Why I don't do Windows

Basically, it's because I'm extremely selfish and spoiled.

I have been using unixen at the university since 1993 and at home on various computers since 1994. So I'm used to unixen (GNU/Linux in particular), and I like them. Windows is a foreign environment to me, and that makes it difficult to use efficiently, again: for me.

If you've never used anything but Windows, it may be hard to imagine that using it can be inefficient. The best way I can conjure up an image of how it feels, for me, probably is: Picture yourself with one arm tied behind your back, trying to get work done while sitting at a desk. That's how I feel if I don't have a friendly flavour of unix to work on.

Obviously work-environment is very important. If you don't have a decent chair, your back hurts. If you don't have a decent desk and a reasonable keyboard, your arms and hands hurt. If you don't have a sufficiently good monitor, your eyes hurt. If I don't have a (to me) friendly operating system, my mind hurts.

Bad work-environment leads to bad performance - not achieving what could have been be achieved during any given amount of time.

So: I'm not religious about operating systems and I do not hate Windows. I just don't want to use it, or develop for it. The net makes it much easier for people to use the systems they prefer, instead of having to use the same system as the next guy. That's cool.

Oh, yeah - some people think that unixen (and GNU/Linux) are old and backwards and use text only. It's far from true. If you want eye-candy, you can get it. If you don't, you can chose not to. The abundance of Free Software available for unixen involves a lot of - yup - freedom.