September 2007

Back to stable

17. September 2007 - 22:34

Do you know how it feels when you come home after a long time, when some of your friends got married recently, and the neighbors refurbished their house? It feels strangely familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. Well, I have that feeling with my computer right now.

I wrote in my last post that the days of Pearly Spencer VistaTM will soon be over. Too many times I had to reboot the entire thing. So, last weekend there was the showdown. This is my first post I'm writing on my Linux Computer.

Jebus, Linux has changed a lot since I last used it at home a while ago. I mean, my computer at work is a Linux PC, but it hasn't any cool features switched on, and our administrator configures everything. But at home, back then it took me days to get my sound card working. More days to get my printer working. Weeks to get my scanner working. You get the idea. In the beginning when I was a novice, each change in a system setting required lots of googling, reading, trying, praying, and confusion. And, to be honest, windows looked more beautiful.

Well, things have changed a lot since then. I had a running system (printer, webcam, soundcard, etc.) in less than an hour. It configured all devices itself, I didn't do anything. It looks cool, doesn't crash, is easy to maintain, fast, and much fun. And it feels like coming home after a long while.

Here's a video of how it looks. I'm amazed. I'm sure I will switch off some of the effects after a while. I think they will get annoying after a few days. But currently I enjoy them. Say hello to my new love...



I didn't create this video, I just found it on youtube to give you an impression how Linux looks today. By the way, the video calls the composition manager "CompComm" as this is a early preview. Now they found their real name, it's "Compiz Fusion".

Linux

I hate Vista

4. September 2007 - 9:57

I hate, hate, hate it. My old computer died two weeks ago, and I had to get a new one. Since you can't find one without Windows VistaTM installed, I'm the "proud" owner of a Vista Computer. Yeah!

I never was a big fan of Windows, I used to use Linux on my systems. But then I tried XP when it came out a looong time ago, and I really liked it. My old computer had XP running when I bought it, and it was very stable, it never crashed. I was so happy about XP that I switched from Linux to XP back then.

But now??? Vista is worse than crap. I haven't rebooted my old XP in five years as often as I did with Vista in two weeks. It often freezes during start-up. I often need to reboot after "highly sophisticated tasks" like launching Excel, or sometimes even minimizing just one window.

How dare you, Microsoft, to ship such crap? I'm a Software Engineer myself. If I sold a program as unstable as Vista, my client would sue me, and as a justified punishment a deathsman would behead me on a public square behind the castle in front of a cheering audience. Only Microsoft can get away with that.

I'll switch back to Linux as soon as I have enough time for the installation. I'm sick and tired of Vista. There, I said it.

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