I’m ditching Windows Vista for Linux September 23, 2007
Posted by Wille in Personal, Technology.trackback
I’ve had my current laptop since May, and I really love it, the size, the power, almost everything about it is great. Except the OS.
Windows Vista is littered with problems: applications freeze and crash regularly (I believe I had 20 odd application crashes on Thursday, including mundane things like WinZip!), it is slow, processes regularly go haywire and take up 100% CPU and 1GB+ memory, not even copy-paste works properly (ever)! It is simply untenable and frustrating.
So pretty soon, I will try installing Ubuntu Linux instead, I’m just sick of Vista, it is a major step back from the frustrating experience that is Windows XP.
Basically I only have two applications that I cannot replace on Linux: iTunes (I have about 4gb of music bought on iTunes), and eFax, for scanning and faxing documents. Everything else can be replaced.
Since I am also using my laptop for the project for my current client, and their platform has some build-time dependencies on Windows (bad, I know), I will also have to hold off for a while to see if the project will use the specific parts that have Windows dependencies.
But on the whole, I think my remaining small dependencies on Windows can be met by reinstalling XP on my old laptop (if I can only find the CD..), for the remaining 98% of my work, I’m pretty sure I will be Linux based from the end of October on..
There’s always VMWare for running windows. For me it’s more of a confort factor than actually useful though, it’s there if I need it, but I never really do.
The other thing to keep in mind is that some things will be better, some will be worse, and some just different, and it takes time to get used to the differences.
I used linux exclusively in my startup business, and it worked really well. After going back to windows for work reasons after that I made a similar transition to the Mac, it really is easier than you think to move off windows.
The irony of my situation is that my biggest dependency on Windows is… iTunes, an apple application..
Being honest, avoiding piracy and paying for my music and software has really rewarded me it seems..