I removed Gentoo and installed Ubuntu. Quite a change, and so I thought I’d note down my reasons for doing it.

The reason I decided to change was that I don’t have as much time these days; time to configure things. With Gentoo, I’d generally be tempted to stay on the cutting edge; to have the newest packages before they were stable. These would generally take time to set up and get working correctly. Over the summer and autumn, I’ve had a job rather than being at university and so have had far less time to spend doing this work. Ubuntu chooses packages and options for you, and hopefully take time to ensure the options they choose work together.

I think the thing with holes in IE is that they tend to be fairly nasty. I know there are problems with Firefox, but they seem to be generally more difficult to exploit and often not so severe.

The new security issue which makes me mention this today can be summerised as “visit website, get infected with virus/spyware/bad things” (again). Hold on to your hats, one presumes that a fix will be issued soon so browsing the web using Internet Explorer won’t be a dangerous activity — until the next security problem is found.

With some of their CDs, Sony ship a rootkit — that’s right, one of those things that virus writers use to hide their wrong doings. What’s more, they ship a shoddily written rootkit made by some people called First 4 Internet, whoever they may be.

The kit is intended to protect music on the CD it is supplied with. You can’t play the CD in a Windows PC (Mac and Linux being unaffected, thankfully) without installing a rootkit on your computer.

I’ve installed a few wireless network cards recently, and have one major recommendation for anyone else about to do the same thing: Never use the manufacturer’s software to manage the network connection.

Each card I’ve installed has a big sticker on the plastic bag containing the card saying “First install software from CD before inserting the card” in big, scary letters. Don’t give in! Be brave and rip open the bag, casting caution to the wind. Keep that CD away from the computer! You’ll benefit in the end.

One of my friends, a Mr John Wood, has been working for the past year on a piece of software that allows you to automatically backup your data to a small peer-to-peer based network of your trusted friends, or buddies. It’s called BuddyBackup.

BuddyBackup monitors the folders you ask it to and makes sure that your files are backed up (encrypted, of course) to the people you nominate. In return, their files are backed up to your PC. Once you’ve chosen the folders, the software can be left to run in the background and it will make sure any changes to the monitored folders are distributed to your buddies, safe and sound. The changes are sent compressed and only a diff is sent to each buddy, so it doesn’t swallow all your bandwidth.