Now, one of my providers had some problems lately and I guess that’s just because of the rough winter which does not seem to end. I am using this provider as the main link on the desktop computer, directly plugged in, the other one being used for the wireless network (iPhone, notebook, fridge etc). Since the connection is getting bad from time to time, I need to switch from one network adapter to another that has just lan connectivity but it is connected to the wireless router. This means I just need to add the router IP address as the gateway and DNS on the secondary adapter. Doing this with clicks on the adapter settings takes time and when you have to train other people that use the same computer to do this it gets rough.

So I made this two batch scripts that add or remove the DNS/gateway IPs from the secondary adapter, so whenever I need to switch from one adapter to another I click on the corresponding bat files.

To get Internet connectivity on the secondary adapter:

netsh interface ip set address name=”your_network_adapter_name” source=static addr=10.0.0.xxx mask=255.255.255.yyy gateway=10.0.0.zzz
netsh int ipv4 set dnsservers “your_network_adapter_name” static 10.0.0.zzz primary

(where 10.0.0.zzz is the wireless router IP address)

To remove Internet connectivity on the secondary adapter:

netsh interface ip set address name=”your_network_adapter_name” source=static addr=10.0.0.xxx mask=255.255.255.yyy
netsh int ipv4 delete dnsservers “your_network_adapter_name” 10.0.0.zzz

These two scripts must be run with elevated privileges in Windows 7 (right click on the script -> Run as Administrator). As this might not be the most elegant way to switch the Internet connection and might need improvement to completely disable the first adapter, it works for me as it is.

I have found that accessing NTFS partitions was quite easy, even in write mode.

I have found that accessing ext2 partitions from my XP was easy too. For this I was using Ext2 IFS for Windows, a driver that maps the linux partitions into XP drives. I was disappointed to see that I could tamper Ubuntu from XP, read and write configuration files etc. Not too safe.

The interface on Ubuntu was quite nice but I messed up something related to transparency and windows effects so the interface was running quite in slow-motion. Too many settings related to these kind of enhancements so I wasn’t able to setup the default settings.

The system update procedure was very easy, even tough there were a lot of packages to update each time.

I tried to install my TV card to watch some DVB TV on my Ubuntu, but this was quite impossible. The lack of drivers for this is something one should think before trying to use another system.

So here is how I have uninstalled Ubuntu: delete all two partitions and reformat them with an XP compatible file system (FAT32 or NTFS). To restore the masterboot record, most of web articles were pointing me to use Windows Recovery Console available only from XP install CD and an utility tool called fixmbr. But since I could not find my XP cd I had to look for another tool. The best one I found was MBRWizard who does more than just fixing the MBR but that was enough for me.

The command line for this was “MBRWiz.exe /Repair=1″. Simple, huh?

So remember: if you’re not ready to fully go using just one OS, you will not be able to use two at the same time.

So I have installed it in a virtual machine first using VMWare. Smooth installation, it didn’t seem to take too much memory on my computer. I had only one problem: network connection, since I wanted to share my XP connection and not connecting directly to the router. Here is how it worked for me: start the “Set up a home or small office network”, follow the wizard and share the internet connection. Then go to Ubuntu to network settings and add the gateway the Win XP local IP address and DNS the DNS addresses already set up on Windows (from provider). Then configure the firewall on the Windows computer to accept remote connections from the virtual machine. That’s it. First time in my life when I played with the Win XP internet connection sharing.

Anyway, having internet connectivity on Ubuntu was a success, so I was able to download the appropriate codecs for playing mp3 and divx files. Office tools were already there (Open Office).

Finally, I have decided to go forward and install Ubuntu directly on my system and not in the virtual machine. So I partitioned my hard-drive, did it by the book with a separate 2GB swap partition. My friends recommended Kubuntu, so I went for this. The installation was pretty straight forward, I love especially the Live CD where you can “try before install” the basic OS features. I was amazed that after installation I even had my internet connection ready, without doing anything. That’s neat.

But, being used with XP, I was expecting the same font smoothness and at least the same speed. Activating features like transparency made the system work quite in re-run. Opening applications took more than on my XP. And I’m not talking about a slow system, it’s a P4 3GHz with 1GB RAM.

Using the software repositories (both Universe and Multiverse) is like having an indexed download portal at your fingertips. This is nice and Windows does not have that.

Trying to figure out how to use the second monitor made me switch back to Windows. From what I understood searching the web/forums, this is still a problem in Linux in general. Also, I wasn’t able to start my digital TV Tuner and I’m not willing to continue without having the same comfort as in XP.

My conclusion: it’s worth trying a Linux OS, you can clearly see the evolution in the last years. But for productivity reasons, if you’re used with another system you should stick there, otherwise you might end us searching for buttons or icons that you don’t have. It is for sure a step toward Microsoft-Independence that could take a time to make it. And a lot of patience. I wonder what the future will bring, now that Vista is out and MS went into the graphical and productivity zone.