I recently bought an Asus Eee PC 4G, which is a $400 ultraportable with no magnetic hard drive and that comes pre-installed with a custom version of Linux meant for children and non-computer-inclined folks (Xandros 4, based on Debian Etch).
Thanks to an over-active enthusiast board and a lot of patience, I've been tweaking the heck out of this thing to the point where it can now truly replace my desktop, with the only sad exception being the fact that you can't run iTunes in Wine.
I've always hated Linux before; there were three separate occasions before now when I gave it a chance--once with Slackware, and a couple of times with Ubuntu. All of these were sleepless, hair-pulling, profanity-inspiring ordeals, and when I bought this machine the first thing I tried to do was put Windows XP on it. Unfortunately there were problems with the disk, so I was forced to live with the default installation for a while longer.
After a week of tweaking and stuff, here are all of the reasons for switching to Windows that I no longer have:
- I thought only Windows could run my grading software (I'm a teacher), but I was able to get it working in Wine
- I thought only Windows could handle games well because of DirectX, but I'm discovering that Linux can really pull its weight. True, I mostly only care about emulation and a few choice RPGs, but I can say now that Linux is at least a better gaming platform than the Mac.
- Not that revelant, but originally only Windows could run the Eee's processor at its rated speed (900 MHz), but it didn't take long for all those hackers to get Linux caught up in this department as well.
- Admittedly, the Windows taskbar is way easier to work with than KDE, which completely lacks the drag-and-drop functionality of the Start Menu. But since discovering where most of my new applications install to, it's not such a big deal.
- I've finally got the process behind installing apps, adding repositories, and pinning down pat. It's a system which is more complex in some ways and less in others; yes, it makes your package manager a one-stop software library; but there's somethng to be said for Windows' double-clickable installer executables. My next project is to master the ability to move as many apps as possible to an external memory card, since my Eee only has 1.5GB of internal storage left.
As I mentioned before, I still sort of miss iTunes. But what I don't miss is everything else about Windows that has heretofore swallowed countless cumulative days of my life: bloat, spyware, security flaws, registry problems, hard drive fragmentation, etc. So for the time being, I can say that I'm a Linux convert. I feel nerdier every second.
