Finally, Linux on My Desktop | Hacker News Reader

Finally, Linux on My Desktop

jeff-barr.com

83 pointsjeffbarr48 comments

I was using ubuntu on my desktop for a year and a half, and it is most definitely a capable system - these days I just don't think windows on the desktop is an option for the serious hacker - unix tools are just too damn useful, too many open source projects assume you're on a unix, and the various crufty elements of windows are just too painful to bear, no doubt a result of their (quite justifiable given their market) obsession with backwards compatibility.

Having said that, linux does have rough edges - for example, I apt-get'd bugzilla the other day, only to realise I didn't need it on that particular box. apt-remove'ing resulted in the setup asking for the (non-existent) db password, then refusing to continue when I didn't supply it.

After a bit of googling round and trial-and-error I found a solution (sudo apt-get remove bugzilla3 rather that bugzilla). Had the same issue with virtualbox for a while too, equally irritating.

Also, there are the issues that don't quite work nicely like closing the lid killing the whole system, on 2 different laptops.

Having said that, I still adore linux; it's the Millennium Falcon of operating systems and despite the (sometimes quite fun for hackers actually) various fixes and cludges you have to apply, very capable. Having tried various flavours of linux every year or so for the past 10 years, I do think the latest ubuntus are miles, MILES ahead of what came before them, and considerably fewer cludges required than in the past - if things keep on developing at this rate we might actually have a very real windows competitor.

I mostly use OS X now (though still do some stuff in ubuntu) as I want an OS that gets out of my way and looks pretty doing it, while retaining the various unix tools I desire (thanks macports!), and that would probably be the system I recommend to a hacker with cash to spend, however linux is genuinely a great option to go for too.

/rambling a bit...

> apt-remove'ing resulted in the setup asking for the (non-existent) db password, then refusing to continue when I didn't supply it.

That sounds like a bug in bugzilla uninstaller not in apt-get...

agreed, however it is certainly a part of using an ubuntu system. The point isn't so much the specific problem, but rather that such things are quite common in linux (though far less so now than in the past).

Regarding OS X, I like it but too many under the hood things are different (maybe it's just because I'm not used to bsd). The bigger problem is that their package management sucks compared to apt-get.

Yep, homebrew or macports is pretty much a must.

I don't know homebrew but macports wasn't that great when I tried it last. Apt-get has never failed to resolve dependencies where as macports did all the time.

I've installed KDE, gnome, and a bunch of other junk through MacPorts, and it hasn't failed me. Maybe you should give it another shot.

Homebrew is the cool kid on the block now, though: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew

Cygwin + PuTTY[1] in Windows is actually quite a reasonable compromise. It takes a little twiddling, but I can get to a local bash-prompt with a single click and be hacking in emacs in no time. I find this to be about equally close to "standard" linux[2] as is OS X, although maybe that's just a factor of my inexperience.

I use OS X, Ubuntu, and Debian at home... but at work I still prefer Windows 7 for some reason.

[1] Especially if you use PuTTYcyg: http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/ EDIT: The main thing I miss with cygwin is command-line package management like apt, but OS X doesn't have that either.

[2] Obviously subjective... I mean Debian/Ubuntu-style.

I worked with Cygwin + Putty for several years. It wasn't Unix, but it made my life tolerable. I recently changed to Ubuntu and I can't believe I could live without it.

I didn't notice until I went to my parents' house for Christmas, but the iPhone has made package management a huge selling point on the desktop platform as well.

I showed my parents the "Ubuntu Software Center" and they immediately understood and loved the idea that they could install a bunch of "apps" from a central repository.

Ubuntu has taken a bit of a leap lately. I've been primary-Linux for coming up on a decade now, for context. Several years ago my father and I both purchased very similar laptops, with the screen size being the primary difference. Mine of course has been driven into the ground and have various keyboard, mousepad, and hard drive issues, his is going strong (albeit with a different hard drive now). I was there for Christmas and tried to see if we could find a video on Netflix and couldn't find a single computer in the house that we could turn on and get the answer to that question in less than five minutes. I'm not making up that number, that's the time the fastest computer took to boot and present a working Firefox. 1.6GHz Pentium M may not be state of the art, but it's not that slow. It is of course because there's just so many things running in the background that the various virus scanners and backup product (or possibly products, I wasn't 100% clear) are just killing each other with IO contention. (If Windows doesn't already have it, it really needs an official "scanning" component in the OS that things can hook to so it can coordinate disk scanning and avoid thrash, that would help an enormous number of home users.)

I was nervous about removing the virus scanner in particular; he's savvy but he's a professional in another industry and doesn't have time to keep utterly up on every threat. Even if they aren't perfect they do sometimes work. So I offered to put on Ubuntu 10.10, which of course made the system usable again.

What stunned me was how slick the desktop really was. Integrated messaging, application menu is great, the application manager filters the apps from the incidental cruft like -dev packages, and just an indefinable feeling of polish everywhere. Still not quite the Windows level of polish but getting the very quickly and surpassing it in some areas. If you haven't played with stock Ubuntu in a while, I'd recommend checking 10.10 out just to see the current state-of-the-art. I was so impressed I put it on my own laptop. (Fortunately I've learned to keep 20-30GB just sort of lying around on the hard disk to make trying a new distro easy; I recommend it next time you find yourself partitioning.)

Apart from the well-documented benefits of Ubuntu/Linux over windows, for me there's now a matter of principle: a machine with pre-installed windows is generally stuffed with bloat-ware. I recently bought an Acer Aspire with Windows 7 starter. It was riddled with anti-virus bollox and stuff for ebay, aol, BT etc etc. It's faster just to bung on Ubuntu then bother taking all this stuff off.

If you're installing linux, why not just re-install windows? A fresh windows install == no third party bloatware. My biggest problem with windows is the lack of a proper shell (without install cygwin)

Many PC manufacturers supply a "recovery" disc or partition that reinstalls all the bloatware too, instead of a normal Windows installation CD/DVD.

Because Linux installers are superior in every way to Windows installers.

Are they really? I still have to unplug one of my monitors during Ubuntu install because otherwise it just doesn't work. I also still have issues with setting up dual boot with Windows as the installer can't setup partitions properly (in some cases at least).

Ah yes - I forgot to mention. To add insult to injury, there's no CD - a proper copy or "recovery" disc. Pretty common in the UK these days, certainly for budget systems.

Unfortunately even if you install cygwin, you're still limited in what you can do - cygwin doesn't handle dynamic compilation very well (like using 'pip'), among other things. Lack of a usable command line is what pushed me to switching to Ubuntu for my primary OS.

Haha, famous last words... "... but this is just a configuration issue."

Somehow reminds me of this old xkcd strip ;)

http://xkcd.com/349/

Shutter (http://shutter-project.org/) should probably be your cup of tea, if you like Snagit.

Switching to Linux from Windows as a regular user can work most of the time, but there are always subtle things and expectations that don't work. If you survive the little frustrations, you are 99% there. Unfortunately, it means it's costly to switch if the work environment depends on either Windows or a Windows application. Mr. Barr actually needed Windows, so he ran it from VirtualBox, which is really not a complete switch-over.

Finally, while having a helpful community, one is left with the impression that there is a much lower threshold for complaining, being free software.

Switching to Linux from Windows as a developer can work most of the time, but there are always subtle things and expectations that don't work, and in general, the experience is quite frustrating.

I know, I occasionally am forced to because some client is Windows only.

Switching to Windows from Linux as a developer can work most of the time, but there are always subtle things and expectations that don't work, and in general, the experience is quite frustrating.

In either direction, there are things to get used to. I'm used to good package management and being able to customize certain window management behavior. Both are sources of frustration on Windows or Mac.

I very much agree about window management being much easier on Linux. Windows 7 made things better, but there's still a ways to go before they catch up with Gnome in this regard.

Congrats! You have overcome the first BIG change. Now it's only about finding alternatives, and often easier solutions, to your normal work on the computer, where you maybe before used propriatary software only made for winboxes. :-) Good luck!

I guess it comes down to your expectations - if you expect to use one operating system exactly the way you use another one, then why switch at all? There are some things that GNU/Linux is better at, and others that Windows is better at. That's why they're different systems.

Why burn a DVD in order to install Win 7? VirtualBox allows you to mount a CD/DVD image.

Worst case scenario getting Windows 7 on a USB-stick is dead easy as well. Much simpler than most Linux-distros.

Plus the install is super fast. USB key to SSD drive Windows 7 install is about 10 to 15 minutes top.

(I've done this several times as I've upgraded the computers in the home to SSD drives.)

As some anecdotal evidence against your point, I've installed Windows 7 on three different systems from a USB stick and all three had the same issue: the installer is unable to see the hard disk while the USB drive is plugged in. From searching around the first time I had the issue it seems like this is well known but there isn't really any effort to fix it. Only solution I was able to use was to format the hard disk NTFS and copy USB drive contents to the disk and boot without the USB. I've also installed a couple different Linux distros from USB and never had any issues (with the install...).

Does anyone else find it a little sad that in 2011 we're still reading stories like this? 'I was able to get most of my system up and running in Ubuntu, after downloading the right drivers, though printing doesn't work and the keyboard sometimes stops responding in Virtualbox (though I understand this is a known issue)' has been the state of the art for years now. It keeps getting a little better, the interfaces keep getting a little refined, but the overall picture has remained terribly static for a long time. We might be past the point where installing Linux was a dungeon dive, fit only for a seasoned hacker; but I think we've been past that point for long enough that minor niggles like 'I still can't print' should be glaring red flags.

In fairness, that particular problem sometimes crops up on OS X too.

I installed a PDF "printer" on windows and I haven't been able to "print" to PDF or the built-in microsoft XPS file write for a really long time now, which is incredibly annoying. Haven't had any problems printing with ubuntu on at least 2 different printers.

I installed Ubuntu onto my father's netbook after he started having trouble with malware. I think he barely noticed that it wasn't Windows, and I've had no complaints since. For most purposes the operating system is becoming less important, since many things are now accessed via a web browser. The main product differentiator is how much maintenance you have to do to keep the OS running well, and in that regard Windows is very high maintenance.

> I can do the [screenshot] scaling and cropping with GIMP

Shooting flies with a cannon. The gThumb viewer has those editing capabilities, and pops open instantly.

My mother did a fresh install of windows because it was a second-hand computer and now nothing works because the drivers aren't present. I recommended she try ubuntu for that reason.

I wish I could do it too, but Lightroom and Photoshop via Wine isn't pleasant. Don't know how well color management would work either. OS X works well enough.

Yeah, that's one of the major selling points (for me) for Mac OS X - It's Unix that can also run Photoshop.

Does anyone know what highly advanced interpolation "Snagit" does?

And wow, that Caldera desktop made me feel old. Worse than a twm screen, for some kind of reason…

I spent about an hour trying to get Imagemagick to produce scaled images that looked as smooth as those produced by Snagit. I tried most of the options described on http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/ . No go.

I remember twm, and I once met "t" (Tom).

If this guy is the "Lead Web Services Evangelist at Amazon.com" why is he running such crap hardware? "ancient" scanner, etc?

Not every competent geek is a frivolous gadget junkie.

I can definitely afford to buy a better scanner, but I probably scan no more than 5 or 6 pages of stuff per year. I was actually amused that the scanner worked at all.

Shotwell and Compiz's Screenshot plugin can help with his screenshot woes. But honestly, for the things you're evaluating Linux to be capable of... it's been quite capable for a while. Now with new software focusing on usability, I suggest that there are now enough nice pieces of software to create a very usable experience for someone who finds a Mac interface easy to pickup, my current setup is a no brainer for them. It has a familiar dock that looks sharper than apple's own dock and not tacky and hacked up. Cardapio has given me a main menu that is more capable and sanely organized than the Start Menu without being a folder full of shortcuts.

tl;dr Linux has /been/ capable. Ubuntu and other OSS community software has made it usably capable.

its easier to just go into an apple store. /troll

Surely "Hey, I use Linux now and it's great!" stories belong on reddit. /r/linux is => that way.

2011 is definitely going to be the year of the Linux desktop!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_Linux#Year_of_Desktop_L...

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