From hero to (l)user

I've just read (rather belatedly, I might add), Charl's post about installing Ubuntu on his laptop. Compared to him, I have not been running Loonix for that long. I started around 1994 with a login account to a box named Belin at varsity. In 1996, I switched-over full-time.

The strange thing was that I never planned to become a Loonix-zealot, rather it was a matter of economics. I had a dual Pentium-Pro desktop machine (I needed the extra power for the stuff I was doing as part of my M.Eng), we had cheap OS/2 licences. The problem was that for the dual-processor version I needed to pay full price for OS/2. Money better spent on booze. So I installed NT 4.0 (enterprise-wide license, no cost), just to come to realise I needed to re-install the bugger when I added the second processor. (I didn't quite know when this will arrive.) At this point Linux was in the 1.3.xx development kernel phase and they just started to add dual-processor support. What the hell, it doesn't cost me anything...

So I started with Slackware and got kernel 1.3.12 (I think) compiled and installed. It became a morning ritual - downloading the latest development kernel (things were changing very quickly), compiling, installing, rebooting - and more often than not, rolling back to the previous working kernel. Baptism by fire you might say.

That was 1996. Over the next 9 years, I always had Linux on my desktop. As I moved jobs, it became the first thing to do - install Linux, configure, off I go. There were always some little issues, driver support, enterprise support (Outlook calendar, Word documents) and as roles changed I started using things like CrossOver more and more. I even became a beta tester for them. At the start of 2005 I came to realise that actually all the applications I use are via Wine. I could get by with OpenOffice, but things like Visio (the joys of being a paper architect) and Outlook (Calendar) kept on tripping me up.

Since I haven't really used an XP machine before, I've decided to give it a go. Hey, seeing how the other half lives is alway good, isn't it? So I resized partitions and installed the beast. Initially it was a week on the one, a week on the other, but since mid-2005 I haven't booted into Linux. For home I bought a Mac Mini (BSD under the covers) in 2005 and at the start of this year a MacBook Pro. The initial idea was to actually install Ubuntu on the G5 Mac Mini, but it never materialised.

The point for me is this - as I've got older I became less of a tinkerer (although I miss LFS a lot) and just wanted to use the applications I'm want or am forced to use. At home I don't do much - browse, play music, you know, all the stuff mom and dad would do. Eclipse and NetBeans work equally well. CAD I use via Parallels emulation on the MacBook Pro. I've just become a user. I don't need to change my OS, OS X does fine for me. It came pre-installed, is quite pretty and does the job I expect it to do. But who knows, if I start doing CAD for 18 hours a day, or use Parallels too often, I may just go for the bootcamp XP/Vista option and the whole cycle may start all over again...