Slashdot | What Differentiates Linux from Windows?
This article has spawned the favorite geek discussion, Windows or Linux? Well, I've been using Linux since 1997, and DOS/Windows since 1994. For a while, I had completely given up on Windows and Microsoft, running at home on Linux. Over the years Linux developed into an OS that had application support as good as Windows. I could do everything any of my windows roommates could. For two years things went by in Linux land, with me able to cope and hack through. But recently, when I bought my laptop, the old problems of no hardware driver support came up for my wireless network card. To get it to work with the various different wireless nets around campus and home was proving difficult. I spent five hours just getting the firmware to load onto the wireless card, and get it to be recognized by the kernel. At that point, I was hoping everything would work, but our campus network works differently from the home wireless routers. I found out that I would have to spend a significant amount of time trying to figure out how to get that part working. And I did not have time. I am a part time system administrator, and a full time undergraduate student, with other duties and responsibilities. Thats a change from the life of a teenager with ample time on his hands. No more time. If I want to have a life that is. So I decided that Linux was coming of. I've had a hard time adjusting to life as a complete Windows user, considering the laptop is the only machine I have now.
There is respite though, since at work, I deal with a Linux/Windows hybrid network which leans more towards Linux than Windows. I still have Linux servers to deal with, so I wont be out of sync with the Linux world. But sometime I just wish I could go back. However, life isn't getting easier. And hence, at least for now, I stick with Windows on the laptop. I yearn for the days when I can work full time as a system administrator trying to figure these things out. **Sigh**, I have to graduate and get a job first!
