I am saddened that the Microsoft product Windows has returned to my life. I was raised on Apple ][ machines, and later Macintosh (512, Plus, SE, etc). Eventually I began using cheap x86 boxes with Xenix on them, and begged and borrowed UNIX shell accounts from my friends that were attending UCSC. Windows was unavoidable though. I was forced to use Windows 95 or Windows NT on company issued laptops beginning around 1996. I hated everything about it. I hated the Plug & Pray support. I hated the Registry. I hated the interface. I hated it all.
That afternoon I downloaded Red Hat 5, wiped the Windows partition of my laptop, and made the switch. I haven't had, or owned, a desktop or laptop with Windows installed on it since this switch in 1998. 11 years.
So why did Windows re-enter my life? Frustration, a bad economy, and a desire for things to Just Work.
Several years ago I decided that my wife should have a laptop all her own. not a crappy hand-me-down. Not a loaner. An moderately powered, relatively inexpensive, good enough for the Web, YouTube, eMail, and other Every Day Activities. I also knew that Windows would not be used on it. Enter a mid-level (at the time) Compaq Presario C304. Immediately upon unpacking the Windows partition was wiped and Fedora 8 (I think) was installed. Then began the pain.
After wrestling with NDIS Wrapper, and XFree86 patches, and third-party Wireless adapters, and an external USB keyboard and mouse, I finally had a system that was 95% functional. And this is the system that my wife has been using for a little over two years now. I've faithfully updated to each new release of Fedora (Fedora 11 at the time of this writing) hoping for fixes. I've faithfully wrestled with All New Stupid with each update (although, in fairness, in Fedora 11 the internal Broadcom wireless began working without a problem).
No more though. After spending two weeks of trying to determine why no sounds come out of the computer, and why sleep stubbornly won't put the machine into low-power mode, I decided "fuck it."
If Apple had a $500 or less laptop I'd buy it for my wife in a hot second. Sadly, they don't. There's the Mini, of course, but that's not a laptop and, once things like a monitor, keyboard, mouse are added it's no longer less than $500. So for now, and there being a recession on an all, the best option that does not involve my spending large amounts of my own billable time wrestling with a OS that is still, after all these years, Not Ready For The Desktop AND does not involve spending ~$1000 for a low-end Mac laptop, is to drop $150 on Windows 7.
I spent an hour or two backing up my wife's home directory, wiping Fedora, installing Windows 7, and restoring her data (the biggest problem encountered so far has been making Firefox and Thunderbird "see" and use their old profiles). The screen? It just works. Sleep? Yep. Just works. Low power mode also now works. Wifi? Perfect. Keyboard and mouse? Working as designed.
So Windows 7 has entered my home. I'll replace it as soon as I can get my hands on some reasonably priced Mac OS X hardware (and that does not involved some equally shaky hack/patch/workaround of trying to get Mac OS X running on some generic white-box gear). I have to admit, though, that having Windows 7 here is causing me a lot less grief and pain than Linux ever did.
Yes, yes. It's not the Linux community's fault that it doesn't work. It's Intel's. Or Broadcom's. Or any of the other vendors of chips used in this machine that don't help the community develop drivers. It's HP's/Compaq's fault for using whatever components they chose to. Still - now it Just Works.