You can decide whether "the dark side" comes from installing Linux, or the fact that I chose to use Kubuntu.
My poor laptop has been having problems for at least a year now. It tends to not want to boot up unless it reaches a temperature most people wouldn't dream of allowing their prized computer to overheat to. Worse, it crashes five minutes after startup 50% of the time, and it crashes when I put it in sleep mode or hibernate 100% of the time. The problem here is that I can't take my laptop anywhere, which was the whole point of getting a laptop in the first place.Since the laptop was freezing most often at the Windows loading screen, I had the idea to install Linux as a dual boot in a vain attempt to make my laptop usable again, and it actually worked. My laptop is now running a dual boot between Kubuntu 10.10 and Windows Vista. It took all day for me to figure out how to get my wireless card to work, and another hour or two to get rid of an annoying flashing screen bug. Now that those are fixed, it runs beautifully, without a hitch. It boots up 100% of the time, and it doesn't lock up in sleep mode.Unfortunately, I was only able to free 7GB of space for it to start, so I'm currently allowing 5 GB for the root folder, and 2GB for swap, which is obviously not ideal. I'm trying to rearrange my MFT files using a program designed for such a purpose, but Vista isn't cooperating. One person suggested just letting Linux be the dominant OS, and running Vista on a VM, which I am skeptically considering right now. In the mean time, though, I'm just happy everything works.I'll post screenshots of my desktop later.
I got 1TB for half that price. :D
Just in case you didn't know, you can mount NTFS partiitons on linux, you could even put your /home somewhere in your windows partition.
Well, wireless internet stopped working again this morning. I'm not sure why. All I did between now and then was make one more feeble attempt to defrag my drive, which didn't allow my to shrink my volume any more that I already could before. I'm bringing my laptop on campus tomorrow for someone who has some experience with Linux to look into.
And as for the avatar comments, I'm pretty sure I had a Frog avatar before. Also, Frog doesn't count as a furry, Frog is Frog. (Google Chrono Trigger if you know nothing about it.) I might change it again later, it's just the one I've been using on instant messenger.I'll consider an external hard drive. It gives me more to carry around, but I don't really mind that so much. The problem is that it costs money, and I'm currently working for only a few hours a week at a job that pays minimum wage. As it is, I have too many things which I have to spend my money on in the near future.@Josea: Really? If I can get my wireless internet working on here again, I might look into that next.