I swear not a day goes by that I find some drawback on any given system. I switch back and forth between linux and windows these days mostly. Linux for all the servers, XP SP2 for most of the workstations, linux again on my laptop. And then of course macs, which I really don’t like for a few reasons. So I realized that really what I want is a frankenstien of a system, that culls the best aspects of all three systems into one badass, perfect one.

Macs are just too expensive for what you get. Plus the whole apple religion, it just seems so superficial, arrogant, snobbish and annoying that I want to have no part of it.

Linux then is wonderful, but the X-windows graphical system STILL to this day cannot produce a 2D UI that is as crisp, sharp, and easy to read as an XP machine. At least, I’ve never seen one. The fonts are always just a little “off”, a little too fuzzy, the spacing isn’t exactly right. The fuzzy fonts is another problem I have with mac displays as well. However, the design of linux itself is just hands down the best OS out there. I love the file system, the security, the stability, the open sourceness of everything, the help on the internet for it. Then things like Compiz Fusion just blow any other OS out of the water in terms of flashy eye candy.

Then XP. I like it because, unlike apple stuff, its very unassuming. There’s a reason like 94% of businesses use PC’s. They are ready to go and just get work *done* … as long as that work you want to do is in Microsoft Office. In linux to get Rails going it was just a few apt-gets. In XP, its much more involved, and just feels like you are being blocked at every turn. To even get close to unix-like command line functionality you have to use cygwin, IE fucking *blows*, etc etc.

So my perfect PC would be a combination of all three. I want a linux filesystem and OS, with its command line elegance and stability, ease of updating and upgrading and low cost. I want XP graphics capability so I can play all the games, have really nice, sharp text with all the standard fonts, and don’t forget all those proprietary drivers for every possible kind of hardware imaginable, not to mention the wealth of PC-only software. And then from apple, they have come up with a couple nice UI ideas here and there, so i’d let apple design my window manager and make it look all nice and shiny and flashy.

Oh, but it still has to work with Compiz