Hi!!!

This was my first week at the programming school and I've decided to share it here . I've started reading programming at the school since Monday. I can already program a lot (been playing with Visual Studio on Windows with DirectX and a while with Python and Pygame/PyopenGL on Linux), but it's always necessary to read it well and get the grades I need to move on (my goal is to read Computer Game Development in Sweden, so I've to start from the grounds up).

I decided to take a full-time study (40 hours week required) so I can start next year with Computer Game Development. This Monday, I've talked with my teacher. Really nice guy. On Tuesday I got all programs I need to return back at the end of the course (Visual Studio. NET and Java) and by tomorrow I might be getting 160 USD worthy of books.

Well, now I needed a Windows box. I decided to take away my Slackware OS from this machine and run solenely WinXP (it was dual boot before with win2k, but Win2k was pretty damaged, virus, missing files, etc). After a long time installing winXP, came the time to configure it. I downloaded the drivers and made all rebooting required for each and every single program I've installed. It took nearly all Tuesday. The number of problems were countless, even my sound card (an SB Audigy) had to be removed for WinXP to detect a new hardware and install the correct drivers. About the drivers, it was a big challenge too. WinXP wanted to install a lot of old generic drivers for everything, and refused to accept the new drivers (only forced installs).

After running a WinXP update and installing the 50 megas worthy of security holes + Service Packs, I was set.
I then installed all stuff necessary to feel me more "home" as installing Gaim and Vim for Windows. (1 and a half year under Linux, is hard to simply use notepad now...ghehe)

Great, I then login at the homepage of my school. Time to download the stuff to read it home. First document I tried to download a .doc. Ive tried to open it with Office 2000, but the document crashed the Office for no apparent reason. I then rebooted and it worked, for a while. Then it crashed again. I decided to take MS Office 2000 away and installed OpenOffice. I then was able to read the document.

For some strange reason, WinXP crashes amazingly often, but instead of a blue screen of death, it brings up a message saying that the system is going to reboot in few seconds and for me to save the documents. Again, for no apparent reason.

Later, I realized that this problem was related to the Explorer (again, why, I dunno, maybe the service pack made something funny or a program that I've installed). I then installed Norton Commander and Mozilla to avoid anything related to IE and Explorer.

After a while, I could get Borland 5.5 to install and, fighting a lot with odd paths, links to libraries and shortcuts, I could compile my first program (hello world... lol).

WinXP looks stable, but it feels like I'm walking drunk over a bridge. What I mean is, I'm printing out everything, I'm saving everything every 2 minutes, just as I did when I first used Win3.1. Today, after over a decade, I still have the very same fear of a sudden crash and lose my stuff. And I hear peoples saying that *nix is an old system. I wonder where and how Windows has significantly evolute since win95. Not even the desktop, apparently (well, XP did, into an ugly one). I kinda feel sad being forced to use Windows again, but I've other 3 boxes with Slackware. But it's sad that schools don't use a good system as Linux to teach programming, since all that I needed (gcc, python, perl, java) is practically in there and free, including tutorials and great help files (as the man pages). Think about the money the school would save with those expensive programs they send me and the money I could save too (my precious 160 bucks).

Today, Wednesday, I have simply got nothing done. I was so concentrated getting windows to run, that I missed the mailman knocking at my door with my books and all I've done is a helloworld.cpp and Ive a test this Friday, including a pseudo code project and 50 pages reading of the first book . Obviously, I won't have time to do it all :S

Has anybody here been forced to use Windows after a while with Linux? How does it feel? For me it feels like if I was Batman without any cool tools into my belt ...

Using windows at school is horrible. I am going to try to make them convert to linux. Every 10 minutes it crashes and I lose my work. Very interesting story. I think that we can all share a similar story.

You should write a book called "Man's Quest to understand the Windows operating system"

p.s. if you ever do write a book by that name, you should give the title credits to me.

Thanks bolinux I thought I was alone up there for a while .

I totally agree with you. At school there're some pretty old machines with win98, that's a truly nightmare. I see no point of them paying so many licenses for Win98 and Office when it all could be replaced to Linux and with better performance (specially on older machines like those). And they really do, pay for all those licenses and so does a lot of companies who barely use Office and a browser. Your signature:

"People are just ignoranant or else they would buy something better that costs less money"

really makes a lot of sense . About the book credit you'd get it for sure . I just doubt I would ever write a book. At least not in english (I clearly suck at it...ghehe), but the title you've suggested "Man's Quest to understand the Windows operating system" could turns into a cool RPG game for Linux..ghehe.

Thanks man

You don't suck at english

Will you start on that RPG?