In my first post on this blog I declared an intention to learn non-Microsoft languages and technologies so that I was equipped to handle both sides of the fence (hence the blog title). During the last year I have been looking at learning PHP using Drupal as a platform for my development. This is progressing well and I have a few mini-projects underway – more about those in future posts. However, I think that the main thing I have gotten out of this last year is a better understanding of Linux (Ubuntu in particular) and have realised just how far it has come on since my first encounters with Red Hat 8.0. So much so that I am currently using Ubuntu as my primary Operating System – the Windows 7 installation on my other partition rarely gets a look in. My previous post highlights my disappointment with Windows 7 and my intention to reconfigure my laptop to move Ubuntu to the larger of the two partitions and revert to Vista (which never gave me all the problems others complain about) on the smaller one – just in case I find I need it for something. But there’s the thing – why would I need it? What do I do on a day to day (or even week to week or month to month) that means I have to have a Windows system at my disposal at all times – just in case?

So what do I do in Windows that I can’t do (or don’t know how to do) in Ubuntu? Well the list is pretty small really:

  • .NET Development using Visual Studio [it’s my day job]
  • Syncing my iPod with music and downloaded Podcasts
  • Video Capture and Transfer to DVD
  • Printing to the networked printer (hung off the back of a Windows XP PC)
  • View certain websites that use Silverlight (Moonlight seems to struggle for me at the moment)

I told you that the list was small!

Well, this year I’m going to look at clearing the list so that I can discard my Windows installation altogether. I’m going to go Ubuntu all the way and even take some time to look at alternative distributions to see what they can offer me.

In addition to making my life easier I intend to contribute back to the Community when I can – bug reports, documentation and once my PHP, Python, and GTK skills have come up to scratch who knows – maybe even some development too.

First stop – sorting out my iPod syncing, I listen to Podcasts on a daily basis and need to keep it updated.