So today I was cleaning up my computer, general maintenance…and guess what I found?

TWO YEARS WORTH OF OLD BLOG POSTS. TWO YEARS! I’m so happy. I thought I had lost it all in the big server crash of 08. Apparently not. I seem to have backed up every post up till January 07, which isn’t too bad considering before I thought I only had January 05. But now that I have at least a little old stuff to remember from high school with, I will restore them and then embark upon that long and tedious process of sorting them through categories and tags.

Since the crash, I’ve been making biweekly backups as opposed to annual backups. Its about time I learned to be more responsible with data anyway.

So I lost all posts between 2007/01/18 and 2008/05/22. Great.

I just realized the consequence of not providing incremental page view links: robots can’t find my old posts with my linux guides! I better repost and stuff..

So its that time of year again for me. I’ve finally come down to evaluating whether Linux or Windows suits my needs better. I’ve used Linux for nearly 4 years of my life now, and I’m not very good at operating without at least four desktops now. But luckily I stumbled upon VirtuaWin this year when at work. So I get the same effect, on Windows. Granted, I have to change the keybindings to what I’m used to, but it works.

So lets compare:

Windows:

Still buggy, still bloated, still slow, but it actually boots faster than my Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron now because Hardy has such horrible boot times compounded by the numerous startup scripts I wrote to set my wireless configs, special drivers, graphics, etc etc etc. Things have improved since olden days if you know how to operate Windows efficiently (Foxit Reader instead of Adobe Reader, AbiWord instead of MS Word, MS Word 2003 instead of 2007 or 2008, 4 desktops instead of 1, a light bittorrent client, XAMPP and we’re good to go). If every portable/light application is used, Windows isn’t too bad. Oh and of course, XP is more efficient than Vista.

However, the real jewel about Windows (from a web designer’s standpoint) is the fact that it has IE 7, which is VERY useful if you are designing sites that need to work well in IE thanks to Microsoft’s horrible history with web standards. The other jewel is Adobe Dreamweaver. The fact that you can add sites and save 4 steps by hitting ctrl+s by editing live on a server means you save tons of time and clicking during work. There isn’t any equivalent on Linux, period. I get by with Photoshop 7 on Linux, but I don’t use CS, CS2 or CS3 in general so I guess I’m only speaking for myself.

Linux:

Horrible boot times, no dreamweaver, print drivers are buggy. That about sums up all the problems I have with Linux. GUI is AMAZING, Terminal is AMAZING-ER, and File Roller, Document Viewer, AbiWord (Linux) are absolutely AMAZING-EST. What makes all of it so great is that you can customize it to exactly your specifications. I have four desktops on a beautiful cube, a media player that (after installing plugins) can play just about any media file, VLC does the same for videos, Document Viewer for documents, File Roller (plus unrar) for archives, Photoshop 7 for PSDs, Gimp for AI, a plethora of browsers (Except IE), oh and did I mention beautiful updates? No system crashes? Immunity to viruses?

My system is a rock. I’ve used this setup for over 3 years without a hitch. Yes, printing with correct margins is a pain, so much so that I’ve started using my brother’s computer to print from M$ Windoze. Yes, boot times are a tad slow. Yes, no dreamweaver. But everything else outweighs that. Unlike Windoze users, I’m not prone to system instability and my wireless card has an overzealous autoconfig. I can spoof mac addresses and do all sorts of crazy things Windoze could never hope to do without some specialized software.

Oh, and then theres the l33t factor, albeit Ubuntu is no longer considered l33t or “true linux” by purists. Slackware, CentOS and Suse are all considered “Linux.” Fedora is also, to a degree. But Ubuntu? It is so big, so phenomenal, and so easy, that tried and true linux purists refuse to believe their eyes. Everything they’ve worked for in an OS is right there. Big, beautiful, easy to use, customizable, oh, and did I mention, free?

So I can either spend $400 on Windows Vista Ultimate, or $5 to ship a beautiful Ubuntu CD, or a set of Fedora CDs, or pay nothing to download the Linux ISOs. What do you think I’d do? Unfortunately, theres also a third option. The unethical one. Thats possible too, but since this is a hypothetical post, I won’t say anything about it except that its unethical.

Yeah so today was another uneventful day. I finished a social networking site based on Drupal (I’m getting good with the whole template porting thing) and I actually used WINDOWS today (first serious use since 8th grade). I only used Windoze because the site I was working on had IE7 bugs and I couldnt get “IE7 4 Linux” to work correctly.

I’m still deciding whether to use Windows or Linux on my future laptop….I think I might actually go with windows because I plan to play some games in college (not too many of course!). Also, having used Linux for what, all of high school, I’m actually getting bored and sick of having to do some un-automated things all the time…even if I’ve written 40-50 scripts to automate things…its basically a good learning experience but not much more hahaha. Plus, I don’t need to pay for Vista which was in fact my first reason for switching to linux (I didnt want to buy XP Pro SP2, WGA just came out at that point and I was pirating I think). Got sick of that stuff, ended up moving completely to legal GNU stuff for all of high school, now possibly looking at a move back to the expensive world of corporate workware…

Hey but I actually have MONEY now so its less of a problem.

=]

Senior pictures today, so I couldn’t go to work. Uhgh. I ended up working from home (1:20pm-7:20pm). I seem to be more productive at home. I guess its cause I use 2 computers at once (and I’ve just discovered that dreamweaver isn’t as bad as I’ve been brainwashed by myself to feel about it…ever since I stopped using windows, that is).

Maybe I’ll install it on my linux.

Brooks Ghost came today, blue colorway cause the other one is gay. I haven’t given them a test run yet cause I had to work until 7:20 but I will break them in by walking them tomorrow in NYC. I just hope they don’t get all black and ugly from NYC cause the place is FILTHY. Uhgh.

Oh and I get paid for travel tomorrow. Since I already used my paychecks to pay back Esther/Mom, this money will go to that laptop I bought (with an advance from my mom’s credit card haha) and I’ll pay back Esther $200 more. that leaves mom to pay back Esther another $220 that she owes her and we can call it even…of course, I still have to stop by at the bank to pick up the cash that was wired in from the tipjar.

See, when “normal” people have periods of doubt, anger and disillusionment like me, they channel it into various things. When Sam has doubtful anger and disillusionment, he writes poetry, composes music, makes graphical interfaces, programs and skriptkiddy-s. OK the first 2 make me sound like some gay guy or maybe a hopeless romantic, both of which I am surely not. I’ll assure you, I’m completely straight, and I write music/poetry for myself. No, I’m not hopelessly in love with anyone, rather, I’m completely angry at the world and how dumb people can be sometimes. And so I write. My poetry, is for myself. My music, for my own ears. Selfish, but true. I’m no emo. I’m a lyrical person, not an emotional person. Rather than let emotions control me, I let that energy flow into all my creative ability. I guess its a good thing. Keeps me sane. When I’m emotional, I blog. I’m not emotional right now. Just wanted to write something I thought about in my personal reflections.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty “artsy” as lehsah would put it. Haha. Just not in the standard “drawing” way.

VIA OpenBook - http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=562

I drool. As long as its $400 or less of course.