My conversion. It was not really a conversion, so much as a culmination of a life around computers. The first point to note is that I don't like computers. I get utterly bored with programming. The whole computer world pretty much bores me to tears. However it's what you can do with computers that interests me, I would be more interested in getting PI to a few million than playing almost any game on the market. Maybe that says a lot about me, but then I don't like to follow the crowd, I take pride in my intelligence and I like to do things for myself, if I don't now how and my life depends upon it, then I have to learn.
So many years ago I was using Autocad, it ran outside of windows, and it was a lovely program, I used to use word, when it was under dos, I liked it, it was easy to use, and pretty trim actually. Then they upgraded to 3.11, and suddenly windows sucked. I noticed more files appearing that had no relation to anything I could see, there were huge numbers of files under the system directory, and I wanted to know what they were, and what they did. I don't like things working unless I know how they work, at least the theory.
So almost three years ago I brought my first PC, having used them for the last 10+. I had used computers before that, and owned a couple of modern antiques - I still do somewhere back home. I hated windows 98 on my computer, I was fed up with it at work as it was. I had used a vax system, and that was nice, it operated cleanly and did what it was told, which M$Dos did, I had used other unix incarnations, and despite lacking a GUI was very nice, very solid, and whats more the engineers I was working with talked in good measure about it. Also software had become an issue, running old versions of the software was hard work, but the fact that the Excel that ran on 3.11 (version 4.0 I think) has all I need in a spreadsheet, why do I need office 2000 versions.
So then this year I finally connected my PC to the Internet, staight in with dial up, and it would be a mild understatement to say it was annoying. All of a sudden my web browser could be hijacked, I could get cookies from sites that were tracking me, and I had little control over them. My system went from a passably stable working device that needed rebooting once a week to the travesty it has become, unstable, virus suseptable. I have found windows unstable, since about 3.11.
Now it should be made clear that what I would like to do is build my own supercomputer, by linking processors together, and then once built run it forever and never buy another computer product for the rest of my life. It's a goal, and I may achieve it, there are many things I have to do first. That said it follows that I have recently been taking an interest in the computer world.
Another point is that I detest large conglomerates controlling the world, so I refused to use Netscape (AOL). However upgrading IE was also not an option, as this failed to help the stability, and just seemed to give me more errors and requirements to boot.
I wanted to write some software, and I had no programming capability with windows, which would cost a lot of money; for a hobby that is of minor interest that is not an option. Also I had unpgraded to Windows 2K, this is not an improvement, it is less stable and more likely to lock up than 98, takes forever to perform the most basic tasks in Windows Explorer, and does not always perform them, without notifying you of it's failure.
I have discovered windows is unstable as hell on dual processor and I want possably hundreds. So Windows operating system is not an option. Then hunting around Unix sites I come across this thing called linux being mentioned, and then I find a link to this site (I forget how). I found to my great joy that there are other browsers available, and that one action alone has made my computer more stable.
I see from this discussion board that others have the same issues, I dive in and buy, because this is a commitment for me, not some exercise in romantic ideals and political awareness. I find Linux offers what I have been trying to force out of Windows. Complete control, the ability to take apart the system from the ground up and prove every single line of code, or not as the case may be.
Now I am also a political animal of sorts, I belive everyone has the basic right to life, that sex, colour and religion do not seperate people, and that there are things required of everyone to enjoy life, totally selfish behaviour will destroy you in the long run. So I hear of the M$ trial, and I start searching the net, I read reliable news sites, and I realise that M$ have been very naughty, but not naughty trying to get you to buy naughty, but naughty, we wrote a program that looks at everything on your computer and that sends it all back to our HQ, it's a marketing tool, to find out what our cusomers want, oh okay mister regulator we will remove this program as the courts have deemed it an invasion of privacy. I detest companies pulling these types of actions, it is simply not good enough to apologise after the fact.
It was a culmination of things, but essentially it has come down to the fact that M$, have failed me, technically, professionally and ethically, that means they do not have the right to my business anymore, so now I am an evangelist of the conversion, don't say it, do it. Change browser, change mail service, change OS. I even advise and support going to Mac, and I am not a Mac fan. So long winded and missing many of the details this summarises why I have to use a different OS, Linux for now, BSD soon, and then my own eventually, depends how deep I decide to go. Would this convince someone else, I very much doubt it, but it's my choice, and I have made it, I have few regrets, the biggest being I am spending a little too much time on the computer, when I could be hiking more of the White Mountains.
