I'm actually running OS X on my Thinkpad. I kinda like the Dock, and the idea of a dock. But I'm weird like that.

Still, anything a tablet is good for, a tablet PC could do. And do better.




CUDA for bitcoin mining.

And really, Wine runs more games than you'd think. I just can't be arsed to install Linux, so I stick with 7 on my gaming system. But my non-gaming system runs Debian, and it works beautifully with LXDE. But that aside, most of the games I played before ran perfectly in Wine, and I'm pretty sure with Playonlinux, everything would run now.

Linux as a personal desktop to me is just a joke. You're just putting yourself under a handicap unnecessarily by not going with an OS more desktop friendly (OS X and Windows).

And as for my tablet, I'm happy with it. It does everything and more that I ever needed a full fledged PC/laptop for.

Linux is totally desktop friendly these days. There's nothing that these systems can do in Windows that they can't do in Linux. Plus they're too old for a comfortable 7, but I don't really want to run XP on them. So I use Debian and LXDE.

Another thing to look up, as an LXDE alternative, is Trinity. Not sure if they're still working with it, but it was a pretty good project.

Oh sure, there's nothing you can't do on a Linux desktop that you can't do on windows/OSX. It's just 50 times more annoying and time consuming to do.

And God forbid if something breaks.

BOD, we've been over this. Sarcasm breaks the internet and causes FSM to kill a kitteh.

Exactly what I am talking about here.

In all seriousness, I've never had anything break. In fact it's actually been more reliable than my Windows system.. and even my Mac for that matter.

That said, I don't really do any heavyweight work on these systems, and not being able to game makes them the perfect schoolwork systems. No distractions for my ADD afflicted mind.

I've had things break on Linux and break on Windows, though in my experience, things break less on Windows.

Linux has its place, Windows has its place. I can't live in a world with only one OS.

Relevant:

http://kotaku.com/5905251/looks-like-le ... y-on-linux

Haha, sweet. Just when I get a good Windows system to play games on, they port Steam to Linux. Eh. I give it 10 years until Linux is usable on the desktop. By then desktop usage would've slowed down. XD

figured you might say that... and you have a point. My argument against Unity is I suppose a weak one, in that aspect, but moreso I just prefer a traditional type desktop environment.

I didn't think Unity was horrible, but as one who uses Win98, I don't really like that type of interface as much. I could probably get used to it if I tried but as you mentioned, it's far more difficult to customize. I loved being able to edit the menu items in G2, that was nice. In Unity you have to do a whole lot of crap to get a custom menu entry, it's not really as cool.

I'm just going to continue using Ubuntu 10, maybe move to the LTS on my 10.10 laptop, but I don't mind it the way it is... LXDE is alright, I've messed with it a bit on a P4, runs pretty fast.

You should try Trinity. KDE3 was made to pretty much be a Windows XP clone. You'd probably like it. Although LXDE IS a lot lighter, Trinity has a lot less bugs.

It's been the "year of linux on the desktop" for years. I've been reading about it personally for over 10.

Trinity uses mostly Qt 3 which has been unmaintained for years now. The developer also shows significant interest in blocking a proper port to Qt 4. I'd like to use it, but Qt 3 is 100% unacceptable to me in 2012.

I remember back when they sold RedHat linux on the shelves. That was like what, 2003? I think that's when I first heard about how Linux was supposed to "turn the tides" on alternative desktop OS options.

That's the problem. Everyone says there'll be a "year of the Linux desktop". There will never be one. Ever.

However, it will evolve into a better desktop system, and over the years, it will constantly become a viable alternative to Windows.. but never will it replace it entirely. It's good, just.. not that good.



Wow, seriously? I thought they were working on porting it. That's stupid of him.. Qt4 is a lot better than Qt3. You'd think he'd WANT to port it to QT4, if just so it'd be able to run on more distros.

I used to keep up on the development of KDE back in the day, and when QT4 came out, they attempted to do a straight port of kde3 to QT4, however there was quite a few changes in the api that it made it more of a pain. The kicker program (the panel in kde3) was basically unportable without a complete rewrite, as it has been the exact same code since KDE was first created back in the 90's. Instead of rewriting for same functionality, they ditched it and started on plasma. Plasma was a nice idea on paper, but when they first implemented it, it was too buggy for its release.

I run one of the later versions of kde4 on my laptop right now and it seems to run perfectly. Only problem I have with it is my custom panel system doesn't display properly on reboot. (panel on the top is randomly floating in the air on every login)

Josh, you are seriously uneducated when it comes to desktop linux. I suppose that Window Maker is a little hard to use (not for me. I love it!), but Unity and GNOME 2 are a huge improvement from Windows 8 and even Windows 7. And Unity is right on par with Mac OSX. It has the equivalent of a dock and much more (the dash). However, I will say that Unity 3d is a piece of crap. It makes me mad that they removed Unity 2d from Ubuntu 12.10 (I'm on 12.04 and staying there for a long time).

Unity 3d is bad? Why do you say that?

I mean I'm running Intel graphics, and I love compositing WMs. Gnome 2 with compiz was wonderful, if you could get a proper theme. Especially with Emerald. Ah, how I miss those days.

Kind of going in circles here.. I'm not talking about UI environment alone. I'm talking about productivity, efficiency, and support.

Unity3d is bad because there are too many effects and crap. I don't need that crap. I just need something that works. If Ubuntu came with Window Maker I would have no complaints. Window Maker just works. Quite well actually.

If you want something that "just works", Linux is hardly the platform you want to be on.

I actually like Compiz... I have Wobbly Windows turned on for all of my computers.



I can't say I agree...

When I want to use a piece of hardware, like a printer or a graphics card, on Windows... I either have to install a huge package of trialware to make the hardware work, or in the case of older hardware, it just doesn't work because it's not "Windows 7 compatible"... and I'm supposed to accept that. For example, the 4 year old printer at Grandma's house whose print queue just periodically clogs up, even though it has the latest drivers, and there seems to be nothing I can do to fix it. I spent time making a batch script that deletes the print spooler temp files and restarts the service... I put it on Grandma's desktop and called it "Fix Printer" and told her to run that if she can't print...

With Ubuntu, on the other hand, it seems like every piece of hardware I own is immediately recognized and just works. There are obviously exceptions, and sometimes the drivers don't fully support the advanced features (an example being my ThinkPad, which I have to disable nVidia Optimus in order for the graphics to work properly) but at least everything seems to work. My Ubuntu machines can seamlessly print to my Brother MFC-7840W, Grandma's "non-Windows 7 Compatible" printer, and an ancient HP LaserJet 4L.

When you boot up a Linux machine to a graphics card that needs proprietary drivers, you usually get a nice 1024x768 desktop with 16-bit colors that you can use while you figure out how to get your drivers installed... not like on Windows where unsupported graphics cards boot up to 640x480 and the nVidia website doesn't even fit on the screen...

Even software that isn't designed to work on Linux (I wanted to install the Kindle reader today on my laptop) can run great after minor adjustments. I installed it with WINE, got an error when trying to run it, and the first or second result on Google was a quick fix that involved moving 1 file in my WINE C:\ drive. Immediately afterward, Kindle was working great.

On Linux, you sometimes have to do additional work to get things working the way you want them. But at least you don't hit brick walls like you do with Windows, where sometimes there's just no good solution and you have to accept that...

And if there is no Linux driver available, what then? I use Bluetooth 4.0 on a regular basis, and I love Windows' simple bluetooth connection method. Not sure how this is on Linux, but if it's anything like the pain I went through trying to get standard plug and play drivers to work. I don't want to deal with it.


Great, but it's not the 4 year old printer I'm concerned about. I want my hardware platform to work out of the box to it's fullest extent. I don't want to worry about some chipset or graphics feature not being utilized to its fullest extent because I'm on Linux.


I haven't seen this happen since Windows XP pre-SP3. The linux distros out at the time were far worse in these regards. I remember editing xwindow files to get my graphics working properly. Trial and error for about an hour and a half. And that was just for 1024x768 @ 16 bit resolution.


...until some update breaks it in a later version. Stuff like this are things I just don't have the time or patience at this point in my life to mess with. When I sit down on my desktop/laptop for personal time, I don't want to be worrying about how to install a Windows application in WINE when I could just run it natively and be done with it.


Come on man. Really? I don't think that's a fair statement at all. Both platforms have their brick walls, I'm not going to lie here. The reality is though, you better get used to it on Linux or learn the OS inside and out, learn how to compile, and lastly learn to program/build your own workarounds because it's just not that straightforward. I can't count how many times I've tried installing some program in Linux when I run into a situation where I need to compile. Ok no big deal. Well guess what? Missing dependency. Ok great lets install latest gcc. Oh great ran into some error with lib-xxx in gcc. Oh crap now I need to use lib-xxx-dev, let me update my repositories.... Blah blah blah. 45 minutes later and I forget why I wanted to the program to begin with.

+1, Josh.

Kirk, I have never had to install a huge trialware package to get a piece of hardware working on Windows. You do realize, you don't have to install everything on the CD / download from the manufacturer, right?

You want to talk printers on Linux and Windows? Alright, let's talk printers. I just recently (well, a few months ago) purchased a new Samsung laser printer.

On Windows:
I downloaded the driver, next-next-finish and I'm done. I installed it on my Windows Server and then adding it to the other computers in the house was as easy as putting the UNC path to the printer in the run box. Within seconds, it was installed and ready to print.

On Linux:
I had to spend an hour or so fucking around with CUPS trying to get the right settings for it to recognize the printer. I had to Google around until I found a site with instructions on how to add the printer, and even then it wouldn't print after following those instructions. I had to do some additional troubleshooting and after another 30 minutes or so I was finally printing to the god damn thing.

Now, to be fair, part of the problem was that I had never used CUPS before or really installed a printer in Linux before. So there was a bit of a learning curve.

But both OS's were accessing the same shared printer, in Windows, I didn't have to do anything more than entering the path to the printer... it took care of everything else for me. Linux required several steps including finding the driver and basically doing everything manually.

As far as OS's "just working" out of the box, it really depends a lot on the specific hardware you're using and how functional it is with the generic drivers. I've had numerous Windows installs that had full Aero glass, sound, and network connectivity right after doing a fresh install and I've had the same on Linux.