Lately
So, I’m sort of ashamed of myself. You see, I’ve become something of a fan of Windows 7. This sort of bothers me because, until now, I’ve been a devoted Linux user and supporter. I’ve never been a fan of general Microsoft bashing, although they’ve done plenty in the past to warrant bashing. I tend to believe in using the best tool for the job, and for me, until now, that was Linux.
Windows 7 may have changed that. I’ve been using the beta and release candidate since they were released. It has been extremely stable, looks good, and is very configurable. I love the new taskbar. It’s got all the benefits of the Mac OS X dock (few though they are) and none of the drawbacks. And it stays out of the way. For once, Windows is letting me just get stuff done.
I’m not sure what to do about this. I still love Linux. I would much prefer to be running it on my laptop. But, in Windows 7 everything “just works.” That, and I’ve gotten so used to the new Windows 7 taskbar with its jumplists and the rest that I have a hard time going back to Gnome’s or KDE’s simple taskbar. I have yet to try the newest KDE 4 update, but it’s looking better. Ubuntu’s new theme for Gnome is a definite improvement. I really dig the monochrome system tray icons. I’ll have to give them another try. For now I’ve been running a few different distributions and desktop environments in VirtualBox on my Windows 7 laptop.
To be honest though, I’m not really planning to change.