Ubuntu 11

For the last nine months the primary computer I use has had Ubuntu Linux running in classic mode as it's operating system. I tried a couple other versions of Linux as well such as Puppy Linux via Live Cd and eventually decided on Ubuntu as the operating system of choice. For the most part I like Linux more than I did Windows. I have had several versions of Windows (98, XP, 2000, and Vista) and I had more problems with them than I have had with Ubuntu since I've been using it.

I do have two pieces of hardware that Linux doesn't run automatically. The first being the dial up modem, which I know I could get to run but would have to download a couple programs and a driver to get to it to run, the second being the finger print scanner which I don't know if I can or can not get it to run via Linux mainly because I never use the thing and have no plans on using it so I didn't even bother to find out. The dial up modem could be useful on occasion such as traveling to some places (but really a lot of places, at least around here, have wi-fi: restaurants, libraries, some parks, government buildings, stores, schools, some entire neighborhoods, etc.) and in a power outage (have several hours of battery power on the laptop and never have had the phone line not work during a power outage) but I don't feel like taking the time to get it to run. I have had hardware not work on Windows as well for example I have a scanner that will not run on Windows Vista, it is several years old and the company didn't update the drivers for Vista. That same scanner does run on Ubuntu just plugging it in though.

Pretty much every program I used on Windows, other than the games, has a Linux program that is comparable though I do run a few windows programs on WINE. WINE is a great program capable of running most of the things I want that is not on Linux (though it doesn't play everything Windows does) including at least one program that I couldn't get to run on Vista (an older Star Trek Trivia game that Windows Vista just would not play even when set to pretend to be an older system). Programs I currently have installed via WINE are: Britannica 11 (I like having an offline dictionary and encyclopedia),  Fanfiction Downloader (there is an online fanfiction downloader that is actually better in that it can download from more sites but I like having the program on the pc), Iso Buster (even though there are several programs on Linux such as K3B that can make and burn Iso's I haven't found one that saves Playstation 1 games to the computer as well as IsoBuster does - I prefer saving the games to the hard drive to play them via emulation rather than playing them from the optical drive), and a few games (Linux has games as well but Windows has a larger selection and since the games can play on WINE I might as well - though not all games can or will play on WINE). Ubuntu software center is also pretty damn convenient for finding programs to do what you want them to do.