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Switching to Windows: Not as easy as you think

Posted by VISITOR on · 1 comment
Mad Penguin; By Simon Gerber
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There was a loud bang, a nasty smell (think burnt cabbage) and a lot of smoke billowed out from the hole where the CD-ROM used to be. Then Nothing. At this point, the idea occurred to me that maybe my computer was broken.

"Why not use this opportunity to try this 'Windows XP' I keep hearing so much about."

I grew up on a Unix command-line. BSD, I believe. I have dim memories of dialing up on a black and green Wyse50 terminal, sending e-mail with 'mail', reading newsgroups and playing Nethack in all its ASCII glory. I even became rather adept at vi. I was happy, ecstatic even, wrapped all snug and safe in my warm, green world of text and terminal beeps. But my friends all had 'IBM clones', and as I grew, so too did the technology. My early youth was tinged in the stark, cyan tones of CGA. My preteens were illustrated in glorious EGA, and as I came of age, so too did the startling, varied hues of SVGA. But I get ahead of myself. As a child, we did play games, primitive games, on these 'IBM clones'. Bolderdash, Centipede, Double-Dragon, Golden Axe. But no computer game could compare to the imagination of a ten-year-old boy! And so for the better part of my youth I remained shrouded by the eerie, flickering glow of scrolling text. My first experience with a 'Graphical User Interface' was an X-terminal. Then it was Red Hat Linux all the way, until Ubuntu walked itself onto my desktop nearly a year ago... and there things should have ended.

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Comments (1)

One of the hardest aspects in promoting GNU/Linux has been trying to explain to prospective new users accustomed to Windows what they are missing by staying with Windows. This is one of the first and so far the best articles I have read that does just that.

Moving from Windows to GNU/Linux is a more like changing your culture than buying a new car. You only get more out of the system by changing the way you think and approach problem solving. Consequently, the advantages of GNU/Linux over Windows are very hard to explain in terms that Windows-only users can understand.

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