As you might know, the EU will be forcing Microsoft to unbundle MSIE from Windows distributions. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/13/1524233 This news brought great joy to the web development community. Finally, the market share will change. Lazy people will have to get off their asses and download a browser of their choosing, and chances are they'll choose something different from MSIE. Even if they do choose to use Internet Explorer, it's their choice. It's no longer forced down their throats. Not that they'd put up much of a fight. Lazy people are bad that way. Back to the point. Well, not just yet. You might wonder how will people access the internet to get a browser if they don't have a browser? I don't care! Linux users have dealt with this problem already. It's called software packaging. You get your software — free software, mind you — from repositories. Alternatively, you can download them via the command line using the old built-in wget. So Windows users will have to either do that, or something like that, or maybe get cd's with FireFox or Opera or whatever. Maybe the ISP`s could do it for them. Maybe we can go to a friend's house who already has a browser because they have linux or an older version of Windows. Where there's a will, there's a way. And people are addicted to and dependent on the internet nowadays, so there's both a need and a will. We'll find a way. Luckily, the EU has given this issue some thought and they came up with this great solution: bundle FireFox with Windows. They must have been high! http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F26%2F1459205 I should rejoyce at hearing this news, but it's hard. It's not that it's FireFox. It's the idea. You're forcing them to unbundle a piece of software, then forcing them to bundle another one? Where's the point? Seriously. The silver lining is that there's a chance that both browsers will be installed. This seems somewhat better, but only just. At least this way people have some sort of a choice. As a web developer, I'll be very glad about this in the morning. As a half-human being, I'm disgusted.

Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a linux-purist. That does not mean I'm a Windows freak, or anything of that sort. I just use the environment I see fit for the task at hand. When I code from home, I mostly use Komodo under ubuntu. When I'm at work, I still use Komodo, but I need to use Windows — work policy. Obviously, if I need to code in Java, I use Eclipse and if I need to code in C/C++ I'll use good ol' notepad2. When I'm on Windows, I IM from Digsby, it's a great application and I'm an alpha tester, so I get to see the cool features even if they're never pushed to the public. When I'm under Linux, I use Pidgin, because it's a great piece of software. When I need to chat from my mobile, I use fring, because it simply blew my mind. The point is: I'm trying to not get tied to one platform or application. It's like buying an uber-keyboard. It's great, at first. You have all those shortcuts, a scroll wheel right on the  keyboard, quick application launchers, a layout that makes better sense — and then you go to work and it's a totally different keyboard and half the time, you're looking for the on-keyboard scroll wheel. All because you got used to YOUR keyboard. So I changed IDE's, changed themes, kept the taskbar on the top of the screen, used very different IM clients — all that huey. In that spirit, I've tried out a lot of operating systems. I've tried out most public versions of Windows, Debian(not ubuntu), Red Hat, Ubuntu,and even UNIX, though not for long. I've found features I've loved in all of them and picking a favorite is impossible. I've spent most of January 2009 on Windows 7.

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