Hi All,
Roy Schestowitz recently wrote the following on COLA :-
"A lot of people keep dual-booting for many years until a generation of
software 'fades' and the user conveniently goes GNU/Linux-only. I fall
under this category as well."
What Roy says was certainly very true in my case.
I had installed Linux on my pc around 1995 - 1996 on a separate hard
drive to my Windows 95 install, and I used to just turn off the PC and
swap the IDE cable from one hard disk to the other, to switch between
OSes.
I did it this way because even at that time it was obvious that Windows
didn't like to play with alternate OSes and I'm the cautious type who
doesn't like to lose data or do things twice.
Eventually as I grew more competent with Linux, and replaced Windows
application with Linux ones, naturally I began to use Windows less and
less.
So what defining moment marked the last time I used Windows ?
It was a new motherboard, and the date was August 1997.
I had bought a new motherboard and cpu, ram etc, (the usual upgrade
cycle) and fitted it in the same pc.
Everything just continued to work fine when I powered the machine up as
it was using the Linux hard drive and *nothing* changed for me, except
the machine was a bit faster.
Then, about 2 weeks later I switched over to the Windows hard disk to do
something, (as I had been doing for the last couple of years) only to be
greeted by "warning, new hardware detected, Windows has gone into "safe"
mode" blah blah.
All my 8 million Desktop icons were crunched into a tiny horrible,
640x480, 16 color "Toys-r-Us" display.
I thought "YOU MUST BE FRACKING JOKING, YOU GREAT BIG STEAMING
POS !!!!!", and that was the last time I had Windows on my PC.
The Windows hard drive was scoured for data, and then formatted with EXT2
and a new and larger /home directory appeared on my single boot Linux PC.
I sold my Windows 95 CD for $50 as the BSAA were having a Blitzkreig and
business everywhere were trying to buy up legit licensed Windows CDs like
mine.
What was your defining moment for switching to Linux ?
--
Linux full time, on the desktop, since August 1997
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