So here I am with a great new job and for once I’m becoming satisfied with where I am and what I’m doing.  I’ve more or less been thrown into the flames when it comes to working in a Unix environment.  As someone who has been doing Web development for a few years as both a hobby and a career, I’m surprised it has taken this long.  I thought I’d take a minute to write about my experiences as a hardcore PC user who is quickly changing sides.

First of all, I have to say that my job is only the catalyst for the changeover.  I’ve since started developing my own site on a Ubuntu machine and love the one-on-one computer interaction over SSH.  While it is possible to transfer files via SSH on a Windows machine,  you will need programs like Putty and WinSCP to play nice with Unix.  As most Web servers are currently running on some sort of Linux OS, I was really missing out on a lot of capabilities and a general understanding of what was happening on those servers I pay for every month.   By running Windows and working purely with FTP clients, I was working with a fraction of the power I now have over SSH.

The other big pull for me was the freedom that is associated with Linux.  Linux and many of the programs available to the OS are free of charge, regardless of whether or not the machine is used for business.  Since these projects are open source, there is constant development and progress and the programs are often more intuitive and ground-breaking.  I also appreciate knowing what is going on under the hood.  I do not have a computer science degree, but as someone who was raised on a Windows machine, I appreciate being able to get my hands dirty if I need to.  Like I said, its all about the freedom.

If it were up to me, I would completely switch over to Linux and I don’t think I would look back.  My primary trade as a designer limits me on OS choice, and I still can’t give up PC games.  You’re probably thinking that I need to get a Mac.  Apple computers have a Unix OS and support all the design software in the world.  And you’d be right.  I’m coming around slowly.

I will probably have a Windows machine for the forseeable future.  I will miss gaming too much (even though that is becoming less of a pull as time flies out the window) and I will need a testing platform for various Web sites and applications.  Honestly though?  Thats about all I need it for.  I suspect I’ll be purely Unix in a few years.

I’ve always had problems with folders that start with ‘The,’ as it places the folder under ‘t’ when arranged in alphabetical order.  I’m really big into using file directories for my media, and as the computers at my work use scripts for all kinds of redundant operations, I it would be a good challenge to make one of my own.  This is pretty simple; I’ll get more in-depth with scripting as I go.

Create a new text file, copy the code into the file, and rename it to .vbs  Don’t forget to change the directories and string fields to suit your needs.  I’m not too big on VB, so I modified another script to get me started, but the search and replace functions are specific to our job (rearranging ‘the’ in the folder name).

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set oFolder = oFSO.GetFolder("z:\Movies")
RenameSubFolders(oFolder)
set oFolder = Nothing
set oFSO = Nothing

Function RenameSubFolders(myFolder)

For each oSubFolder in myFolder.SubFolders
dim pos
pos=InStr(oSubFolder.Name,"The ")
If pos = 1 Then
oSubFolder.Name = Mid(oSubFolder.Name, 5) + ", The"
RenameSubFolders(oSubFolder)
End If
Next

End Function

This script searches for a string in a folder name and places it at the end of the said folder name.  So, for instance, I have a ton of folders named “The (MovieName)”  This script renames them to “(MovieName), The”.  Like I said, I’m old school and use file directories for everything (no I-Tunes, thank you) so alphabetical order is very important.  Rather than taking the hours to rename a bunch of folders, I took an hour to toy around with some Visual Basic.  Totally worth it.

So in the end, I really don’t understand why people don’t use scripts more often, especially for the growing media libraries that most people have on their computers.  I guess it all comes down to I-Tunes and similar applications.

I finally got Linux running in Windows so I can test on Konqueror. As I suspected, it worked about the same as Safari, another KHTML browser. Anyway, the easiest way I found to get Linux running in Windows can be found here. It’s just a matter of running KMD on a virtual machine. I originally tried to get it to run using Cygwin, which was a waste of time.

Another issue I ran into a while back was testing with IE6 and below.  Having two versions of Explorer on the same OS is nearly impossible.  Microsoft released a VPC image running IE6 for this reason.  It is available here.

And if you haven’t heard yet, a beta version of Safari 3 is available for download.  You can get it here. 

I worked on an Apple machine for a year, and I enjoyed the OS. I cant say I enjoyed the machine, a 700mhz G4 that would crash if you looked at it funny. In any case I found myself flicking my cursor to the corner of my monitor even when I was back on my Windows machine.

Meet Switcher, like OSX’s Expose feature but for Windows Vista. This program uses Vista’s built-in desktop rendering system, making it fast and flawlessly integrated. It works great with multiple monitors, and just like Expose and Flip 3D, it continues to render your window content in real time. To make things even better, version 2.0 is set to come out soon.

Input is very configurable. I set switcher to activate on mouse wheel down, though it is possible to use corner activation just like OSX.

Visit Bao’s Blob for Switcher.