[plug] Frustration

[Brad Campbell]

On 20/09/12 10:06, Onno Benschop wrote:
> On 7 September 2012 12:45, Brad Campbell <brad at fnarfbargle.com <mailto:brad at fnarfbargle.com>> wrote:
>
>     Sometimes I wonder why I stick with Linux....
>
>
> Hi Brad, just came back from some technology free leave and I saw the subject of your email among 
> the deluge.
>
> I've removed your tale of woe, since it mirrors mine - albeit different hardware and software 
> combinations. I came to the same exclamation as you did and then I went sideways to go forwards. I 
> love Linux, it gives me stuff that I now take for granted, tools that make me more productive, the 
> ability to fix stuff at a low level if I have the need, but sometimes I used to spend more time 
> fixing my desktop than I did earning money.
>
> I'll preface this with, "This may not be a solution for everyone, but for me it has changed my life."
>
> In brief, I run Ubuntu inside a VMware Fusion container on a MacBook Pro 17".
>
I can see the value in that. I run quite a few KVM based VM's depending on what I'm doing. When I 
upgraded my old 2006 Mac Mini to the iMac I passed the Mini on to my mother. She had been running an 
XP laptop for years, so I migrated her XP install across to the mini in a Virtualbox VM. As she gets 
used to the Mac her usage pattern moves from virtualised to native. Eventually the only thing she'll 
need the XP VM for is MYOB.

I have clients that specify precise versions of office, so I have XP VM's with office 2003, 2007 & 
2010. I run up the VM in the background and rdesktop into it. This gives me cut and paste without 
worrying about special guest extensions. I do the same thing for Autocad, Google sketchup and 
various bits of software required to configure/use some of the hardware I test as part of my day 
job. It also means I can move the VM between my desktop and laptop and the only thing that changes 
is the screen size.

I have thought about using OSX as my primary desktop OS. I know lots of people do and are very happy 
with it. As I get older I seem to be less interested in having to do the work to make stuff usable 
rather than just using it, so at some point I'll get sick of having to hack the kernel and userspace 
and just move to a pre-packaged solution. Until then I suppose I'll slowly code less and complain 
more :)

Regards,
Brad
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plug.org.au/pipermail/plug/attachments/20120923/ab437a8e/attachment.html>