mattglet - 7:58 pm on Aug 27, 2008 (gmt 0)

Well, it's official as of 4 days ago... my home operating system is no longer based on Windows (specifically, Vista). I've made the switch to Ubuntu 8.04 -- code named Hardy Heron. It may not be that big of a deal to many of you, but it's pretty monumental in my world. Here's my story:

I'm a Microsoft software guy, through and through. I started my professional life as a classic ASP developer, and eventually moved to programming with .NET. I've always had a Windows OS, Microsoft Office, and anything else that made my life easier... started at 3.1 more than 10 years ago, stopped at Vista, used everything else in between. Back in the day (ok, maybe 7 years ago), a friend of mine installed Red Hat on a spare system to mess around. I was able to have a first hand view of his trials and tribulations, and swore I'd never need anything but Windows. I'll be honest, I need a GUI. It's just "easier" for me.

A couple/few weeks ago I ran into a blog post from a site I frequent, showcasing Hardy Heron. Frankly, I had no idea a graphical Linux even existed, so I dug into it a little bit more. Still being a GUI-guy, I have to admit I was impressed. I'm not the person that said "well, it doesn't look like Windows, so it sucks". I actually downloaded Ubuntu, burned it to a CD, and set off to dual boot my home system (Vista being primary, Ubuntu to "check it out"). I really had no personal reason to do it. I'm actually one of the few that has no problems with Vista other than 1 driver issue that sometimes pops up. I guess I was just feeling adventurous.

So I eventually got a dual boot environment set up. It took me about 6 hours to finally get it right, but it would have been much faster had I not been overly afraid of messing up my Master Boot Record. I have everything backed up... but still. Once I was in, I immediately downloaded Opera (sorry Firefox :) and starting playing around. When I found something that didn't make sense or just flat out went over my head, I looked it up online. I started playing around with customizing the look/feel with themes, and add-ons. I started to figure out how the whole "package" system works. I realized that Terminal is still much needed. I then started to look into what my options were for replacement software (email client, IM client, stuff like that)... and realized 2 major things:

1) I don't do a whole lot at home with different software on a day-to-day basis. Email and surf, mostly.
2) There are a lot of VERY comparable open source software packages that can replace Microsoft offerings.

After about a month, I realized that I really CAN switch over to Ubuntu full time, and ditch Windows. So I did.

One thing I do want to point out... I still do a fair amount of programming on the side with a few sites I run, and it's all done in .NET. Because I still need to use Visual Studio and SQL Server, I still need Windows. Well, VirtualBox (a VMWare competitor) came in handy to allow me to run Windows XP virtually. Other than that, I'm 100% Linux. I still can use Opera to surf, and use Evolution as my Outlook replacement (this is one program that has so much potential, but still has a little bit to go). I use Pidgin as my IM client. And I'm OK with all of this.

Moral of this long story? I surprised myself. I would never have guessed that I'd be running a *nix based system as my primary home machine. Did I do it because I hate Microsoft? No, I never will. Did I do it for any real reason? The only one I can think of is: I guess I wanted a change, and to see what it was like. The only thing I can really compare it to is if you worked at a company for 10 years, and decided to quit and work for a start-up. Your job title might not change, but you ultimately are doing something new and a just a little bit different.

Is anyone else a recent convert? Anyone do it for similar reasons, and not because you hate Microsoft?