I love Linux; really, I do

For a while now, I have been posting a number of rants that explain why it is I use Windows XP instead of Linux today on my desktop.

I have decided to no longer post these kinds of rants. I have made my decision; my desktop now runs Windows XP. [1] This does not mean I hate Linux. It's an excellent server OS and embedded OS.

My primary concern right now is not what operating system I use on my computer.

My primary concern is to find a good job in California and to be closer to my family and make good money again. If my 14 years of using Linux can help me do this, great. If I get a job as a .net developer or Windows sys admin, great. If I completely leave the tech industry and get a job as a professional translator or teaching ESL, great.

I think working on Deadwood and getting MaraDNS 2.0 out the door may help me accomplish this goal. Even if not, I have a lot of free time because of my current work situation (part-time work, with a lot of dead time between translations and when the computers are just happily humming along), so it gives me something to do that is more productive than, say, arguing on Slashdot. [2] And, hopefully, something that helps people and makes the world a slightly better place.

I was listening to CNN recently, and they were talking about how a lot of people unemployed because of the crisis are doing a lot of volunteer work to pass the time and help people. Deadwood and MaraDNS 2.0 is my volunteer project during this economic downturn.

- Sam

[1] I have a CentOS 5 VMware virtual machine I use for Deadwood/MaraDNS development. I also have a CentOS 5 Linux partition I boot into for 64-bit testing and to use as a music player to listen to music at night every now and then. I can't use it for much more because my hardware isn't fully supported, even though I did buy a Linux laptop.

[2] Slashdot was a big time sink for me back when I was a Linux fanatic. I would spend hours on Slashdot instead of doing useful things like work on open-source projects. One of the reasons I have spent a lot of effort justifying my decision to use Windows XP on the desktop is because I was justifying, to the person I was a decade ago, why I made this decision.