From Windows to Ubuntu

Pedro Rainho — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:29:33 GMT

A few months ago I was using my home pc, with vista ultimate, and since the beginning I had problems like:

Network card should be connected at 1gbit/s and some times was connected at 100mbit/s why, I really don’t know.
- Solution sometimes I had to restart others I had to disable and enable my network card. Never found the problem and had always the latest drivers.
One other problem that I had ever since the beginning was with my creative 5.1 speakers, the sound was not stable. Sometimes the sound goes up and sometimes went down, why??? I don’t know. A friend had exactly the same problem solution…. buy new speakers… stupid when I told him the problem was not with speaker was with vista :P
One other problem that I had was copy files from usb disk to my pc… speed 15mb/s – 20mb/s note that the speed of usb 2 is 400mbits/s. Even on my notebook with xp I got better speeds.
Copy over lan using 1gbit/s values are between 10mb/s to 15mb/s, impressive hummm
copy over ftp speed between 10mb/s to 20mb/s

And there was lots of other problems.

After I become very irritated about this… I had two choices downgrade to xp or use Ubuntu.

I start using Linux back in 98 with Redhat and I stop using it a few years ago… shame on me.

After doing some search about programs that I use in windows and similar programs in ubuntu, I did the switch and format, and install Ubuntu. And this was probably the BEST choice I had done recently why???

It’s much more faster that vista and Ubuntu has visual effects too.
took me just a few seconds to boot Ubuntu. Next release of ubuntu will be even faster on reboot.
Ubuntu only uses 350mb – 400mb of memory after reboot. Vista after reboot consumes me 1.5gb of memory.
Every single driver was detected no need to search for drivers and install drivers. The only driver I had to install was the ATI driver and took me one mouse click.
The problems I had with network card and speakers are vanished now you understand why I told my friend was stupid buy new speakers lol
Now copy usb to disk 35mb/s – 40mb/s more than double the speed
copy using ftp 75mb/s – 80mb/s with 1gbit/s network card. Three to four times faster that vista.

The most impressive is that I can do every thing with ubuntu, let’s see:

Windows	Ubuntu
Explorer	Nautilus
Windows update, just updates windows and MS programs	Update manager, updates every single application in ubuntu
Notepad	Gedit
Messenger	Pidgin / Empathy
gtalk	Pidgin / Empathy
Remote desktop	Terminal server client
Windows media player	Banshee, much better can every subscribe podcasts etc…, Movie player
Calculator	Calculator like win 7
mspaint	Gimp
MS office	Openoffice
Outlook	Evolution, much better
Filezilla	Filezilla
VirtualBox	VirtualBox
Nero	Brasero
Firefox	Firefox
Tcpview	Net Activity viewer
deamon tools	Gmount-iso
Acrobat reader	Acrobat reader
AVG	Avast
Windows Firewall	Gufw
Tweetdeck	Tweetdeck
.Net	Mono
Silverlight	Monolight
Flash	Flash
Netbeans	Netbeans
Ruby	Ruby

And the list continues…

The only, and only program I miss Is Windows Live Writer the rest every thing you can imagine it’s at one click of distance.

I just had to click on “Add and Remove…” type the program you want to install and that’s it… no need to use browser, search for a app, and then download, and then install…

No in, ubuntu, just open “Add and Remove…” type, for instance Filezilla, check it for install and that’s it…

In Ubuntu I even can mount ntfs usb disk. And I can read and write… what do I need more :)

what you need more…

Now there is only one reason why I still have a Windows VM…. It’s because I’m a .Net developer and need I need Visual Studio and other tools… despite this in my home pc I just have Ubuntu.

How much it costs ubuntu… zero euro. Now everybody knows that vista ultimate is too expensive.

I’m even planning on migrate my work notebook into ubuntu and work with VM.

I definitely invite every one to do a test drive on Ubuntu just download VirtualBox and download Ubuntu and create a VM to test Ubuntu and I think every one will love it.

It’s fast…….

How to unlock a user in Vista

Pedro Rainho — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:01:21 GMT

Today my cat locked my Windows Vista password in my home pc. Don’t ask me how but the cat locked my password.

In this computer I only have two user one that is a user that belongs to the admin group and other user that belongs to users group.

So the question is, if you lock the only administrator user how do you unlock it???

There is various options some are payee and others are free. So today I found a tool named Trinity Rescue Kit (TRK) that solve my problem.

How???

First I had to download the TRK and the I burn it to the CD

Then I boot the cd after restarting the computer

Next I only had to write this in command prompt winpass –u MyUser (be careful because the user is case sensitive)

This magical command first presented me with a option to choose where is my windows installation drive, then presented me with some options and I choose unlock password, or something like this, and then reboot the computer again and the password was unlocked :)

It was all very fast.