XP is dead! Long live …what?

“We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.” ― Steve Jobs

Hello Windows 8: XP had a good run. First released in 2001, this operating system has been around approximately 12 years.  That is like 100 years old in human years.

I bought my wife a Lenovo laptop pre-loaded with Windows 8.  My wife liked the Surface commercials but we opted for a bigger screen and more processing power.  The Surface (tablet version) and laptop commercials show young clowns dancing (like Glee), dressed in some fashionista version of business apparel supposedly working or a little girl easily creating art and showing it to her dad via teleconference.  If we believed commercials, we should have been impressed.

My wife was not impressed with the nouveau tiles!  I was eventually told about something called classic shell.  The tiles still show up but after a short wait the selected look shows up.  Mama is happy with the classic style and stronger laptop.

Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail): The next strongest computer (the one replaced by the Lenovo) is a re-built Dell with dual processor.  I had already replaced XP with Ubuntu 12.10 and decided to make the next jump to 13.04.  I like Ubuntu but found that the versions after 12.04 did not play nice with my older Dell models. The upgrade went fairly smooth and I may have had to deal with only one glitch. The best part of Ubuntu is the price (FREE).  The good news is that the boys did not notice that I had made a change to their system.  If you are an Ubuntu fan, I recommend reading articles on what to do after installing (especially the OMG version). Ubuntu is the third place operating system behind Windows and Apple (which has a proprietary version of Linux under the hood).

Linux Mint 13 (Maya Mate) & 14 (Nadia): We have two older Dells which I found played best with Linux Mint (the fourth place system — also FREE).

I was running 12.04 Ubuntu on the newer machine but noticed it was using a lot of CPU.  After further research, I found the Linux Mint worked best with the monitor and decided to give it try.  I preferred the GNOME look to the Unity look (reference only has meaning for Linux users). The conversion went fine.  Seeing a newer version available recently, I made the move to Nadia (Linux Mint 14). Everything went fine until I opened my Mozilla Firefox browser and found no connection to Internet via my wireless connection.  Using ether-net cable did not resolve the problem, so I knew it had to be a network configuration requiring a change to some lines of code.  I managed to get my wireless up and running.

For the oldest machine (used by Jimmy and the boys), I decided to go with Linux Mint 13 (more stable).  Because of the Broadcomm wireless card, I knew I would have issues with the wireless.  Luckily, I could connect using ether-net cable and research a way to fix the issue.  I found a Mint 13 step by step fix to the Broadcomm problem.  I resolved the browser issues with Mozilla Firefox by switching to Google Chrome.  Since the boys mainly view videos and play Internet games, I set-up the browser to open at start up. No complaints so far!