(I posted this on Slashdot tonight and thought it was worth sharing.)

I did two major things last week:
1. I quit smoking
2. I quit Windows

The two have nothing to do with one another, but I can tell you that replacing a machine which had been running Windows for over two years certainly tested my new non-need for nicotine.

Tribes2 came from tuxgames, and I no longer work at Eudora. I don't really need Windows anymore. So I wiped my big, fast SCSI drive and threw Linux on it. No more using the tinier and slower drive in dual boot when I want Linux. I'm going to have an actual uptime on my main, daily-use machine. And now the only Win32 machines in the house are my wife's.

I've been using Linux since 1994 (Slack, even) and I'm pretty familiar with it. I have a couple machines at home that run Linux (including a gateway built from the Linux Router Project's stuff that has no hard disk). I'm confident when working with Linux, and I use it at work. I don't really like Windows all that much and I've been wanting to dump it for years. Yet it was a hard decision to leave Windows completely.

What games will I be giving up? Will there be some new killer app I cannot run? Can I live with Samba for all my non-Linux connectivity? Will all my USB stuff work? Will the latest CVS snapshot Voodoo5 drivers be better than the six month old Win32 ones? Will they work at all? How will I update my BIOS now that they pack them in Win32 self-extracting EXEs? How's WINE doing these days? Can I get drivers for my old Canon laser printer?

I think things are fine. I've got stunnel doing cool things, and ssh port forwards for my mail. Opera runs like a champ, and I can get pix out of my digital camera. I'm thinking of installing GNUCash. I feel comfortable for the first time in years. It's like being home again. I wrote a shell script that did absolutely nothing, just because I could.

But if the decision to completely switch was hard for me, it must be really, really hard for the casual user. I can't imagine what a new Linux user would do. ("I have to link a GLU DRI to what .so thingy where? Huh?") I think it would be nearly impossible for the average/new Linux users to make the switch.

So we need WINE. We also need native ports. It's a very tough question. I can tell you that the people like me won't support Lokigames -- there aren't enough of us. But if we rely on WINE to run all our non-ported apps, MS (or someone) will work on breaking the implementation, just like what happened to AIM and Samba. I'll deal with either WINE or a native port (ports preferred), but if the goal is new Linux users then games aren't where the answer is. Ask anyone with Mac OSX to burn a disc and see what they think of Unix. The interface to the OS needs significant ease-of-use changes.

I know a lot of you were curious about what my "office" looks like, so I hacked up this quick page to show you (and give you some thoughts on the matter of my new work environment). Below is a grab from the office cam someone here set up.



That's me over in the corner, doing what I do. I've got my backpack and coffee on the right,and a sweater and a book on the left. Sitting to my right is Jim, a networking guy extraordinaire, and on his right you can see Scott Kennedy's (our fearless leader) knees. The population of the Beanbag Room in this photo is four people, which is a light load.

As you can see, I've stategically placed myself on a beanbag over in the corner, next to Beanbag Mountain. This is a simple yet essential trick to ensure that I don't have others being nosy neighbors. After all, Robert Frost was right (good fences making good neighbors, and all that), and I like to do things to keep honest people honest whenever I can. My philosophy on this matter was inherited via the Collective Unconsciousness, and I am far from being alone in this way of thinking. It's not that anyone has anything to hide, it's just a subliminal need for a little privacy (except for the gent under the cam -- you can see his laptop screen in the lower portion of the image -- who didn't know about the new office cam until about twenty minutes ago and has since moved). I think. When in Rome...

It's actually not that uncomfortable, except for four things:

1. If you want to write stuff down (using paper, even!), there's really no flat, hard surface to use except for the top of the laptop. That makes it difficult, as you could imagine, to refer to what is on your computer screen as you write.
   
2. My shoulders and wrists hurt more at the end of the day than they would otherwise. I think this is due to equal parts beanbag and laptop use.
   
3. The vinyl on a beanbag is a perfect medium for the storage of microbes, since it's fairly impervious to water and other fluids. If someone who's feeling a little less than fresh sneezes on a beanbag, the sneeze goo will remain on the beanbag for some time, unabsorbed and waiting for the tender embrace of your skin. The upshot of this is that people here don't grouse about sick time being taken. It gets taken quite a bit. This has a tertiary upshot of telecommuting being an acceptable alternative to further speading the bugs about the office.
   
4. I've noticed that prolonged periods of beanbagedness produce a certain, how does one put it delicately, "butt juice" between one's trousers and the surface of the beanbag. It occurred to me that I might not be the only person who has experienced this phenomenon. It would then follow that this residual butt juice would remain unabsorbed (see #3 above). Since one is most fresh in the morning, and has not yet produced any personal juice with which to saturate one's clothing, the first seating in a "pre-owned" beanbag would be the time at which one's trousers would best absorb the previous owner's leavings. I don't know what this means from a pharmacological standpoint,but the thought of spending the bulk of the day in a perfect vector for another's flora and fauna is unsettling nevertheless. I wash my hands quite a bit, and the undercarriage gets a good scrubbing at shower time.

As an added bonus, I've also set up a quick-and-dirty email beanbag color bounceback process. Simply send mail to and you'll get a message back stating the color of my beanbag du jour. Fun stuff, no?

Argh, matey! This here is the news. It's just a test, so don't get all hot and bothered that there's no news here yet.