Well today wasn’t too bad. I felt better this morning. Still not great, but better still than yesterday, and certainly the day before. The only problem was my eczema flaring up. Ugh. And to think I didn’t even ahve to deal with eczema this time last year.
Other than that, I had a hell of a time working on my computer. Time for a rant...
So being a CS major, I started using Linux -- that’s the platform on which the majority of development occurs. I love Linux because I hate Microsoft’s inability to make an operating system that works, and because Linux OSes give me more freedom for customization.
Anyways, there is a plethora of Linux OSes out there. I was previously using Ubuntu because that’s the best-known system, and it’s relatively stable. That’s all well and good, but the software packages are only updated when there’s a new release of the OS -- every other year. Being that the most recent stable release of Ubuntu was in 2018, the packages are effectively a year old on that system. I found that unacceptable.
So what did I do? I switched to Fedora, one of the other “big name” Linux systems. The Fedora devs release a new version very six months, which means upgrading is going to be kind of annoying. But. their package repositories are more up-to-date, meaning my computer can stay more up-to-date. Yay for that. So we’re running Fedora now.
Installing an operating system sucks though, no matter what, because you have to start all over from square one again.
The other thing that sucks is that I dual-boot, meaning I have Windows and Linux running on the same computer, and can switch with just a reboot. Why do I have both? Two reasons:
1. Sibelius, a music notation software. I like the workflow, and the sound samples are absolutely gorgeous. Oh, and it’s a proprietary program, the license for which I paid a good bit of money to obtain.
2. PC gaming. Gaming on Linux is coming along very well, but it still isn’t perfect, meaning Windows is really the best way to go.
A Windows compatibility layer for Linux does exist, but programs don’t always run smoothly through them, if they even run, meaning they might be better off run natively on Windows. This is especially true for proprietary programs, like Sibelius and most video games.
The day that Linux is able to fully replace Windows in all aspects as a daily system is the day I dream of. That is the day I wipe the Windows partition from any computer I will ever own and run Linux 24/7 without a backward glance, because the above points are literally the only reasons I hang onto Windows. I have a music typesetting program that runs on Linux, and produces some of the most beautiful sheet music I’ve ever seen, but the MIDI files it generates sound like nails on a chalkboard, so that’s just for prints. As for gaming, well... I’m not giving that up any time soon. Ugh.
