A few weeks ago, a worm hit my windows drive that completely screwed it over. It was from 180 solutions. Despite all my attempts to repair the issue, running XP in standard mode was impossible. Well, my main drive ran Fedora Core 2. I had been a loyal RH user for years. But the rpm base of the OS was really getting to me. Mainly, my issues lay in disabling NTFS, MP3, DVD functionality in the kernel to prevent possible lawsuits (sort of like disabling the clock on a VCR). Secondly, I had issues with the updates. See, I was stuck with FC2 because all attempts to update the thing yielded so many issues as to deem the update worthless. Luckily, the older versions were still there to fall back on. Which leads me to this post. I lost windoze operability and it gave me an excuse to use that drive as a test bed for a replacement distro. I posted a thread on <a href="http://justlinux.com">justlinux.com</a> for advice on a distribution. I listed Ubuntu and Debian as lead possibilities. Since I had read many posts throughout the board, I've heard more and more about Ubuntu. In my thread, I stated the requirement needed for a distro I'd like to see. Here are the guidelines: <ul> <li>Upgrades run smoothly.</li> <li>No RPMs please. </li> <li>Good driver support for video/audio.</li> <li>NTFS/MP3/DVD implemented automatically.</li> <li>Good apt-get repositories (and a good front end).</li> </ul> I tried debian but it proved to be too much work just to make the kde desktop visually pleasing. Then all the other issues like video drivers and such. It all proved too much for me. I had the original ubuntu disc that had been sent to me when it first came out. I installed it next. A good part of the evening was spent downloading updates to hoary. It was beautiful but never liked gnome. After following instructions in switching to KDE, I just bit the bullet and installed a fresh Hoary disc for Kubuntu. in short, that test drive nearly became my main drive. All I can say is it, by far, beats out Fedora by a longshot. Everything worked as it should. So last night I took the plunge, after a few hours of grueling backups, I secured over 15 gigs of data on CD and did a complete replacement on my main drive. Then an hour or two was spent restoring everything from backup. All I can say is I'm a very happy man. Just a few loose strings have to be tied before it is a complete desktop, but overall, it was the smoothest migration I've ever done. Next project: Migrate my best friend to Kubuntu. -- D