Adventures in Linux

I've spent the last few days using Linux exclusively. I've made a few failed attempts to switch in the past, but they always ended poorly.

At first I was struggling badly. I needed to learn obscure evocations to make my wireless card work, it took a while time to get dual monitors working, and many things simply worked in ways that weren't obvious to me. The worst part was that I found myself crippled while trying to program. I'd always depended on IDEs and I couldn't get any to work the way I wanted. I had difficulty making anything in the GNU toolchain work too.

After three day, It's finally starting to come together. I researched the file system and spend most of the night learning unix commands and playing with shell scripts. I just wrote several scripts that generate code, organize my files, and generally help with programming. More importantly, I understand much more throughly what exactly goes into compiling and linking a program. It's always nice to have fewer things that seem "magical".

Learning so much in such a short time feels amazing. My mind somehow feels much more "free". I'm seeing new ways to overcome many of the problems that have been holding me back. If any programmers who use windows are reading this, I HIGHLY recommend struggling with linux for few days.

Tomorrow, I'm going to get my Opengl development environment in order and start doing some work on Mage Fist.