Ugh-Windows

Heh. Vista.

Posted by Matthew on July 18, 2008
Posted in: Linux, Ugh-Windows. 3 comments

OK, so I’m sure everyone knows that I am “not exactly a big fan of Windows.” We have all heard it before, so I won’t dwell on it. At this point, I am about 90% Windows free. Most of that, however, is for work. The Novell network stuff still relies on Windows for basic management. The current version of ConsoleOne (Netware administrator) is written in Java and actually runs better on my Linux box then it does on any Windows machine I have tried. So I still run Windows XP in a VMware desktop on my Gentoo box. I’ve come to find a small warm spot in my heart for XP, almost enough to call it “not too terribly bad.” Don’t worry, that’s as good as it will get.

Anyway, enter Vista. I decided to give it a whirl in a fresh VMware session. All I can say is Oh. My. God. I gave the thing 2 virtual processors and 2.5GB of RAM and it was still awful. I personally think the way the new Windows Explorer (My Computer, etc) design is terrible and totally difficult to use. I know the argument is that “it is just different,” but I don’t think so. It made simple things that I do hundreds of times a day so much harder. It only took me a half hour of playing around before I killed the virtual machine and wiped it into oblivion. It was that bad.

I guess if you really don’t have anything important to do with a computer (like spider solitare) Vista is OK. But really, if you need to get stuff done, stick with XP.

vim for Windows

Posted by Matthew on June 21, 2007
Posted in: Ugh-Windows. Leave a Comment

Sometimes I have to use Windows. However, life isn’t always TOO bad. There is a vim port for windows. However, it does have some default settings that really drive me crazy.

If you have ever installed it, you know what I mean. When you open any file, it creates a temporary swap file. This is fine in Linux, because I always have multiple terminals doing multiple things at once. However, we don’t have that in Windows. Don’t pretend you do. The other setting is the automatic backup option. Open a file, edit, then save. It will create a backup of the original file. To me, that’s not needed.

To fix this, go to your _vimrc file. The default location is in C:\Program Files\Vim. Add these lines to the bottom of the file, and you are all set:

set nobackup
set nowritebackup
set noswapfile

Save and exit. Simple when you know how.