Photo by urban_data.
This is a guest post by Evan Meagher. He writes about tech, design, music and gaming at evanmeagher.net.
If blogs are to be believed, it would seem that every aspect of the web worker’s life revolves around one Apple product or another. The image of the hip MacBook Pro-clad designer has become a meme to the point of becoming clichė. As a web worker, it seems like I should be subscribing to digg’s Apple feed, drinking copious amount of tea, and listening to bands that no one has heard of.
The last two are fine, but why not break the mold and use an operating system that no one’s heard of too?
Sure, Apple’s built its reputation on being the hipster brand of choice, but one of the nice things about Linux is the ability to customize virtually any aspect of the operating system to cater to your workflow and computing habits.
For the purpose of structure I’ll break the article into two parts. The first will discuss how Linux can be just as application-rich, in terms of usefulness, as OS X or Windows. In the second half, I’ll cover various productivity-boosting apps and features that allow you do accomplish virtually any task with a few simple keystrokes.
Applications
Most people’s reason for not using Linux is that software companies don’t offer much support for it. Office, Outlook, iCal, etc. are the industry standards, so why should the freelancer look elsewhere?
Simply put, because you can.
You decided to work through the web so you could do whatever you wanted, right? Why not extend that to your choice of software? Give Pidgin, OpenOffice, Evolution, or Thunderbird a try, even if only to save a few bucks.
Outside the sphere of desktop applications, most of the average web-worker’s fundamental tasks can be achieved through the use of web apps. In the case of writers, for example, it’s possible that your entire freelance career can be performed through a browser. Gmail, Gcal, Meebo, Remember The Milk, Wordpress, Paypal. Game, set, match.
Web apps are cross-platform by nature, so they’re also ideal for use with Linux. As long as you have a browser (which you do, since you’re reading this), you can rely on web apps for your email, calendars, to-do lists, finances, and research.
For any other software needs (i.e. Photoshop), chances are you can fill the holes with Wine. Since 0.9.54, Photoshop CS2 works without hitch (which I can attest to). The power of open-source, along with help from Google, is making Wine better all the time. Any glitches left over are taken care of for those with a bit of patience.
For freelance programmers, Ubuntu’s built-in text edit, gedit is remarkably powerful. With the addition of a few plugins, you can turn it into a fully-functional development environment.
Productivity Boosters
As much as I adore Compiz Fusion, I understand why some people might see it as visual fluff. Demo videos tend to only show the bells and whistles. Sure, being able to rain and paint fire on your cubical desktop is cool for 10 seconds, but who actually uses that?
A lot of the “advanced desktop effects” built into Ubuntu 7.10 are nothing but eye candy, but a handful of them, when set up and used properly, can really put your productivity into full-throttle.
- Virtual Desktops: This one’s really up to you. You can have as few or as many as you like, and use each for whatever you want. The most common paradigm is to split up separate desktops for different tasks, like browsing, media-playing, instant-messaging, etc. Using keyboard shortcuts or the scroll wheel, you can access any desktop on the fly, allowing for extremely quick screen-switching. (Learn how to use Linux’s virtual desktops.)
- ADD Helper: Darkens all inactive windows, leaving the window you’re working in brightly lit and distraction-free. Very useful when you have to buckle down and get to work.
- Scale: Same as Exposé in OS X. Slam the cursor into a corner and all active windows slide into tile formation, allowing you to quickly access your IM window hidden behind Firefox without having to touch the keyboard.
- Focus Desktop: Again emulating OS X, this feature causes all active windows to slide out to the corners of the screen, giving you quick access to your desktop. You can turn this feature on by going to General Options > Actions, double-clicking on the Screen Edge column of “Hide all windows and focus desktop,” and selecting the trigger mechanism. (I trigger it by slamming the cursor into the bottom-right corner of the screen)
- Eye Candy: Although not a direct promoter of productivity, having an interface that looks and feels slick makes you enjoy using it, and thus makes you work better with it. In my opinion, Compiz’s smooth animations and overall eye candy put OS X and Vista to shame without requiring a lot of hardware power.
Gnome-Do
I’m deliberately saving the best for last, found in a little app called Gnome-Do. Anyone familiar with Quicksilver for OS X will know what this is like. Gnome-Do pops up a slick-looking little window that lets you do virtually anything by typing in a few characters and hitting enter.
You can open any application, URL, bookmark, or folder within your home directory by simply typing in the name and hitting enter. It’ll recognize what you want after the first few characters, so it (basically) reads your mind.
With the right set of plugins, you can start chats in Pidgin by typing in contact’s names, play music without having to actually interact with your media player, search the web, or put your computer to sleep, just to name a few. You can tie Compiz Animation to it too, just to make it even more cool-looking.
I’ve been using Do for a few months now and can’t think of another program I’ve ever used that came anywhere near to being as useful. You’ll be amazed at how fast you can interact with your computer. Whenever I use my Windows partition to play games, I’m a little peeved at having to waste time clicking around to do stuff.
Conclusion
Hopefully, I’m not sounding like another Linux fanatic fruitlessly trying to preach. I went into writing this simply to let you know that it’s possible to actually do things with Linux. It’s not just for pale people who speak in code anymore.
If you combine web apps with open source alternatives like OpenOffice and plug any holes with Wine, it’s fully possible to craft a computing environment that’s just as easy and enjoyable to use as Windows or OS X.
That being said, the setup can be more of a hassle. Sometimes you may have to change your work habits and at times deal with format incompatibilities. Four that reason, Linux still isn’t for everyone.
I encourage anyone at all interested to give web-work using Linux a try. You might be surprised at how slick and easy it can be.
Interested? You can download Ubuntu here.
Evan Meagher blogs about tech, design, music and gaming at evanmeagher.net.
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51 Comments, Comment or Ping
Shankar Ganesh
One thing that I think Ubuntu doesn’t yet have is a good desktop blog client. I’m so much accustomed to Windows Live Writer, and I was able to find hardly any such program for Ubuntu that matches it.
I found something called BlogGTK, but it’s quite primitive and didn’t have that many features.
If anyone knows about a good desktop blogging client that runs on Linux, please let me know
Thanks.
Mar 27th, 2008
Terence Chang
I am second Shankar, I am a big fan of Windows LIve Writer. I am also a web programmer.
The hardware and software availability on Linux is always bothering me. It takes time to resolve issues on Linux if you don’t really know the shell or command line.
Most of the clients I dealt with are M$ only shop for desktop. One advantage for windows users is that you can easily find free software or cracked software to use on your computers. It saves a lot of time trouble shooting your computer or learning new system.
I don’t remember how many times I have tried to install RedHat, Suse and …. , but I have never successfully migrate my stuff from Window.
I hope Ubuntu is easier. I heard it’s very customizable with some knowledge about package and patch etc. I will be switching if Linux can support the following programs.
1. Sync Blackberry or PocketPC
2. Quickbooks
3. MSSQL
One thing I really hate about Windows is the Desktop Graphic. There is no creative. I really like KDE or GNOME desk top. So pretty!
Mar 27th, 2008
Evan Meagher
I’m sorry to say I don’t, Shankar. I write my stuff either in OpenOffice or directly in Wordpress.
Mar 27th, 2008
yungchin
I think there are reasons for checking out GNU/Linux other than “because you can”: much like people work through the web to attain more freedom, people use GNU/Linux to attain more freedom.
There’s more freedom on a lot of levels. For example, I prefer the Ubuntu distro over MacOS because it gives me freedom to choose my hardware: I don’t like Apple keyboards, and screen resolutions are too low to my taste all across their laptop line, not to mention they lack card slots for 3G cards… (working anywhere?!)
So, Ubuntu gives me most of the smoothness and power that MacOS would, on my favourite laptop.
Thanks for writing a nice introduction. It’s really great that you invest time in telling people they have choices!
Shankar: you might want to check out Gnome-Blog or Drivel (and there are probably plenty more choices I can’t remember).
Mar 27th, 2008
Shankar Ganesh
@Evan: Not a problem, Evan. I’ve also tried OpenOffice, but I’ll try what YungChin has mentioned.
Mar 28th, 2008
Shankar Ganesh
I left a comment here on this post before the first one appearing here, but I guess it hasn’t been approved yet. It contained a few links
Mar 28th, 2008
Michael Martin
I’m using Windows, and it would take a lot to get me to change I think. Windows Live Writer, Photoshop CS3, Dreamweaver, Adobe Air (For desktop web-apps), iDrive (Online backups) etc.
As for Gnome-Do, check out Launchy (free). It sounds like it’s exactly the same as Gnome-Do (I have mine set up to search files, programs, shutdown, lock, change music and eject drives, but you can do more if you want, because it can execute anything).
Auto Hot Key is another free tool I couldn’t do without now. Makes it simple to set up all kinds of fancy hotkeys.
But yeah, some of the visual effects on Linux are amazing.
Mar 28th, 2008
Linda R. Moore
I now use Linux for pretty much everything, with one exception–some specialty software that isn’t on Linux and likely never will be. I was wondering how come you don’t use GIMP, though, instead of PhotoShop?
Mar 28th, 2008
Evan Meagher
I use GIMP for more menial tasks like cropping images and basic stuff, but I’ve found I’m too accustomed to Photoshop to officially make the switch. GIMP is lacking in the area of text effects and isn’t as powerful overall as Photoshop, IMO.
I’m glad to see I’m not the only one using Linux.
Mar 28th, 2008
Tom Beaton
I swapped over to Ubuntu in January. Since then I have been very happy with it. I recently moved from openoffice to google docs. It has a function to submit to blog which you might like to test. I have not tried it yet. This is something you can test on windows then if happy, commit to the move.
I am very excited about the idea of running photoshop through wine.
You can use GNUcash for Quickbooks, but im not sure how similar it is.
The one thing I think Linux needs is a great twitter client. Twitux aint that great.
Mar 28th, 2008
The Cubicle Guy
To be honest haven’t tried Ubuntu, yet. Tried Fedora and GNOME and XFCE4 on different environments. The main thing against Linux currently is, and it sounds very trivial, that the user experience in terms of regular apps doesn’t rival Windows’ yet. FireFox will parse “smal”, “x-small” and other small fonts very differently on Windows and Linux. The Linux version displays the small text almost unreadably small and the regular text too big. Increasing the text size makes regular text look like headings and decreasing size makes the small text unreadable.
On a side note, GIMP has become very powerful and will do very nicely. You might need to learn new tricks. Even on Windows GIMP is really cool.
Other little items standing in the way of Linux useability is that directly moving from Windows, the GNOME environment is very unresponsive. Although, the X server and it’s graphics subsystems have improved recently, it needs to be more responsive. They say that the network communication in X server for the client dislpay has improved a lot. So hopefully soon GNOME and KDE and all such will be very responsive. The exception to this is of course the lightweight XFCE.
Being a keyboard maniac, I find the lack of keyboard support in all interfaces in Linux is very random. It’s not really Linux’s fault. Linux is really just the kernel. But the Desktop Managers such as GNOME and such don’t have a uniform GUI interface and Linux community in general doesn’t have as many keyboard shortcuts established yet. It causes confusion and frustration moving from app to app.
OpenOffice is pretty cool even on Windows. It doesn’t rival MS Office in experience yet, but it is almost there. And for free, it beats other word processors….
Very good post. Informative. And you provided good options. As userbase increases for so will useability.
Sorry, if any part of this post sounds negative. That’s not the intention.
Just chiming in.
Mar 28th, 2008
MJ Ray
Great to see this post here! Not just Ubuntu, but there are many GNU/Linux systems, from Ubuntu-based ones like Kubuntu and so on, or more radical ones like gobolinux. A few riffs on points above:
Maybe it takes time to resolve hardware issues with Linux, but at least you can resolve them yourself (or pay a developer to) as long as the hardware maker isn’t in bed with MS;
GIMP v Photoshop really is a case of what you’re accustomed to - I’m comfortable with GIMP to the point of writing batch processing instructions and plugins and find Photoshop horribly limiting;
The “Linux community in general doesn’t have as many keyboard shortcuts established yet” simply isn’t true. There were lots of keyboard shortcuts, like ctrl-A for start of line, ctrl-K (scissors) for cut, ctrl-Y (trowel) for paste, but they were different to Windows, so GNOME (and KDE?) chose to fight them and add more Windows-y ones, resulting in the current mess - it’s a damn shock when you try to go to start of line and it selects all text instead…
Other tasks mostly have the parts available. If something matters that much to you, pay to put those parts together and then share them with the world. You can pay with time or money or sometimes other stuff!
Mar 28th, 2008
Outlaw Design Blog
Those are some very interesting thoughts and suggestions. Im going to have to bookmark this and check them all out later!
Mar 29th, 2008
Ed Sutherland
I went through my own Linux stage a few years ago. Like many fevers, if you grab something to drink and lie flat for a while, it’ll pass.
Now that I’ve dispensed with the required Linux-bashing, I do have a couple serious comments. I know there are Linux equivalents to many Microsoft and Apple products, but are they drop-in no-brain replacements, or more like Sacharine, which seems like sugar, but leave a yukky after-taste?
I think the best candidate for Linux is the newcomer to computers. Although rare, they have the least emotional baggage and likely to view Linux for what it can do, rather than how it would be easier to boot back into OSX or Windows.
The other question is Linux (at least in desktops; servers have always loved the penguin) was viewed as a cheap alternative to Windows or OSX. But is that need shrinking with the onset of all the great (i.e. they work and are faster than molasses in February) virtual machines? I’ve an Imac and can start a Windows game while typing away in Apple’s TextEdit. The same can be done from Windows for Apple applications.
Mar 29th, 2008
Evan Meagher
@ The Cubicle Guy
I know what you’re talking about with regard to GNOME’s shoddy keyboard support, to some extent. Switching tabs in native apps like gedit is a pain. Why can’t they use ctrl + tab like everyone else?
@ MJ Ray
Thanks for the feedback! I wrote the article thinking that not many people here would be Linux users, so it’s nice to see all of you posting!
Mar 29th, 2008
Jake
I love Linux… especially KDE. In KDE, everything is so nicely integrated it makes using GNOME or Windows look like a mess. The only software I still use regularly that isn’t KDE is Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and the GIMP. Unfortunately, Konqueror, KOffice, and Krita are still a ways off for me.
One of my favourite things about KDE as compared to GNOME I’ve decided is keyboard support. I never need to use my mouse for basic tasks and really only use it for web browsing (though I have been loving the Hit a Hint extension lately), and very mouse specific applications such as the GIMP.
Of course, KDE’s main strength is customizability. Seriously, if you’re on GNOME and you’ve never given it much of a shot, do.
Mar 29th, 2008
CharlesP
I’ve never used Ubuntu, but was a Unix/Linux admin for a few years back in the early 00’s and always maintained a linux box or two at home. When I first got my iBook it was intended to dual boot with yellow-dog linux, but there were some hardware issues at that time and I gradually came to love OS X. I still love the command line, and used Quanta with the linux transporter app for OS X for a while.
My problem changing back to linux has been finding a laptop that I liked as much as my iBook (that wasn’t more expensive). That, and that I’ve now got enough Mac software that I’d hate to give up. I seriously looked at an EeePC to use as my portable, but it was just a smidge too small for my big man hands.
Mar 31st, 2008
George Fragos
I do all my site development on Ubuntu. There’s been some good points made but I have a few more. I prefer to start development on a standards based browser and then tweak for the vagarities of IE which I run in Wine. I use Gnome’s Epiphany browser because it’s so much faster than Firefox for example. I also like that in Epiphany, Ctrl-U brings up Gedit to view source. It also has an Error Viewer extention to test HTML and Links. The Actions extension can create lots of helpful tricks like right clicking a browser image to bring it up in GIMP. I use GFTP to uplaod pages.
Mar 31st, 2008
Evan Meagher
@CharlesP
I think your problem is more the deficiency of the non-Apple PC industry in the area of industrial design than with Linux. Apple is head-and-shoulders above the rest of the mainstream manufacturers when it comes to sleek-looking products. Hopefully PC-makers will continue taking the hints that people nowadays want things to look smooth and curvy instead of black and beefy.
@George Fragos
Ditto for developing in Ubuntu. I haven’t used Epiphany much, though. I’ll have to check it out.
Mar 31st, 2008
Brian
@TOM BEATON: Check out gTwitter. It’s not perfect but I’ve found it suitable for everyday use.
Apr 1st, 2008
C. T.
@Michael Martin: there’s no need to give up your favorite applications listed. While I’m not sure about an equivelant for Windows Live Writer or iDrive (I don’t need either of those services so I don’t have experience), both Dreamweaver and Photoshop work nearly flawlessly in Wine on Ubuntu (and the bugs are nothing much either), and Adobe is porting Air to Linux very soon. I’m a website developer, and it works perfectly for me.
Apr 1st, 2008
Peter
The best blogging software for Linux is Flock, and it does a mean flickr uploader at the same time…
Apr 1st, 2008
The Cubicle Guy
One thing that is somewhat annoying is in Windows it is a simple matter of doing Alt-Space then C and the window closes because keystrokes are buffered. In GNOME or XFCE they’re not buffered. So if you press Alt+space then C you’re left looking at the system menu on the window having to press C again because when you first pressed C the system menu wasn’t up so the keystroke was just thrown out.
@MJ Ray: “There were lots of keyboard shortcuts, like ctrl-A for start of line, ctrl-K (scissors) for cut, ctrl-Y (trowel) for paste, but they were different to Windows,”
Those are fine and well. But simple things like tab navigation as mentioned and the presence of Alt+Underlined_Char for button presses. In general you can’t do without the mouse…. not on GNOME or XFCE4. It seems to be upto the developer to worry about whether they’ll support hotkeys. In Windows it is just the norm so _almost_ all apps do support. Now someone mentions KDE. Will have to try it.
Don’t misunderstand, all the labor for free in people’s personal time is much appreciated and very impressive. Just saying that for average user things like this matter.
@Evan Meagher: Ctrl-tab too. Also one desktop will use ctrl-esc to show system menu the other will not have a system menu. While the choice is good, the lack of (at least default) standards is frustrating for your keyboard using joe geek. But it will get there eventually. All that for free…. you can’t complain.
Apr 1st, 2008
Evan Meagher
@The Cubicle Guy
Agreed. A lot of Compiz-Fusion’s hotkeys are arguably unintuitive too.
Apr 1st, 2008
CGA
Totally agree with The Cubicle Guy, the fonts has always been, and still is, the major deal breaker for me when it comes to any Linux distro. No matter how your tweak, the are just plain butt ugly.
Apr 1st, 2008
blink4blog
Sorry but for Productivity Boost part, all you need is Compiz Fusion to do the same tricks.
For GNOME go, forget about it, just hit “Alt + F2″ you are having a GNOME command input anyway.
TQ
Apr 1st, 2008
MJ Ray
@The Cubicle Guy: I don’t understand what you mean by “Alt+Underlined_Char for button presses” - you can use the number pad as a mouse emulator if you want and IIRC /*- switch which mouse button the 5 and 0 keys activates. Also, unless something changed since I last saw it, GNOME was useable without mouse, using Alt+hotkeys to drive the menus and Ctrl+key for common tasks. It’s part of the user interface guidelines, but if a developer ignores it, what can you do? You can’t sack them and you can’t stop them releasing until they fixed the bug. Look at the reviews for nasties like that.
Tab navigation I’ll give you. Tabs are always a usability graveyard, a last-ditch attempt to salvage Microsoft-style window-in-window Multiple Document Interface. They should have no place on any windowed user interface…
Apr 1st, 2008
Georges
Linux is open and free. Windows is arguably not as open, and definitely not free.
I use Linux on servers and it is performing perfectly, 7.5 Gb/s of mpeg2 streaming without a glitch. And that is on a 2U system. Microsoft can’t come close to this!
Now on the desktop, I want to switch to Linux, but it is a bit of a challenge. I have software licenses that work only on Windows: an mpeg encoder, an mpeg analyser, a desktop share application that works very easily over firewalls, etc …
I’m preparing myself for switching to Linux:
On my windows laptop, I use free open source software, or software that exist in both windows and Linux:
- Mozilla
- Gimp
- OpenOffice
- Audacity
- VLC
- Soon thunderbird for emails
- Skype
- Google desktop
etc …
Next time I get a new laptop or next time my hard drive crashes, I’ll switch to Linux, probably fedora because I use redhat on my servers.
Microsoft has designed a big lock-in, but I’ll escape !
Apr 1st, 2008
dersk
@Evan - there’s a control panel you can install that lets you customize all the hotkeys for compiz.
The extra benefit of compiz: four year old daughters think the desktop cube looks really cool.
Apr 1st, 2008
RMVilela
I use xfce4, and i assigned CTRL+1 key biding to the command xfrun.
It’s much faster, and I don’t use menus
Apr 2nd, 2008
Sean
I recently installed Ubuntu 8.10 Hardy Heron Beta. I wrote a quick guide for new users to install using wubi, which can be found on my website in the linux section.
I’d rather not link as I don’t want anyone to think I’m just trying to steal traffic
Apr 2nd, 2008
The Cubicle Guy
@MJ Ray:
“Tab navigation I’ll give you. Tabs are always a usability graveyard, a last-ditch attempt to salvage Microsoft-style window-in-window Multiple Document Interface. They should have no place on any windowed user interface…”
To be honest, I like tabs when used properly. That is also the one feature that moved quite a few MS IE users to FireFox. It has been one of the favorite feature of the linux community as well. But I’ll agree that GUI design is very subjective.
“It’s part of the user interface guidelines, but if a developer ignores it, what can you do?”
Very true. That’s exactly what I meant, when the community doesn’t really have a platform wide set of standards and the developers also don’t help, it is hard for a standard to emerge.
Alt+Underlined_Char meant that almost all applications in MS Windows that have a “Browse” button will have B or R underlined to allow the user to press Alt+B or Alt+R to send a click to the button.
Also in Windows you can Press the underlined character on a menu item or the first letter of the first word of the menu caption. But in XFCE you can’t. You have to press down arrow 20 times to get to the 20th item down or so.
It’s all subjective and GUI design is very subjective. So it is very understandable that different people will find different elements more suitable for productivity.
@Evan Meagher,
@Skellie,
Enjoying the discussion but please let us know if it sounds disruptive.
Apr 2nd, 2008
Evan Meagher
@The Cubicle Guy
I’m with you on tabs. They provide very useful functionality with minimal visual intrusion. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another paradigm to break away from having multiple instances/windows of the same program.
I also agree than many people switched to Firefox because of its early usage of tabs. I remember using Maxthon for a while in between my using IE and Firefox because it was basically IE with tabs.
Not sure what Skellie thinks, but I don’t think the discussion has gotten disruptive at all. This is exactly what makes the blog such a great interactive medium.
Apr 2nd, 2008
Evan Meagher
@Dersk
Thanks for the tip. And yes, the desktop cube is an intawin for getting ooooo’s and aaaaah’s from most people.
Apr 3rd, 2008
anima
I tried developing websites with Ubuntu and couldn’t find a close replacement to Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS3. Using GIMP and BlueFish is a good alternative but it takes time to really really switch
Apr 4th, 2008
Evan Meagher
@Anima
It’s worked pretty well for me so far. I use CS2 through wine and Bluefish/gedit. It takes a bit of work to set up a good system, but if you’re willing to put in the effort, it can be just as good as a Mac/Windows setup.
Apr 4th, 2008
MJ Ray
@The Cubicle Guy: Oh well, most desktops do have shortcuts, but I think XFCE is a smaller and younger one, so maybe it’s not there yet. I expect you could make a name for yourself as XFCE’s usability guru by writing some docs and sending in some patches, if you wanted…
@anima: Photoshop-v-GIMP is a habit thing, I think. I suspect there’s a reason there’s no Dreamweaver-like package - last time I looked (18 months or so ago), it made it pretty hard to produce good standards-compliant cross-platform web sites, so it would probably die a death among generally-Mozilla-based Ubuntu users who often tweak their browsers to fool stupid banks and so on. I use wily (a hyperlinking editor) and emacs to produce web sites, along with a lot of bolt-on tools, which I’ve probably been doing for 10 years or so now. I don’t think that would be quite as easy on another platform, although modern Macs look like they get close.
Apr 4th, 2008
Jack
I recently installed Ubuntu and really rate it. The only downside is games are harder to play and perhaps don’t work so well on Wine.
Re Photoshop you didn’t mention Gimp. Which is an awesome free picture editing program which is very useful.
Apr 4th, 2008
devnet
scribefire is a firefox extension that plugs into most blogs for posting. Why use a desktop client when it can integrate with your browsers?
Apr 6th, 2008
Dom
I’d just like to point out something I’m sure you know but you may want to edit your post so other readers who aren’t familiar with Linux and Compiz understand that Virtual Desktops is not a Compiz feature.
I don’t have Compiz or any other compositing window manager but I’m using 4 virtual desktops on my Debian laptop right now.
Compiz only makes it eye candy.
BTW, some of the things that would keep me from ever working in Windows again (and lack of which bothers me every time a firend of mine asks me to clean his/her PC from nasty viruses) are:
much more customizable system, unix clipboard, “keep above/below others” window feature, virtual desktops, possibilities of command line and bash scripting, stability and no need to restart the whole system when something is installed (I went nuts the other day when I had to restart firend’s PC 5 times in 10 minutes because I was installing some software!), security (granted you have to know how to setup your box to be as secure as you can handle), price and freedom to do what I please.
But I don’t have anything against 90% of the population that uses Windows, just waiting for the OOXML format to get rejected by IEEE-SA and Microsoft being forced into allowing the whole population to easily use ODF documents in Office, and not have worries of incompatibilities.
Apr 7th, 2008
Dom
@Anima:
Some 2-3 years ago when I switched I found Quanta as a good replacement for Dreamweaver - have you tried that? And there’s also some NVU about which I don’t know much…
Apr 7th, 2008
Evan Meagher
@Dom
Good point. I bundled all the features together to make them easier to digest, but it may be a good idea to note that virtual desktops are built into Ubuntu. Compiz-Fusion simply adds eye-candy animations to how you interact with them.
Agreed about OOXML. I lost a bit of faith in the ISO, but hopefully it won’t get past many more checkpoints.
Apr 9th, 2008
Dom
Yeah, just as I posted a comment here I went to check the latest developments on the OOXML case and was stunned when I found out the news.
What do you mean by “hopefully it won’t get past many more checkpoints” - didn’t it became a standard now? What’s more to pass?
Apr 9th, 2008
Evan Meagher
@Dom
Referring to your comment on the IEEE. I don’t foresee Microsoft making Office compatible with any ODx formats any time soon, though.
Apr 9th, 2008
Edi Stojicevic
Hi,
Just to give you some software available for blogging under gnome :
$ apt-cache search blog gnome
dfo - Desktop Flickr Organizer for Gnome
drivel - Blogging client for the GNOME desktop
foomatic-gui - GNOME interface for configuring the Foomatic printer filter system
gnome-blog - GNOME applet to post to weblog entries
straw - desktop news aggregator for GNOME
gnome-blog manage differents blogs like blogger, wordpress, etc …
I’m using Linux for about eleven years now and I’m usind Debian GNU/Linux exclusively since 2000 and I dont want to work anymore with any Windows.
Why ?
Because I like the philosophy of the Free and OpenSource Softwares.
For those working with Photoshop and Illustrator, you should try softwares like inkscape, gimp which are simple and have a lot of features.
You can contact me if you want/need some advices …
E
Apr 11th, 2008
Michael Bubb
Nice post - agree wholeheartedly. Did not know about the gedit improvements.
One thing to add - I am enjoying
innotek VirtualBox as a vm platform for running WinXP for the few things I cant replace (Windows only inventory tracker that my company uses; Internet Explorer for the dumass timesheet my company uses…).
I have been on Ubuntu for the past 6 months (SysAdmin tech support work) and it has been great. \
Nice post.
Apr 11th, 2008
Evan Meagher
Thanks, Michael! I’m heard of VirtualBox, but have never used it. How seamlessly does it run things?
Apr 11th, 2008
Sam
Great post.
I just wanted to add that I use Gnome Deskbar applet instead of Do - after a few months of trying both I prefer it. The clincher was when I found the Remember the Milk addon, and I can post, review and edit tasks on RTM directly from the Deskbar - sweet.
VirtualBox is brilliant, though I haven’t been able to get USB and some other inputs working. I simply haven’t needed it. But clipboards move across between OS’, and in “Seamless” mode, the two OS’ coexist in the same environment pretty happily.
Agree with an earlier comment, I never found a blog post that couldn’t be written quite happily in ScribeFire, an excellent Firefox extension.
I’ve found the progression of Ubuntu over the past year and a half that I’ve been running Linux to be excellent. It just gets easier and more intuitive. I guess thats what happens when software is written for people and not for their wallets.
Apr 12th, 2008
Evan Meagher
@Sam
I have a friend who swears by Deskbar, too. As a note, there’s a Tasque plugin for Do that you can integrate with RTM, at least according to the Do mailing list people.
Apr 13th, 2008
cJ
@Evan,
What program do you use for the Mac looking bar on the bottom of your desktop as a program launcher?
May 5th, 2008
Evan Meagher
Avant Window Navigator.
May 9th, 2008
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