[OT] Making the move (to Linux/*BSD/real OS)

[Jonathan Gardner]

Sandy Norton wrote:
> Jonathan Gardner wrote
>> If you want to customize your mail client, you're using the wrong OS. All
>> the customizability is over here in Linux, with procmail and sendmail and
>> fetchmail and all sorts of great stuff that you've never even dreamed of
>> - even in those really wild dreams where you use your computer for a
>> month and it doesn't crash once.
> 
> Your point is well taken. Actually, I've had the move in mind for some
> time, and am hoping to ease the transition by getting used to the
> cygwin environment, and using cross platform tools as often as I can.
> However, I don't think I'm quite ready yet, and if I do make the move
> I don't know whether it will be to linux or to Mac OS X.
> 

There was a challenge posted by a journalist (not a programmer) who uses 
Linux quite readily for all his journalistic needs. He said something like 
"Try it out for 2 weeks, and by the end of the 2 weeks, you won't be able 
to go back."

After all, it is habits you are going to change, and those habits have to 
be broken the hard way. I don't suggest Mac OSX because it is still not 
really in-your-face unix. Cygwin is great, but it is mostly a crutch for 
those who already use Unix systems, but are forced to work on a windows 
box. You won't really be exposed to the power of Unix until you learn all 
the simple commands that you normally do with Explorer and other tools.

I wish you luck in the switch. I switched by wiping windows from my home 
computer and trying to get Red Hat installed. It wasn't pretty, and I 
didn't have a LUG to help me out. But thanks to Linuxdoc and google, I got 
thing working. 

Eventually, I felt so restricted in windows at work, that I convinced my 
boss to get me another box to put Linux on. It only cost a couple of 
hundred dollars, and since we were using Linux for our servers, it really 
made me much more productive.

BTW, the bane of non-MS users is the doc format. It drives me nuts that 
people think it is portable. That and newer Adobe PDF files. And HTML mail. 
Oh well... =(

Jonathan