In the beginning

I don't really know when it all started but I remember installing, or trying to install, several flavors of Linux. I had the most success with a version of Mandrake I obtained at a computer show. You remember the shows I'm talking about. Grand affairs that covered the floor of a good size exhibition hall. They grew smaller and smaller until I don't think I've been to one in years. I think places like Newegg and Zipzoomfly killed them off.

Back then I was running a 200 Mhz machine and Windows 3.1 then 95. I then happened upon RedHat 6. It was a grand thing. Looked good, ran well, and had a large user community. I stuck with them until they forked and began charging real money for their regular distro and came out with Fedora. I'm not a hard core Linux user and always dual booted or ran Linux in a virtual machine.

I've done quite a bit of development on the Windows platform so I would consider myself a power user at the least. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Windows very much but I fear they are on the wrong path. I have put my foot down, I'll stop at XP. I've run Vista and it is an absolute hog. It might be ok for a person just starting out as I was quite a few years ago but now I've become accustomed to fast and light systems. I've become somewhat at home with the command line and don't blink an eye at partitioning and configuration. I'll still dual boot XP but I am going to prepare for a Microsoft free future.

Around the house I have three Macintosh laptops and one Mac cube. I like Mac well enough and their interface is superb in almost all respects but the lock in thing really bugs me. Underneath is a custom brand of BSD UNIX but things are in all the "wrong" places and it confuses me greatly. You see, I've learned a bit of Linux over the years and this old mind can take but so much change.

Wubi

Or rather Ubuntu Hardy Heron with a unique installer. No partitioning, with it's attendant risks, just run the installer and it installs Linux in a file in the windows file system. I did just that a couple of weeks ago and I will share the customizations and tribulations with you. This is really just a log so I can remember next time :-)

Fonts

Maybe it's a pet peeve with me but both Windows and Os X have spoiled me. I can't stand the fonts in most Linux distros. Here's what I did.

Go to your Windows folder C:\ Windows\fonts and drag the whole folder to a thumb (USB) drive.

Boot back into Ubuntu and create a hidden folder (directory) in you home folder named .fonts, the period is necessary. Do this by clicking Places > Home Folder. Now in your file browser click View then check the Show Hidden Files box on the drop down menu. Then if you click the File menu it allows you to "Create Folder".

Open the .fonts directory you created and with the File Browser.

Open another File Browser and open the fonts folder on the thumb drive.

Drag the following fonts into the .fonts folder.

arial.ttf, arialbd.ttf, arial.bi.ttf, araili.ttf, couri.ttf, courbd.ttf, courbi.ttf, Georgia.ttf, Georgiab.ttf, Georgiab.ttf, Georgiai.ttf, Georgiaz.ttf, impact.ttf, times.ttf, timesbd.ttf, timesi.ttf, trebuc.ttf, trebucbd.ttf, trebucbi.ttf, trebucit.ttf, Verdana.TTF, Verdanab.TTF, Verdanai.TTF, Verdanaz.TTF, and webdings.ttf

These are the core fonts from Microsoft which you can download if you or a friend don't have a copy of Windows running. I found it eaiser to copy them from my copy.

Next go to System > Preferences > Fonts and point the default fonts to thost you just sreated in the .fonts folder. Don't worry they will be there. Log off then back on and volia!

There are other ways to do this, but that is how I did it this time. This only works for your login name because these fonts are in your .fonts folder. This is safer than fooling around in the system files. It also has the added feature that the fonts are backed up with your profile.

To be continued...