Awhile back, I bought a $449 computer with Microsoft Windows XP on it for Lorena to be able to talk via Skype with her mother in Mexico. I immediately installed Ubuntu Linux. I think I we were at Dapper Drake at the time and I have to admit that I struggled a little to get all the hardware going. Since then, I have did upgrades through Edgy Eft and Feisty Fawn. It got easier each time. I will be installing Gutsy Gibbon sometime toward the end of October. I cannot imagine the torture I would have to endure if I had to do that with a Windows computer, but I am actually lookng forward to the new installs because they get easier every time I do them. I know part of it is because of my movement up the learning curve, but part of it is that Linux, in general and Ubuntu in particular, just keeps getting better and better.
At any rate, some way cool things have been happening over the last little while that rarely happened to me in the past. The first was that I found out the new V.P. of Engineering at my new job here in the Research Triangle Park area in North Carolina is running several Ubuntu boxes at home as file and internet servers. The really big thing we have in common is that both of us have money burning a hole in our pocket waiting for the first under $200 Linux laptop to come out. $201 is not good enough, so both of us have great hope for the new $199 Asus Xandros laptops to arrive. We will buy them the first day they are available. I will probably play with it for awhile, then start working on getting Ubuntu installed on it. When it is possible to get a laptop computer with a camera and microphone for cruising the web, watchubg movies, Skype, writing papers, instant messaging, and all that sort of thing for less than the cost of a Palm TX or most smart cellphones, it surely feels like a sea change is taking place. The funny deal is that the Asus computer is really small. I actually think that the small screen helps them. This computer does not feel like your grandfather’s PDA.
The other way cool thing happened this morning. I am writing this as I sit in my easy chair with attached coffee table at the Holly Springs, North Carolina Public Library. I am drinking my cup of gourmet coffee in the library as I write. I know I have talked about this often, but it does not really get any less cool with time. I forgot to turn down the volume on my laptop so a guy with two little kids nearby heard the Ubuntu boot tune when I fired up the computer. Before he walked out, he came by and asked me if this was one of the new Dell Ubuntu laptops. I told him my story (see above). He told me he had been running Ubuntu for quite awhile now and was looking forward to Gutsy Gibbon, too. I really feel some kind of momentum is being established here.