Installing Ubuntu
Fifteen years past since I first used Linux. At that time it was Windows 3.1 vs Linux. Most of the programs I used was running on Windows, and I used Linux mainly for the Internet.
Later when Windows 95 came out, I switched all my programs to Windows and I said goodbye to Linux and has been running full windows ever since. I've experienced Windows 95, 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and finally Windows XP. The earlier windows were pested with stability issues (e.g. Win 95 & 98), NT to Win 2000 had been pretty good. Then came Windows XP. It was a pretty stable system... but then it haunted me an endless cycle of security patching. I never worried too much for security, because for the last 20 years, with numerous download and a pretty liberal security policy, I had been infected with 0 virus--that is until last week.
Don't really know where the virus came from (probably from some unpatched security hole). But I'm pretty sure it got the problem: first I got unexplained high CPU usage. Then my anti-virus program picked up some Win32.Malum virus in the xmllib.dll under c:\windows. There isn't any visible damage done by the virus. Everything still works fine. But I guess it's time for some drastic mesasure.
And after some drastic measure, the original small problem became a big problem. And it's mainly because I have two identical hard drives and it was 3:00am, and I couldn't focus very well and you know the rest of the story: I accidentially erased all my data from the wrong harddrive... No big deal. The data wasn't deadly critical. But I did spend considerable amount of time collecting those data. And since it wasn't deadly critical, I didn't bother to back it up. So all was gone, forever. Shit.
On the brighter side, I now have more choices.
I still can restore my old Windows XP using Acronis. But since the security has been breached, I wouldn't want to use it too often. Now I can either install Windows Vista, or I can install Linux Ubuntu. I've already installed Vista on my other computer, so I don't really feel like ditching another $200 on the operating system for this computer that I don't use that often. So a dual boot Windows XP and Linux Ubuntu seems to be a good choice.
So 15 years later, I've returned to Linux. Ubuntu, here I come.