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I don’t remember when I first heard about Open Source Software / Free Software terms. Probably very long ago. When I began to seek more information about OSS/FS, I was so impressed by their philosophy. But I got the impression that one need to be geeky techie in order to use one of the GNU/linux distros without much pain. At that time, formatting a pc was a great deal for me. Besides, Windows XP was fairly good. Instead of using a distro and risking my computer and nerves, I began to try Open Source softwares. In the days of XP, everything was peaceful enough for not to think about using another OS other than XP, although I was so annoyed by endlessly various security issues, malwares, spywares, adwares… etc. How come an operation system, which we pay quite a big amount of money to obtain can be so insecure?
Then, Vista came out. It was rumored to be the ultimately secure OS of the Windows family before it was released. Rumors turned out to be wrong. Besides, Vista still has compatibility issues. I saw and heard many people prefer XP over Vista. What a failure! My experience with Vista? Well, I hate it; I hated it from the first moment I had to use it. System requirements of Vista is totally absurd, and its performance doesn’t worth it. I miss my XP so much. And I’m stuck with Vista and I’m unhappy with it.
This is how I decided to convert to GNU/Linux based OS on my notebook.
But my first attempt didn’t work out quite well, though. Everything went pretty well during installation. ( I will not mention my weird experience when attempting to make a partititon for Pardus – the distro I decided to try- using Gparted and end up waiting like 23 hours for it to complete the process. I must have done something quite wrong.) I eagerly booted my notebook after installation, GRUB screen showed up and… well nothing happened. Grub kept itself at “Stage 1,5; loading…” with no error messages or anything. I didn’t find anything useful for me in the forums, since it has no error messages. I thought it is because I did something wrong while trying to set up a dual boot notebook. I re-installed the OS and re-installed as a single boot; no chance. On every try, I couldn’t go far than Grub screen. I gave up and installed Vista back.
The only issue before my new attemp to install another distro is the need to back up the files, settings etc. I will try dual boot solution once more. It seems a bit early for me to make linux my primary OS, but I won’t know until I use it properly. My next target is Kubuntu ( I don’t know why exactly but I tend to prefer KDE over Gnome. It’s probably because I’m told KDE is more newbie-friendly) and I also want to try Mandriva. But I believe, I will try Live CD versions for a while.
As you might follow, Tarja of the Nightwish was fired from the band by receiving an open letter from the fellow band members in 2005. It was a very (very) brave move, I thought, when I first read the news, I even shocked. Like most people, I was thinking Tarja, as a lead vocal and precious female member of the band, is an element inseparable from band’s image. For the most of the average listeners (and fans) Tarja equaled Nightwish and vice versa. I wasn’t particularly upset, though. As for me (and maybe it’s just me, but) I felt lack of enough expression of the emotions that lyrics intended to convey (from time to time); her beautiful opera-trained voice conceals them.
Actually I was totally impressed the way Nightwish members explained what was wrong between them and Tarja. They stated that they value the mental satisfaction the most when they are doing their job. ( We don’t see this around much, right? As for me, whenever I say something similar, I’m blamed for being a dreamer.) Apparently, they had began to feel in different ways for some time on this matter. Maybe Tarja had became realistic while other members still running after Neverland. ( I’m on the side of running after Neverland myself, so I sympathize more with remaining members of Nightwish. Be able to keep that enthusiasm toward their job worth appreciating. ) . Also, it seems that Tarja was already set her mind on leaving the group, so she did not really “fired” anyway. It sure must be hard on her, the way she had to leave was not the easiest way. But one cannot gain anything without loosing something else.
After the break-up, both sides went on their separate ways. First thing Nightwish did was to look for a female vocal as they stated their open letter. They didn’t specify any qualities that their former singer had for their new vocal. On the other hand, Tarja focused on her solo career. At this point I quit following the development of the events.
Here is the harvests of the break-up; Nightwish, with their new pretty vocal says “Bye Bye Beautiful” to Tarja (awesome song by the way) and Tarja answers; “I Walk Alone” (another awesome song). I will be talking on their new album, hopefully, on next post. For now, I need to digest both albums more.
