I just built myself a new Windows VM. After I spent the next ~six hours patching and rebooting several thousand times I went to install Microsoft Visual C++ Express. I had not yet had a chance to play with it before today but 2010 has been released into the wild. So I download it and start the installer. To my absolute surprise the bare-bones install is 2.4GBs. Two, point, four gigabytes. Two, point, four gigabytes. I was floored.

I have not been quiet about my great exodus not so much towards Linux but away from Windows. I used to get phone calls every week from family and friends about how their computers were slow, something stopped working out of the blue, or whatever. I have since moved most of them to 100% free software built by the community and have never hear of any problems since. As a matter of fact my father (who requires Windows-based software for work that mandated he stay with Windows) uses my mother’s Ubuntu-based laptop whenever possible because he is absolutely sick of the headaches. This is a man who does not know a mouse from a trackball and given his inexperience even he is sick of the God-damned horror show that is Microsoft Windows.

Any way, back to the point before I wrap up my short rant. I will now move all of my software development over to another operating systems and cross-compile from now on.

Hey, Microsoft. I am disgusted by you. I have a choice and I no longer choose you.