New computer on the way

[johnridley]

In pieces, should be assembling on Wednesday. Pretty much as posted previously. Went up a bit, after deciding there's no point in spending $550 on almost the best components I can get instead of $600 on THE best. Bumped up from 2 to 4 GB, faster RAM, a little faster CPU, and a little nicer case and a more efficent, cooler running power supply.

I'm going to try Windows 7. A friend at work sez he's sold on it, and he dislikes Vista too. He's USED Vista for a while so to him Win7 looked OK. I've used Vista for only a few minutes total, so Win7 looks frightening to me, but I guess I'd better get used to it.

Comments

Re: okay, i'll bite

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Because open source operating systems are more about the operating systems than about getting things done. I've long since outgrown playing with operating systems for their own sakes. The computer and OS are just tools to run software; what matters is the software.

I've spent about 13 years running Linux at work, I make my living on it, and I've tried probably a dozen times to run Linux at home. It always winds up with me spending more time screwing with the OS than getting things done. The job of the OS is to get the hell out of the way and let me do stuff. Linux is pretty but it doesn't do that.



The appeal to Windows is that I've been running Microsoft operating systems since before the Mac existed, and I know them really well. And I don't care what anyone says, one damn OS is as good as another if it does what I want it to do.

What's the appeal in NOT running Windows? I get it for free via my MSDN subscription, and I know it already. Again, it doesn't matter what OS you run; if you can get your work done, that's the end of the story.


OS X licensing forbids it being run on non-Apple hardware. The reason for this is simple; Apple is a hardware company, OS X is simply some software that runs on it.

The truth is that the machine that I'm building is every bit the equivalent of a $2600 Mac, in both performance and quality (OK, except for the cheapo case I'm using). Apple knows that, and they want to be able to keep charging $2600 for a machine that cost them $400 to build (maybe). OS X is their only leverage in this regard; they simply couldn't compete in the PC hardware market, so they forbid OS X running on non-Apple hardware.

In point of fact, the machine that I'm building will run OS X just fine; in fact with one small tweak OS X can't even tell it's not running on genuine Apple equipment.




I can only have so many learning experiences per day. Learning OS X would take me days to weeks to get fairly familiar with it at a superficial level, a few months to get intimately familiar with it. When I'm done, I'll know a new operating system. So what? I don't need to know a new operating system, it does me no good. It would be nice to put a LITTLE time into it so that I can help my friends, but I have a ton of other, more interesting and fun things that I could learn during that time.


At the end of the day, the answer is "because I don't really give a damn what anyone else is doing or what's cool, I'm just trying to get some stuff done, and this doe that."