My neighbour (and fellow student) has an old Toshiba, nothing spectacular (cant quite remember the spec. ) that has been putting up a fight for the past year now. First the speakers fell silent, then the “special” keys on the keyboard kicked the bucket and finally the network card stopped working. By now, booting windows had evolved into an elaborate game of Russian roulette, freezing ever so often, complaining of files corrupted or MIA that we didn't even know existed. So, she asked if I could help her.
I have to confess that I first tried to reinstall windows... Thing is, she is no computer geek (neither am I, though I wish I where.) so it didn't exactly help. The network card still didn't work, the speakers didn't work, but the “special” keys worked (just not as they where designed to work...) Thinking that most of it would be an easy fix (just find the drivers) I went online to do some googling... firstly, any software or even mention of the machine where not to be found on Toshiba's website, secondly the only post found regarding drivers to the sound card was on a polish site... Feeling dumber by the minute I remembered this Ubuntu CD a friend of mine gave me a coupple of months back. After a hurried discussion, we put in the live CD and booted.
After messing around for about a day we agreed to “make the plunge” and install it. I showed her a virtual machine I had going with Debian (with KDE,) and she liked it even more. So, we decided to go for Kubuntu, as it's more “convert friendly” than any other distro that I had seen.
Now, when we reinstalled windows, it took me hours to get the machine up and running with all the software that she needed. Kubuntu, took me one hour and the machine was past anything windows had ever served. The usb mouse acted like it aught to, the speakers suddenly came alive and played something OTHER than the standard windows sound when we booted and the network card didn't complain or disconnect... and she even agreed to finally let go of IE (well... ok, it is kind of hard to use IE on Linux... but, yea...) and use Firefox.
We are now 2 weeks into the “experiment” and by the looks of things she is staying, and I'm "migrating/converting" some time next month (God it will be great to get away from all those popups from Norton!) Only thing that is annoying so far is getting her digital camera to work, as we cant quite understand how to bring up the memory chip when we plug it in... but, live and learn.
Just thought I should share the story. Great OS and good job!
I have to confess that I first tried to reinstall windows... Thing is, she is no computer geek (neither am I, though I wish I where.) so it didn't exactly help. The network card still didn't work, the speakers didn't work, but the “special” keys worked (just not as they where designed to work...) Thinking that most of it would be an easy fix (just find the drivers) I went online to do some googling... firstly, any software or even mention of the machine where not to be found on Toshiba's website, secondly the only post found regarding drivers to the sound card was on a polish site... Feeling dumber by the minute I remembered this Ubuntu CD a friend of mine gave me a coupple of months back. After a hurried discussion, we put in the live CD and booted.
After messing around for about a day we agreed to “make the plunge” and install it. I showed her a virtual machine I had going with Debian (with KDE,) and she liked it even more. So, we decided to go for Kubuntu, as it's more “convert friendly” than any other distro that I had seen.
Now, when we reinstalled windows, it took me hours to get the machine up and running with all the software that she needed. Kubuntu, took me one hour and the machine was past anything windows had ever served. The usb mouse acted like it aught to, the speakers suddenly came alive and played something OTHER than the standard windows sound when we booted and the network card didn't complain or disconnect... and she even agreed to finally let go of IE (well... ok, it is kind of hard to use IE on Linux... but, yea...) and use Firefox.
We are now 2 weeks into the “experiment” and by the looks of things she is staying, and I'm "migrating/converting" some time next month (God it will be great to get away from all those popups from Norton!) Only thing that is annoying so far is getting her digital camera to work, as we cant quite understand how to bring up the memory chip when we plug it in... but, live and learn.
Just thought I should share the story. Great OS and good job!