I've been at my new job for about 2 and a half months. When I first walked in the door (this is after orientation, of course) I was given a shiny almost-new thinkpad preloaded with Windows XP. I figured, what the hell. It's been years since I've used windows on a semi-regular basis. My 98 installation at home is borked to the point where it barely boots. Linux does most of what I needed. So I figured it'd be a nice experiment.

Sidenote: I just got a OSX box a few days ago. I've had about 30 seconds to devote to it. I do intend to work with it a little more, at least try to persuade it to run tomcat/apache with whichever connector I can get to work on there. I'll probably talk about that sometime in the future.

One of my biggest frustrations with windows has to be the poor way software is installed and removed. Yes, the "Add/Remove Software" feature was great when it first showed up in Windows 95. Too bad it's 2003 now. I hate the fact that when you install a program you have very little control over what it does. Install Real? Get ready for the "tray icon that won't die". Install a 3rd party app? Maybe it'll overwrite a critical system DLL with an older version. Breathe wrong? Windows Media Player will reinstall itself.

It's also frustrating that once you install a program, you can't see what files it installed, and check on them. If you suspect that Alpo's Screensaver may have overwritten something important, wouldn't it be nice to check? Unfortunately, installation and removal of software on windows seems to be *way* behind the Mac/Linux methods.

On Linux, you have 3 ways to install software. You can install from source. A lot of applications (Netscape, Mozilla, Real, OpenOffice, etc) have installers that function much like their windows counterparts. The major exception is tho, if I install RealPlayer in /opt/Realplayer9, I know it won't put files anywhere else. So I'm comfortable with that.

The other option is a package. Usually a RPM or DEB (yeah, I know slackware has some odd .tgz package system). Installing a RPM is pretty freakin easy. Point. Click. Press the install button. It's over, but it doesn't have to be. If the package is going to overwrite something already installed, you're warned. If you suspect somethings happened to a file from an installed package, you can fire up the package manager and check on it. It's pretty sweet, when you don't abuse it.

So yeah, part of my experience with XP has been with shitty software that's dumped parts of itself all over my system. I haven't been enjoying that.

The other part is, oddly enough, media. I really dig my xine on my linux box. It plays pretty much *EVERY* format I can download(except real, but that's to be expected). It doesn't have the horrible interface that WMP has (can someone tell me how to make it look better please. A true "compact" mode perhaps). And xmms does everything Winamp 2.x does. Winamp 3.x... well... the less said about that the better.

Office applications don't really matter anymore. OpenOffice realistically does everything I need, and it's compatible with MS Office. I've been running that on XP, and been happy with that.

IE hasn't been good for a few versions now. I think it peaked somewhere around version 4. Right now both Mozilla and Konqueror (Safari to you apple volk) run rings around it. I can't figure out why people still use a browser that has no tabs and/or doesn't let you block pop up ads.

I think the myth that Linux is hard to use died a few years ago. I think it's harder to set up networking in XP than on my SuSE boxen. USB stuff is *easier* on my linux box than my laptop. I just plug it in, and it goes. On the other hand, SuSE update is slower than grandma on the parkway.

My paranoid side doesn't like XP because I know it's a squealer. Pop in a cd? WMP reports what you're listening to to microsoft. It makes it easier to target specific ads to you. Hit windows update? All your installed software is sent to MSFT. Sure, I could configure ZoneAlarm to block that stuff, but why should I have to? Can't I trust my operating system? I get enough spam as it is, I don't want my OS helping them out any.

Games really don't concern me, because this is my work laptop after all. At home, tho, I usually play Tribes 2 or Deus Ex. Both work in linux fine. Tribes is a native linux game, and Deus Ex . So that's covered. To be honest, most windows applications run pretty OK thru wine these days. Word starts faster on my Linux box than it does on my XP box. Maybe, just maybe, that's because it's not trying to reinstall MSN Messenger on the linux box when I launch it.