AMD, VMware and Ubuntu rock…
Oh yes, they do. I’ve recently bought an HW191D 19″ widescreen TFT for my aged tower PC, as my laptop can’t run Vista (P3/600) and I need something that can run it (in theory) for work “familiarisation” purposes. This tower was built a year or more ago, and is now quite laughably outdated.
It consists of:
ASRock K7S41GX motherboard
768mb DRR400 RAM
Socket A Duron Applebred CPU, overclocked to 2Ghz
8x GeforceFX5200 video card
20gb HDD
However, it laughed at the Longhorn beta..so I thought it’d do nicely. Having invested in removeable hard disk caddies I now have 1 windows hard disk (running XP SP2), and one Linux drive, running Ubuntu Feisty.
Having seen Vista at work on machines, I’m less than awed by it. Nice, yes. Bulky, yes. expensive, yes. Critical Update? Hmm.
I’ll be honest. I installed Ubuntu Linux back in the days of Hoary (5.10). It was good. I then upgraded to Dapper (6.06LTS) and it was even better, if a bit quirky in some things. Then I got bored and went back to Windows. No idea why. Then I installed Ubuntu Edgy (6.10) on my laptop..bleeding edge, quite stubborn, nice and quick..perfect for it.
Having seen Vista Aero Glass, I wanted to try the “Beryl” 3d Interface in Ubuntu. I ended up upgrading this tower to the new Ubuntu release (Feisty) - networking? Turnkey, even the wireless. Beat even XP. Then I installed Beryl as the window manager, and it rocks. Vista can step aside and grovel as far as I care. Eye candy, I have. Free, too.
Click on the links to see..they’re flash videos.
Mmm..Bendy Windows..
Rollup Windows and fancy window animations
Kicks the arse of “Alt-Tab” doesn’t it..?
Even better, using the VMware player, Ubuntu is running virtual computers at “normal PC” speeds. I have WinXP and Win98 installed in “software only” emulated PCs, and it’s almost impossible to tell that they’re not running on a real PC, merely a “simulated” one.
They all have wireless 54mb internet, LAN access, file sharing..they’re all perfectly useable. Nice. Free fancy Vista beating OS, running Windows as a fallback if needs be inside itself at the same time. Not bad for a machine regarded as “past it” by most of the IT world. I am unashamedly AMDs bitch..I think I always will be..;)
in fact, I just realised…I’ve written this post in my XP virtual PC. oops. In full screen, you forget that it’s not a “real” PC and you’re actually in Linux.