I made the switch to Ubuntu | Hacker News Reader

I made the switch to Ubuntu

ruchirablog.com

19 pointsruchirablog33 comments

It's very good and all, and I'm glad more people are switching to Linux for their desktops (I mean, THIS is the year of Linux on the desktop, isn't it?).

But seriously, the rambling about printers and Word... You are not supposed to use Word files as a platform-independent Portable Document Format. I mean, for that we have, you know, the Portable Document Format (euh... PDF), for example. Just export to PDF and you can print it wherever, and it will look just fine.

Also, running Wine for Notepad++ seems... excessive.

> Also, running Wine for Notepad++ seems... excessive.

Especially when you can run something like Sublime Text.

Agreed, but bear in mind that the author is already having to learn a bunch of new software packages to replace many other things from his previous experience.

Being able to delay a few new learning experiences for later makes for smoother switching.

By the time he's ready to tackle that one, he might be ready to skip past ST and go straight to Vim. ;)

Having to deal with the weirdness that is the simulated 'windows file system' every time you open when running a Wine app is much harder than just learning how to use gEdit with all the plugins you'll ever need. Or Kate.

And yet, there he goes, using it, happy as a clam.

Haha, after all these years of knowing the expression "happy as a clam", it still cracks me up. Go figure.

I use Vim half the time and ST the other half.

I would never try to push Vim on someone who already uses ST. It is that good.

My only reason to use Vim is editing remote files, or config files.

Especially when you already have Virtualbox set up for your MS Office

Wine is much nicer than virtualization, when it works flawlessly.

The default text editor (gEdit) is a competent equivalent of notepad++, it's just that you have to enable some things which would do programming better.

I'm thinking about running Wine for HeidiSQL.

If you like working with LibreOffice but you hate printing a LibreOffice document from MS Office just save your document as pdf and you will be able to print this from any Windows/Mac/Linux computer.

A good alternative to Notepad++ is SublimeText 2.

Or Gedit, which has a very good amount of plug-ins that allow you to configure it the way you want. He might even want to start using Vim right in the terminal.

Gedit is a good and free alternative, also multiplatform. I doubt a guy that goes all the way to install Wine just to use his favorite (mouse driven) text editor will be comfortable in VIM (I know you can use the mouse in VIM, but it was designed for extensive keyboard usage).

Good point. Though writing code goes smoother when you don't need to use the mouse (IMO).

SublimeText is a great choice... I especially like tools that are multiplatform. I use Thunderbird as my mail client for just that reason.

Sublime costs $70 whereas Notepad++ is free.

They also seem to take a different philosophy in terms of the UI. Notepad++ is full of dialog boxes with tons of options whereas sublime seems to rely more on plugins and keyboard shortcuts etc for most of it's functionality.

Took me a while of using it to find out how powerful ST2 is.

or Kate

But you told me Linux sucks...

http://www.ruchirablog.com/love-windows-linux-sucks-2/

Also, this is just my opinion but I feel like notepad++/wine is a wasted combination when there are so many better multi-platform text editors that are available for Linux.

The "Linux sucks" article is from 2010 and the OP switched to Linux in ... 2013. One can change his mind over time.

I know, it's just funny to see how passionately against Linux he was just a bit ago.

Well, it happens :). I was a passionate XP user, Vista made me switch to Ubuntu. 7 and 8 are good alternatives to Ubuntu (from my point of view). Currently I use mostly OS X.

I think a programmer should be OS agnostic, he can have a preferred OS, of course, but he should be able to do his work on all major OSes.

I use Ubuntu for everything and I've worked on OS X and got along with it.

Unfortunately Windows is the only OS that doesn't have good integration with Unix-specific developer tools (like the GNU userland) or automation for installing said tools from a central and well maintained repository (coincidently the Debian repository is also the reason why I prefer Linux over OS X too). Cygwin is the only option and it's just awful.

Working on top of Windows makes me want to shoot myself. I don't understand how developers that deploy on other platforms (like the web) can stand Windows at all.

I hate blogs with Google ads at the top after the title and/or in the middle of the content and this particular blog is guilty of both.

I understand the need to earn some money, but seriously, this shit is awful.

(btw, I'm not using AdBlock because I want annoying websites to annoy me)

So making the switch to Ubuntu is worth HN front page ?

Dont want to hate, but this article has so little useful information and mostly consists of rambling about some personal computing edge cases that i dont see the value.

"need" and "notebook++" are two words I don't believe I've ever seen in the same sentence. :-)

I've tried to use Gimp as a Photoshop replacement for some years now. Each attempt results with me getting frustrated with the interface or I eventually come across a feature it lacks. I'm sure Gimp is fine for basic photo editing but I really don't see it as a viable replacement for someone who depends on Photoshop.

My windows xp runs smoothly ib the vm, and boots in seconds. So whenever I need PhotoShop i fire up the vm. Ubuntu has evolved so much that my mom has no problem using it.

I don't get why you want Notepad++. Gedit should be good enough, but if you want something more powerful and beautiful — Sublime Text it is!

"... way back in 2006 but it wasn’t exciting to me on those times. Those were the days people were rocking dial up connections"

Really? Pretty sure almost everyone I know had at least a basic DSL connection by then.

Well, it depends on where you were situated I guess, in 2004/2005 I was stil on dial up.

Who is Ruchira Sahan?

Politically correct way to put it is "well.. it's a slow news day on HN"

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