Having moved quite frequently between several different machines over the last few months, I thought I might offer some advice on how to do things on different operating systems:
Windows
- You can probably do it in several ways
- None of them will be particularly intuitive
- Some of the ways will cost you lots of money
- If it doesn’t work, getting support will cost you even more money
- At least there are an awful lot of other people who can sympathise.
Linux
- You can do anything
- It won’t cost you anything
- It will be exceedingly reliable
- It will probably be horribly complicated
- If you can’t do something, just modify the source, update your compiler, find and install a few extra packages, and recompile the kernel
- Well done! Go to a party and see if you can find anyone who appreciates how clever you’ve been.
Mac OS X
- Things on the Mac fall broadly into one of two categories:
- Things that have been done right
- Things that haven’t been done yet
- You can therefore do it easily or not at all
- If you can’t do it, just relax and go to Starbucks instead
- It probably wasn’t that important after all, man.