year number here"

No amounts of tweaking, process-inhibiting, firefox, noscript, anti-virus, scanning, or even different architecture is going to stop computer clueless peole from clicking on things they shouldn't. But they help in many cases to stop infections from shitting all over the system once they're activated.

So for the most likely to get viruses and "I just use computer for facebook *coughporn*" people, they are probably better off using mac or ubuntu than windows, just because of sheer volume of everyday threats to those systems.

[Ampersand]

Blah de blah de blah. You guys have no idea what the situation was like, and on that grounds, I'm going to override your criticism with my actual knowledge.

There's a reason why I went with Linux here; he uses the laptop exclusively as a netbook. He has a much better desktop computer with a dual monitor setup, running Windows 7 that is completely disconnected from the internet that he actually uses for all the software and production studio things he needs. The laptop is purely an internet client. This was about saving a laptop that was utterly non-functional and bringing it up to the point were he could actually use it. Yes, I know hate hate hate on the linux for one reason or another.

I know what he uses the laptop for, and I know that what I set him up with is perfectly capable of doing everything he uses it for, because I tested it. I demonstrated everything to him, and he was perfectly intelligent enough to understand how it works.

So please, Blacken, don't tell me I didn't know what I was doing, what I was getting myself into, or anything about where linux is lacking. Because I did and I do.

[Nadaka]

I've recently gotten a new computer myself and installed both ubuntu and windows 7 on it.

Ubuntu took a little longer, but it detected more of my hardware, was able to be fully functional from the start and even got the latest drivers for my video card.

Windows took a little less time to install, but I had to manually install drivers for everything afterwords so it takes much longer. And even then it will only detect an sd card if it first formats it, it won't handle any of my previous standard format sd cards that windows xp and ubuntu handle.

If you don't constantly change your hardware, and don't need critical missing software (mostly video games, some high end graphics applications and visual studio), ubuntu works really damn well. I need those, so I dual boot. I spend about half my time in each OS.

[Dasleah]

The point is, Ampersand, is that his new Linux laptop isn't doing anything different or special compared to a normal Windows laptop. Everything that you did could be done exactly the same under Windows, right down to installing Firefox, which would of probably helped just as much to get rid of all his virus problems. Hell, seeing as it was a internet laptop, Windows would have been a far better choice, seeing as Flash and various other plugins work miles better, faster, and more up-to-date on Windows compared to Linux.