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.

Tags: Tech

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 12:39 am and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.