Weblog entry:
- Application Dependency
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After reading Adrian Holovaty’s interview at zlog, I got to thinking yet again about how nice it would be to switch over to Linux. I’ve got a dual-boot Windows 2000/Red Hat 8 machine at home, and a dedicated Linux box here at work. In the little time I’ve spent on Red Hat, I’ve come to realize that KDE offers a much stronger, enjoyable desktop experience than anything Microsoft’s engineered, and all without the added inconvenience of dealing with the snafucation that is the Windows registry. But other than a little experimental tinkering (installing Synaptic and building Firebird have been the extent of my efforts…well, the successful ones, anyway), I’ve left the Linux installations largely alone.
The reason? I’m dependent on too many Windows applications.
No, wait — that’s not quite it. I’m just too damn lazy to learn a new workflow. My lack of ability to pick up either the GIMP or Kate (or even vi, for crying out loud) is not a reflection of the quality of those tools or their interfaces, but is instead largely because I’m stuck in a rut: a rut that’s been good to me, a rut that’s formed around applications like Photoshop and HomeSite. I’ve become addicted to the hotkeys I’ve set up in those two applications, to the little idiosyncracies in their UIs that I’ve initially hated (and then learned to live with). The thought of doing it all over again (and in an OS I know nothing about) is a tiring one, at that. It’s frustrating that something so very small and is keeping me from something that I know I’d enjoy learning…
Bah. See? Lazy. I just need to motivate, and convince myself that I’d be moving to something better. Any suggestions?
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- 27th day of August 2003.
- Filed under Web, Usability.
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