Hans-Christian Andersen
hans.andersen at phulse.com
Fri Jun 1 12:03:27 CDT 2012
Congratulations on the upgrade. :) And just in time to dodge the incoming Windows 8 debacle as well. I remember that feeling of liberation. It totally changed my outlook on computers. It was back in the days of XP, when Microsoft announced that Longhorn was going to be called Vista and they were going to cut out all the best features that they had been touting and promising for years. I switched over to OpenSUSE back then, but it was still early days for Ubuntu and Mint didn't exist yet. I remember being amazed having a laptop that had new life breathed into it. It was stable and fast and didn't need reinstalling every 6 months to a year. After being a heavy Windows user since 3.11, this was a new experience for me. :p By the way, don't under-estimate how powerful WINE is at being able to run Windows applications on Linux natively. It's not perfect, but it's able to handle quite a lot of applications rather well. So, if there is any particular application or game that you miss from Windows and would frequently use, give it a try. - Hans On 2012-05-31, at 1:31 PM, Arthur Fuller wrote: > That's actually a quote from one of my fave singer-songwriters, to wit, > Warren Zevon. The song is The Great Pretender and it's on his second album. > But the point here is not about Warren Zevon, it's about my final > liberation from Microsoft. > > I have at last converted my main squeeze to a native boot of Linux Mint 11. > Inside that, I run Oracle VirtualBox, and inside that I run the only > instances of Windows that I care about, each of which emulates a client > workstation with only and exactly what the clients run. > > I have to tell you that for the first time in at least a decade, I finally > feel free from the fellows in Redmond. The few times that I need to do some > development for a client, I run a VM to do so. The rest of the time I'm > living in Linux/Mint, and I love it. > > I do need to purchase a new laptop this month, but that's another story. It > will probably come equipped with one or another version of Windows 7, and > having toured the Windows 8 preliminary versions, I can see no reason to go > there. Mind you, all this needs to be taken with a large grain of salt, > since I am almost 65 years old and have little to no desire to retain my > place on the bleeding edge. I have a stupid-phone and no tablets or any > other fancy techno-vices. I'll continue to maintain the apps that I already > have in the field, but from here on in my native OS is Mint, not Windows. > For that kind of work, a VM will do just fine. I can precisely emulate what > the client runs, right down to Windows/Office/SPs, so that I'm 100% > confident that if it works in my VM, it will work on their hardware. > > And after that, my friends in Redmond, I have lost interest in your future > directions. I simply do not care any more. > > -- > Arthur > Cell: 647.710.1314 > > Prediction is difficult, especially of the future. > -- Niels Bohr > _______________________________________________ > dba-Tech mailing list > dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com