On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:17:33 -0500, Gordon Hudson wrote:

"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...
In finding the cure for Vista, I've installed Ubuntu Linux on my
laptop.

Its about the only current operating system that will work properly on
a
laptop.
Vista requires too much memory to work properly on a laptop. We use
Linux on all our business laptops now.

I must agree. My new laptop is no slouch, but at times I felt that I was
operating with a 286 machine under Vista. My average time from boot to
actually doing something was as much as 30 minutes, as all the programs
accessed the web, looking for updates, and many of them crashed. At least

half the time, I have to hard kill the machine to turn it off. This is
the fifth laptop I've tried with Vista. None have actually worked.

During Field day this year, we had tried to use N3FJP's software for
networked logging with Vista. It failed most spectacularly (Vista failed,

the logging software itself works wonderfully on XP machines. Apparently
Vista occasionally "loses" an IP address, and the cure is to reboot. Not
a very good situation in the middle of a multi station logging effort.

My laptop has performed flawlessly since the OS change.

The Ubuntu repositories have a lot of apps, There are Ham specific ones,
such as loggers, digital mode software (linux even has AMTOR/PACTOR
transmitting software) there are antenna modeling programs, even a Smith
chart program. Lots of developer apps too.

There are quite a few electronic apps, such as transmission line
calculators, and a whole lot of other stuff that I am just finding out
about. More Hams need to check it out - I think the whole Operating
system is in line with "Ham Spirit".


I would recommend trying the K desktop (distributed as "Kubuntu")
because the K programs can handle DVD's and other things more easily.
You can run K and Gnome and switch between them.

I'll probably give that a try


--
-73 de Mike N3LI -