Goodbye, Bill
I suppose it was predictable. I’ve spent a month on my new laptop with a fresh Windows Vista installation. And hasta.
So, Vista. It’s not that it’s bad, per se: actually, it’s just like that. It’s bad. Unforgivably bad. I have a 64-bit processor; four gigs of RAM (I’m old enough [my first hard drive was 40 MB] that this is practically inconceivable); and every accessory imaginable. And what do I get from Redmond? Well, it takes a couple seconds for my typing to show up on screen. I have to pay Symantec absurd amounts of money to protect me from malware. I have “trial versions” of Office, that would cost roughly $100,000 to register. Non-uninstallable applications. And fucking blue screens of death. For real. BSOD. In 2009. At least WordPerfect has forgone the white-on-blue color scheme in the last 15 years.
Vista came “for free” on my computer. That means that some large amount of money was spent by Hewlett-Packard to buy me a copy of this OS OEM.
Being a Vista user is like being married to a retarded, HIV-positive prostitute — a prostitute who still charges you money for sex, after marriage, and goes on sleeping around; who never gets your jokes; and threatens you with terminal illness every time you attempt to do something fun.
Stop being so smug, Mac-heads. Being a Macintosh user is like being married to a high-class prostitute who went to finishing school, but who, every time you want to talk about something intimate or important, tells you a vivid Shahrazodian tale to distract you.
I’m going back to Ubuntu. I’m running towards it. Using Ubuntu is like having an open relationship with the well-read, clean, natural-fiber-wearing vegan neo-hippie you met at the health foods store: she’s willing to experiment with anything, not opposed to your seeing other people, and if it doesn’t work out, well, the relationship will end with a hug and her packing up the thrift store backpack that can hold all her essential possessions with space left over.
Ubuntu. That’s the link. Ubuntu is “free as in speech” and “free as in beer”. It’s written by volunteers. It’s maintained by volunteers. It is configurable down to sub-millimeter scale. It works anywhere. It does anything. And the people who maintain it — and you can be one with a small amount of effort — actually welcome advice and refuse money. Ubuntu’s main goal? To be available in every language, even if there are only 100 speakers, and to support any old hardware, even if it’s twenty-year-old crap that the Salvation Army is throwing in the trash. And to rock while doing it.
It’s one of my basic rules of computing: you can pay for shit, or you can get great stuff for free. I’ll share my other rules later. In the meantime I’m going to finish [description of illegal activity redacted] on Windows, then boot off my CD-ROM and go back to a grownup’s operating system.
I’ll see you on the other side.
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February 2nd, 2009 at 21h12
Those are probably the best metaphors of operating systems I’ve read in a while. You hit the nails on their respective heads.
Reminds me of an article I read with an extended metaphor of Vista as a housewife who gives you the best sex you’ve ever had, then wakes up before you and starts making you breakfast, and when you come downstairs and try to help out, she slams you against the wall and starts choking you.
Or something like that.
February 3rd, 2009 at 01h04
[...] giving up some stuff in fleeing Redmond. Like any abusive relationship, it wasn’t all bad. There are some things I’ll [...]