Hasta La Vista, Baby? If you don’t play games don’t bother.

Posted on February 3, 2007
Filed Under Rants, Techie stuff |

Let me state upfront, to save any confusion, that I will be installing Vista when my copy arrives. I do so under protest however.

I want to use linux, I really do, and having read some of the scuttlebut regarding Vistas EULA on the interweb makes me want to use linux even more. I’m stuck using Vista though because of what I want to do with my computer.
I want to:

Now all you Linux bods out there will be saying “Three out of four ain’t bad”. And you’d be right, but the one thing that Linux doesn’t do (play all the latest games) is the thing I originally bought a PC for in the first place. You may argue that there are plenty of games available for linux, and you’re right there are. Dawn of War is not one of them, neither is Supreme Commander, Guild Wars, or any of the Steam games (which includes Half Life 2 and Counterstrike). If ports of the most popular games do exist they’re usually unofficial and as such have no tech support from the publisher.

Vista is also extremely invasive, recording information about your hardware, software and even browsing habits, and sending the lot to Microsoft. It requires you to update regularly, ostensibly this is so that Microsoft can update your OS as soon as patches and service packs are released. However there are clauses in the EULA which state that if you’re running any software which Microsoft doesn’t like, a range of steps may be taken, from automatically deleting the software without asking you to rendering your PC completely unusable. It used to be joked that Bill Gates had a big red button in his office which he could use to shut down every PC on the planet which was running windows, this is now closer to the truth than you might imagine. You want to play media files which don’t have any kind of DRM software attatched to them? Tough. You want to tweak Vista so that it runs slightly more efficiently? Tough, you invalidate your license if you do. You want to use third party antivirus and firewall software becuse you don’t trust Microsoft’s? Sorry, in their wisdom Microsoft haven’t released the APIs necessary for anti-virus developers to do their thing (This is currently the subject of court proceedings along similar lines of the whole IE furore with Win95) You want to run pirate software? (not that I would advocate such behaviour, software piracy is theft after all.) Make sure you’re not connected to the internet when you do so. To put it bluntly when you install Vista you are basically handing control of your PC over to Microsoft. You use it at their pleasure. Piss them off in any way and you can expect you PC not to work (although if past history is anything to go by it won’t work very well anyway.)

We have to face the fact that Microsoft has a monopoly. Its not due to their software being better than anyone else’s (it plainly isn’t), cheaper than anyone else’s (Linux is free for god’s sake), or easier to use (OSX is far more user friendly, and has been for years). It is simply because people don’t know any different. People are under the misapprehension that Linux is difficult, complicated and for techies only. This is wrong. Linux has the potential to be whatever you want it to be. If you just want to surf, use email and do a little word-processing then linux is ideal. You don’t even need to know that it’s linux you’re running.
Most users would not know the difference anyway.

My advice, for what its worth, if you’re not going to be playing games (apart from browser games) then don’t bother. Email me with your address and I’ll send you a copy of the latest Ubuntu Linux Distribution (UK only I’m afraid). If you’re not technically minded you can probably find someone local to install it for you. Break the chains binding you to Microsoft, I wish I could but I’m a gamer. All I can do is show this image and hope that someone who works for Microsoft reads it:

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