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A loose series of thoughts and venting on Linux, computers in general and their (ab)users.
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Blogging? Me?

Posted 08-01-2008 at 06:06 AM by bitpicker

Seems I'm not the only one who got reeled into this by the most recent newsletter. Why is it we feel compelled to start blogging all of a sudden even though some of us might never have done so before? I sure haven't.

Anyway, on the off-chance anyone is really reading this, I'm Robin from Germany. Fighting windmills as the IT scapegoat in a small German company.

One such windmill presented itself just today, so that's probably why I am using this new chance to vent.

Our company runs on Windows mostly. I have converted my own desktop to Ubuntu 7.10 and am running Win XP in VirtualBox for the three Win-only programs I need: our ERP software, Dreamweaver and Corel Draw. All other workstations are XP.

One colleague with a pretty hysterical bent took it upon himself to convert from Outlook to Thunderbird. That was a couple of months ago. But our ERP software refuses to work with TB properly; it can use TB to send mails, but those mails never end up in any Sent folder, it's as if they never existed. And you can't CC or BCC from the ERP, so to mail the same thing to more than one recipient you have to go through all the motions again for each.

Anyway, this colleague today decided he wanted to switch back. And my, did he spend the whole morning cursing. How to get the e-mails from TB to Outlook? The other way round is easy, but this? Well, we did it. And then the troubles with Outlook started.

I don't want to bore you (or myself or whatever wall I am talking to) with the details, but one thing is remarkable: while in fact we did spend more time getting Outlook to work properly than we did getting the e-mails from TB to Outlook, the noise level of my colleague's hysterics was much lower during that time. He's a perfect example of the type of user who nearly gets a heart attack about everything he can conveivably blame on Linux or open source, while staying relatively calm when having much larger and more time-consuming problems with established proprietary software.

I know the type, I have mutated into the exact opposite, I'm afraid. 18 years in the computer business, I have been a Linux convert for 5 years now. I'm running Gentoo at home and Ubuntu on my notebook, I hold courses about Linux, open source, IT security etc. (but no Windows, no, no - except to warn against it). I used to think that Windows was as good as it gets, though I was wary of XP from the start, and today I am just as convinced that it's the worst. Windows trouble always sends me screaming. I remain totally calm when rescuing completely messed up Linuxes, but format any non-working Windows at the first opportunity.

But I am trying to get a grip on it. I have my dried frog pills and am now going to stay calm, no matter what bluescreens Windows flings at me. I'm cool. Zen in the art of Windows maintenance.

Now if only my company would at last convert to Linux completely.
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