Hosed! :)

My time spent with Linux seems to go in cycles... I grab either a new version of something I'm familiar with or try a new distro, figure out how to get things running smoothly, then worry about the niceties (browser plug-ins, DVD playback, CD burning, etc...), then focus on smooth 3D gaming. After that goal is achieved, I tend to start over or revert to some form of Windows for a while. I gave-up on Ubuntu 6.06 last night, after it mangled a basic data burn to a CD-RW. It worked fine sometimes, and came-out unreadable others... Not good enough to keep me interested any longer (plus Flash for Linux is still stuck at version 7), but good enough to prompt me to hose-down the system and install Build 5728 ("RC1 Update") of Windows Vista.

I haven't noticed any huge differences since BETA 2, but then I haven't spent much quality time with either release. I did discover a few new things by installing Vista on my P4 2.4B system though: Vista doesn't (yet?) support SoundBlaster Live!s or SiS products particularly well. The SB Live! is simply unrecognized and unsupported, and the onboard AC'97 audio hardware, while recognized and supported, produces no sound and seems to make the system crawl; SiS' website offers no Vista software. So, no audio! Wheee! Also, the 256MB AGP 4x (8x bottlenecked by mobo) GeForce 6200 gets a performance rating of only 2.2 for "Desktop performance for Windows Aero", which is strange, since it gets a score of 3.0 for "3D business and gaming graphics performance". It's sad when your video card can run something like UT2004 without effort, but can't handle your OS's GUI ;) Okay, no, that's not true; the card can handle Vista's "Aero" GUI just fine, but the new performance rating system rates your system by its lowest-scoring component... Kinda sucks when your entire system's rating is brought down so low just because there're faster cards out there; or at least that seems to be the case when you consider the adequate performance of my current setup.