Ubuntu Fun

With the new (used) PC installed in the kitchen running XP, I decided it would be a good test bed to see how I liked running Ubuntu Linux for all sorts of common browsing tasks.

Since I wanted to do it with a minimum of fuss and the ability to revert back to just XP on the system I used the Wubi installer. It installs (and uninstalls) Ubuntu and other varieties of Linux as though it were a Windows program. Worked well and I now have a dual boot system.

While I haven't decided whether I like it enough to use in place of Windows (not going to happen on my main work PC) on most of our PCs, and I haven't used it enough to see if it's as good as XP for web browsing/media enjoyment, it seems just as good. Here's a great guide on How-To Geek.

So I also installed the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on the Toshiba Netbook we have. Used Wubi as before. It was very slow (10+ minutes) on bootup however. Luckily the internet is full of information and a few minutes of googling produced this forum thread that had me change a setting in the BIOS. Now it boots quickly. There's another page on How-To Geek about doing this install.

Now I just need to get Felice to learn how to use it. She managed to get hit by a virus (fake antivirus/trojan/etc) on the netbook a few days ago and I'd like to avoid that in the future.

If you're wondering how I cleaned the virus up? Well that's how I first found the How-To Geek site as they have a good lesson on doing just that. Avast failed miserably in preventing the infection, so I now run MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) instead. I'm doing a scan a day with MSE and Malwarebytes just to make sure it's all gone. Here's hoping. Having Linux on the netbook will at least assist me in fixing future problems should they arise.