Re: Why are you on a *nix desktop?

I am on OS X because of how much more media centric it is. Right off the bat
I installed VMWare Fusion to install WinXP for development. My hope is to
not need Windows eventually to do my midrange development. I have played in
Linux on the desktop, but am lazy and haven't dived into that much lately.

--
Mike Wills
http://mikewills.info
P: (507) 933-0880 | Skype: koldark


On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:27 PM, Aaron Bartell <aaronbartell@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:

Heyo,

I thought I would start a thread that would allow us to get to know each
other and why we ended up here. A little over a year ago I was planning my
normal 9 month schedule of reformatting my Windows desktop. I would
reformat every 9 months because I install a lot of developer software "just
to try it out". Well, after awhile things just seem to come to a grinding
halt and when I can't stand the slowness anymore I reformat and start with a
fresh install of Windows. Well the last time I was going to do that I
couldn't find my Windows XP Pro license key. I went to look at what a new
license would cost me and I almost swallowed my goiter.

At that point I decided I was going to try Linux again. At the time Ubuntu
was the most popular rising star so I went with that. I haven't looked back
since. I only reboot about once a month (after installing upgrades). I
haven't had to re-install the OS in over a year of use. And I love the fact
that it is easy to use (mostly) and doesn't cost me a dime (relative that
is).

The obvious drawback, and what does cost me "money", is the amount of time
it takes to do the switch. I have spent many hours trying to figure out how
to do xyz and abc. That is why I am hoping this forum will save many others
the initial pain I went through.

I have proceeded to switch all of my home machines to Ubuntu and now only
have a couple virtual instances of Windows (for Quickbooks and GoToMeeting
mostly) and one laptop that boots to Windows so I can use my Blackberry on
the road as a modem.

My primary job responsibilities are first RPG development, then Java, then
PHP, and a little C#.NET - all of which I can do on Ubuntu (including C#.NET
using Monodevelop).

What is your *nix story? (FYI, Using an asterisk in place of the L in
Linux is a way to reference both Unix and Linux which are very similar in
nature as I understand it. I also understand that Mac OSX is more based on
Unix than Linux. )

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com

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