Ordinarily I carry around two laptops. The first is a dell 700m running Windows XP, which got me though MBA school and tolerated being thrown in a satchel bag, thrown over my shoulder, jostled on my bike ride, unpacked and packed 5 times a day, and then back on the bike. The computer was a champ, and I got away without using very minimal virus software. The other is my development box, which runs Ubuntu Linux. I’ve had this for a year now, and it runs nothing but Ubuntu Linux, the same distribution that lov.li runs. This allows me to have a perfect mirror of lov.li running on my laptop, although of course the live server is a much more powerful machine.

Purists question why I need the Windows box at all, and lately, because it’s become such a pig due to

• Windows ’service packs’ which install hundreds of megabytes of code on my computer and seem only to slow it down
• Anti-virus software which intercepts just about everything that happens on the computer to make sure it’s not malicious, but in the process slows the computer to a crawl
• The viruses and spyware that make it through the antivirus software

On top of that, Microsoft has really been pissing me, and everyone else, off:

• Microsoft is talking about suing linux users for patent infringement, and acquiring patents they think linux might infringe on, and trying to sell licenses(!) to linux users. That’s just protection money.
• Windows Vista has ridiculous hardware requirements which make me think that, even with a racehorse computer, the thing will be a dog in months. This has been confirmed by my experience with Vista at the computer store - it seems to barely be able to draw the screen or load it’s own Start menu without a discouraging delay. There’s no way I’m going there.

But there are reasons I can’t work without it - in particular, a five letter word - a d o b e. I need Photoshop to do the design part of my job. Why won’t Adobe sell a linux version of Photoshop? I’d be the first in line to pay for this. They could sell a binary distribution, so there’s no reason for them to give away their source code. The code would be very similar to the Mac OS X version, since OS X is based on the same platform as linux.

A fellow PHP developer I work with has said that he estimated he lost 3 days every year keeping his Windows computer running the way he wanted it to. Mine is at least that. Since he switched to a Mac, he says he spends almost no time keeping his computer working properly.

So this is an experiment - necessity is the mother of invention. My Windows laptop is literally unusable right now, despite North Antivirus and anti-spyware software. So I am using my linux laptop for everything - email, surfing, MP3, spreadsheet, word processing. So far everything has been great - not always straightforward - but it’s always my mistake, and I know what’s under the hood of my computer, and if I don’t like it, I can change it. There’s just one thing missing.

I miss you, Photoshop.

Time to pull the Barcamp banner down from my sidebar.

Here it is, as it was. It appeared on a bunch of great blogs. I’m proud of this one - I designed this and all the Barcamp Portland logos and t-shirts. I worked hard to make it look like a tasty piece of chewing gum.

I upgraded my distro on my development laptop to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn from Dapper Drake last week, and it’s been fantastic - a real standby mode, much better WiFi support (even though the Broadcom card that shipped with my Dell has no linux drivers and I have to use the Windows drivers using ndiswrapper), and it seems a little snappier too. The Firefox it comes includes Flash 7, which is better than no flash, but not enough to watch videos on the New York Times - for that I need 8 or above. I followed the first installation method on this great page

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/flash

and am now up and running with Flash 9, watching video with sound.

My Creative Zen V Plus mp3 player arrives tomorrow, and I’ll report how well it works with Linux.

If you’re interested in getting away from Microsoft on your desktop or laptop, the time has come. Start with your last computer, the one that got slower and slower with each Microsoft Disservice Pack, virus and spyware. Header over to http://www.ubuntu.com/ and follow the instructions for turning that computer into something fun and useful again.

05-21-07_1846.jpg, originally uploaded by expatrick.

Fiona comforting megan during first contractions of her brother alex.

villains, originally uploaded by _Villains.

These are the people who distribute centOS

05-18-07_1028.jpg, originally uploaded by expatrick.

My niece, looking like a movie star.

DSC_0008.JPG, originally uploaded by Kevin Scaldeferri.

lov.li was a sponsor of Barcamp Portland - I designed the logo and arranged for ‘Just In time’ t-shirt printing on-site. Barcamp was a lot of fun, a huge success! Congrats to the organizers.