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From OS X to Ubuntu

nicolas.perriault.net

11–20 of 403 posts

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#11
> So, is Linux ready for the desktop? > For me, the answer is yes.

Honestly it's been ready for years on the desktop (of course, this does not apply if you are an expert user in Y software only available on Z platform and need to use it for your job/company, etc...). Ubuntu 16.04 did not bring anything significant on the table, it's just that most people have not noticed. I switched full Linux back in 2009~2010 and I have never looked back since.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#12

Elementary OS is very similar to Mac OS in terms of UI. Of course the project is rather new, but is very promising. The desktop environment (Pantheon) is installable in Ubuntu, though. Once in a while you might end up with a messed up situation that might require some effort to fix.

How well does it work to install Pantheon on Ubuntu? I'm curious to try it on a home computer that has other users without impacting them, is there a simple way to make it launch Pantheon when I sign in, but still use Unity for other user accounts on the machine? Ages ago I remember using a login client that allowed you to pick which desktop environment you wanted to use, but I'm not sure how to do it on Ubuntu... I…

Lightdm/gdm (the service that provides the login screen) generally provides a way to choose an alternate session to start on login and then remember it on a per-user basis.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#13

Elementary OS is very similar to Mac OS in terms of UI. Of course the project is rather new, but is very promising. The desktop environment (Pantheon) is installable in Ubuntu, though. Once in a while you might end up with a messed up situation that might require some effort to fix.

How well does it work to install Pantheon on Ubuntu? I'm curious to try it on a home computer that has other users without impacting them, is there a simple way to make it launch Pantheon when I sign in, but still use Unity for other user accounts on the machine? Ages ago I remember using a login client that allowed you to pick which desktop environment you wanted to use, but I'm not sure how to do it on Ubuntu... I…

At least most desktop managers (gdm, kdm, etc) allow you to establish a preferred desktop environment. You can have KDE, Gnome, XFCE, Unity, LXDE, etc... all installed, and pick which one you want to start your session with.

The only thing that becomes messy is that some applications might use Qt, others GTK, and the themes might be inconsistent. Fortunately there's a GTK engine for Qt and a Qt engine for GTK that allow you to have a more unified experience.

The menu also might end up with many applications and the preferred applications for each file type can be a bit hard to manage when you have multiple desktop environments installed.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#14
Not related to the blog post but why are the websites form lenovo + dell (and acer) so god damn awful?

lenovo.com redirects me to https://www.lenovo.com/se/en/ since i'm currently in Sweden. I then get nice server error as greeting: 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.

If I try to access lenovo.de I get often no response... also for subsequent pages...

On dells website it takes an awful lot of time to filter their laptops. It's not even 100 items... why does it take so long?

Acer has a nice compare function. The only problem is that you can't compare laptops of their business line with the home ones. They also have too many different models. The compare function doesn't showcase any difference.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#15

> If you know f.lux, RedShift is an alternative to it for Linux. Good to know there's an alternative, but to clarify: f.lux is available on Linux as well (the statement makes it as if it weren't, just not open-source).

I think due to the closed-source nature of f.lux, RedShift is in the main repos for more distros than f.lux, making it easier for new Linux users to install.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#16
post #11

> So, is Linux ready for the desktop? > For me, the answer is yes. Honestly it's been ready for years on the desktop (of course, this does not apply if you are an expert user in Y software only available on Z platform and need to use it for your job/company, etc...). Ubuntu 16.04 did not bring anything significant on the table, it's just that most people have not noticed. I switched full Linux back in 2009~2010 and I…

What keeps many people on Windows are games.

Valve, through Steam, has made monetization of Linux games more viable. So now there are many titles available on Linux compared to years ago.

There's still a gap, but I hope that Vulkan gets traction and becomes the de-facto standard rather than DirectX. DirectX was pushed through a lot of FUD controversy during the evil years of Microsoft (they claimed that in future Windows versions OpenGL was going to be put behind a compatibility layer with a performance hit, and developers freaked out and moved to DirectX. Then it didn't happen).

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#17
post #14

Not related to the blog post but why are the websites form lenovo + dell (and acer) so god damn awful? lenovo.com redirects me to https://www.lenovo.com/se/en/ since i'm currently in Sweden. I then get nice server error as greeting: 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied. If I try to access lenovo.de I get often no response... also for subsequent pages... On dells website it takes an awful lot of time to filter their lapt…

Even worse when you're trying to dig through a maze of URL's to find drivers, half the link will go to the US site which will then get redirected to the regional one where the file doesn't exist. Had to do it once for a network drive with "export restrictions" it took hours to find their awful, half working driver. IME Dell are one of the better ones.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#19
post #11

> So, is Linux ready for the desktop? > For me, the answer is yes. Honestly it's been ready for years on the desktop (of course, this does not apply if you are an expert user in Y software only available on Z platform and need to use it for your job/company, etc...). Ubuntu 16.04 did not bring anything significant on the table, it's just that most people have not noticed. I switched full Linux back in 2009~2010 and I…

I switched in the early to mid 00's and it was ready then, nothing fundamental has really changed. Currently I'm switching to it again because the game situation has improved.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#20

Elementary OS is very similar to Mac OS in terms of UI. Of course the project is rather new, but is very promising. The desktop environment (Pantheon) is installable in Ubuntu, though. Once in a while you might end up with a messed up situation that might require some effort to fix.

How well does it work to install Pantheon on Ubuntu? I'm curious to try it on a home computer that has other users without impacting them, is there a simple way to make it launch Pantheon when I sign in, but still use Unity for other user accounts on the machine? Ages ago I remember using a login client that allowed you to pick which desktop environment you wanted to use, but I'm not sure how to do it on Ubuntu... I…

And now I need to go install e17 and play around (is that still possible?).
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