Windows

November 16, 2005

So last night I decided to boot into Windows for the first or second time since I've installed it on my old 20gig hard drive (dual-booting using Grub). After completing the hordes of Windows Updates, I started playing around with some of my old software and such. I even fired up my CS 1.6 server and dicked around in CS for a few minutes. I kind of liked how things 'just worked.'

After being a hardcore Linux user for the past 4-5 years, it was quite a change to be able to 'double-click' on a game and not have to worry about whether or not my current Wine build would still work.

Now here's the thing. I got thinking.. basically everything I do now days is done through a screen session on my server, including (but not limited to) e-mail, IRC, BitTorrent, programming, system maintenance, AIM/MSN/Yahoo IM clients, etc and really the only thing I do on my main machine at home is use that screen session in an Xorg environment. I am missing out on all the fun games, being able to print from my print server, using my digital camera, using my USB->Serial connection for my cell phone and other misc. things like that. So I've been asking myself.. do I even really need to run Linux on my main machine anymore? If anything, it's just a pain in the ass keeping it up to date, making sure things don't break, etc.

What it boils down to is this: I'm getting older and lazier and starting not to care. I just want things to work and not have to worry about keeping software patched. I no longer care about the 'elite' self-imagery that I always thought running Linux gave me. Don't get me wrong- I still highly dislike Windows, and if I could, I would probably run OS X on it (soon to come), but damnit, I want to play some games! And let's face it.. it's just not going to happen on Linux for quite a while. So, I think sometime this week I'm going to scrap the Linux partition and throw XP on for a while. Who knows, maybe I'll be reminded why I didn't run it for so long shortly thereafter.

What are some of your opinions? Spirilis? Damacus? Sorel?