From Windows to Linux?

I don't want to switch to Vista, so I decided to explore Linux as an option. I am not a computer novice, having built my own first computer (Altair 8080) back in the seventies, and doing a variety of hardware and software work since then. However I have very little Unix/Xenix experience, and none with Linux.

Failure one: Downloaded the live CD for Ubuntu. Booted it in my (2005) computer. Half way through the boot it would stall forever. However it would boot just fine in my old (1998) computer. Hmmm. Ordered the version for AMD 64 bit, which my newer computer has. Boot failed with a kernel panic. Problem one - there are many flavors of Linux, and they don't all work the same.

Downloaded Mandriva One, and booted from CD. Seems to work fine. Pretty cool. Installed it on second disk drive. Installation modified boot on original disk drive giving choice of operating system. Linux is the default, and there is no apparent way to change this.

Ran Mandriva for four days, trying the various things I need to do. Email worked, and imported my saved emails and my address book. Firefox imported my bookmarks. The built-in audio played my mp3s.

Installed WINE for some of the other things, to see if I could get them to work. Got Agent! newsreader running fine. MP3TrimPro worked. MP3Gain worked, Some others did, and some didn't. Discovered that some "Linux" software will work with one flavor of Linux, but perhaps not with a different one. Problem two - finding the version of Linux that runs the combination of software you need, and then hoping you don't later need something different that you can't find for your flavor.

All through this process I was frustrated by the total lack of documentation and instructions. Every Linux program that I clicked the help button on asked to create an index. It then declared the file couldn't be found. Without my previous computer experience I doubt I would have gotten past the first two hours of evaluation. I had to rely on educated guesses for almost everything I wanted to try.

Failure two: Towards the end of day four I told the system to restart. The boot process stalled. Pressing the ESC key revealed that I was in a shell (like a "command" window in Windows) as the default (limited rights) user. No explanation. No exit apparent. I shut the system down and rebooted. It stalled part way through. I had it in verbose mode (show steps on screen), and saw that it "could not mount /dev/root." Not good. Shut down, started again choosing safe mode. It came up in a shell as root user. No explanation, no idea what to do next.

During the four days of experimentation, I also looked into backup options. In WinXP I use Norton Ghost, and copy the complete drive image to another drive. Anything happens, Ghost it back down and EVERYTHING is as it was. I could find no equivalent for Linux. There are programs which back up portions, but no easy total recovery for things that sometimes happen, like being unable to boot anymore.

Conclusion: I am now reformatting my second drive to eliminate Mandriva. How I'm going to get rid of the modification to my base drive which tries to boot Mandriva first, I don't know. In the meantime, I'll have to stand by as it boots until I can select XP from the boot choices.

Maybe I'll try Linux again in another few years.