Mac/Linux Thread

[Lilly]

That it is! I think it's probably gonna be my last Windows OS, too.

As for Lunix, I actually do have an Ubuntu dual boot... but I don't boot into it too often. The main reasons being touchpad driver weirdness (not quite the same as Win7, i.e lacking working edge-scrolling, very important), having difficulty getting comfortable with a DE (to which LXDE is closest but it has annoying quirks - gonna try Cinnamon) along with some niggling program issues like vidya availability.
Thankfully Steam is starting this Linux movement which will hopefully see many more games on the OS!

Overall, I'm hopeful that if I don't adopt Lunix fully with this aging laptop, I'll almost certainly be using it a lot (hopefully entirely) on my hypothetical future Desktop. I just need to find/make a good DE and not need to deal with touchpads.

I really love the underlying services and file system structure of UNIX-based OSes. To this effect I have an old Desktop running Ubuntu Server that is a joy to administrate via SSH from my Windows Laptop (shame about CMD window width...). I use it to run game servers and a simple web server for providing HTTP access to files I don't want to or can't put on file hosters ¦D
It's just the awkwardness of the Linux desktop that has prevented total adoption here... and to think I hated Linux some 5 years ago.

w00t! It's great to see another Linux user on here. =P

Yeah, touchpads are a bit finicky on Linux, but with the way I keep mine configured it's hardly a problem for me. (No click on touch, disabled wheel scrolling, disabled lock mouse while typing, etc.) And I use a USB mouse anyway, since touchpads are sloppily inaccurate and threaten to give me a nasty case of carpel tunnel anyway, especially while working on digital art.

As for an DE, I've gone fully to XFCE, and Linux Mint is using it just the same as well. XFCE wasn't really that mature five years ago, but now it's better than Gnome 2 ever was, IMO, so it's really nice and easily configurable, just the way I like; feels like good ol' Ubuntu again. KDE looks really nice too as a traditional desktop, so I may try that again sometime soon as well. If you want a desktop that makes sense, I'd try XFCE or KDE, IMO.

As far as Unity goes, it's actually not that bad once you configure it the way you like with third party apps, and it looks very polished. (Like my panel is hidden unless the mouse is kept pushed towards the left edge of the screen. It's so genius and simple that I'm shocked Microsoft hasn't thought of it yet.) It's like the Ubuntu devs fixed everything that was wrong with Gnome 3. My only beef with it is the resource usage. GIMP runs slower than I'd like, and any game attempting to go fullscreen at a different resolution flips out for five seconds until its loaded. So yeah, it's not quite as light as XFCE yet. XD

Thankfully WINE is making this issue... well, less of an issue! We'll probably never see 100% compatibility but outside of the more obscure programs, we'll hopefully see equivalent programs or better WINE compatibility on Linux in the future as more users adopt it.

Or maybe some people will actually port their programs over, who knows

I'll chime in WINE as well. It runs all of my obscure apps that I like, as well as older ones that I still need from time to time. Photoshop CS2, Microsoft GIF Animator, Game Maker 5.3a, IMGBurn, and some of my favorite games run without a hitch under WINE. Heck, if I had an Nvidea chipset instead of an Intel one, I could enjoy all my favorite old shooters like Halo CE or the first Call of Duty better and faster than I could on Windows!

I've been using WINE since before it reached its first stable release, and it has matured a lot since then. It may always be a step behind the latest Windows tech for sure, but it's still great at making me too lazy to boot into Windowz anymore.