Anyone else originally start using Linux to program and find themselves actually just running it as a desktop system? I know that something like 9 years ago or so, I started experimenting with Linux and kind of slowly just went full blown…

Anyone else just kind of "stop" using windows? Now, I don't even have windows installed(actually, I installed vista just to check it out.. Can't really talk crap about something if you haven't at least tried it) anymore… Just curious if programming(MUD coding more specifically) turned anyone else onto what I think is a fine piece of software…

Though, I'd really like to switch to FreeBSD(Been using it for close to a year now at work and it's pretty freaking sweat).. I just don't want to deal with their bootloader…. lol

It's true that MUD programming was how I started using Linux seriously – I had to, to talk to remote servers – and it's what got me started on vi. Over time, I moved a lot of my work to Cygwin under Windows. After a while, I was basically running Firefox + Thunderbird + Cygwin + OpenOffice, for almost everything I did. So, when I built this computer in 2006, I made the decision to install Linux on it as a primary system. (I dual-boot XP for games and the very occasional Windows-only app I need to run.)

FreeBSD just got a pretty sweet update – they modernized and overhauled basically the whole system and it's pretty darn impressive now.

I started using Linux as a desktop system years ago, subsequently also when I was working on MUD programming, but mainly for development in general. It made it easy to have an Apache web server running natively so you don't have to upload anything (also with all the goodies, Python, PHP, MYSQL). But because I was also a gamer I rarely actually had it running for anything other than development. Eventually I parted out an old system and decided to just run a server.

When I went looking for a laptop I bought a Mac, and I enjoy the ability once again to be able to drop into the shell to do some compiling. I still have my Windows system at home for my gaming needs (and, actually, it needs to be upgraded soon too) and the Linux server upstairs running some Java software and a Smaug build.

I've never been an operating system snob. I use what's best for the occasion. For Windows programming, I stick with Visual Studio, and almost everything else there is some type of plugin for Eclipse. But when it comes to my servers the choice is damn near always Linux, although, FreeBSD is looking mighty finer now. Maybe I'll tinker with that on one of my test machines. Not sure I could ever run Linux as a sole desktop system. There's not enough native software for my taste (for me, Native software doesn't mean half-working open source implementations – I *need* to be able to open OOXML documents, for example).

I don't have trouble with needing more "native software" on Linux… in fact, for very many things, there is usually some open-source thing that does what I want. I think it's a little unfair to make the accusation with the implication that Linux is somehow deprived of software that works. Rather, I think that different people have different needs, and in some cases those needs are not well-served by Linux. OOXML might be a pretty good example, actually, where the Linux people simply don't care about supporting it. An Exchange server would be another example. Media processing is perhaps another example domain, but for different reasons…

I almost exclusively use Linux as my desktop. The only reason I ever leave is to burn episodes to a dvd for playback on my tv (so only about twice a month.) One major draw to Linux for me is Kate (KDE's Advanced Text Editor.) I can't code without it! :) I also found it hard, in Windows, to have two decent text editors open at the same time. Having a dual-monitor setup, I find it very helpful to have two sources to view at once.

I'm one of those who started using Linux for my mud and fairly quickly switched to it for everything except those games that require Windows. I have Windows installed on my laptop for my games that require it (and, for when I travel, I have a Windows based client for my mud and most of the sites I regularly browse are bookmarked to Opera/Firefox on there too) but I've done pretty much everything in Linux for the last few years otherwise. Currently I've got an older version of Fedora (FC3) running on my server and Ubuntu on my personal machine and Dragona was using Debian on her personal machine until a couple of weeks ago when she switched to Ubuntu as well. (She's also got a Windows based laptop for gaming and does everything else in Linux these days too.)

I used to be a big fan of Fedora, but I slowly found myself booting to Windows to do X, Y, or Z more and more often until I finally stopped using Linux altogether locally. It's definitely getting better, but until you can use it to do all the things Windows can do (or, more specifically, Windows-compatible software can do), I just can't see it as a permanent desktop replacement.

It won't be long now, though…

Yes, any day now, it'll be the year of the Linux Desktop… :tongue:


Again I would argue that that depends on what you need to do. On my desktop, I use Linux for absolutely everything except for:

1. games
2. a software package used for a class I taught that only works under Windows

And apparently, Photoshop works well in Wine now so I can use that too – but I haven't needed to run Photoshop for a while.

I'm curious to hear which applications you need on Windows that only exist for Windows. (Not that there aren't any, I'm just curious.) Or perhaps, applications on Windows that run better. (DVD players are such a thing – the one I have on Linux is functional, but not polished.)

I don't really want to get into this debate. Linux is a great desktop operating system for people like us (programmers, enthusiasts, etc), but when it comes to people that need to get work done it falls short in the native software category. An example? Desktop publishing. I am a senior staff member on my college newspaper, we use Photoshop, Quark and need to be able to open all formats of Word documents. Sure, GIMP is available as a Photoshop replacement, but that requires learning a piece of software to do simple things. (And before you bring it up, I don't even consider WINE a viable option simply because its not a catch-all for all the software - only certain software).

You brought up an Exchange server, which is one of the few things that I would actually buy a Microsoft license for. Right now there isn't an open source software (that, at least, I know of - maybe you could enlighten me) available on Linux that compares to the power that Outlook provides. Hell, even on the Mac, I use Thunderbird and iCal. The problem is that they are two pieces of separate software. Outlook, in my opinion, is a great piece of software that I absolutely love (and wish Microsoft would bring to the Mac).

In short, Linux would work fine for me, you, most people here and everyone else like us. The reason why I don't use it? Because, when my laptop breaks I like to be able to go to the Apple store, yell at some underpaid techs and tell them to fix it. I'm tired of fixing my own computers if I can avoid it. I also don't want to have to recompile the kernel for any reason. That's not my job (not anymore). But when I am running a server, well, I can deal with that if need be. I put a distinctive line between desktop and server systems.

I am attempting to open a business with friends from school. If we ever get to the point where we need to get office space all the machines will be running Linux. Because its cheap, and it'll run on hardware that we can buy from Staples or Dell.

Well, for me personally, it's more about the features of said software that are available on Windows than the software itself, I guess. For example, for the longest time Flash was unavailable to Linux versions of Opera, Firefox, etc. (it is now, though). It's been about a year and a half since I used Linux as a desktop at all, but at that point Java was largely unavailable to 64-bit versions of these browsers as well, so one had to either revert to the 32-bit versions or jump through all kinds of hackish hoops to get the package running. Some features work on Linux, but are just more annoying to get working because of the lack of default support, such as video and audio codecs.

But, as I said, it's getting much better. The makers of most distributions are slowly realizing that user-friendliness isn't just for computer-ignorant people.

Actually, since you asked, I use Thunderbird for my email and calendar too, it's got "lightning" available as an add-on rather than a separate program now and I understand that Mozilla's upcoming version is supposed to offer it with even more features and better integration.. and it's already integrated pretty nicely with full iCal support. Unfortunately, the add-on to support Plaxo is still very flaky, but that's an entirely separate issue.. :wink:



Understood entirely.. I can even fully appreciate it. Plus, you didn't say that you preferred Windows to Linux. :cyclops:



Good luck with that endeavor. :smile:

That's a very offensive way of putting it, you know? That implies that all the people who use Linux somehow don't need to get work done!


Arguably the same could be said of Photoshop. I don't like GIMP, but I don't think "you have to learn it" is a good argument: just learn GIMP first. :wink:


The only advantage I see Outlook providing is its calendar integration. As an email client, as in a program for sending and receiving emails, I found that it left a bit to be desired. It's also has serious issues conforming to email standards. Just look at what happens when somebody with outlook replies to threads on mailing lists. :thinking:


I've never had to recompile the kernel, not even when installing new modules… The most I ever had to do was download the headers, and that was handled automatically by aptitude.


Sigh, yes, actually it still isn't for 64-bit systems. That's one of my bigger gripes. A positive side effect is that it disables a lot of ads for me. :smile:

As for Java, it worked for me since at least Fall 2006. All I had to do was download Sun's version. I agree that the tricks to make 32-bit stuff work on 64-bit are pretty nasty.


Yes, the culture of "if you can't figure it out it must be your fault and too bad for you" is starting to change. Good thing, too…

Personally, I use Windows as a desktop, but I do a good majority of my work in Linux via SSH. There are quite a few good Linux desktop environments out there, and in some ways that's part of the problem.

I think people like consistency above almost all else, and while having choices does let you do things the way you want to do them, it also means things don't always work the same way from application to application, or desktop to desktop. That's annoying to people who know what they're doing, and downright frightening to those that don't.

One of my oldest pet-peeves with X-windows (going back to X11R4 and fvwm!) is the fact that there are several different cut-and-paste buffers, and some applications use one, and others use another. Thus, if I highlight text in, say, an xterm; I may get something else when I try to paste it into, say, my word processor – because they're looking at different buffers.

Sure, windows is no prize, and 10 years ago it was in the same boat (with the MacOS people laughing because they had an imposed standard). However, nowadays, everyone seems to develop their applications with the same basic tools, and thus some level of consistency exists.

Every few years I go install a desktop (often in a VM) to see how things are progressing. Very nice, but still not enough to make me switch unless I get a job using linux again, or unless they release Spore for linux in September. :)

That's the kind of thing that made me switch, actually: I was spending so much time in Cygwin/SSH working on (and sometimes administering) remote systems that I started wanting to administer the local system the same way. Also, it was occasionally annoying to do work on remote files without things like X-forwarding: I disliked having to shuttle graphics files back and forth.

X-forwarding is pretty damn cool. I can, from the university's Linux computer clusters, run my home email client simply by logging in remotely with X-forwarding over ssh, and presto, I've got my email client all set up just like it is at home. Sure beats using webmail… or reconfiguring Thunderbird on every machine I talk to. (Cygwin has X-forwarding but it kind of, well, stinks.)


Ugh, yes. I think I've just got two: the one that almost everybody uses, and then the one that just a few applications copy into when you select text and you paste from with the middle mouse button.

For me, I primarily stick with Windows for desktop use. I don't have a lot of time to fool around with the latest "in thing" in linux anymore and prefer to be able to click a few things here and there to get stuff done. I've had people tell me I'm just lazy and don't want to learn it. It's not that. I have a certain "work flow" if you will that works for me and is severely disrupted in linux. Even though I also spend significant amounts of time on the web and doing coding for various things, I still find that using Windows is just easier. Despite Microsoft's obvious hatred of the consumer.

For day to day stuff I tend to avoid most of the expensive crap like Photoshop and Office. I prefer to stick with free software wherever I can get it. I'm also a big fan of Firefox and Thunderbird - and I don't need a bloody calendar app in my email client!!! ( pet peeve = conglomeration programs ). Since I do still game from time to time I find that dual boot setups are more of a hassle than they're worth, especially now that it seems I can't even create a FAT32 partition for both OS's to share. WINE isn't anywhere close to a real solution either. So in the end it's just easier to stick with Windows for now. That's likely to change though since Vista is such a piece of shit. When XP is no longer viable I'll be forced to make a decision which will be between getting a Mac, or finding the best linux distro available at the time and tolerating the shortcomings.

You don't have to always stay up to date with the very latest, in fact, sometimes it's actually better not to as the latest tend to be less stable. But I can certainly understand and appreciate that "work flow" complaint, to which I reply: if it works for you that's what matters.


For what it's worth, as I understand it, several of the newest distributions of Linux read NTFS just fine now too…


To each his/her own, but try to remember that some of those "shortcomings" are actually strengths in the minds of others.. :wink:

Ubuntu did back in 2006. And now it can write, too, although I haven't played with that much. (No need to.)


Some distributions encourage rapid switching, though, because releases aren't as completely bullet-proofed as in other distributions. Debian vs. Ubuntu is a good example. Fedora (which is what Samson uses, IIRC) is more like Ubuntu in terms of stability. (Still very stable, but hard to beat Debian. Of course, Debian stable is often several reasons behind…)

As for work flow, yeah, sure, that's a valid point. It's always annoying to have to set up a computer to work for you – even if in the end it would do whatever you do better than your current setup. (Not saying it would for you Samson, just making a general comment.)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply they could only read, I meant that they could actually use NTFS. But, yes, I'm using Ubuntu for my personal desktop so, guess where I was coming from. :lol:


Exactly. Fedora and Ubuntu both try to be more cutting edge than Debian (or Red Hat Enterprise) and others, but even with Fedora, as an example, you don't have to always accept every new update the day it was released because it was released, you can run apt/yum (or your favorite front-end for either) when you choose to and manually select which software to upgrade as you like instead of just accepting what is offered. This is why Red Hat's enterprise version of Linux is several versions behind and why Debian Stable is too, because in some environments it's far more important to have stability over cutting edge, and even with those flavors that work that way, they'll still usually do their best to let you know right away when an update is available so you can stay as close to cutting edge as you can when it comes to security issues.


See, the problem with this statement is that it's a matter of perspective. In Samson's case, if he'd have to spend a lot of time/effort to learn new software, set-up the computer to work with him, remodel his work flow a bit, etc, in the end it might very well not be worth the changeover for him. In fact, it's quite conceivable that, in some scenarios, he might even find switching entirely to Linux to be impractical because of issues with what software he has to use for his work. Either way, which OS one chooses these days is becoming a preference issue rather than about what OS is dominant or which OS can do what you need it to do or even how technically savvy one is, and I think that is a very good thing.

I originally had a Win2k system, which worked well for everything I used it for. When that computer finally died, we got a new computer that came with WinXP. I can't say that I was thrilled about XP then, or even now (though, I would have to say it's better to use than Vista.) I did most of my coding using MS Visual Studio. This was mostly because I did a lot of work, at the time, using VB. After a while, I used VB less and less and began working on MUD code using VC++. This helped a lot because it made it easy to find function and structure definitions.

Then my wife got a new laptop that came with Vista. She wasn't too pleased with Vista either. This, however, gave me full control over our XP computer. I took that opportunity create a dual-boot system and installed Ubuntu on it. I had done some research on it prior to installing it and it seemed pretty good and capable of doing anything I was needing to be done. I can say that since my wife got her own computer that I have had no reason to boot into Windows at all. WINE runs any of the Windows apps that I used that are not available in Linux just fine.

As for the NTSF partitions, I still have the Windows XP system on the original HD and have mounted that disk in Ubuntu. I can access any of the files on that disk and have full read, write, execute permissions. I use this disk mostly for saving all my digital photos from my camera, since that's where they were all being stored before I switched to Ubuntu.

Well, I did say that it might not be a gain for him… :wink:


Hmm, well, for development, I still think it's a lot easier to do stuff on Linux: there is more support for just downloading a package, extracting it, configure, make, boom, it works. Better yet, most packages are already in the package manager. Unless you're doing Windows development specially, I really do find that it's easier to do general programming in Linux – the richness of the command-line environment contributes to this as well.