Going #! Full-time, wish me luck!

@FSM, I quit dual booting back around the Ubuntu Hardy era, and the only thing I miss about windows really is the cigarette breaks between virus scans, and virus updates. The kids have always had the playstations, and wii's, and what not for gaming, so that was never something I relied on the PC for, cides recently getting hooked on that damn frozen-bubble. I been using Statler only on both my laptop and desktop now for hmmmm, I lost track LOL, but I cant see any distro coming along any time soon to change that, and Ive tried em all.

As far as blogs go, good luck they are just as addicting as games. I been running a site since 1998-1999, and around 2004 changed to a blog style (wordpress), out of ease of use, and not having a whole lot of time really. Now I find it hard to set aside time to really do it justice, but I cant imagine not having it. But Ive learned so much from people who take the time and blog about there linux, and program experience, and from great forums like this one, and the mepis forums are cool too. I cant wait to read about your ordeal your about to go through, but I doubt your gonna miss windows at all. Good luck.

Thanks!

I appreciate your input, at the moment I've just installed Statler, and am running through my first apt-get update & upgrade. After that its time for installing the video drivers by hand, and then the real fun begins.

I've always attached myself to PC gaming because its where I started, when i /didnt/ have playstation etc, and my parents would have rather spent money on a PC than on a console. At any rate, i'm not completely cutting myself off from gaming, i just want to limit myself to casual games which i can just play for an hour or half hour and feel satisfied, not something where I say 'oh, just one more quest... one more minute... oh just let me do this...' and suddenly two, three hours are gone. Theres nothing wrong with games being put in the same category as TV and movies, if they serve the same function. It's those games that withold pleasure, or deal it out small bits at a time to keep you playing that aren't good. World of Warcraft is a perfect example of a game that you need more than an hour of play time to feel like you've done something. But much like watching tv, if you spent 5-7 hours playing WoW, at the end of the day, what do you have to show for it? Difference is, with TV you'll usually feel like you've done nothing, whereas WoW makes it feel like you did some work... only you have nothing to show for that work.

On the topic of blogs being addicting and slowing work, It won't be that way for me. I'm using wordpress too actually, its quite nice, but my definition of 'work' or productivity may be a bit different. Time well spent is either spent: creating art (either 2D or 3D, or learning more about the programs), coding or learning new things about coding, and writing, learning new styles of writing, oh and of course learning more about linux. The blog i categorize as time well spent, as long as it keeps me on track and helps others, as the blog is directly about what i mentioned above. And really, with any of the above, if i say to myself, 'what did i do today?' i have concrete things i can say 'look what i made' or 'look what i learned', something gaming has never been able to do.

I will probably split the coming weeks into blog segments, maybe two or three segments over the week, hopefully it'll help people who also want to switch over. Something like 'Segement 1: Install and Setup' 'Segment 2: The first week' 'Segment 3: The end of the first month', and then maybe a revisit later (perhaps once school starts up again for me in September).

I've been Windows free personally many times but I always have to use Windows at work. On the dual boot front, I never dual boot. I have enough trouble keeping track of my documents and programs on one partition, let alone two or more. Enjoy the purity of a Linux only experience.

Gimp is pretty sweet once you get the hang of it, also don't forget MTpaint, it comes in handy too. Also if ou get in a bind http://www.pixlr.com/ can sometimes be good.

Sounds dramatic. I cannot remember ever having used anything different from Linux/*BSD. So I wouldn't know what to write about. My all-day computer experiences? Nothing exciting to speak about.
But wait, there is some wisdom I could share. If you see Windows as just another window-manager or desktop environment (which it is not of course, but modern DEs are successful in hiding this fact from you), then you probably notice, that habits don't neccessarily change just because you use another DE.

Concerning technical problems with distro #1: You can always hop over to distro #2.

Thanks for the luck guys and corenomial, #! is probably the best distro to go fulltime with, less awesome distros would have a harder time winning me over
And I used #! on my old laptop for about half of last year, with no windows in site. I had windows on my desktop, but for a good 8 hours i was at school with only my laptop, and being a CIS student... it gets used a lot. So i'm comfortable with #!... really the only bugs i have right now are slightly flaky wireless access (which may just be my router, going to wicd helps... though it might be different now too, cause i dont have windows connecting and interfering lol), but that problem isnt an issue right now because im using a wired connection. And my sound won't switch over from speakers (i.e. if i plug in headphones, i still get sound out the speakers as well). Which isn't a big issue right now, but once school starts it may be a problem. Anyways, i'm off to install a whole slew of programs, thanks for the support

I suppose it all depends on what you need to do. This main box has been Linux-only for the past several years and I haven't once wished I could boot up into Windows. Maybe specialists of various kinds need software that's unavailable for or more difficult to use on Linux. I've got a partition of W98 on an old laptop, mostly so I can check website design compatibility with Internet Explorer, but with Wine even that's not really necessary...

Basically, anything is possible

#! full-time is best.
With respect - may I suggest - do not think too much.

Yes these web services are pretty good for a final check that no bugs have slipped by, but note you have to wait 3 minutes (edit: make that 27 min!) to get the results. If you're tweaking a css file you want to get some instant feedback on what kind of mess IE is making of it...

Last edited by johnraff (2010-06-08 05:40:26)

It was 27 min to get the screenshot for IE4. I only asked for 4: IE4, 6, 7 & 8. The other three came in in 3min or so. But if you're hacking on a file and checking the result you need instant feedback. Anyway IE is available with Winetricks or IEs4Linux so it still isn't really necessary to have a Windows installation.