Computers: What Happens After You Catch Your Own Tail?

I’ve been chasing my own tail for some time over computer issues. Sure, there’s a part of me that likes trying new things. I’m still planning to put NetBSD on my old laptop, and spend some time learning to use it. But for the main system I use every day, the desktop system which stands ready and waiting for me to just move the mouse and go to work, I really don’t enjoy changes.

I also don’t enjoy watching my wife struggle with her computer. When her system kept giving her trouble, I traded her my Dell tower. I had built that system she was using, and knew what it could do. The Dell wasn’t going to work with Linux, and any BSD was dubious. Hers was certainly not going to work with Win7 as it was. So she got the Dell with Vista, and likes it so far. I got the older box, which includes an onboard video chipset from nVidia. It was not a good one. Now Linux and BSD both don’t like it, and even with the fully accelerated driver from nVidia, it didn’t work properly. Under Win7 it kept entering race condition. You couldn’t detect any processes doing anything unusual, but it took forever for anything to repaint on the screen. But I figured I could still get it to work okay with my digital LCD.

No dice. I tried FreeBSD — no GUI at all. Tried CentOS (GUI refused to center onto the screen, stretched off screen on right side), then Ubuntu (refused to recognize the SATA DVD-RW from which it was running), then openSUSE 11.3 pre-release (unable to bring the display on center, but displaced far off to the left). Finally, I decided I needed a real video card, and was not going to use anything from nVidia. I found some Radeons locally at retail, and grabbed the least expensive one. It was a Diamond Radeon HD4350.

X.org can’t use it. I mean, I could get a pitiful 2D display, but no support for any LCD of any kind, except at 720×576. I never heard of that before, but it was worthless, less than half the numbers native to my monitor. So I gave up, and put Win7 back on it. Works perfectly well.

I don’t like Windows of any flavor. I like Linux and BSD, but I don’t have any choice with this hardware. And I don’t have any more money to spend on computers and parts. So I’m now a Windows user.

*sigh*