Simple Mistakes

“I am not out to destroy Microsoft, that would be a completely unintended side effect.”
– Linus Torvalds

“If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.”
– Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ok, I'll admit it -- I'm becoming a Linux fan-boy. I'm now exclusively running Ubuntu as my desktop computer operating system. On the laptop I'm running a dual boot with Windows XP and Puppy Linux. I would abandon Windows entirely, but occasionally I'll come across something requiring VB Script or ActiveX or some other proprietary Microsoft technology. I'll admit Linux has given me a case of ADHD, because I can't stand to wait for my laptop to boot or for an application to open in Windows. That leads me into throwing out another quotation--

“It’s hardware that makes a machine fast. It’s software that makes a fast machine slow.”
– Craig Bruce

It seems as the hardware gets faster our software gets more bloated and more prone to bugs. The computer hardware available today at you local Wal-Mart is more than I could have dreamed of just 10 years ago. It still amazes me when I see advertisement for 2 Terabyte hard drives and computers with more than 6 Gigabytes of ram. These would have seemed like things of science fiction just a few years ago. What amazes me more is that multi-gigahertz, multi-core processors sometimes crawl just to run the operating system. I've heard some people claim it's a conspiracy between the hardware and software manufactures. I use to think these people were nut-jobs, but I'm really starting to wonder.

Something has to be done, and I think Linux might be the answer. Microsoft has failed to really innovate anything and I believe we might be seeing a fundemental shift in computing technology very soon. With the economy being in shambles and consumers and businesses unwilling to spend their hard-earned dollars on bigger and better hardware. I believe it's going to come down to software, and I can see Linux blazing the path here. Many organization have already changed to Linux, and many more are now seriously considering making the change. This will of course push many home users to change as well. To be continued ...