Old Li2-Crystals

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Not long ago I posted about how I'd had it with Windows and the way it's buggyness cost me a mountain of files and ended up inspiring me to go Microsoft free in a move to Ubuntu linux. I discovered that making a move like that mostly out of anger and frustration, with almost no advance preparation, was not the way I should have migrated from one OS to another.

I want to make it absolutely clear that I consider Linux to be the best possible way to go. However I'm finding that while I have no problem attacking something with a steepish learning curve, I do have something of a problem finding myself having to attack several of them at once.

I also have every intention of eventually being Microsoft free on a permanent basis. However I'm going to revert to the plan that I had in place when the crash of '08 cost me 200+ gigs of hard drive.

The plan I had in place at that time was to get a laptop and outfit it with linux and document the transition to Linux and linux only based ways to accomplish assorted Windows tasks in blog posts and videos to help others make the transition by sharing what I learn as I go. This was to be done on the laptop while my desktop continued to run Windows for the time being.

Why continue with Windows?

Frankly because I have found out the hard way that there are some windows only programs that I still need to use at least for the time being because A, I sometimes have trouble finding a Linux program to accomplish the same task and B, when I do find such a program I don't have much time to learn it these days. I've tried using a Windows install in a VM but too many of these things run entirely too slow that way and several more of them don't work in Wine yet (several of those being .net 2.0 applications and a few .Net 3.0).

If I didn't need these things and had the time to play the learn as I go game, then I'd be sticking with Linux regardless. Unfortunately this isn't the case, I need my desktop to be a working production machine that is fully stocked with programs that I already know how to use to their fullest. I enjoy learning new stuff and I want to learn Linux and make it my OS of choice, I simply can't be making that change on my primary working machine until I've learned a lot more by starting out on another machine to do my linux transition on.

Therefore, I'm going to make a backup of the entire /home directory tree and reformat the desktop machine once again and re-install windows. Once that's done I'll get the XP setup back to the state it was in before the big crash.

After that I'll concentrate on saving up for a laptop with which to make the permanent linux move. That final move will be the subject of either an entire series of posts or perhaps the central subject of a whole new blog and will be where I try to cover every single painstaking detail of making a permanent move from windows to linux. I'm hoping that it becomes something that makes it easier for others to follow the migration away from windows forever.

I think making the chance to Linux is absolutely the way to go. A fact that will become more evident with every new thing that spews forth out of Microsoft. It is however, very important that this transition be done with a bit of thought ahead of time so that you can continue being productive. My own productivity has gone through the floor recently, mostly due to my wife spending most of a month in the hospital and the rest because of the many things that I had to find new software to do and having to learn all those programs and it's essential that I get myself into the most productive possible situation I can manage.

Technorati Tags: learning curve, windows only utilities, hard drive, virtual machine, crash, windows tasks, windows utilities, advance preparation, wine, microsoft