Desktop Linux For The Windows Power User | Hacker News Reader

Desktop Linux For The Windows Power User

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14 pointsthomas11 comments

"...and no sentence begins with “bring up the terminal” or any other UNIX techno-babble."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that his intended audience probably doesn't include many HN readers...

It would seem to me that you're in the worst possible place as a power Windows user who is not a programmer: you're efficient and productive on one system and are going to lose most of your tricks, but can't take advantage of the parts of Linux where it is better than Windows.

I still haven't figured out what the key combination is to reproduce Windows-M on Ubuntu (minimize all Windows so I can see my desktop). It's really annoying when I think "Oh, crud, need to SSH into my production server but I have an IDE and 12 windows sitting on top of the shortcut."

I think the default is "Control-Alt-D". This is customizable in gnome in Preferences | Personal | Keyboard Shortcuts.

There's also a gnome panel button/icon called "show desktop" that can be toggled on and off.

Alternatively, you can have multiple virtual desktops, and if you need to switch mental contexts to handle the cases like you described, you can switch to a different, empty one. Instant new context, and the old context isn't disturbed at all.

This is actually a good example of something where you don't know the kinds of things Linux offers and it's difficult to know where to start to translate your Windows-desktop-fu to Linux-desktop-fu.

You don't do that - i.e. you don't use a single desktop that you need to clear. That's a Windows thing, where multiple desktops never worked right, and always needed add-ons.

You put an extra Gnome toolbar on your screen's right side, and you add a "Desktop-switcher" applet (I also like the "System monitor" applet there, and a couple other gewgaws).

Then you keep a desktop for each work topic (web, docs, mail, whatever), and a clean one for the visitors ;-). All one click away, generally work flawlessly.

But there's also a "Show desktop" applet, to add to your single-desktop toolbar, if you insist.

ctrl + alt + d

(First hit for "ubuntu minimize all windows" on google.)

Having a shortcut for something like ssh is so Windows...

"ubuntu is the best follow-up after xp" Did he actually mean that?

I have to agree. My work laptop came with Vista. I tried getting along with it, but I didn't like it as much as XP. When working on a project, everything worked fine on XP and Ubuntu but not on Vista, so I had to switch to Ubuntu.

It was easier (at least for me) to come to grips with it even though I've never been an avid Linux user.

By now I've started working on a new project and decided to give Vista another chance. Two days later... I'm back in Ubuntu.

I would agree with that also. As a beginner, I found Ubuntu easy to understand. However, I would now consider myself an advanced user, and having tried all the other major distros (Debian, Suse, Fedora, Arch, among others) I still don't think you can beat Ubuntu for every-day purposes.

I haven't seen any other distro that is as likely to work on most hardware (specifically, I'm thinking of laptop wireless devices - those have been huge nuisance to me), have as much software ready to go, as much documentation, and feel as "finished". With very little work, I've customized the hell out of my ubuntu installation and it uses very little disk space, runs extremely fast, is very stable.

I see Ubuntu as an ideal balance of usability and raw power. Out of curiosity, what would you say is the best follow-up after XP? I saw XP as the best Windows version, because it was more robust, popular and usable than any of the others.

The whole article is flawed - it's based on the false assumption there is such a thing as an advanced Windows user. :-P

Some people have no sense of humor...

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