Return of Windows?
I’ve been Linux-only on the desktop for 4 years now. And now, I’m considering adding Windows back to my daily life. Linux provides an excellent environment to do many of the things I do:
- web - Web Browse
- remote administration - Use a terminal
- services - Run servers
- video - Transcode, edit, convert, and Backup DVD’s
- music - Listen to music
A few things Linux hasn’t done well and why I’m considering adding a second OS to my desk here (alongside Linux):
- Money Management - GNUCash is the closest thing here, but doesn’t hold a candle to the financial institution integration MS Money and Quicken can offer
- audible.com - my audible.com content forces me to boot into Windows every few months to add new audio books to my iPod mini
- Music - I’ve made limited use and I’d like to make more use of services like Rhapsody.com, Napster.com, or Yahoo Music to have a wider variety of music to listen to.
There are a few ancillary things that don’t necessitate daily Windows usage, but I do need them occasionally:
- Harmony Remote - make my Harmony remote do new things
- Some multimedia stuff, CNN Video - most of this is going to Flash anyway
Wow, that’s a pretty short list. I had in my head that there were more things I wanted from Windows. Maybe I’ll suck it up and work with GNUCash!
On that note, recently solved things that used to suck about Linux on the desktop:
- Flash 9 - Like it or not, Linux is all about choice, now you have the option of running Flash 9 on Linux.
- DVD Backups: This has gotten easier and easier on Windows; I just tried an amazing piece of Linux software called Thoggen which backs up DVD’s to my hard-drive-based media server with a surprisingly few number of clicks.
- Music Management - Rhythmbox and the new player Banshee have made music management and playback much more manageable on Linux. Keep up the great work!
- Network Manager - the network manager makes wireless/wired connection management a cinch. I highly recommend it!
I hate to mention it, but you know you could do all of that that you list for both Windows and Linux under Mac OS X. Every single thing there is covered.
* Firefox, Safari, Camino, and more..
* It’s unix underneath, so bash in a terminal works fine.
* Unix again, so servers work fine.
* Video works much better under OS X.
* I didn’t like iTunes when it first came out, but now I can’t imagine not using it. Nothing on linux comes close because what they don’t understand is that iTunes isn’t just a player, it’s an entire db for music.
* I run Quicken on my MacBook just fine.
* I must admit I don’t know for sure what about audible makes you need windows, but I can’t imagine it doesn’t work under the mac.
* Rhapsody.com, Napster.com, or Yahoo Music? Losers. Try eMusic for completely DRM free music, or you if you don’t mind the DRM, you really can’t beat the iTunes Music Store.
* Harmony Remote? Is this a smart remote control? If it doesn’t work directly in OS X, with the new intel macs can run windows under VMWare or Parallels when you need to do this. This is how I load maps on my GPS receiver.
* CNN? Works fine under the mac with flip4mac installed.
* Flash 9? No problems at all.
* DVD Backups? Handbrake.
* Music Management? No one holds a candle to iTunes. Rhythmbox is better than Banshee (which, as far as I can tell, sucks for management) but they’re both no where as good as iTunes.
* Network management? Everything in both Linux and Windows sucks compared to network management on the mac. Just click the wifi icon on the status bar and select the network you want. That’s all you do.
Anyway, if you’re going to consider windows, take just an extra moment and consider OS X. You can still do all the unix stuff you can with linux, but also all the windows stuff too. It really is quite a bit better.
Comment by Tanner Lovelace — February 2, 2007 @ 12:11 am
Thanks for taking the time to make what’s an excellent point. The short answer is, it hadn’t popped into my head during this thought process. The long answer has to do with a few things:
1) cost - I’ve never been willing to swallow the higher cost
2) interface - everyone loves the interface of OS X, and while I see it’s pretty and nice; I’ve found it to be somewhat clunky to actually use.
a) My main challenge is finding how to do things with the keyboard rather than reaching for the mouse. I used an iMac at the office for ~30 days while I was without a laptop. I’d get something like a mail client open, and want to go back from the message composition window to the Inbox window and couldn’t find any way to do it other than using the mouse. Obviously, my favorite alt-tab (I don’t remember if the key is alt or command or something else, but it’s where alt normally is) didn’t work, but I couldn’t find any substitute. Any ideas on this?
b) Getting through confirmation dialogs. Things like Firefox’s dialog to ask whether I want to remember that password I just typed or not, I refuse to move my hand to the mouse just to click ‘no’ or ‘remember’. I found that I could press Tab to switch between these after turning something on in the settings. However, the UI actually had some bugs in displaying the results of a user navigating focus of different UI elements using the keyboard. This may or may not have been only Firefox, I’m not sure.
3) availability - this is probably related to cost, but I already have Windows, and it’s associated software including MS Money
Maybe I’ll cancel my Lenovo order and get a Mac. Thanks for the insight Tanner.
Comment by drasch — February 2, 2007 @ 8:03 am
David:
A few thoughts here…
amarok is now a pretty decent music db.
moneydance is arguably a better finance system than gnucash, at least for personal finance stuff. I had the free trial version, and it let me go past the 100 transaction ‘limit’ without issue. It’s java-based, but I didn’t have speed issues with it. And you can run it the same on mac/linux/windows.
I agree on the keyboard stuff. I do not understand why I can’t tab through all fields in web forms - pulldown boxes and such get skipped over. I’ve been told you can change a setting to modify that behaviour, but macs are supposed to be all about a smooth experience. Who would honestly think that skipping over ordered widgets (forcing you to reach for the mouse yet again) is a ‘good’ idea (or even a natural idea)?
On another side note, why do the firefox packagers decide to have menus and dialog boxes renamed and in different orders on different platforms? Compare firefox2 on linux then on a windows machine. There’s no reason for the differences there - it makes moving between platforms difficult.
Comment by mgkimsal — February 7, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
BTW, I’m doing the vmware/xp thing under linux - best of both worlds, ime.
Comment by mgkimsal — February 7, 2007 @ 8:31 pm
[…] Part 1 […]
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