Geek Daily

Ever wanted to run Visual Studio 2003 on Windows Vista? No? Me neither but apparently at least one person has wanted since there is an article on MSDN about how to do it and the problems you should expect to run into.

Just from skimming the list of problems it makes me wonder why on earth anyone would want to do this? Perhaps they enjoy self-inflicted torture? They are using Vista after-all.

Yes I know, they need to support existing .Net 1.1 applications but surely there are better options!?!

a) Upgrade the application.
b) If upgrading is just not feasible then maintain a seperate Windows XP machine and avoid the headaches in the first place.
c) Don’t want to spend a dime? Install a Virtual Machine (VMWare or Virtula PC) with XP on it on the local Vista machine and the problem goes away.

You can get a brand new PC downgraded to XP in the $300 ballpark and I am sure there are still ways to get your hands on XP if you don’t already have a copy. Although, I can’t imagine someone upgrading from Windows 2000 to Vista. I guess there must be some.

I just thought the whole idea of the article was humerous and thought I’d share my thoughts.

So it’s been a month since I have been running Unbuntu (Hardy) on one of my PCs at home. I just wanted to give a short overview of my experiences so far and some of the things that bug me.

Getting Started

Getting Ubunutu up and running is a snap. The nice installer pretty much takes care of everything. I only had to enter my routers DNS details and I was up and on the Internet, Firefox no less, in probably 20 minutes. Beats the pants off Windows in that respect.

System Updates

Another thing I like about Ubuntu is the updates. They download regularly and install fine in the background. I’ve lost count of the number of reformats I had to due because of bad updates for Windows.

A Bit Of Trouble

Beyond that I am still learning. I’ve installed a few games like FreeCiv and played with my video card settings but nothing too advanced and certainly not without a step-by-step guide telling me what to do.

The one major roadblock that I’ve encountered was trying to install a Jave/JSP development environment. I thought since I was free of Windows and didn’t have Call of Duty or Visual Studio to distract me that it would be a great opportunity to dive back into some Java development.

I installed Java, Tomcat, and Eclipse with no troubles and played around a bit. My problems started when I tried to install Web Tools for Eclipse. I used the update tool built into Eclipse since it seem like the most fool-proof way of getting it installed. The install went fine and evrything finished but when ever I create a web project, class, anything…I get SWT error messages and Eclipse shutsdown. Short story, Eclipse won’t create a web project and I am a little upset.

Not Done Yet

Despite this set back I am pushing forward and determined to become a comfortable everyday Linux user. With Vista a flop and no promise of things getting better I’ll have my XP box for a while still since I couldn’t give up Call of Duty or some of my other favorite games but that is about all it will get used for.