Its hard to go back
For one of my school projects I have to write programs for Microsoft (R) Windows (TM). I know that this makes sense, lets be honest its in most peoples homes. The problem I have is that I didn’t have it in my home. I’ve been using Ubuntu (a linux thing) on all my machines for more than six months now and have barely touched anything with Windows since. So, I knew that a new version of Ubuntu was coming out on Thursday so yesterday I decided to wipe my laptop and replace it with Windows XP in order to make school a little easier (I’ll also get more BBC content, as a bonus). And here is where the problems started…
Correct drivers were not included. Why is this something the the OSS boys do so well with so little help yet a company with so much money for research do so badly? I mean, the drivers were available on the internet, I just couldn’t get on the internet to find them because the first set of drivers I needed were network drivers! Even when I used other machines I found the documentation was atrocious. I got that annoyed with it I had to give my computer to someone else to fix before I started beating it.
I’m not saying life’s a beach as soon as you go open source, infact its far from it. To be honest, my other problems were things that I would have just been used to before. Things like programs organised by manufacturer rather than what they do. Maybe this is why its hard to go back, you get used to something and you’re happy. Its like trying to revive an old relationship I guess, lets be honest, you broke up for a reason.
So in a couple of days Windows will be partitioned off and placed in a back corner of my machine. I’m not going to completely delete it this time but I’m afraid to say I can never embrace it again.