OSRI Weekend

For those unfamiliar with the term, OSRI is a acronym we use in my line of work. I means Operating System Re-Install. I know, I know. Geek language is just so darn rife with acronyms it sounds like an alphabet soup.

Well, this weekend I embark on a regular round of OSRI. I tend to do it every few months just to start anew. I guess this has been one of my longest runs. I haven't done an OSRI since August. I used to do it every three months or so. I've stayed too long probably because for the first time in many years I actually enjoyed Windows. Windows 7 was actually pleasant. I usually have my computer dual-booted and have been equally happy with Ubuntu 9.04. Even when 9.10 came around, I didn't feel I needed to upgrade. I guess it comes with age. When you get older, you tend to stick to what you like. No more listless multi-boot experiments.

This isn't a joke. Seriously. Just a few years back, I actually maintained 5 operating systems at any given time on my machine. I nominally had Windows 2000, Windows XP, Ubuntu, Mandrake (now called Mandriva) and Xandros. I dabbled on even more Live distributions, burned whatever caught my eye in Distrowatch.com. I had to give it up after going through the pain of having to maintain updates, security and otherwise, on 5 different operating systems. Add to that the fact that at the time, I only had dial-up. Heck, those were the days.

So this weekend I dive into another round of OSRI to rid my system of all the crud that got accumulated in the last 6 months. It's going to be a geeky weekend for me. I'm planning to install Windows 7 and Linux Mint 8. I've been meaning to install the latter from when it launched. Now I'm really going for it. My only problem now is the space on my hard drive. After almost a year, the Seagate 500 GB drive  I bought now has only 84.6 GB left of free space. I think I need to rethink my storage strategy. But for now, just installing will have to do.