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Who uses Linux (as a Desktop)?
I am tempted to make a move to Linux and dump Windows XP, I realised that theres nothing I need Windows for and in the long run will be less hassle than Windows.
Anyhow, I wondered who here uses Linux as a desktop and also for Web development (and in particular for YACS) ?
Rod 52 posts |
My laptop is dual boot, as I do win32 desktop development and linux driver/app work. I run KDE, which is good, but quirky, not as stable as WinXP, but very usable. Most of the basics are there under the OpenSuse 10.1 installation: chat, pdf, msoffice docs, photo edit/gimp, etc. (I did have considerable trouble with the music player though.) OpenOffice has been fine for reading Word, Excel & Powerpoint, but if I have serious doc work to I boot the Win side, because I don't have time to deal with problems I've heard of in those apps. I have a server that I put Gnome on as an experiment. I don't log into it often, but Gnome seems somewhat cleaner than KDE...read that simpler on first look, but perhaps not quite as tool/feature rich...I need more time with Gnome before making that claim with authority. At least, I haven't seen some of the quirks I've seen in KDE. Also, the graphics performance of X on my laptop is noticeably slower than windows...full rez photo jpgs take noticeably longer to draw, though we're talking the different between less then .1s on win and maybe .25-.5s on linux. My adapter is dual display, but I haven't yet figured out how to enable the analog side on linux. I suspect these are driver related and may have solutions if I had time to pursue them. Finally, neither is as stable or polished as the Mac OSX. If I didn't do win32 dev, I would give that platform serious consideration. Oh, and for PHP dev: that's more a question of what coding tools you find most productive. I use emacs, which has support just about everywhere. I have used Zend for a PHP commercial website (which has some very nice debugger integration), and that runs everywhere, too. |
Fernand from Paris 1287 posts |
I am dual booted on my laptop too, but with presently an Ubuntu installation on my X side. The fact is that since I installed this dual boot I almost never feel the need to boot the Win side. I rather have a tendency to literally forget it... Save, perhaps, when I stock a few images which are expected to be treated through an old release of Photoshop because I handle it better than The Gimp. The graphic performances appears not to me speeder on Windows than on X. Concerning KDE, I have heard a lot of excellent feedbacks from my friends and I would like to experiment the Konqueror browser too. But at the present hour, as I got the habit of Gnome and as it brings entire satisfaction to me... There is a Linux soft called Bluefish for both PHP code and all sorts of codes, even html, and CSS if necessary (but I prefer to treat CSS apart through CSSed Editor). To those tools I add the Firefox Web Developer. " Finally, neither is as stable or polished as the Mac OSX "For me, it stays the best for the treatment of all the graphical parts, as Linux is definitely the best for all dev. WinXP appears useful only to test the dev and be sure that it works too on it. The experimentation of X rendered Windows uncomfortable and unsafe to me. |
| Fernand from Paris 1287 posts |
NickR : Last but not least, in particular for YACS, I found useful to work from the Firefox Web Developer (as I wrote over there)... But particularly I use now the last version of Firebug (plugin of Firefox which can be installed by one clic) not only for debugging but because, for instance, it detects spontaneously (by clicking on "inspect" the style classes and id present in YACS and is able to outline it on the physical page. This tool is incredible ! |
| Fw_crocodile 151 posts |
Hi, I use only linux from about 4 years, and as i'm not a developper (just some traduction on YACS with kbabel and some XHTML/CSS editing), i use it principally as like any other "normal" desktop user. The principally limitation you can find with a linux pc, are about 3d acceleration and games. I prefer kde, as i think gnome is to "simple" and limit the user freedom. I don't think you can really say that kde is less stable than windows. But, if you don't need more know-how to install ubuntu or suse than to install windows, you probably need it when you have to resolv something doesn't work as you like. Any way the best choice is always a distribution used by one of your friends that could help you. When your are more confortable i suggest debian 
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Lasares from L'Île-Bizard à Montréal, Québec 697 posts |
Fernand: Thanks, Fernand ! I just installed Firebug on your recommendation and it is really incredible ! I am sure to use it a lot. |
NickR from West Yorkshire, UK 327 posts |
I successfully installed Linux on my server at the weekend. I am running the Caos distro, was a painless install. There are no official drivers for my laser printer, just some open source ones in beta, my friend had to package them up. Turns out that they give better colour matching (on default settings than the windows drivers, which I am really happy about as I print a number of flyers and price lists every month for my wife's business and was the main worry for me swapping over to Linux. The default file system is XFS, but we could get it to work as a boot partition so had to create a boot partition in EXT3. I'm running Gnome (its a 700mhz Duron with 512mb ram), Open Office, Firefox and Amule are the main apps, that's all I need, as the machine will run mainly as a file/print server. Took me a while to juggle data off the other drives in the machine (NTFS), also remember how to do all the command line stuff to partition, mount format etc the drives and add entries to the etc/fstab file. When I get time I will be swapping my laptop over to Linux as well, but it will be good to move away from Windows (well I still have to use Windows for my .net development at work, but I hope that will change as well). Now using Firebug, quite useful, reminds me of the Visual Studio debugger (which is a good thing). Will try out Bluefish, already had that recommended to me. Nick |
Oniip from Slovakia 8 posts |
I replaced Win with Ubuntu few months ago and I never boot windows again. I dont need it. I have everything I need and Im satisfied. There was problem to install printer with scanner but I did it. Webcamera on my laptop isnt working... Thats only one bad thing... ----- pali |
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Posted by NickR on Feb. 9 2007, commented by Oniip on Feb. 20 2007, (popular)
