Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

cjj wrote:MAC's are pretty good,.....It's biggest "problem" is the availability of applications (this is a problem with MAC's too). There's just so much out there for windoze, some of it has migrated to MAC's, even less to Linux.

Check out this site for Mac related software.

CJ: I am not sure I understand what is missing in Linux...
Except games - there is NOTHING I can't do in Linux.
Been using Slackware Linux since 1992/3 and last year I finally migrated to the apt world with Debian on my servers and ubuntu on my desktops.
The application repository makes MS windows look like an embedded application...
The very few applications I truly miss (like adobe photoshop which is 10 times better than gimp imho) I run via wine. so it's really not a problem (and it works great!)

Sounds like things are coming along! Admittedly, it's been a while since I've kept up with the latest in applications for the various platforms. I see I'm going to have to look into it some more. Mostly, I use a PC and various Linux machines for my "day" job. There are a few apps we run that aren't available on anything but PC's, but they are really mostly overhead **** that the company requires and don't actually serve any useful purpose towards getting the actual work done.

Most of the "real" work I do is Verilog simulations and 'C' verification code for various chips we are developing. We used to do this on Unix machines (HP-UX), but Linux has pretty much blown those out of the water. Of course, for my stuff, I pretty much just use what they give me, I don't really have time to find other ways to get the job done.

Now, my wife, she does website design. She's pretty heavily into MACs for that, using stuff like Adobe Creative Suite, Photoshop, and hmm, can't seem to remember what the actual web program is, she used to use Front Page, but gave that up a while back. I suppose my brain is a bit fried after a full day at work and them baling hay until 1:30 AM. Anyway, I'd sure like to get her web design stuff working on Linux. That's an OS where she hasn't done any sort of verification fo the sites to make sure everything works.

When you come to think about it - what do most people do with their computer?
1. Surf the web - Firefox and Opera are great browsers, both available in Linux.
2. Check emails - Thunderbird is nice, Kmail is also nice for those who like KDE, and Evolution is a great client that can totally replace outlook in the coroprate environment (it can actually work with an exchange server and have full support for calendar sharing, tasks, etc...)
3. Watch movies - vlc, mplayer, xine - all are really great media players. xbmc is there as well for those of us who like having a sleek and feature rich media center (kicks MS media center in the ***)
4. Edit documents - here there is a great advantage to MS office, which still beats openoffice, however - openoffice is really not bad once you get used to it AND - you can EASILY run ms office via wine, so again - not a real advantage to MS here.
5. Development: Visual studio is a great application, but many IDEs are available for Linux, from Kdevelop to eclipse, add the opensource power and Linux wins again.
And all this for FREE, without stealing anything, a fully features MS windows with MS office and Visual studio is VERY expensive, probably costs more than the hardware that runs it.

The only real advantage that MS windows has over Linux is "professional" applications that some people need (like CAD and graphic applications, some have opensource alternatives (Gimp for photoshop, qcad for Autocad, etc...) and most of them can run via wine).

If your wife has an x86 MAC - she can try linux on her current hardware by using bootcamp. I use it at work and it works great. Of course - you can do that with a PPC mac as well, but the sleek and out of the box read distros (ubuntu et al) are not available for PPC afaik