One of my computers has had Linux installed since Dapper Drake came out. Throughout the years, this computer has been through various updates and has been upgraded all the way to Hardy Heron. I have installed several different themes and removed them. It has been the brunt of many tests, software installs, software removals, backups, restores, and one time it even suffered a power failure due to a thunderstorm in the middle of a critical update.

However, the computer (and Linux) continued to limp along. I really only used it to store some data (this computer has an enormous hard drive in it), run FAH, and play music on. So, as long as it would do those three things I didn't really care what problems it did have. For example: A few months earlier due to some playing around with compiz that the resolution was permanently stuck on 1024X768. After screwing around with some gnome settings my top toolbar was completely missing and unable to be retrieved. Running certain programs such as Totem would instantly make the computer reboot. Every now and then the computer would just completely freeze up for about a minute and then everything would resume as normal. It would no longer recognize my DVD burner. Get the idea? This thing had problems.

Well the other day while playing around with different video drivers, I really screwed something up. I ended up causing entire screen to turn completely white, having to reboot, and then I had to jump to a terminal and do some pretty dicey commands from the terminal so that I could even get myself logged back into Ubuntu. Then in an attempt to get things back to "normal", I lost my sound. Now as I said before, the main that I do with this computer is listen to music. This computer is now basically useless to me.

I messed around in the Ubuntu forums for a while asking for help. Everyone who tried to help me would give me a "WTF" when they looked at various information that they needed from my computer in an attempt to solve problem. I knew that it was probably time for a backup/format/reinstall. I was kind of concerned about doing this for a couple of different reasons:

• There was a lot of information on this computer. All of my music, pictures, and various other files totaling about 250 GB in all.
• I've never done this on a Linux box before. All of my previous experience in the backup/format/reinstall had been with Windows machines, which is an incredible pain in the ass.

I spent another day trying to fix the sound to no avail, and finally decided to bite the bullet and go with a fresh install. I started gathering up everything that I would need to backup on my 300 GB external hard drive, and I began to notice something awesome. Everything that I needed was in my home folder. All I would need to do was backup my entire home folder, and that was it. In my past experience with Windows fresh installs you had to hunt all over your computer to make sure that you didn't forget something, and you always did forget something.

Once I had everything backed up, I popped in the Hardy Heron install CD, and watched it go. I love how Ubuntu is so easy to install. It asks you a few simple questions, and in about 20 minutes you are ready to run Ubuntu. After the installation I spent another 15-20 minutes doing some updating. This was more than likely because the Hardy CD that I had was kind of old and didn't have all the latest updates already built into it. Then it was off to install all my programs again. I fired up the package manager marked what I wanted to install and in about 10 minutes I had my system back to the way I wanted it. I'll also add that all of my previous problems were fixes. I had a higher resolution available to me, compiz was working, DVD burner was detected, my sound was back, and there was no crash when I started totem.

After I had everything transferred back to my Linux box from my external hard drive I basically had a brand new computer that was better than what I had been putting up with for months. I have actually been using this computer for more than I was in the past just because I can.

All in all in about an hour I had a fresh install. This does not include the time it took me to back up all of my data to the external hard drive. That took about 3 hours each way. The moral of the story is this: If you play around with Linux like I do, eventually you are probably going to screw it up and have to bite the bullet and start over with a fresh install. It's not as bad as it sounds, and you might come out ahead in the long run.