Linux Desktop Trial Over
The Linux Desktop Trial lasted about 3 days. Actually, it was a Linux laptop trial, and the verdict is that Linux on the laptop (Fedora 4) has gotten a lot better but it still sucks. The Gnome / X environment is slow and sluggish to use. Configuring WiFi is a huge hassle. And don’t even get me started on print driver support. I’m so happy to be back on Windows; on identical hardware (Dell C400, 1.33ghz Pentium M, 1GB RAM) the GUI environment is much snappier and I have working drivers for everything.
May 4th, 2006 at 7:15 am
Buy a Mac Intel. Sheesh.
May 6th, 2006 at 9:08 am
Why would anyone pay 2x what Dell is charging for a computer to run Windows? Sheesh.
May 7th, 2006 at 8:18 am
Its a time waster (for those who value their time) to spend all that time to install and configure a Linux Desktop (the mere act of the experiment presumes a dissatisfiction with the Windows Desktop or some other aspects of Windows such as needing to run bulky virus scanner daemons in “the background” on XP to monitor for a gazillion viruses floating around out there). What’s wrong with the Mac OS X Desktop — the progeny of the tried and tribulated NeXTSTEP — which has a much superior window manager to XP? Considering you’ve essentially got FreeBSD (a cousin to Linux) under the hood of a Mac, looks like a good deal to me to save time. With Apple’s Boot Camp they provide the Windows driveers so you can dual boot. Better yet, you can triple boot (run Fedora if you want to). Or run Parallels and have virtual machines. The cost of Dell and Apple on the laptops is essentially the same. Take a look at the entry level Dell XPS M1710 and compare it to the new MacBook 17″ Dual Core Intel. Feature for feature they are about the same (the Dell has more USB ports, the Mac has Firewire 400 and 800 plus USB 2.0). They both have BlueTooth and WiFI. They both have SATA drives (the MacBook gives you 120 GB 5400 rpm SATA, the Dell gives you a 60 GB 7200 rpm SATA). The Mac gives you a 2.16 GhZ Dual Core Intel beast, the Dell a 1.86 GhZ Dual Core Intel. Both have DVD burning, both give you a 1 GB RAM stick. 120 GB (even if the rpm speed is a tad slower) is a better deal for dual booting or triple booting OS. The Dell is $100 less than the Mac. Big whup … you save the $100 of time and hassle by having more peace of mind on a Mac and the OS is more responsive due to that great window manager that Jobs had a chance to work on at NeXT in the early 1990s whereas XP still has crap legacy windowing from Windows 3.1. Go figure.
May 7th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
You can also configure a Dell Inspiron 9400 with a 2.16ghz dual core / 1GB / 120GB HD for $1650 — over $1000 less than the MacBook Pro. But the bigger issue for me is that the only reason I buy computers is to use them to make money developing software and software companies. So a computer with minimal market share like the Mac is of no use to me.
May 8th, 2006 at 1:06 am
What you say makes a lot of sense and you’re best off not spending the extra money on the Mac since Apple has such a small slice of the market share of computers for which your software will likely be run on. Common sense tells me that Windows will be around for an eternity. It takes people a long time to change (they have to be motivated by money or life-death situations) even if there is better technonology. That being said, I have my doubts that we’ll see, any time in the near future, a Linux desktop take a hold en masse. Then again, stranger things have happened. Best wishes in your software development endeavors.
December 1st, 2006 at 6:23 am
Hey Chris,
How goes it and what’s new?
I’ve got my Thinkpad X41 Tablet running Ubuntu “Edgy” 6.10 — so far its quite stable (all the apps I need run fine including the Eclipse SDK which seems to be progressing well the past five years). Its hard to beat the bash shell and not having to worry about Windows viruses (but that might change with Vista now, true?).
Not sure how much .NET dependency you have but I would now take a close look at Ubuntu Edgy (was released just about one month ago). You can download and burn the Live CD ISO to give it a whirl without installing it onto your laptop’s drive.
Cheers from Shanghai.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
[…] Chris Maeda ???? Blog Archive ???? Linux Desktop Trial Over Chris’ experience differs from mine, as i find GNOME snappy compared to Windows XP (possibly b/c i’m not running anti-virus constantly); and wifi, with network manager, is trivial - if flaky on the hardware side. to each their own, though. (tags: ChrsMaeda GNOME Linux desktop wifi Windows) […]