> Most of my friends have this attitude like
> "Michael's not running a real operating system, he's running linux."
> Yeah. I'm going to have to keep it like this for a while. It's like
> having a bird in a cage. He, he... Best regards as always,
Heh.
I enjoy when some Windows "power user" swings by my home office to chat. Most of
them have read and can parrot the Microsoft verbiage about how Linux is somehow not
as "professional" as Windows. They have heard their Microsoft reps say things like,
"Well if you're going to use a FREE OS, then you get what you pay for." They have
read their Windows magazines. So they stop by, armed with their glorious picture of
the Microsoft World.... And get furiously stomped.
I moonlight as a math tutor so at any moment I may have Mathematica, R or LaTeX
screens on my machines. Recently I was chatting with another Linux user about
primes and had Lisp and MuPAD screens up. There was also some primality testing code
splashed up there in a syntax-highlighted Vim window... Looked really cool!
Yeah, sometimes it's up there for effect because I enjoy when they tell me that I do
some "serious" computing :D Most times though it's for work. I do a lot of Perl and
korn, awk/sed, some Java, occasionally some C. For entertainment I'm often playing
with graphics apps, music, video. I do a lot of writing in OpenOffice. My contacts
are stored in a web based directory... Point I'm making is that there's some
serious *work* going on in that Linux box.
As wonderful and heartwarming as the Linux community and GPL and free-as-in-speech
computing is, what it boils down to is that Linux is very *practical*. I can get a
heckuva lot of stuff done that I couldn't in front of a Windows box, at least not
without some significant cash outlay.
Windows also has these annoying little problems that don't exist on Linux. For
example, the Citrix client works well on Linux with two screens. Everything works as
normal. Try it on the Windows machine and the client gets confused and draws massive
windows. I *NEED* multiple virtual desktops to organize my work. In Linux just
about every window manager can do this well. In Windows you can load the Powertools
desktop switcher but it doesn't work correctly with apps such as Excel (maximize,
switch to another desktop, switch back, and you've lost your menus). In Linux I can
create a PDF from a printjob very easily.... In Windows I was told I need to install
Acrobat... Etc. etc..
Geez, whenever I use Windows I feel like I'm riding a tricycle.
-- * The Digital Hermit http://www.digitalhermit.com * Unix and Linux Solutions kwan@digitalhermit.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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