jonlee.ca

This is a followup to The Weekend Project and The Weekend Project Continued. Let me just say this… I love Linux, I love using it, I love that its open source. But I’m uninstalling it and going to Vista.

I kind of feel like a failure, but after using purely Linux for only a month, there were so many things I missed in Windows that I was pretty much virtualizing XP in VMWare about 80% of the time. Here are the reasons why I gave up on Linux:

• Lack of driver support for my hardware – Fingerprint reader and my bluetooth adapter were my main concerns.
• Weak driver/software support for hardware – Yes there were drivers for my Thinkpad Active Protection System, but I find it wasn’t implemented as well as the Lenovo software for Windows.
• No ActiveSync support - This one was a biggie, I couldn’t sync my Smartphone with my calendar/contacts manager. There are solutions, but again, they were subpar and did not do everything I required.
• Instant Messaging client lacking video/audio support – I use MSN, my friends use MSN, my family uses MSN. Neither Gaim, Kopete nor Miranda IM have webcam support though Gaim has a plug-in but isn’t fully mature. aMSN is nice, but I can’t stand the interface and it just doesn’t have the features of Windows Live Messenger (i.e. offline messaging)
• Lack of software support – There are a few pieces of software that I need to have as a high school math teacher – Geometer’s Sketchpad and Fathom. Neither have a Linux version, and so I had to run them in VMWare.
• Lack of Dreamweaver alternative – Vim is great for coding – in fact, SSH & Vim are the only things I use when making changes to webpages. But when developing a webpage from scratch, I find that a suite such as Dreamweaver is key. Nothing Linux has to offer has the features I have come to love – such as integrated FTP and code completion. The only thing that comes close to Dreamweaver is Aptana – but it does leave things to be desired.

So why Vista and not XP? No reason really, my work gave me a license for Vista so I figured I’d try it out and see what the big deal is. I also hear it has great integrated Tablet support.

This post was written in Vista.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Linux, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.