This won’t prevent the terrible Aero glass chrome, but you’ll get a much better looking and more usable console that acts like you’d expect it to coming from a unix terminal. That terrible chrome is still lurking in Windows 8, too…it’s just a solid color instead of semitransparent. So…that’s a plus if you hate opacity I guess.

2 – 4) Sadly, I know of nothing that will get Redmond to reduce the cost of Windows, or prevent restart on update. I wish I could :(. In terms of cost, you could weight the pros and cons of an MSDN subscribership, but then you’re just mitigating costs elsewhere.

3) Ruby is the answer, sir. Most of the time. Write your scripts using ruby and run them from the command line: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/166347/how-do-i-use-ruby-for-shell-scripting. I think you’d be surprised how robust this approach is for most cases. Then again, I don’t know what you’re doing with your shell scripts, so YMMV.

Protip: Throw OpenBox over that Ubuntu Server setup you’ve got going. Then you can configure your window manager to be as simple or robust as necessary, totally tailored to you. There’s configuration overhead, but the end result is pure productivity Nirvana. Drop me a line if you decide to do this and need some sample configuration files.

(also, viewing parts I & II…have you looked into a Hackintosh? It’s getting pretty easy to go that route, and is at least worth looking into is OSX is your most productive OS. All the fun of OSX without the price gouging :) ).

This won’t prevent the terrible Aero glass chrome, but you’ll get a much better looking and more usable console that acts like you’d expect it to coming from a unix terminal. That terrible chrome is still lurking in Windows 8, too…it’s just a solid color instead of semitransparent. So…that’s a plus if you hate opacity I guess.

2 – 4) Sadly, I know of nothing that will get Redmond to reduce the cost of Windows, or prevent restart on update. I wish I could :(. In terms of cost, you could weight the pros and cons of an MSDN subscribership, but then you’re just mitigating costs elsewhere.

3) Ruby is the answer, sir. Most of the time. Write your scripts using ruby and run them from the command line: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/166347/how-do-i-use-ruby-for-shell-scripting. I think you’d be surprised how robust this approach is for most cases. Then again, I don’t know what you’re doing with your shell scripts, so YMMV.

Protip: Throw OpenBox over that Ubuntu Server setup you’ve got going. Then you can configure your window manager to be as simple or robust as necessary, totally tailored to you. There’s configuration overhead, but the end result is pure productivity Nirvana. Drop me a line if you decide to do this and need some sample configuration files.

(also, viewing parts I & II…have you looked into a Hackintosh? It’s getting pretty easy to go that route, and is at least worth looking into is OSX is your most productive OS. All the fun of OSX without the price gouging :) ).

This won’t prevent the terrible Aero glass chrome, but you’ll get a much better looking and more usable console that acts like you’d expect it to coming from a unix terminal. That terrible chrome is still lurking in Windows 8, too…it’s just a solid color instead of semitransparent. So…that’s a plus if you hate opacity I guess.

2 – 4) Sadly, I know of nothing that will get Redmond to reduce the cost of Windows, or prevent restart on update. I wish I could :(. In terms of cost, you could weight the pros and cons of an MSDN subscribership, but then you’re just mitigating costs elsewhere.

3) Ruby is the answer, sir. Most of the time. Write your scripts using ruby and run them from the command line: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/166347/how-do-i-use-ruby-for-shell-scripting. I think you’d be surprised how robust this approach is for most cases. Then again, I don’t know what you’re doing with your shell scripts, so YMMV.

Protip: Throw OpenBox over that Ubuntu Server setup you’ve got going. Then you can configure your window manager to be as simple or robust as necessary, totally tailored to you. There’s configuration overhead, but the end result is pure productivity Nirvana. Drop me a line if you decide to do this and need some sample configuration files.

(also, viewing parts I & II…have you looked into a Hackintosh? It’s getting pretty easy to go that route, and is at least worth looking into is OSX is your most productive OS. All the fun of OSX without the price gouging :) ).