Moving to Linux
Monday April 28, 2008
Sick of Windows
Windows does some things pretty well. Installing software has come a long way from the early days of having to configure at the settings manually. Some times it took hours and maybe even days before a piece of hardware could be made to work with the software that came with it. I remember one such installation of a hand held scanner on a 386 machine in the early 90's. It was a valuable lesson because after I finally got things working it turned out that all the problems were a result of poor documentation. The instructions were poorly written.
I guess the thing I like the least about Windows is the yearly tax that comes in the form of purchasing a subscription to anti-virus Internet security software. Perhaps if I never surfed the web I could do without it, but my machine would have to live in isolation. That would include never allowing any outside media to enter a CD drive or a usb port. It just is not feasible.
The alternative to Windows is to buy a Mac. I would love to do just that but I have an investment in hardware and a shortage of available cash to plunk down on a new computer. So that brings me to Linux.
This past Saturday I did my entire day's work on my Linux machine running Fedora 8. I was making html files and found that Bluefish worked just fine for that task. The only problem I encountered was with the spell checker. I may not have the proper library installed or something of that nature to get it working properly. The point is that as I completed my work, I realized that I need to make the move away from Windows to Linux. My studies will lead down that path. Fedora is putting out a new version in a few weeks. I will update then. I am also planning on trying an install of Ubuntu and giving that a test drive as well.