Content tagged gnu

A Fond Farewell

So for the last few weeks I've been exclusively using GuixSD on my X200s. It's been an interesting experiment, and there are a good many things I really liked about the system. For now, though, I am going back to Parabola.

Note: I have contributed translations to the Elementary OS project and have been an active Patreon supporter since April 2018. I don't think of myself as particularly biased, but it's best to mention these things

Summary (For Those Who Don't Want to Read)

I like Elementary OS. It does plenty right and offers a minimalist system with decent keyboard control, a healthy environment which encourages users to invest in developers, and it largely keeps out of my way while offering the power of Ubuntu under the hood. The system is not without its bugs (which I expect to see ironed out as reports come in), and there is still a little too much in the system for my liking personally. However, the vision of Elementary has been realised no clearer than in this release. I won't be covering everything in this post, just some initial thoughts and reactions. See the official release notes for a better technical rundown.

This post is more of a rant than anything technical. In fact, it's more of a moan born of recent frustrations. Nevertheless, this is my website. Where better to moan?

I've recently started a new job working for a software company. My day-to-day work mostly includes rifling through SQL databases and making changes as well as searching for causes of issues faced by customers. This job has me using a work-issued MacBook Air and a copy of Windows 10 running in a virtual machine. It's the setup used by every employee of the company bar one tester, who gets to use GNU/Linux.

I hate this.

For the past couple of weeks I've been trying out new things. New to me, anyway. And as you might expect, I'm really bad at them. Let's talk about that!

I have lived a Windows-free life for a good long while now, using the OS only at work and leaving my home setup free of Microsoft’s influence. However, with the upcoming shift to Windows 10 in my place of work (which I will be helping to develop) and my need to study PowerShell and Hyper-V for my 70-410 exam, I decided to bite the bullet and once again load Windows 10 Professional on to my machine. This is nothing more than a brain dump of my experience on returning. Let it be known that I do not hate Windows as many Linux enthusiasts do; indeed, I’ve been very impressed with many of the advances that Microsoft has been making across their product lines. However, my experiences with it have been patchy at best.