The Noble Experiment part 1 (the plan)

As Roger the Shrubber once said, "There is a pestilence upon this land." That pestilence is Microsoft Windows, particularly Windows Vista, which came pre-loaded on my new Acer Aspire T-690. I've been fighting buying a new computer for about 6 years now, scraping by on used and surplus units. I kept Windows light by running Win2k Professional with no bells and whistles, allowing me to run Macromedia Studio 8 on Pentium III computers. Slowly, I've been eliminating Windows from my home computers in favor of Ubuntu & Xubuntu Linux. I've had to keep one Windows computer to do web design, as Studio is very limited in Ubuntu under Crossover Office. Three weeks ago, the day of judgement came when my only remaining Windows computer, a Dell Inspiron 4100, died, losing a lot of web design client data, I might add. This is one of those bad deaths that you can't recover from no matter what you do. There were missing drivers and damaged registry files. The bottom line, it's still a paperweight until I can get the data off of the physical drive by another means.

So, here I sit with a new computer, running Windows Vista, possibly the worst reviewed permutation of Windows since ME. Thus begins the noble experiment. I plan, by November, to be Windows free. My current setup looks like this:

vista


Windows Vista Home Premium with...




  • Macromedia (not adobe) Studio 8

  • Adobe Photoshop

  • Adobe Illustrator

  • MS Office


Really, the only thing I can't live without is Studio 8 (particularly Fireworks 8, which happens to be the only one that doesn't work well on Wine or Crossover Office.

In spite of the fact that I'm running a 64 bit machine, I hope to install the theme and packages associated with Ubuntu Studio (shown below), which only comes in 32 bit configurations.

screenshot-desktop.png

For my Web Design Suite (Macromedia Studio 8), I intend to run Windows 2000 within Innotek's Virtual Box.

Stay tuned for my triumphs and miserable failures.

 

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