I’m not religious about Operating Systems. All OSes have their advantages Linux for servers, Mac for multimedia, Windows for gaming…etc. But…let’s be frank here…keeping Windows clean is like keeping a toilet clean. You can buy your air fresheners and toilet duck but at the end of the day you will have to chuck a shit and start the cleaning process again. There’s really is no such thing as an auto toilet cleaner. You can do your best to keep it clean but you’re only delaying the fact that sooner or later it’ll get filthy. What’s worse is that you are the only one that can keep it clean. You can’t hire a toilet cleaner, you’re the one who’ll have to clean up your own shit.

I used to be a Windows whore. I was like one of those gym junkies trying to keep my body in shape except I was keeping my Windows in shape. I only downloaded applications that I needed and if possible used standalone applications. If I could choose between an app that had an installer with an app that came in a zip file, I’ll download the zip file any day. Who uses utorrent here? Most people these days do, but I was using it back when it promised to use “less than 4mb of memory”…during it’s beta stages. Every heard of Foxit Reader? It was a 1mb pdf reader. It substituted Adobe Reader. It got to a point where my startup processes was 16. I didn’t have any icons on my desktop and I ran registry cleaners regularly. I even took it to the step where I was modifying the Windows XP installation disk to minimize my install. Using nlite, I was able to bring my Windows XP installation down to around 550mb. I removed everything that I didn’t need, Accessiblity Tools, Games, Internet Games, Netmeeting, MSN Zone, random legacy device drivers…you name it.

It was pretty fun actually, whilst it lasted.

It all came crashing down when I installed Windows Vista. It tripled the number of starting processes and there was nothing I could do about it. But that problem went away when I installed Ubuntu…I felt clean again.

The problem with Windows is that…you install an app, it’ll leave traces behind, shit-stains on the toilet bowl if you will, sure you can wipe the stains away but eventually, overtime, you’ll find that these stains will clog up the extent you have to get down on both your knees and seriously wipe it with some heavy duty sandpaper. The only solution is to either upgrade your computer or reformat.

And that’s what I love about Debian based Linux Distributions. No registry. To install an app it’s one command. To remove an app it’s another command. Install as much as you like and you will hardly notice any performance issues.

I would also like to take some time to rant about the use of the Desktop. The desktop is NOT your workspace. Do NOT put everything on your Desktop. Make a seperate partition for your Music/Movies/TV Shows/etc. Create a shortcuts toolbar for all your shortcuts. The only shortcuts that I approve of seeing on the desktop are your local drives and the trash can. Everything else can gtfo. Sure…you can use your Desktop to temporarily store documents or folders but as soon as you’re done with it PLEASE move it to your home directory. I use the Desktop all the time for temp files these days, all my downloads gets saved there but once I’m done with them I move them elsewhere, there’s no point having them clutter my desktop. You want to keep your desktop pretty…what’s the poing of having a wallpaper when there’s all this tiny pieces of crap covering it?

I do not disapprove Windows. I disapprove the use of Windows.