OSs I’ll never buy
I’ve have a (short) list of (consumer electronics) brands that I would never buy. Somehow these companies are always trying to box people, and feed them their tie-ins. Sony is first on that list. Quite often I like the design, but I’ll never buy anything Sony. Microsoft, unsurprisingly. I’ve been using their crappy stuff for fifteen years, since it’s pretty hard to be in the software industry and not have to use their stuff. Dell is there (nothing says ‘corporate’ better). But also elitist brands like B&O. (B&O is not design, Ikea is design.)
Recently, Apple has joined that list. Love the design, hate the arrogance. This is unfortunate, though, because that leaves me with very little choice regarding OS, when I upgrade my little company’s hardware next year. Theoretically, there is still an abundance of choice between every single flavour of Unix and Linux. But those scare the shit out of me. At home, I’m the administrator. If my wife’s computer is unable to connect to the internet, I have to fix it, preferably within the hour. (Yeah, I’m whipped:-) On a Windows box I know my way around, and on a Mac it’s just dead easy. But Linux is the great unknown for me, even if it’s called Ubuntu. But since it’s increasingly difficult to run a copied version of Windows (and twice that being a company), I’m left with no choice.
I’m going to install Ubuntu on my old iBook first, and see how that works out. I figure, if I can run it there, I can run it anywhere. I read in a comment by Mark Pilgrim that the current version (Dapper Drake) does not support my Airport Card, so I may have to wait for the next version to come out, which is somewhere in october. Thankfully, at the moment, Ubuntu is quite the hype. Which is off course why I chose that particular distro:-) It also means that documentation on how to do things is going to get better fast. From what I’ve read, it’s the most user-friendly Linux ever. If my move is unsuccessful, I can always become a farmer.
Update [28/08/06]: I may have to reconsider buying a Dell instead of a Lenovo. Research by Greenpeace suggests Dell is much, much greener. I’d rather be boring but green, than funky but mean!
