Martin's Annual Linux Experience 2002 -- wrapping up

Well, it looks like this year's Linux Experience is drawing to a close. It's been over a month since I switched my primary desktop to SuSE Linux 8.1, which is the longest I've ever held out. But it's time to go back to Windows now.

It's been an interesting month. I've learned a lot about setting up and configuring Linux, and the programs that run on it. My Perl has gone from rusted-away back up to passably acceptable. And I'm much more familiar with editing Apache's httpd.conf files. And all this for an initial outlay of about £30! I reckon I've probably had more enjoyment out of that money than I get out of most £30-£40 games I buy. So it hasn't been a waste of time by a long shot.

When I made the switch this year, I did expect to keep running some Windows apps. I thought that I would probably end up using VMWare to set up virtual Windows machines, but that didn't work out. In fact, I think it's going to end up the other way round. There are some Linux programs that are just too useful to give up. Our web host (EZPUblishing runs Linux servers with Apache on them. It would be really useful to be able to mirror that environment locally more effectively than I can with Apache on Windows. So my plan is to set up a stable Linux environment in a virtual machine. I can then use the VM as a local development server on our home network.

Overall, converting back to Windows is not going to be too much of a problem, because I hadn't completely zapped my hard drive, and was using grub to multi-boot between Win and Lin. The main difficulty I'm running into is email. When I set up KMail, I set it up to use the maildir mailbox format, rather than the standard mbox format. KMail happily imported my Windows mail from Outlook Express, but going in the other direction is proving to be more difficult.

If I had my mail in mbox format, I could suck it into Mozilla mail in a snap. I could even import it into Outlook Express via the Eudora import filter, because Eudora uses the mbox format. But maildir? Uh-uh. Not a hope. I can't even find a tool that will easily convert mail from maildir to mbox on Linux. The only thing that seems to do the trick is a widget that comes with qmail, but of all the Linux software I've installed and configured over the last month, qmail takes the biscuit for being the most difficult. And I'm not sure I can be bothered.

It looks like the simplest way is going to be the most time-consuming: KMail allows you to have both maildir and mbox formatted folders running at the same time. So I can create a new parallel mbox filing structure to mirror my maildir folders, and then copy messages from one to the other. Slow, laborious, annoying...but simpler than sodding qmail.

I find myself sad to have to go back to Windows. The XP desktop looks a little bit cold and plain now. KDE felt ragged at times, but it also had that little frisson of adventurousness--a sense that something strange, but maybe pleasant lay behind the next mouse click. Windows, I know inside-out, and it holds few secrets for me. But on the other hand, it also holds the joys of TextPad and Paint Shop Pro, and a faster version of Opera. It means a more productive me.

Linux will still be around, though, even if it is just in a Virtual Machine I fire up when I need it. And going on past experience, it's only a year until the 2003 Annual Experience rolls around...