The first Ubuntu variants that I have used were Xubuntu and then Ubuntu. Though the saddest thing to figure out is that in just over 4 months that the first Ubuntu I had ever used is being discontinued… for Desktop Users… Yes only 126 Days left before its dimise into the world of nothingness. I was the first of my friends to go to the 6.06 release of any Ubuntu based Distro wheter it was (X)ubuntu or (K)ubuntu or just the regular ( )Ubuntu. I had an old computer that came from my Dads work. We got it for a price of $75. It had its problems which one was “Could not find RUN32.dll” which is probably why no one wanted it at my dads work. Also at that time my dads office was shutting down so there was tonnes of junk computers that I would have loved to put in the back of my dads old pick up truck (Dark Blue, 2003 Ford Ranger… He Loved it!… But we sold it to get my mom a new car just over a year and a half ago!) There were old printers, PCs, Ladders, CDroms with Microsoft Office (Version: ???) I never could find anything that would be useful except that I climbed a ladder and tore down the sign at the top of the stairs and hid it in my jacket so that when I got home I put it behind his laptop. So when he went to the warehouse that he also worked in he saw it.

But who cares now it has been almost 3 years. I saw my first Windows XP… I had only seen 3 other versions of Windows before: 1.Windows 3.1 2.Windows 95 and 3. Windows 98. So I had only used Apple Macs at school. ever since Kindergarten. (Yes I am still reflecting on my last 13.5 years of school.) Kindergarten had these crappy black and white screened Macs. I just recently found out that we were using something that was created before I was born: System 6 (Now know as Mac OS 6.)

Back to the regular story: I had all these troubles with Windows that I had tried Vector Linux 5.1. It looked the same as Windows 98 so I thought… yes what I am about to write looks very very DUMB… I would use Internet Explorer… I had no idea that no one in Linux used IE. But by the time I figured out that there was no IE I remembered that there was something called Firefox that I had only used less then a handful of times at school because the person who writes the blog Tombuntu.com showed it to me. I looked for it in the menus and yes there it was! I was loving this a lot. I finally got bored of trying to figure everything out so I asked Tom to help me figure out what I wanted so I could have some fun… yes I had games which I figured out how to download, that had taken me a couple of months to use, and I started to use the command line which was very interesting as I had never used it before. Yes I was using XFce on Vector Linux… Tom had gotten me a free Linux… I am very thankful that he did get me started or I would never probably have left Windows in the dust… well for a little while at a time.

So there are only 126 days of Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop left. I stopped using it when the beta of Edgy came out  as I had learned how to upgrade the system which only had taken me 2 days because I was wondering why this thing kept popping up everytime I logged in and left a box on my screen. Hey what was I supposed to think. June 6th 2006 (A.K.A 06/06/06) I started using (X)ubuntu. I was much happier. Grade 11 I went into Networking which I promptly started the Linux Insurgence at the lab. Yes I had split the class in two by doing that. Soon people were starting to follow me 2 others in fact at the start: Kris and David. My two best friends who were in the same class as me. That was only the second computer class I had taken in all of my highschool years… The first was in Grade 10 Second Semester. Hello Mr. Hasselhan! I had done what was expected in the class and started programming which is where my project ROTE started. I had taken out book after book from the library that was downtown in my fairly small town (which the Council calls a “City”. My Grandparents city is way smaller then mine and is always getting better because of all the beach front.) My Grandparents were scared of all the things I was wanting to install on their Windows XP computer… OpenOffice (My Grandparents have just recently asked me if Open Office is a ok application to use as my Grampas’ brother said he needed to install it to see what he had written.) my ROTE which I copied to their Desktop and found when I came back not installed, deleted and funny how it works forgotten about when the topic was brought back up.

This last week has been a giant week. Last week I started with only a week of school to go… I had been in school for the whole school year. I had 2 Finals spread over 3 days: I had retaken Math 11 which I got 60% in the first time I had ever taken it. I can proudly say that for the first day of the 2 part exam I had only 2 wrong which gave me 32/34 the highest mark I have ever gotten out of math on a Final since I had gone into the Grade 6 Final Exam… Sick… and only went to school for that test and not the rest of the day… I was sick in bed and I phoned my Mom at work and said I am going to school to take that test… That final boosted my mark 5% not that I was doing that bad in the first place. I got the full test right. yes 100%. The teachers wanted to get the kids who were failing some marks so at the end of the test there were 3 questions with only 1 mutiple choice answer. I can remember one of those questions:

What is your favorite course in Middle School?

A)Math
B)
C)
D)

So if you were to pick any answer other then A you were just going to fail to get marks that were just gimmes and the teachers wanted you to get those answers right. Not only that they gave you 2 Bonus Marks for putting your first, and last name down.  Unfortunately you can only get the maximum 100%.

That is all I have to say. I may get back to writing this week a lot more or I may take the rest of the week off to get ready for post secondary which starts next Monday February 2nd 2009.

Until next time,
Ryan Orser.