The Return of XP

I have been a reluctant user of Microsoft products for years and was running Windows XP on my laptop until a few weeks ago, when I had a system crash that required a reinstall of my operating system. Unfortunately, when I pulled the XP install disc out of its case it was scratched beyond use, so I opted instead for Ubuntu Linux 8.04. Sadly, in spite of all the geek love that Linux receives on the Internet, I have never been able to make it work for me. Over the past several years I have installed several different flavours of Linux on various systems and always found myself returning to Windows due to insoluble problems. Linux has made huge strides over the years, but this time was no more successful than the others.

On my laptop, Linux would not go into Suspend Mode or shut down properly and there are a variety of other, lesser but still annoying issues. A month of Internet research and tweaking has not resolved the problems, so a friend is bringing me a new XP disc from the US this week and I will regretfully return to Windows, at least until Linux gets to the point that it is usable without the assistance of a full-blooded geek to fix all the glitches.