
Finally, Linux on My Desktop - jeffbarr
http://www.jeff-barr.com/?p=1592
======
singular
I was using ubuntu on my desktop for a year and a half, and it is most
definitely a capable system - these days I just don't think windows on the
desktop is an option for the serious hacker - unix tools are just too damn
useful, too many open source projects assume you're on a unix, and the various
crufty elements of windows are just too painful to bear, no doubt a result of
their (quite justifiable given their market) obsession with backwards
compatibility.

Having said that, linux _does_ have rough edges - for example, I apt-get'd
bugzilla the other day, only to realise I didn't need it on that particular
box. apt-remove'ing resulted in the setup asking for the (non-existent) db
password, then refusing to continue when I didn't supply it.

After a bit of googling round and trial-and-error I found a solution (sudo
apt-get remove bugzilla3 rather that bugzilla). Had the same issue with
virtualbox for a while too, equally irritating.

Also, there are the issues that don't quite work nicely like closing the lid
killing the whole system, on 2 different laptops.

Having said that, I still adore linux; it's the Millennium Falcon of operating
systems and despite the (sometimes quite fun for hackers actually) various
fixes and cludges you have to apply, very capable. Having tried various
flavours of linux every year or so for the past 10 years, I do think the
latest ubuntus are miles, _MILES_ ahead of what came before them, and
considerably fewer cludges required than in the past - if things keep on
developing at this rate we might actually have a very real windows competitor.

I mostly use OS X now (though still do some stuff in ubuntu) as I want an OS
that gets out of my way and looks pretty doing it, while retaining the various
unix tools I desire (thanks macports!), and that would probably be the system
I recommend to a hacker with cash to spend, however linux is genuinely a great
option to go for too.

/rambling a bit...

~~~
roadnottaken
Cygwin + PuTTY[1] in Windows is actually quite a reasonable compromise. It
takes a little twiddling, but I can get to a local bash-prompt with a single
click and be hacking in emacs in no time. I find this to be about equally
close to _"standard"_ linux[2] as is OS X, although maybe that's just a factor
of my inexperience.

I use OS X, Ubuntu, and Debian at home... but at work I still prefer Windows 7
for some reason.

[1] Especially if you use PuTTYcyg: <http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/> EDIT:
The main thing I miss with cygwin is command-line package management like
_apt_ , but OS X doesn't have that either.

[2] Obviously subjective... I mean Debian/Ubuntu-style.

~~~
huherto
I worked with Cygwin + Putty for several years. It wasn't Unix, but it made my
life tolerable. I recently changed to Ubuntu and I can't believe I could live
without it.

------
drags
I didn't notice until I went to my parents' house for Christmas, but the
iPhone has made package management a _huge_ selling point on the desktop
platform as well.

I showed my parents the "Ubuntu Software Center" and they immediately
understood and loved the idea that they could install a bunch of "apps" from a
central repository.

------
jerf
Ubuntu has taken a bit of a leap lately. I've been primary-Linux for coming up
on a decade now, for context. Several years ago my father and I both purchased
very similar laptops, with the screen size being the primary difference. Mine
of course has been driven into the ground and have various keyboard, mousepad,
and hard drive issues, his is going strong (albeit with a different hard drive
now). I was there for Christmas and tried to see if we could find a video on
Netflix and couldn't find a single computer in the house that we could turn on
and get the answer to that question in less than five minutes. I'm not making
up that number, that's the time the fastest computer took to boot and present
a working Firefox. 1.6GHz Pentium M may not be state of the art, but it's not
_that_ slow. It is of course because there's just so many things running in
the background that the various virus scanners and backup product (or possibly
products, I wasn't 100% clear) are just killing each other with IO contention.
(If Windows doesn't already have it, it really needs an official "scanning"
component in the OS that things can hook to so it can coordinate disk scanning
and avoid thrash, that would help an enormous number of home users.)

I was nervous about removing the virus scanner in particular; he's savvy but
he's a professional in another industry and doesn't have time to keep utterly
up on every threat. Even if they aren't perfect they do sometimes work. So I
offered to put on Ubuntu 10.10, which of course made the system usable again.

What stunned me was how slick the desktop really was. Integrated messaging,
application menu is great, the application manager filters the apps from the
incidental cruft like -dev packages, and just an indefinable feeling of polish
everywhere. Still not quite the Windows level of polish but getting the very
quickly and surpassing it in some areas. If you haven't played with stock
Ubuntu in a while, I'd recommend checking 10.10 out just to see the current
state-of-the-art. I was so impressed I put it on my own laptop. (Fortunately
I've learned to keep 20-30GB just sort of lying around on the hard disk to
make trying a new distro easy; I recommend it next time you find yourself
partitioning.)

------
retube
Apart from the well-documented benefits of Ubuntu/Linux over windows, for me
there's now a matter of principle: a machine with pre-installed windows is
generally stuffed with bloat-ware. I recently bought an Acer Aspire with
Windows 7 starter. It was riddled with anti-virus bollox and stuff for ebay,
aol, BT etc etc. It's faster just to bung on Ubuntu then bother taking all
this stuff off.

~~~
phsr
If you're installing linux, why not just re-install windows? A fresh windows
install == no third party bloatware. My biggest problem with windows is the
lack of a proper shell (without install cygwin)

~~~
haribilalic
Many PC manufacturers supply a "recovery" disc or partition that reinstalls
all the bloatware too, instead of a normal Windows installation CD/DVD.

------
erikstarck
Haha, famous last words... "... but this is just a configuration issue."

~~~
trezor
Somehow reminds me of this old xkcd strip ;)

<http://xkcd.com/349/>

------
jeekl
Shutter (<http://shutter-project.org/>) should probably be your cup of tea, if
you like Snagit.

------
iwwr
Switching to Linux from Windows as a regular user can work most of the time,
but there are always subtle things and expectations that don't work. If you
survive the little frustrations, you are 99% there. Unfortunately, it means
it's costly to switch if the work environment depends on either Windows or a
Windows application. Mr. Barr actually needed Windows, so he ran it from
VirtualBox, which is really not a complete switch-over.

Finally, while having a helpful community, one is left with the impression
that there is a much lower threshold for complaining, being free software.

~~~
davidw
Switching to Linux from Windows as a developer can work most of the time, but
there are always subtle things and expectations that don't work, and in
general, the experience is quite frustrating.

I know, I occasionally am forced to because some client is Windows only.

~~~
Zak
Switching to Windows from Linux as a developer can work most of the time, but
there are always subtle things and expectations that don't work, and in
general, the experience is quite frustrating.

In either direction, there are things to get used to. I'm used to good package
management and being able to customize certain window management behavior.
Both are sources of frustration on Windows or Mac.

~~~
Symmetry
I very much agree about window management being much easier on Linux. Windows
7 made things better, but there's still a ways to go before they catch up with
Gnome in this regard.

------
Strunk
Congrats! You have overcome the first BIG change. Now it's only about finding
alternatives, and often easier solutions, to your normal work on the computer,
where you maybe before used propriatary software only made for winboxes. :-)
Good luck!

~~~
kleiba
I guess it comes down to your expectations - if you expect to use one
operating system exactly the way you use another one, then why switch at all?
There are some things that GNU/Linux is better at, and others that Windows is
better at. That's why they're different systems.

------
middus
Why burn a DVD in order to install Win 7? VirtualBox allows you to mount a
CD/DVD image.

~~~
trezor
Worst case scenario getting Windows 7 on a USB-stick is dead easy as well.
Much simpler than most Linux-distros.

~~~
adient
As some anecdotal evidence against your point, I've installed Windows 7 on
three different systems from a USB stick and all three had the same issue: the
installer is unable to see the hard disk while the USB drive is plugged in.
From searching around the first time I had the issue it seems like this is
well known but there isn't really any effort to fix it. Only solution I was
able to use was to format the hard disk NTFS and copy USB drive contents to
the disk and boot without the USB. I've also installed a couple different
Linux distros from USB and never had any issues (with the install...).

------
crux
Does anyone else find it a little sad that in 2011 we're still reading stories
like this? 'I was able to get most of my system up and running in Ubuntu,
after downloading the right drivers, though printing doesn't work and the
keyboard sometimes stops responding in Virtualbox (though I understand this is
a known issue)' has been the state of the art for years now. It keeps getting
a little better, the interfaces keep getting a little refined, but the overall
picture has remained terribly static for a long time. We might be past the
point where installing Linux was a dungeon dive, fit only for a seasoned
hacker; but I think we've been past that point for long enough that minor
niggles like 'I still can't print' should be glaring red flags.

~~~
sn
I installed a PDF "printer" on windows and I haven't been able to "print" to
PDF or the built-in microsoft XPS file write for a really long time now, which
is incredibly annoying. Haven't had any problems printing with ubuntu on at
least 2 different printers.

------
motters
I installed Ubuntu onto my father's netbook after he started having trouble
with malware. I think he barely noticed that it wasn't Windows, and I've had
no complaints since. For most purposes the operating system is becoming less
important, since many things are now accessed via a web browser. The main
product differentiator is how much maintenance you have to do to keep the OS
running well, and in that regard Windows is very high maintenance.

------
ableal
> I can do the [screenshot] scaling and cropping with GIMP

Shooting flies with a cannon. The gThumb viewer has those editing
capabilities, and pops open instantly.

------
sn
My mother did a fresh install of windows because it was a second-hand computer
and now nothing works because the drivers aren't present. I recommended she
try ubuntu for that reason.

------
unicornporn
I wish I could do it too, but Lightroom and Photoshop via Wine isn't pleasant.
Don't know how well color management would work either. OS X works well
enough.

~~~
statictype
Yeah, that's one of the major selling points (for me) for Mac OS X - It's Unix
that can also run Photoshop.

------
mhd
Does anyone know what highly advanced interpolation "Snagit" does?

And wow, that Caldera desktop made me feel old. Worse than a twm screen, for
some kind of reason…

~~~
jeffbarr
I spent about an hour trying to get Imagemagick to produce scaled images that
looked as smooth as those produced by Snagit. I tried most of the options
described on <http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/> . No go.

I remember twm, and I once met "t" (Tom).

------
pragmatic
If this guy is the "Lead Web Services Evangelist at Amazon.com" why is he
running such crap hardware? "ancient" scanner, etc?

~~~
jpitz
Not every competent geek is a frivolous gadget junkie.

------
drivebyacct2
Shotwell and Compiz's Screenshot plugin can help with his screenshot woes. But
honestly, for the things you're evaluating Linux to be capable of... it's been
quite capable for a while. Now with new software focusing on usability, I
suggest that there are now enough nice pieces of software to create a very
usable experience for someone who finds a Mac interface easy to pickup, my
current setup is a no brainer for them. It has a familiar dock that looks
sharper than apple's own dock and not tacky and hacked up. Cardapio has given
me a main menu that is more capable and sanely organized than the Start Menu
without being a folder full of shortcuts.

tl;dr Linux has /been/ capable. Ubuntu and other OSS community software has
made it usably capable.

------
to
its easier to just go into an apple store. /troll

------
iuguy
Surely "Hey, I use Linux now and it's great!" stories belong on reddit.
/r/linux is => that way.

------
ludwigvan
2011 is definitely going to be the year of the Linux desktop!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Linux#Year_of_Desktop_L...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Linux#Year_of_Desktop_Linux)

