Harper Reed's Blog

Harper Reed's Blog

Musing from a normal person doing normal things

20 Dec 2007

My battle with desktop Linux

Please note: This post was written some time ago (16 years ago). My perspectives, knowledge, and opinions may have evolved significantly since then. While the content might still offer valuable insights, I encourage readers to consider it in the context of its publication date.

Awhile ago i decided to switch to Linux on my laptop. It was awesome. I didn’t last however - a work emergency occurred and I spent more time getting the openvpn to work up and then getting the Cisco vpn to our servers going than solving the emergency problem. It was indicative that i should have eased into desktop Linux a bit more.

So I have with much sadness reinstalled windows on my primary laptop. Since i do so much of my work in Linux still - I just moved my Linux desktop home dir into vmware and rock it there.

Having to switch back made me really bummed. I wanted to use Linux full time. I use it constantly on servers and for coding, but I wanted to engage in it for everything. It is obviously very usable and compelling - but it just didn’t solve the problem I needed solved at that one very important point.

The good news is that I have another laptop that I use casually. It is a lot smaller and much more portable. And it is now my desktop Linux machine - so I haven’t given up totally. And it is a much more interesting test of the usability of desktop Linux - because Hiromi will also be using it while we travel.

So far - so good.

I will hopefully be able to figure out my VPN issues and move back to linux.