I’ve been a fan of Linux for a very long time. I’ve sworn off Windows at least a dozen times — but each time I came crawling back, because there was always something I couldn’t figure out how to configure or get to work: in the past it was usually printing, video, audio, or multimedia-related.
With the rise of Ubuntu, most of those things just work by default. But still, having to give up Windows gaming, Photoshop, and other proprietary crap I can’t kick the habit of will always force me to keep Windows installed. I think this is the best of both worlds: I have Ubuntu running under VMWare Workstation running on one monitor (at 1680×1050, too, thanks to VMWare Tools) and Windows on the other. I can, for instance, do web development on the Linux screen and test it on Safari, Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer in Windows.
In the screenshot above you can see me drafting this post in Windows on Chrome while listening to crappy dance music in iTunes and, meanwhile, tinkering with Emacs, git and Prolog under Linux. Good times.
This way, I can make use of both monitors without having to figure out Xinerama or tinkering with stupid drivers in order to make use of my video card in Linux. It takes away a lot of the hassle and if you’ve been wanting to try an alternative operating system but haven’t been able to move out, this is a good compromise.
