i love to work at nothing all day
Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 04:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
erikaWhy I use Windows:
Okay, this is a trip down my own personal hell of brain-weasels, anxiety, and possible OCD. It's also an explanation for Why I Don't Use Linux (Now, or Possibly Ever).
I grew up using Linux. Most people are surprised at this, especially when I tell them that I started using a computer for various stuff in 1993ish, and got online (still using Linux) in 1996. My dad uses Linux, and basically has nearly since Linus Torvalds put the first damn kernel out. Josh uses Linux. Joe (online friend) uses Linux. (I'm probably forgetting at least 3 people here that I talk to regularly who use Linux because they aren't mentioning it on a regular basis like the ones I just named.)
And every so often they ask me "Why don't you switch [to Linux instead of Windows|to foobar2000 instead of iTunes|to X-better-text-editor instead of just using Notepad]?"
I try to tell them, but they never understand. Here's my explanation anyway!
Basically I already know Linux is five billion times better, no problem, I know that. The issue here is not that I couldn't use Linux, because I could, and probably very happily.
The problem here is that Linux was made by geeks for geeks, and that means that everything is incredibly customizable, because geeks tend to be anal about what they want their software to do.
That is Very Bad News for my OCD/OCD-tendencies, because what happens is I spend about ... oh... two weeks on each piece of software. That's if it's something easy like a note taking application, by the way, because if it's a program to play my music, forget it, I'll be fucking with that for a month.
I told this to Josh and he was like "but... then you'll be all set up and happy at the end, right?'
and I was like HAHAHAHA... oh honey. NO.
Once the OCD starts in, I must fix EVERYTHING. If it's not actually broken, I will find something I dislike, and declare THAT broken, and try to fix it.
Even if I managed to find an OS that could deal with that for me (VE suggests DebianSID) I'd have to download, for example, all the notetaking apps I can find that meet my needs, and then test each of them exhaustively, configure all of them, and blah blah.
NAY. I SAY NAY. It is far better for my personal mental health if I just acknowledge that shit on my computer is not going to be to my exact preferences, it CANNOT ALLOW ITSELF TO CATER TO SETTING UP MY EXACT PREFERENCES, or I will spend the rest of my life fixing it to those exact preferences.
Theoretically, yes, I'd only have to do it once. But I'd only have to do it once for each class of application I use.
In the last week, I've watched & edited movies, I've edited sound files, I've converted multiple sound files (and I prefer those to be different programs), I've edited text files, journal files and docx/doc files (different programs required for all of those because of the markup), I habitually run 3 different web browsers...
And that's just the stuff I can come up with off the top of my head.
The problem I have with Linux is that there are just too many options, too many possibilities and then if I DO settle on a program, it's likely to be highly configurable and, unlike everyone else, that does not make me happy, because it wastes a LOT of my time.
I mean, yes, iTunes is a memory hog, a CPU hog, etc, I know this. But do I switch? No, because iTunes WON'T LET ME FUCK WITH THINGS BEYOND A CERTAIN LIMIT. And hey, I actually need that limitation or I'm going to spend the next month fucking with everything until it's 'perfect.'
Fucking with shit can become a game in and of itself, and yeah, I do like playing that game and my anxiety and OCD are like "yay we can play that game FOREVER!"
(As a reference point for this, I installed over 255 mods for Morrowind, which meant I had to intricately manage their load order in every save file and compile several different mods into one mod [while making sure they didn't conflict] because you can only have 252 mods. If you've ever played Morrowind, you now understand why I say I am BOSS at that game.)
But sometimes I need to actually do things and I cannot do them if I don't have shit that says "no, erika, you must now actually do the thing you wanted to do, you cannot reconfigure this program any further."
What about the Windows registry, I can hear some of the more cranky geeks out there suggesting. What about THAT!? That lets you fuck with things!
Truthfully, I only do very specific pre-defined things in the Windows registry when I cannot do it any other way, because that way lies madness.
I know this, and I have to respect it, because otherwise I am perfectly serious when I say I will spend the next year not getting anything actually done and just reconfiguring everything.
And really, what the lure of that cycle says to me is "I need to take a step back here, because this is not helping me actually accomplish anything."
Therefore, ironically, the fact that windows programs and windows itself doesn't allow you to fuck around with shit to my personal level of satisfaction is a great thing for me.
(For example, I cannot reskin iTunes. I spent probably 2 months reskinning winamp total in the first 10ish years I used a computer. I don't mean all at once, I mean cumulative total. Again, that way lies madness.
I used to get so fucking angry at people who named their mp3s "the wrong way" i.e. not the way I preferred to name my files, and now iTunes takes care of that! Yes, it does an exceptionally mediocre job, but it copies all the files I add to it into my music directory and my brain stops freaking out at me that I personally need to fix the filename of every file.)
At the end, inevitably every Linux user and I have to agree to disagree. I ♥♥♥ them for suggesting something they think will make me happy*, but they just don't understand my problem here.
Okay, this is a trip down my own personal hell of brain-weasels, anxiety, and possible OCD. It's also an explanation for Why I Don't Use Linux (Now, or Possibly Ever).
I grew up using Linux. Most people are surprised at this, especially when I tell them that I started using a computer for various stuff in 1993ish, and got online (still using Linux) in 1996. My dad uses Linux, and basically has nearly since Linus Torvalds put the first damn kernel out. Josh uses Linux. Joe (online friend) uses Linux. (I'm probably forgetting at least 3 people here that I talk to regularly who use Linux because they aren't mentioning it on a regular basis like the ones I just named.)
And every so often they ask me "Why don't you switch [to Linux instead of Windows|to foobar2000 instead of iTunes|to X-better-text-editor instead of just using Notepad]?"
I try to tell them, but they never understand. Here's my explanation anyway!
Basically I already know Linux is five billion times better, no problem, I know that. The issue here is not that I couldn't use Linux, because I could, and probably very happily.
The problem here is that Linux was made by geeks for geeks, and that means that everything is incredibly customizable, because geeks tend to be anal about what they want their software to do.
That is Very Bad News for my OCD/OCD-tendencies, because what happens is I spend about ... oh... two weeks on each piece of software. That's if it's something easy like a note taking application, by the way, because if it's a program to play my music, forget it, I'll be fucking with that for a month.
I told this to Josh and he was like "but... then you'll be all set up and happy at the end, right?'
and I was like HAHAHAHA... oh honey. NO.
Once the OCD starts in, I must fix EVERYTHING. If it's not actually broken, I will find something I dislike, and declare THAT broken, and try to fix it.
Even if I managed to find an OS that could deal with that for me (VE suggests DebianSID) I'd have to download, for example, all the notetaking apps I can find that meet my needs, and then test each of them exhaustively, configure all of them, and blah blah.
NAY. I SAY NAY. It is far better for my personal mental health if I just acknowledge that shit on my computer is not going to be to my exact preferences, it CANNOT ALLOW ITSELF TO CATER TO SETTING UP MY EXACT PREFERENCES, or I will spend the rest of my life fixing it to those exact preferences.
Theoretically, yes, I'd only have to do it once. But I'd only have to do it once for each class of application I use.
In the last week, I've watched & edited movies, I've edited sound files, I've converted multiple sound files (and I prefer those to be different programs), I've edited text files, journal files and docx/doc files (different programs required for all of those because of the markup), I habitually run 3 different web browsers...
And that's just the stuff I can come up with off the top of my head.
The problem I have with Linux is that there are just too many options, too many possibilities and then if I DO settle on a program, it's likely to be highly configurable and, unlike everyone else, that does not make me happy, because it wastes a LOT of my time.
I mean, yes, iTunes is a memory hog, a CPU hog, etc, I know this. But do I switch? No, because iTunes WON'T LET ME FUCK WITH THINGS BEYOND A CERTAIN LIMIT. And hey, I actually need that limitation or I'm going to spend the next month fucking with everything until it's 'perfect.'
Fucking with shit can become a game in and of itself, and yeah, I do like playing that game and my anxiety and OCD are like "yay we can play that game FOREVER!"
(As a reference point for this, I installed over 255 mods for Morrowind, which meant I had to intricately manage their load order in every save file and compile several different mods into one mod [while making sure they didn't conflict] because you can only have 252 mods. If you've ever played Morrowind, you now understand why I say I am BOSS at that game.)
But sometimes I need to actually do things and I cannot do them if I don't have shit that says "no, erika, you must now actually do the thing you wanted to do, you cannot reconfigure this program any further."
What about the Windows registry, I can hear some of the more cranky geeks out there suggesting. What about THAT!? That lets you fuck with things!
Truthfully, I only do very specific pre-defined things in the Windows registry when I cannot do it any other way, because that way lies madness.
I know this, and I have to respect it, because otherwise I am perfectly serious when I say I will spend the next year not getting anything actually done and just reconfiguring everything.
And really, what the lure of that cycle says to me is "I need to take a step back here, because this is not helping me actually accomplish anything."
Therefore, ironically, the fact that windows programs and windows itself doesn't allow you to fuck around with shit to my personal level of satisfaction is a great thing for me.
(For example, I cannot reskin iTunes. I spent probably 2 months reskinning winamp total in the first 10ish years I used a computer. I don't mean all at once, I mean cumulative total. Again, that way lies madness.
I used to get so fucking angry at people who named their mp3s "the wrong way" i.e. not the way I preferred to name my files, and now iTunes takes care of that! Yes, it does an exceptionally mediocre job, but it copies all the files I add to it into my music directory and my brain stops freaking out at me that I personally need to fix the filename of every file.)
At the end, inevitably every Linux user and I have to agree to disagree. I ♥♥♥ them for suggesting something they think will make me happy*, but they just don't understand my problem here.
* (I'm betting their internal calculus
goes something like
"certain level of geek = Linux!")
goes something like
"certain level of geek = Linux!")
