Why I use Linux more than Windows on these days..

Yesterday I dug up my Jewels-project from under the thick layer of frost it had gathered during the winter days. As it is a XNA-game, I have to boot into Windows to develop it. I installed XNA 2.0 and started porting the game. After a few head scratchers I finally got the game working properly in XNA 2.0. Great!

I'll try to finally finish that game, so I have been making some improvements and fixes. I need to add the timed play mode, and the do the game settings menus.. *sigh* Damn, why games must have settings menus..!?

Anyway, I noticed that I needed a key typing sound for the highscore screen where the player enters their name. You know, the old typewriter sound. So, I browsed my earlier game sounds, found a sound, double clicked it. Winamp starts. At this point it occured to me: oh crap! I have Winamp set to playlist looping, which is what I like when I listen to music. However, double clicking a file replaces the current playlist and plays the single file looped. In case of a short sound clip, the sound repeats quite often. It sounds a bit annoying, but that's not the worst effect here.

You see, on this machine, Winamp somehow cannot handle a short sound clip played on repeat (I only remembered that *after* I had activated the file!) – it crashes. And hard. So Windows presents me a message the Winamp had to close. When I click on Close, the computer reboots cold. Same as when I press the reset switch. And that annoys me. This has happened several times, and it's annoying. A cold reboot doesn't exactly do wonders on your HD.. 🙁

When Windows finally comes up (that's another thing, it takes ages to start up – although I do have years worth of crap installed, so no wonder..), it presents me a familiar little dialog:

Feels like coming home.