OR "Farewell Windows, You've Been A Fine Punching Bag"
[size=7px]Warning this may yet be my longest rant in the history of being a member of this board!!![/size]


Hi everyone! I just wanted to let all of you guys know of the huge challenge I'm going to partake in over my holiday trip back home. Windows for me has been a bit of a love-hate relationship since Windows 3.0.[size=9px](I've actually held an original disk copy of 2.0, but lets not talk about my authentic 5.25" Borland Turbo C 2.something floppies )[/size] When I start to think of operating systems I go way back to my first OS[size=9px](technically it could be considered LOGO since I was first learning how to program simple quiz games in grade 5, OR AppleTalk and HyperCard in grade 6 and then there was Turing in highschool which was a University of Toronto based project to make an even simplier language for students to learn proper programming practices; Yes Pascal could be evil too.)[/size] DOS. Oh it was great! A command to do this and a command to do that, loved it. Never thought it could get better. But wait... Whats this? A visual enviroment for PCs that closely resembled a Macintosh?[size=9px](You have to remember that all of this was new back then)[/size] No way!!! Installed it, ran it fell in love with the concept even with all of its vast many flaws. Heck, back then if Windows crashed all you had to do was close the damn thing, if it didn't already do so itself, and type "win" to get it back up and running. Remember OS2[size=7px](by IBM)[/size]? Yup... it was aroud here that it was still well known. I guess IBM realized that Microsoft had pulled their underwear over their heads. Day late and a dollar short I guess.

Around this time Turbo Pascal 7 was my compiler/language of choice and I was primarily a DOS programmer. Protected Mode Memory management was a bitch. :? Funny thing is I never really played with Borland Pascal 7[size=9px](the latest version of the DOS-based Pascal compilers from Borland)[/size] until after I had discovered Delphi. Go figure. Well soon after followed Windows 95[size=9px](wow a visual based operating system)[/size]. What a peice of... well... "work" that was. Install, crash, reboot, crash, install, crash, etc, etc... This is where the hate part comes in. It took a good few versions to get the Blue Screen of Death to eventually not show up ALL THE TIME. I'm supprise I managed to stay sane for the next 3 or so years. It was around this time, I believe[size=9px](oh, so long ago)[/size] that I had first heard of Linux. Oh neat whats that, I asked my friend. It's a new Free Operating system that is based off of UNIX, but is open source. Open source, I asked?[size=9px](This was all so new a concept to me back then)[/size] He told me a bunch of the features, etc and told me the bad news. Lack of hardware support. "Patch of the week" OS it was dubbed by some. Nothing I wanted to get my feet wet in yet.

Well soon there after is was indeed time for a change of sorts, Windows 98! Hmm... a bit more stable, but still had it's Blue Screen moments. It was around this time or closer to the Windows 98 SE release that I had discovered Delphi. Now I was programming! At this point I was actually starting to think, "Hey Windows is actaully pretty darn neat"... well in a Borland way of seeing it, it is. Everything decending from each other, TForms, TObjects, TControls, TButtons, etc... Object Oriented Programming at it's best. I bought a huge 3000 or so 'Delphi 3 VCL Super Bible' to go with my copy off Delphi 3. Soon enough Windows 2000 came about based on the infamous Windows NT stability claim and code. It wasn't that bad. Some few fustrated moments, but overall a huge improvement over all other existing versions, though many would argue that point. Windows ME was junk. I tried it myself hated it. Memory leaks galore. However the eye-candy was nifty.

Around this point I believe Delphi 4 and 5 had come out and Borland recently had a change of heart and renamed it's company's name to Inprise[size=9px](so the stories that I've read tell it that way)[/size]. There was this one seminar on the latest a greatest new thing to come around Kylix[size=9px](Delphi for Linux, shame on you if you didn't know that already! )[/size]. Wow, Delphi for Linux! How could I resist. I went to the seminar I sat as saw in amazement as he did exactly the same things that I had been doing for the last few years in Windows on a Linux machine. It was incredible! I mean I had known about Linux before and all the neat GUIs that came with it, but that it was at this level where non-rocket scientists could use it. Wow! This is where I first contemplated changing over. If only it weren't for all of those neat programs that I'd be missing. Being not too far off as it is today, alot has changed. Linux is getting to be more mainstream[size=9px](in the sense that Linux distros are getting closer to the point where the average user will be able to use it like they do Windows)[/size] and with such RAD tools as Kylix, it wouldn't be long. We litterally are standing at the brink of a cross-platform computer world soon enough. Linux will be in and Windows out, eventually. Or at the very least not the end-all-be-all of the OS market.

Delphi 6 and 7 were released in a quicker period of time than any other compiler had been in such a long while along with Kylix 2 and 3. Now that is Borland pushing the envelope for sure. All we need is for programmers to take hold of this bold new move and get cross-platform compatable. I myself have taken a look at all of the pros cons and other stuff inbetween and have come to the same very conclusions that most people probably have over the longest time.

1) I'm sick of my system crashing and crapping out on me because a peice of my OS wasn't coded properly.
2) Windows is a pig on my resources, i know it can run faster than this.
3) Why do all of my maintenance tools(Defrag, Backup, chkdsk, etc) not cut it when my system gets all screwed up and I have to resort to a 3rd party set of software to fix my registry, file system and installed programs and services.
4) Why do I have to pay each time Microsoft remakes a new Windows out of the same old code it's been using since 95/NT?
5) Can I find programs for every single type of program that exists in Windows for Linux? And are the just as good or better. Well for the most part, yes!


So my mind is made up. I'm going to drop this bad OS like a bad habit and switch to a much better OS that is faster, more stable, fully modifible[size=9px](I loves open source )[/size] and FREE. Free to upgrade free to install and use as I wish. This is however going to mean I will be a big user of Kylix. Delphi still if the team working on wine or winex can solve that Delphi 7 issue. Other than that I'm going to be stuck to whatever is cross compatable. All my projects that I wish to continue will have to be changed over to OpenGL/OpenAL, etc and I'll be looking at everything from a Linux perspective. Unfortunately this also means that my backing of a DirectX component suite will have to be dropped too. [size=9px](Sorry, Kai )[/size] All in all it's for the best, but I will be going through some odd type changes in the process. Thank goodness for the web huh?

I thank you all for listening to my rather long rant and hope that my bold move doesn't screw up my chances to maintain my current on goings with this site and my Delphi projects.