Ok, obviously I’ve lost my mind. But, I’ve got two things to report with Windows Vista and Microsoft in general that now allow me to feel a bit better about my move back to the darkside.

1) I was listening to a podcast (Windows Weekly) which was talking about some of the new initiatives Microsoft was making. The key one that caught my ear was their move to opening more of their APIs! Well, that may not be “Open Source”, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction! They are a for-profit company, so I certainly don’t expect them to open their source, but open APIs are a step toward a more conformed marketplace. Conformity is good when it comes to computers. I prefer to use the term “Standards” but it is what it is.

2) Symbolic Links! No shit! There are symlinks in Vista! This has to be the #1 feature that bothered me about Windows ever since I discovered the wonders of Linux. Symlinks are such a useful feature and have been in use in the *nix world for SO freakin long! It really bothered me that Windows did not have this functionality. Especially since it was such a trivial thing to implement! But, now it’s here! I discovered it thanks to a post on the How-To Geek. Here’s the gist! Oh, and you have to run the command window as Administrator.

C:\Users\username> mklink
Creates a symbolic link.
MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target
       /D      Creates a directory symbolic link.  Default is a file
               symbolic link.
       /H      Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
       /J      Creates a Directory Junction.
       Link    specifies the new symbolic link name.
       Target  specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link
               refers to.

I’ve posted this how many times before? So, I will spare the details. The only new revelation is I know why people love Vista. Unfortunately, I also know why people hate it…

So, yeah. Here I am back on the Darkside… Anyone want to start a poll for how long it will take me to get fed up and switch back to Linux? ;)

So, you salivating over Vista because it’s pretty? I don’t blame you one bit. Just before I finally became fed up with Microsoft (again), I was salivating over Vista too! I was totally willing to overlook the poorly thought out security enhancements. I will still admit they are on the right track with the whole running at the user level thing. But, seriously, with all the great examples of how it’s done in Linux and BSD, you’d think they could have stolen that code and made something a bit worthwhile. Mac OSX implements this perfectly — it is a BSD OS, but still.

Anyway, then I came to my senses after hearing about Windows 7, the little stealth update stunt that Microsoft pulled, and of course their desire to move toward subscription based revenue for Windows products.

I was a bit distraught. Happy to be back on Linux of course, but sad that XOrg hadn’t really made any leaps and bounds since I last saw it. No alpha transparency still!? Come on! Or so I thought. A friend of mine turned me on to the Beryl Project. Last night after a bit of fiddling I got it installed. It looks to be a gtk app, and thus built for Gnome, but it does work fine in KDE, and no real annoying inconsistencies.

If you are running Linux as your main desktop and you haven’t checked out Beryl, you must! It brings the pretty GUI to the Open Source community! So far no problems with it crashing, or getting along with KDE! Just had to give them a plug and a thanks!