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An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

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31–40 of 58 posts

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#31
post #6

> It’s not just cool, it’s great for workflow. You can have files and documents open on one desktop – maybe you’ve got four browser windows open, researching something – and a single click takes you to a fresh desktop, with documents and apps open as you like. The article was written on May 2, 2008, well after the release of Leopard which ships with Spaces. > The results come up in different colors, which helps you l…

Probably the most significant thing in this article: I wholeheartedly agree that for everyone else, it should ship with one desktop interface...

I don't know if this has changed recently, but when I installed Ubuntu, it did not ask me to choose -- it defaulted to Gnome. If you later wanted KDE, you had to install it separately (or you could have installed the KDE-only Kubuntu in the first place). It makes me suspect that the friend that set up the Ubuntu box went through the additional trouble of installing both environments, so that the author was not playing with a vanilla install:

http://www.watchingthenet.com/switch-between-gnome-and-kde-d...

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#32
post #31
post #6

> It’s not just cool, it’s great for workflow. You can have files and documents open on one desktop – maybe you’ve got four browser windows open, researching something – and a single click takes you to a fresh desktop, with documents and apps open as you like. The article was written on May 2, 2008, well after the release of Leopard which ships with Spaces. > The results come up in different colors, which helps you l…

Probably the most significant thing in this article: I wholeheartedly agree that for everyone else, it should ship with one desktop interface... I don't know if this has changed recently, but when I installed Ubuntu, it did not ask me to choose -- it defaulted to Gnome. If you later wanted KDE, you had to install it separately (or you could have installed the KDE-only Kubuntu in the first place). It makes me suspect…

Actually, it's been a while since I had been on Ubuntu--I can't remember for sure! I was going by what he said.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#34

As a Mac user, this article made me cringe. > And that Safari can’t handle certain Web features, including plenty of videos. That's not really true, unless he's talking about crappy IE-specific sites. Most videos will play with the appropriate codecs installed (Flip4Mac and Perian cover most) > ...and some even still use the command line. (The command line? Oh, geez…) This says much more about your level of experienc…

Agreed. BTW, multiple desktops were around since before Linux. Unix workstations had them since the late '80s or so.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#35

i tried ubuntu over the weekend (this time for real, not on a VM). I was severely shocked to see that in order to have multiple monitor support, I would have to start editing config files. I'm a tad bit linux savvy (i know what cd is, in other words) but this was just too much hassle. I stuck with vista... :(

Knowing how to change directories isn't really evidence of "linux savvy", considering the command is the same in Linux, Unix, and Windows.

As for multiple-monitor support, your hardware vendor will often have a GUI configurator just like they provide for Windows. ATI's is called Catalyst Control.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#36
I'm certain I've read this article before. Given all the anachronisms in the article, that really points to this being an old article. Google didn't turn up anything though :-/

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#38
post #21
post #2

> I know Ubuntu is free software, but I don’t care about that. It’s more important that my system be good, not cheap. (And if it was really that great, they’d charge for it, right?). I wanted to stop reading right there, because the reviewer is ill informed by what it means to be "free," however I stuck it out and he gives a favorable review.

The first 10 paragraphs seem to be intentionally echoing the usual gripes and fears, in an ignorant-sounding tone. The author could have made it more clear, but I think he meant for it to sound flippant or somewhat mocking, then rebut most of it in the rest of the article. It's a decent Mac-user-tries-Ubuntu anecdote, not so much a review. But he does bring up one good point: Apple spends hojillions on advertising, a…

While the point about advertising is interesting, I think it's a bit of a red herring: Apple and Microsoft are trying to make money by having people use their OS, so naturally they have to convert people, or convince them to not switch to the competition. Linux on the other hand doesn't need to convert people.

Sure, the more users you get, the more potential developers there are, and the better the system will end up being. And of course there are commercial Linux distributions. But in general, Linux doesn't need advertising, because it doesn't need to "win." It just needs to stay alive for those of us who want to use it!

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#39
"Granted, I was testing on the campus of Virginia Tech, which has a fire-breathingly fast Net connection. But I’ve often checked out Web page load time while standing in an Apple store – and you know that’s optimized for speed – and it still wasn’t as fast."

Here I stopped reading.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#40
ubuntu-desktop stays true to its name ... an OS for average users only for desktoping

you know a unix OS is broken when you google "how do i compile / patch vim in ubuntu?"

or when you can't ssh to ubuntu-desktop machine

Ubuntu is an OS designed by committee ... it's secure by being weak

The only thing good about ubuntu is its supports for new hardwares; however, quality is questionable.

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