If you haven't noticed a theme lately, I'm on a quest to make my life less complicated, while at the same time, being more interesting and more fruitful. I've started to weed out all of the little things in life that I hold on to so tightly that, in the end, don't really buy me that much. I've started to care more about me and less about… well… you.
I think… perhaps… maybe… the next thing to go will be Linux on the desktop.
I hate to say it. It almost feels like I'm denouncing my faith in front of the entire congregation, and, in a way, I guess I am. As the open source world bleeds further and further across the platform boundaries, more and more of the tools that I've always claimed I needed and loved are available under Windows now.
Other than the obvious pride issues, the only reason I haven't made the switch yet is because, in many situations, I use my Desktop as a quick and dirty server. While this is possible under Windows, I've tried it, and I don't particularly care for it. It's difficult to manage, and even more difficult to troubleshoot.
But, for all non-programming tasks, Windows has everything I need. I can run Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim on Windows. I can even run XChat. I can get a full suite of Unix command line tools. I can write Ruby scripts, Perl scripts, Bash scripts, and PHP scripts and run them, for the most part, with ease. If I don't want to pay for Microsoft Word, I can use the OpenOffice.Org Office Suite, which, from what I can tell so far, works great under Windows.
I've mentioned lots of things that I can do in Windows that I can also do in Linux, but that's no reason to switch. What is it that Windows does that Linux doesn't?
I have Jess run the download manager for the website that I get MP3s off of. The software doesn't run under Linux and it's a pain to deal with. I have them saved automatically into a Samba share on my Linux box, so it's as though I'm running it anyway. Only now, if her computer is off, or if she isn't running it, I can do it myself.
Samba just doesn't work right. Attempting to fine tune all of the permissions and passwords aspects has left me in a situation where I simply open access to anyone with a valid password. Unfortunately, it wants to expire Jess' password almost every time she connects, so I've had to teach her how to use Putty to SSH to my box and reset her Samba password. It's just plain silly and I can't seem to find a way to make it stop.
Printing. Sure, I can print under Linux. It works right 99% of the time. But, when I need to be picky about margins or spacing or anything that relates to making sure that what I see on my screen is what will come out of the printer, it generally fails in one way or another.
Sound and Recording. While there is some new software for Linux that allows multi-track recording, I haven't tried it yet because my sound card isn't supported very well. For whatever reason, sound is often distorted and quiet. I've tried to fix this a million different ways.
Graphics editing. I've jumped through *lots* of hoops to get an image editing work flow that I can live with. For the most part, I'm okay with it, but it's less than ideal. I'd like to use ICC profiles to give everything I do that final touch of professionalism. Unfortunately, the only tool for Linux worth using to edit graphics is the Gimp, and, as good as the Gimp is, it doesn't support ICC profiles. So, it looks like Photoshop is the way to go here.
There are lots of other little things. It all adds up after a while, and I'm finally just getting fed up with it all.
There's still a lot of hesitation here. I love Linux. I use it at work. I use it at home. It powers my TiVo and my router and my website. I agree with the philosophy behind Linux. I mean, while Gimp isn't as powerful as Photoshop, it gets closer and closer every day and, someday, it'll be there. I use it every day and, other than ICC profiles, have never found it lacking. Depending on how you use it, it might work for you too. There's no reason that Photoshop should cost the hundreds and hundreds of dollars that it does. Not when products like the Gimp are free and allow me to change the software to suit me should I desire to do so. The same goes for Windows. There's no reason I should have to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for an operating system that, other than its hardware support and available software, offers little advantage over an entirely free and open system.
But, what does my philosophy buy me? In the end…. it saves me about $1000. That's about it. Believe me when I say that the heartache and trouble I've endured making what I have work as easily as it does cost me a lot more than $1000 in time and anguish.
So… well… it's a possibility, anyway.
Maybe I'll get a Mac. It's supposedly the best of both worlds, though, I'm sure something about it will annoy me too, and then I'll be even more pissed off because I wasted A LOT of money on special hardware and software to use a system I don't even like.
