Today I start platform rehab, and this time I'm serious about getting clean. I'm writing this blog post from my laptop, yes my laptop, running Ubuntu 8.10. You don't get serious about dumping Windows until you take the plunge of installing Linux on your laptop. If you're like me, your laptop is your primary development box.

To my surprise, even my el-cheap-o laptop was absolutely painless to install Linux on. I suspect that maybe, just maybe, that even my 65 year old mom could do it. Even the wireless works connecting to the commuter trains free wifi. The only slightly difficult part was setting up my development environment, and that was mostly because I'm not super familiar with the OS or tooling, all of which are my problems.

Why did I switch? To people who use Linux already this is a rhetorical question, but for me the reason was pretty simple: Linux is free and good. I generally don't play games anymore, especially on my laptop. I don't really use MS Office too much, and Open Office is more than OK for my needs. Firefox is just as good on Linux as Windows.

More importantly though, Linux is the gateway to the backbone of the Internet. You don't build a web company on a proprietary per license platform when you have equivalent or better alternatives for free; after all Microsoft is dead. This speaks directly to competitive advantage and more importantly to a company's bottom line. I'm cheap. Startups, if their going to be successful, should be cheap.

Now back to GRails for me.