Kubuntu

Like many other people I have experienced problems with Windows Vista. I got Vista with my new Dell XPS M1330 last December and it has worked until it just started crashing randomly. After spending about 5 hours chatting with someone from Microsoft, another 3 hours on the phone with Dell and finally getting a guy from Geek Squad out to my house it kept happening. I started to look for alternatives on which I could run Windows programs without the downsides of Vista. I had been using Ubuntu Server for about a year as a file server, and so I looked into that and realized that I liked KDE better then Gnome for the desktop environment. I first partitioned 250GB of hard drive space for Kubuntu (out of 500) but then I realized that it was not worth keeping Vista on my computer. So I gave the full 500GB (minus partitioning) to Kubuntu. I could run any Windows program via WINE, and it had a built in office suite. The first few things I installed were Adobe CS3, 3DS Max and Tremulous. Adobe CS3 is a graphic/flash/web design package, 3DS Max is 3d modelling software and Tremulous is a free, open source fps game. Download here. If you want free versions of the software, GIMP is a good Photoshop equivalent, along with illustrator, Flash there is no equivalent to though. A good equivilent for 3ds Max is Blender 3d. Download here. For a browser I found Firefox. Firefox is open source and free and fully compatible with about 99% of websites.  Click here for your Vista refund. The least helpful source I found was Microsoft Help and Support, all they had me do was edit the registry and that didn’t help, I think it made it worse…