My FULL Move to Ubuntu

So for years I have been a Windows for work user, not by choice but because 80% of all the software I used was for Windows :(

So a few years ago I started moving all other computer's at the house and work to Ubuntu.  Now all computer's are Ubu, but my work PC that is.  And for 2 years things have been awesome, all the PC's at work and house have been trouble free, no worries everything just works!  No more problem's with freezes and other such things.

Even my personal laptop has been Ubuntu for a few years, I loved it.  I just couldn't pull myself to move, too much software I would miss.

So a year ago I started making a decision to start moving off.  I started with little things, moved from office to LibreOffice.  I also changed a couple other things.  3 months ago I made a move from UltraEdit to Geany!  That was what did it since I don't do much Flash and design work anymore as I use to, that was the big problem back then.  I moved software over like from my movie collector program to Griffith, and stored the DB on my server in MySQL, much better ;)

So last week I got back from a long trip, when I got back someone gave me a new laptop to replace my old one.  The new laptop was 6 months old.  So the first thing I did was move my Ubu from the old system over to the new, it took me and hour and a half, that even includes the apt-get install download of 300MB!

All I had to do was an export to a text file of all installed apps using aptitude.  Then insert my 8GB flash drive in the old laptop, copy the home directory of my user and that exported file.  Then install Ubu on the second new laptop (crashing and removing Win 7 ;)).  Once installed I started up, ran apt-get install using a cat and xargs of the old file with the list of my installed apps.  It downloaded and installed all apps.  Once done I drop back into console (Ctrl-Alt-F1), service gdm stop, and copy the home files from the flash drive to my new home directory.  Once done shutdown -r now from console.  BAM!!  It boots up into my "old" looking Gnome desktop, as if I had never left my old laptop!

Ubu is great!  It took me one hour and 30 min. including all downloads!

So that was at the beginning of the week.  I took the rest of the week off of work and still enjoyed my vacation ;).

So I went back to work on Thu. to finish out the week, the first thing I noticed was my Windows XP system was deadly slow! :(  It had been 8 months since my last crash, wow that's bad. My laptop has gone 2 years since I installed Ubu! ha ha

So after a full day of working in XP I was angry and tired.  So I spent yesterday crashing, the whole day!  I had to make a list of the software I wanted installed, make a backup of all my setting's of certain program's.  That includes looking through many folder's, local settings-App settings, App settings etc etc.

This took a long time.  Once done backing up, I crashed window's and re-installed.  Then the long process of installing all software and copying all the setting's back in.  This took me until 5PM!!  My Lord come on!

Once done I copied my Desktop back and copied the backup I made of Stardocks Fences.  Wouldn't you believe it that their software doesn't backup icon location, just the fence names and location's!  So now I have to manually figure out where I had 30 icons at on my desktop!  Even software for window's is as stupid as window's itself! ha ha

So sitting last night I figured, you know this sucks!  I decided never to do it again.  This morning I migrated 100% to Ubu on my Desktop work system!

It took me an hour :)  Same process as before with the laptop.

Now after working all day on Ubu on my Work PC I think I am not going back.  I am going to try hard not to touch that old XP system and boot only into Ubu, this is an experiment that I hope goes well because I hate, hate, hate windows!

Whew, I feel relieved.