(sung to the tune of reunited)


i'm at a loss to explain the power linux has over me. a long-time windows user (by default, rather than choice, and largely due to my masochistic love affair with photoshop, which is at times a warm and sensitive partner but often puts microsoft's needs before my own), i admit to being fairly inexperienced with this beauteous os. and that may contribute, in no small way, to its mystique.

most days, i come to work and sit behind the desk growing increasingly frustrated as i wait and wait for the windows box - or worse, the g4, which is quick but unwieldy - to do the simple things i ask of it. and today i reached my breaking point. this being the weekend, when few people desire my services, i am free to wander into the advanced computing classroom, domain of elitist computer science students and liberal arts students who don't want to be observed while they look at porn on the web.

i placed my hands upon the sticky keys and a chill ran through my body, like discovering an incomprehensible treasure shot down from space. linux defies what i thought i understood about software design. it seems, in my limited understanding, to run so counter to everything in the mythical man month. it seems organic, and therefore very, very sexy. the product of a mass consciousness, the fruit of countless people's labor of love. not being a good enough programmer to even begin to understand the arduous task that writing a kernel must involve, i can feel nothing more than awe.

though i may not use linux for anything that would give me insight into the power it supposedly holds, i can observe that it is worlds beyond the desirability of a setup like the one behind my desk and i cannot help but think of my larger impression of the system.

i look at the screen and i want to be a real geek. i want to use kterm for more than opening netscape. i want to learn perl and really understand c and master opengl. i want to do everything from a command line and ignore my graphics tablet unless i'm drawing or modelling.

maybe it's time for me to go home and partition my hard drive..