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Can a Linux man survive in Windows Land?

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Edvard:
According to a TechNewsWorld post, around the same time that Ash Pringle dove into Linux for a week, Kevin dean at Monochrome Mentality was doing the opposite:
I'm going to give Windows Server 2008 a spin on my personal computer for the next week or so, full time.
...
So, in the next week or so, I'll be trying to use my computer and relearn a whole new way of doing things. Just as new Linux users balk at the changes, I'm sure I will, and in the process I hope to learn a little bit more about what I use my computer for, what I depend on and what flexibilities I have.

--- End quote ---

The Beginning
The Windows Seat - Day 0: BIOS
The Windows Seat - Day 0: Virtualization and Bitness
The Windows Seat - Day 1: Shutdown
The Windows Seat - Day 3: Interfaces

A little less reading, and a little less entertaining, but informative nonetheless.
The last one was posted on Jan. 2 so I'm hoping there will be more forthcoming...

How the hell I got to this from Fox News, I'll never know... and WTH was I doing at Fox News??

f0dder:
Heh... "Day 0: BIOS".
The biggest thing that strikes me about the Windows/Linux split is that Linux doesn't ever assume anything about hardware. Sure, it does assume that you're on the right architecture and that you have some way to give the PC information. It doesn't, however, expect you to have a certain BIOS version, a certain graphics card, a special TPM module or the like.

Linux developers learn to deal with the quirks of each system. The odds are that my system really WAS not compliant with ACPI but Linux never complained. It didn't deny me permission to install until it was.
--- End quote ---
Linux might not "assume" anything about your graphics card, but you still do have to be careful when picking one if you want proper hardware acceleration. And it might not keep you from installing on a system with b0rked ACPI implementation, instead you'll risk random crashes or motherboard devices not working (been there, done that).

Anyway, sleep time - I'll read the rest tomorrow :)

ilyag:
My suggestion for Linux people (though it's unrelated to what the author of the article cares about): try Cygwin (www.cygwin.com). If you have 2GB free, just install everything. After installing,
immediately do: mount -c /

You'll have all the tools you can imagine without the need to install anything more. (Of course, if you are seriously
needing X, it might be worthwhile the native windows port of X, but the difference is usually minimal) If you copy
the .stuff files from linux, you'll also have all the settings you are used to.

For me, this obviates the need for linux, though your mileage may vary. Of course, the other alternative is virtualization,
but I never tried that, so I  can't compare.

Deozaan:
Why would you pick Windows Server 2008 for your personal computer? Nobody uses that on their personal computer.

urlwolf:
I'm considering server 2008 for my personal computer  :Thmbsup:

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