Long ago, nearly ten years before Linux was released, I enjoyed the simple, no-nonsense, high-performance properties of the UNIX/Linux culture. The belief that a tool should only be as complicated as required by the task and no more, truly resonated in my young mind. Being a down-home, poor farm boy, I had very little appreciation for "bells and whistles". And, as such, over the years I have enjoyed Linux.
Unfortunately my inner pragmatist needs to come out of the closet. Why? There are two hobbies that I would like to enjoy more fully: photography & ham radio. Certainly there are great programs that run in Linux for both hobbies. Unfortunately, aside from a few exceptions, I must admit, the better applications run under Windows.
Still on the fence, I evaluated my complete set of needs. Certainly, programs running on Linux could support my basic list of user requirements. There are some ham radio programs out there. There are some great photo utilities like RawTherapee and ImageMagick on Linux. Still walking that fence.
But there is one additional requirement... I want to spend some time honing my C# and .NET skills. Sure there is MONO on Linux; spending an afternoon with MonoDevelop and MONO pushed me in a different direction. There is no way I could hone my C# skills using MONO.
So... I re-evaluated... Sure, Linux has RawTherapee, but Windows has ACDsee, the Canon DPP and a host of other photo management and manipulation programs.
Certainly, there are some great programs under Linux for amateur radio, but I want to get back into PSK31 and maybe SSTV and HSCW. The programs in Windows are far more flexible than those for Linux IMHO. And, honestly, there are no decent, up-to-date logging programs for Linux. Certainly there are some ham radio logging programs for Linux but they don't meet my requirements.
And so... I made a change. Earlier this week I backed up my Linux machine and installed Windows 10.
Honestly, it has issues that I will write about later, but I am not ashamed. Already I have ACDsee Studio running for photo management and DPP & RawTherapee installed for image development and manipulation. OpenOffice runs well and I have Microsoft VisualStudio 2015 installed for programming and honing my C# skills.
No, I am not a sell-out. I am a pragmatist.
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