Everyone knows I hate Windows. I could list pages of reasons, but I’ve recently found myself in an unfortunate position.
I work as a web developer, and people at my job use Windows, myself and the network admin are the only ones who use linux. The people here are used to sharing Word docs, .psd (photoshop) files and other windows-centric files and having no problems. I’ve kept up with this onslaught of Windows files, and only had a couple problems. The first was that abiword can’t properly render Word docs, if text has underline and strikethrough it will only show one of them, which caused about an hour of wasted time. So I resolved to just use word on a win2k server I have an account on (set up in the first place for viewing things in IE). For win2k servers rdesktop works great, so it’s not been too much of a hassle, since all I do is view things on that box. Then recently the manager suggested I use Homesite, a Windows program used for writing HTML, since that’s what everyone else here uses. I have always pushed away from editors other than vim, but I said I might be able to use it via rdesktop if they really think it’d be a benefit. Then the other day I was sent a .psd file to start developing a website. I fired up gimp and opened the images, no errors, no problem. After creating the template for the site I noticed some interesting things that the original developer on the site had done that I didn’t see on my .psd files. Turns out that the newest Photo Shop does layering in a complex way that gimp can’t handle, I logged onto a nearby Windows box to open it and convert it to a filetype I could use and was annoyed to find that even the previous version of photoshop errored when trying to open the layers! I brought this fact to the attention of some of the people here and they said that in the future they’d send me flattened files.
This morning I found bluefish which seems to be a reasonable linux alternative to Homesite, so I am going to try working with that. So I am finding solutions, but is using rdesktop to get to a Windows box for all the other things a reasonable answer? Sadly, I barely use any linux-specific tools for my work. I love the stability of linux, I know how to use it (the last Windows OS I used full time was 98, not on a network, I don’t know how to use WinXP!), I like that my computer is fast while I multitask in linux (800 mhz, 256mb ram, it’d crawl while multitasking in WinXP, especially with programs like Photoshop running) and I like not having to worry about viruses. So where is the line drawn between the love of all things linux and the popular utility of Windows in my profession? Am I wasting more time with compatibility issues than I would be with the troubles and slowness using a Windows machine brings? I think Linux is still the lesser of two evils here, but maybe I’m just being foolishly stubborn. *sigh*
For now I’m going to continue to use linux.
Last night we headed out to the Home Depot for a few things. While we were there I wandered down the shelving aisle and came across some bookcases. Basic, but nice. So we picked a couple up, each 4 feet high, and should fit nicely in two spots in the computer room, I’ll put them together tonight.
Now I have work to do. *wanders off*