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Why did you convert?

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LorKorub:
I started on Mandrake Linux 8.0 about a year ago, after cruising through K-Mart one day when I was buying some new fishing gear, and saw it sitting in the "Blue Light Bin."  I figured, "$20???  Why, not?"  So, I fired it up on a dual boot with $hitblows 2K, and made my first attempt at Linux.

As much as it pains me to say it, I didn't give it a long enough shot. I was working on an MIS degree at the time, and at UNLV, Linux was next to alien in the bullshit classes I was taking, which were basically all M$ oriented.  So the work I was doing was all done on $hitblows, and I lacked both the time and motivation to really get going on it.

Low and behold, I suddenly realized that college made me smart.  So, with this new-found intelligence, I did the smart thing by moving out to Cali, and switching my major to Computer Programming.   After one day in class when a substitute teacher of all people, steered me into SuSE 8.0, I ingested his praises toward it, and went down to Com(mie)pUSA and shelled out the $80 for it.

Best $80 I've spent in my life (and I've spent money on a lot of "good" things...if you catch my drift...)

With my exposure to the world of programming, you can't ask for a better tool.  An entire, open source OS, written in C (not like that M$ monkey-language Visual Bull$hit), that I can dick around with, and pick at.  I have been on it for about two solid months, now, and I learn something new everyday. Not to mention that you get GNU for free, and, if you are going to be taken seriously as a programmer anywhere, you had better learn to compile on UNIX based systems.  

There are other factors that have kept me away from M$.  Articles I read, stories I hear, etc.  The more I hear about them, the less I want to do with them.  I never bought any of their products, and I never will. I consider myself a victim of their oligopolistic tactics, and I try my damndest to break free.

So, with that said, I am never going back to M$. Linux keeps improving and improving. Someday, hopefully when I finally finish school, I would like to contribute to the open source community. It would be my pennace for being a M$ slave, and walking down the only road provided. Sooner or later it will be lights out for M$. When huge companies that serve government contracts ,like Grumman Northrop and TRW, opt for Red Hat Linux, you know that it is only a matter of time before the Ace of Spades is shown on a good hand. That old saying, "The bigger they come, the harder they fall" is timeless....

badkarma:
My conversion was actually non voluntarily (spelling?). I got a job as a programmer, and our shop only uses linux, so that left me with little choice (but I have no regrets, been working here for about a year and am a happy linux user   )

choasmaster:
then your programing shop got it right. windows is not a good programing environment.

choasmaster:
another reason why i like opensource software is the optimization that i can do just by pharking with the makefile

badkarma:

quote:Originally posted by choasmaster:
then your programing shop got it right. windows is not a good programing environment.
--- End quote ---


that's a pretty big understatement .... I couldn't imagine ever programming under windows again (even if I had to program for windows I'd just use a cross platform toolkit and the mingw cross compiler ... work under linux, compile for windows on linux)

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