My Computer System...Well...one of them!

My desktop

The computer that I'm currently using, the one that I spend a great majority of my time on, is a Dell Latitude D610. The operating system that's running on this computer is Ubuntu, which is a version of Linux. More precisely, the version of Ubuntu that I'm running is Backtrack 5R2. Backtrack is a penetration testing distribution. If you're not familiar with Backtrack you can read more about what it is and does here at this link. http://www.backtrack-linux.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Of the things that my computer/OS does well, that is of primary and utmost importance to me, is supply me with an abundance of security tools to be at my disposal with the click of a button or the issuance of a command. This allows me to spend my time more productively while alleviating me from the tedious task of having to STFW ( Search The Freaking Web ) all day for a specific tool to download to cover a particular area of study in order to complete the task at hand. However....

There are challenges that come with having such a convenience.  One of my greatest challenges to date has been trying to find ways to compensate not having the Microsoft Office Suite nor the ability to access the schools V.D.I.- two things that are somewhat necessities to complete a lot of the course work that we're assigned. Sure there are open-source alternatives to the MS Office Suite like Open Office, which would be a sufficient alternative in a work environment but in a class environment where the instructor explicitly states to use MS, or an assignment that requires one to do an assignment over MS Word or MS Excel, it in turn renders Open Office insufficient. As stated previously, in such cases where one normally has the option to access the schools V.D.I., this also becomes a problem because Backtrack doesn't support the exact virtual client needed for the job. In short, in the functionality and support are very limited in cases like the above scenario. This also becomes the case when I try using this computer for recreational task. Due to the nature of the operating system's purpose, recreation just wasn't something the designers had in mind when they built it. 

One area of my computer that needs to be upgraded is my CD ROM drive. At this point it is entirely impossible for me to play CD/DVD's of any type in my computer. I'm not quite sure what's going on technically with the drive. What I am sure about is that the drive worked perfectly fine before I wiped my Windows XP installation completely and did the full install of Backtrack. After the Backtrack installation, practically everything else worked but the CD ROM drive. Actually, if anyone has suggestions or the technical know how to fix this problem I'd be honored to put this advice into execution mode. :)