Back to Windows

There's a group of five other South Africans on the Direct3D team at NVIDIA. Bruce, Carl, Chris, Ashley and Nick have all interned in the team. So it was a kind of obvious choice to make when I had to decide which team to join.

The only thing that made me hesitate was a rather big factor. Direct3D is for Windows. That means development is also done on Windows. Those of you that know me well enough will understand just how anti-Windows I have become of late. I only switched to Linux for good little over two years ago, but since then I have only used Windows when absolutely forced to. For browsing the web I'm ok with it, so even though our honours labs used Windows I still used them when I had to. For anything else though, I used my own laptop.

Bruce, Carl and Chris are also Linux gurus so I took their advice when they said it was worth going Direct3D. If they managed, surely I would be ok. Well, I can't say I'm heading back to Windows as my OS of choice. No, certainly not. If anything my three days on XP have made me even less wanting to use it.

Thank goodness Firefox and Pidgin run on Windows. At least two applications I heavily use on Linux. What would I do without Cygwin? At least I have my Vim, Wget and all those other wonders. It isn't a Linux terminal, but it does knock some sense into Windows.

Some things that I've hit again that made me switch. No virtual desktops. While I've tried a few applications that provide this it simply doesn't work the same. I haven't found one that provdes a fast method of moving a window between desktops. Having so many applications open clutters the screen very easily and the lack of organisation is terrible. Luckily I have a good 1600x1200 monitor, which provides some compensation. Then there's the space bug. Ever put something in "C:\Documents and Settings\..." and had major issues? Yes, some applications can't handle the spaces in a path. Why then does such a major directory have spaces? Why? And the last one for now, XPs multitasking is hopeless. When one application hangs it takes the whole PC along with it. At least my dual core saves me there most of the time. One very last one -- those "Send error report" dialogs...I hate them with a passion!

Thankfully I have been able to stay away from Vista for now. Although speaking to Ilan yesterday it seems that might not be the case for very long. I'll manage, but I still far prefer Linux. At least I have my laptop to return to so I still get my dose of Linux.