http://grep.be/blog/en/computer/ui/windows_desktop

I'm here trying to get work done, and the Windows XP box I barely used today is totally locked up. The disk light isn't on at all, but nothing is moving on the desktop.

I'm rebooting, but I'd rather just do some f&^%ing work.

Windows for Linux Users admittedly is an attention-grabbing title. I'd say the great majority of Linux users have either some or much familiarity with the Microsoft Windows environment. Very few have never used Windows before (though some might have come from the Macintosh environment and may be wholly unexperienced in Windows).

In my case I spent maybe a year using Windows as little as possible, doing as much work as I could on my Debian GNU/Linux laptop. Thus the performance issues I experienced in Windows didn't affect me as much as they do now that I'm not bringing the laptop to the office and must rely on the Dell Optiplex GX520 (Pentium 4 at 3 GHz, 1.2 GB RAM, 80 GB HD) running XP SP3.

I'm making a best effort to turn my Windows XP box at work into a usable system. I'm tired of lugging the laptop to the office, and I have neither desk space nor a network connection for it. I've run CCleaner and Defraggler. I used the freeware version of Revo Uninstaller to clear out a lot of applications I no longer needed and couldn't otherwise get rid of.

It is running quite a bit better. The 1.2 GB of RAM helps. Even Linux can be hell on the desktop in 512 MB of RAM, depending on what you're doing. Windows more so.

I run a lot of free, open-source applications in Windows. It would take me a good half-hour to list them all. Then I have a few critical free-as-in-beer apps.

I'm trying to make my environment as OS-agnostic as possible, hoping that XP will get out of the way (i.e. not stall so damn much) and let me work.

This means a whole lot less time running Debian, though I did set up a second machine at home running Squeeze with LXDE to see how that works for me. I still have the Lenovo G555 dual-booting Debian Squeeze (with GNOME) and Windows 7 (for Netflix streaming purposes ...) but am using it a lot less for the time being.

Thanks to readers who responded, Service Pack 1 successfully installed on my Debian-squeeze-running laptop.

Here's a chronicle of what I've done to the machine:

Those who read my previous entry on this topic know that SP1 refused to install on the Windows 7 Home Premium portion of my Lenovo G555's hard drive.

And it probably had something to do with my running Linux (specifically Debian Squeeze) on the same drive.

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Just when I'm thinking, "Windows sucks less than it used to," here I am with my dual-boot system - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit on one partition, Debian Squeeze 64-bit in LVM (with encrypted swap and home partitions) on another.

Everything has worked well until the arrival of Service Pack 1.

It just won't install. It won't install via the Windows Update mechanism. It won't install after downloading a 900 MB file.

A 900 MB file. For a service pack. Let's ponder that for a minute.

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Yes, I do use Windows. XP and 7, depending on the hardware.

So what software and services do I bring along for the ride?

• Notepad++
• IrfanView
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• FileZilla
• Dropbox
• Avast! Free Antivirus
• Google Chrome
• Pidgin
• GIMP
• Inkscape
• Audacity

I'll write more about each of these applications in the future. They're sort of in order of most valuable to least. The Notepad++ text editor and IrfanView image viewer/editor are definitely my top 2 applications in Windows.