I have been blessed…
I’ve been living a charmed past couple of years, and didn’t even realize it until just now when I was reading an article on Windows Vista. How have I been blessed? I realized that I’m not one of the people the article mentioned will have to agonize over the decision of when to switch to Vista. I haven’t had to deal with any Microsoft issues in a long time; since my junior year at UH, I’ve been doing all my important work and play on Linux boxes. Thankfully, academia (well, mathematical academia) has been quick to appreciate the plethora of reasons why Linux is a better choice for workstations– all the math departments I’ve seen have been firmly ensconced in the Linux world.
I haven’t had to pay for (or steal) any software I’ve wanted in a long time– I simply type in apt-get install <package-name> and I’m all set to go. Updating the OS, as often as I want, is equally hassle-free: apt-get dist-upgrade; upgrading all my many software packages is also incredibly simple: apt-get upgrade. Importantly, if I need to install a software package on my office workstation, I can usually get around the need for sysop priviledges by installing it locally; in the past I’ve found it utterly frustrating that there is no equivalent option under Windows.
Forget Photoshop, I have GIMP. Forget Illustrator, I have Inkscape and metapost. Forget Office, I have variously LaTeX (with Kile or vi for interfaces), OpenOffice, or TeXmacs. And don’t even mention MS Visual Studio, I have a plethora of choices of how to hack my system under Linux, none of which involve memorizing tedious API details (at least, not nearly as much), and which cost literally infinitely less than MSVS (since they’re all free).
You can even compare the technical support: whereas with Windows, chances are that if you run into a non-trivial error message there’s no way you can figure out how to fix the problem yourself; if I hit a problem now, I usually find an answer online in under 20 minutes. The solutions are also a lot more palatable than for Windows problems– I’ve yet to have a problem that couldn’t be resolved by reconfiguring, upgrading or switching to alternate software. Under Windows, I’ve found error message usually indicate that there’s a hardware/Windows incompatibility which can be fixed only by replacing the hardware.
The point of all this isn’t to bang on MS or Windows, I’m past the stage of hating the company just because it’s a behemoth whose goal is to sell, sell, sell its constrictive and actively unempowering flagship OS. I’m just pointing out how much more productive I’ve been in switching to Linux. At this point, I can’t imagine going back to Windows to do something more serious than use the computers at the library.
Possibly relevant posts:
- Delivery Day (9/5/2007)
- Persevering for the Pastries (3/3/2002)
- Installing TeTeX latex packages (2/28/2005)