I'm sure the title of this post makes most people think it will be about my sister Monica getting married in less than a month... WRONG! (BTW: congrats Monica and John!)
This is about moving my home computer to Linux. Ditching Windows from my life before it becomes necessary to switch to YET ANOTHER Microsoft operating system (Vista). From news reports, it appears that migration to Vista is much slower than previous versions of Windows, but I don't care. I hate not having a choice about what to use, and I'd like to more actively support open source efforts. Heck, maybe I'll even start contributing, or moving some of my home projects under an open source license.
So what has changed to make me switch? I've used every single version of Windows since I bought Windows 95. I even had a version of Windows 3.11 that you installed from floppy disks! (probably still have it somewhere in the elephant graveyard in my basement...) Well, up until now, there were two compelling reasons to run Windows. Not just compelling; it was impossible to reasonably circumvent these two requirements for my home computer:
1. My home finances - I run Quicken
2. My sporadic but long-standing addiction to PC computer games.
First Quicken: I love Quicken. It does a great job of sorting through my income and expenses, balancing my checkbook month-to-month, and tracking my investments. I like how it gives me control over my current finances and provides budgeting and planning tools as well. Frankly, if I didn't have something like Quicken helping me out, I probably wouldn't do much more than a bare minimum of financial planning and tracking. I probably wouldn't even balance my checkbook. With Quicken, I can spend two or three hours a month and I have an ongoing financial outlook, balanced checkbook, spending trends, graphs of cash flows, stock analysis, retirement planning, etc.