Journal Trolling4Dollars's Journal: What First Made You Move from Windows to another OS? 2
My move from Windows to Linux was precipitated the first time that I saw the Enlightenment Window Manager and G.I.M.P. At that point, I'd been working on Windows 3.1 and then 95a. I was using Windows for audio production (because I couldn't afford a Mac) and desktop publishing. My most used applications were Cakewalk Pro Audio, Wave for Windows, CoolEdit, Adobe Photoshop 2 and then 3, Aldus Pagemaker (later became Adobe) and Goldenhawk Technology's CDRWIN. I started off with a 486 DX2 66 with 16 Megs of RAM in August of 1994 and DOS 6.22/Win 3.1. Then I progressed to a 486 DX4 100 with 32 Megs of RAM, and Windows 95a. I also upgraded from cheapo IDE to a SCSI disk system.
With Windows 3.1, I really felt like I was slumming it compared to Mac OS 7 from my college years or even my Atari 1040ST. In word, the user interface sucked ass. When Windows 95 came out it was a nice improvement, but it still needed work. What was particularly frustrating was when I found out how little effort had been put into the MIDI subsystem of Windows 95. It was basically carried over from Windows 3.1! That was when I decided that Microsoft cared only for the business world and not the creative media world (which was growing in import at the time). I got sick of the promises from Microsoft and sent in a letter telling them they'd better start paying attention to musicians and artists if they ever want to be taken seriously by us. However, I knew this would fall on deaf ears because business is where they think they can make more money. They didn't seem to realize that many of the creative folk who AREN'T in business was willing to drop hundreds or thousands on our tools in one pop without batting an eye if the tools are good.
I'd played around with Unix and VMS in college and when a friend at my first real job out of college introduced me to Linux I gave it a try. At the time, Linux was pretty hard to get going, but I did it and was intrigued. I couldn't get X running though, so back to Win 3.1 and my Mac emulator. But as time went on I kept my eye on Linux. Then one day in 1997, I saw the Enlightenment Window Manager and realized Linux was where I needed to be no matter how hard it was to set up. I installed Redhat 4 and then set out to try out Enlightment. I finally got it installed and running after a week of reading and trying to understand what I was doing. The end results were truly rewarding. What had previously been a boring old Windows 95 system was now a much more reliable and powerful desktop with a lot of great eye candy.
My other goal was to try out G.I.M.P. Since it came with the OS distribution, I just ran it and played with it. The reasons I was using Photoshop (digital image manipulation) were more than suited to GIMP and I was sold. I never bought another Adobe product again.
Within the first six months I discovered SAMBA, IP Masquerading/NAT, and Apache. Since I was also learning how to work with Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 on the job, I soon realized I could have the same functionality at home for free. Since I'm not rich and am completely opposed to piracy, I saw an instant appeal in Linux that went beyond the initial eye candy (Enlightenement) and killer app (GIMP) phase. Now, there is no going back for me. The only thing that has kept me dealing with Windows at home is audio and video production. In the Spring of 2004 I finally got my pro audio interface (An Echo Layla 20) working in Linux. I've been playing around with it for a bit. Technically, Linux, at the OS level, is farther ahead than Windows in the audio/MIDI realm. The application realm is starting to progress, but there are still things I am missing from Windows or the Mac. However, at thisd point, I only have one installation of Windows XP here at home. It's on my audio/video workstation. If the apps move further along within the next year or two, Windows will probably disappear from my life other than work.
What about you?
Update: Hell and bat's doos. I forgot to enable comments earlier. Thanks Sam.
What made me move? (Score:2)
You start to get the idea when I 'switched' -- around 1991. ;-)
I've used Macs since 1984, though there was an interlude where I used DOS and Windows exclusively (version 2.11 [metz-furniere.de]! w00t!) because of requirements in my studies (at the time I was studying engineering). Then when I switched to design, M
Three little letters. (Score:1)
I'm actually on BOTH right now. I've got a nice WinXP box, tweaked and prodded to act like Win2k corporate (the one thing Microsoft pretty much got right out of the box, UI-wise) with Cygwin, GCC, ActiveState Perl, and ActiveState Python, sitting behind a Linux firewalL and processing box I interact with using VNC. It's the best of all possible worlds for me.