The Linux Desktop
An interesting and strangely coincidental post showed up on /. today pointing to an opinion piece about whether or not Linux is "ready" for the desktop of Joe User. I found it interesting because some (not all) of the thoughts in both the article and the posted comments mirror my own, and coincidental because of my momentous (for me) decision to put Windows XP Pro on my machine at home...for the first time since I bought it almost 2 years ago. (I was a little wary of what my box' reaction would be to the installation of an alien OS; it took it rather well).
I would have to say that the major impetus for the install was my newfound addiction, which comes in the form of a new MMORPG named EVE. Incidentally, Cedega actually ran the game rather well, with only a few of the usual trouble spots (infrequent CTD, wonky mouse pointer). However, upon installing XP I started to realize that there were niceties accompanying Windows that I'd forgotten about since I hadn't used it on that machine. For instance, now all the features of all the (very expensive) hardware that I purchased are actually available. Being a programmer and general all-around nerd, I was willing to live with some decreased functionality user-experience-wise as a tradeoff for all of the programming environment benefits that Linux had to offer, but it's nice to know that my $300 video card and $200 sound card are, in fact, worth that. Also, I'm now able to use the (Windows-only) software RAID capability that my mobo provides.
The downside to all this is that it's simply unacceptable for me to not have Linux on that machine; the productivity decrease would just be too great. Thus, I'm faced with the option of dual-boot or VMWare. I'm much more seriously considering the latter, as it seems like a much more "best of both worlds" approach than having to reboot every time I want to use Feature X of operating system Y. In a perfect world I would be able to afford an identical (power-wise) second machine, sans monitor and expensive graphics/sound options, on which I could put Linux and develop to my heart's content...but it's unlikely that I'll find a spare $2500, say, doing the laundry. I guess the only thing left to do is start investigating educational pricing for VMWare...
I would have to say that the major impetus for the install was my newfound addiction, which comes in the form of a new MMORPG named EVE. Incidentally, Cedega actually ran the game rather well, with only a few of the usual trouble spots (infrequent CTD, wonky mouse pointer). However, upon installing XP I started to realize that there were niceties accompanying Windows that I'd forgotten about since I hadn't used it on that machine. For instance, now all the features of all the (very expensive) hardware that I purchased are actually available. Being a programmer and general all-around nerd, I was willing to live with some decreased functionality user-experience-wise as a tradeoff for all of the programming environment benefits that Linux had to offer, but it's nice to know that my $300 video card and $200 sound card are, in fact, worth that. Also, I'm now able to use the (Windows-only) software RAID capability that my mobo provides.
The downside to all this is that it's simply unacceptable for me to not have Linux on that machine; the productivity decrease would just be too great. Thus, I'm faced with the option of dual-boot or VMWare. I'm much more seriously considering the latter, as it seems like a much more "best of both worlds" approach than having to reboot every time I want to use Feature X of operating system Y. In a perfect world I would be able to afford an identical (power-wise) second machine, sans monitor and expensive graphics/sound options, on which I could put Linux and develop to my heart's content...but it's unlikely that I'll find a spare $2500, say, doing the laundry. I guess the only thing left to do is start investigating educational pricing for VMWare...
posted by cliff at 7:54 AM
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