Confessions of an (almost) ex-Linux Geek

Thursday, I took my Mac into the Apple Store in Southcenter to get fixed, so I'm temporarily using my work computer that has Linux installed on it.  At one point, I had thought about ditching the Mac for a Linux-installed PC, and the prices of new Mac Laptops are slowly pushing me in that direction. The thing is, though, I'm noticing that Firefox on Ubuntu is a bit slower than it is in other platforms, and the embedded Flash support for the 64 bit version of Ubuntu is sadly inconsistant. Also - OpenOffice still doesn't offer full support for the .docx / .xslx / .pptx formats, and I'm noticing that even editing plain old .doc files produces some weird, undesirable effects when you open up said edited documents in Word. And finally, there is no nifty MP3 storefront available for Linux that rivals iTunes. Given those facts and the fact that I'm tied to my iPod (plus also want to get an iPhone at some point in the future), and I may just suck up the cost, get a new Mac, and throw Ubuntu on a partition and use either Parallels (if my version supports the newer Ubuntu distro) or Sun's VirtualBox to run it. I'll only need $2500. Oh well - maybe I can claim it as a businesss expense...?

Confessions of an (almost) ex-Mac-Geek

Everyone who knows me (at least who has known me for the past six years) knows that I’m a Mac Geek. For me, the interfaces are more intuitive, the graphics better, the memory management saner, and the platform more stable than Windows.

Yet, lately, I’ve been becoming jaded over the entire enterprise. Each release of the OS costs serious money, and the latest and greatest hardware even more so. I don’t like having to get the latest and greatest and pay serious money for it – especially when I can get something that does the job for free. I’m not a hardcore computer user, but I do like a nice stable box who’s applications don’t always crash.

Enter Linux. I’ve been wanting to play around with it ever since 2003, but I’ve never had the chance to actually base all of my daily computer use around it. I’ve the following challenges to contend with:

1. All of my music is on my iPod, and I’ve bought a lot of it through iTunes.


2. OSX does a pretty nifty job of backing itself up and restoring using Time Machine


3. I’ve a lot of custom Firefox settings


4. Documents, pictures, and programming projects


5. Oh – and my digital camera works like a breeze with my Mac

Okay – so what am I to do?

Well…

1. I can still use my Mac for managing my music, at least if and until Apple releases a version of iTunes for Linux


2. I’ll need to investigate this one, but I’m hoping that an open-source solution can be found


3. Foxmarks will take care of this


4. Well - they’re only files! Transfer them!


5. Keep the Mac for this as well, and transfer the files – at least until I can get my camera to download files to my Linux box

While the prospect of keeping yet another computer in the house doesn’t thrill me, I’ll need to put up with it in the near future.

Okay – I guess next up, I’ll go over what my distro criteria are.

My kingdom for a blank CD-ROM!!!

I'm just sayin'...

Here I am, trying to install X-Ubuntu onto an underpowered laptop, I've downloaded the ISO from the site (which, if you've ever tried to dowload anything -buntu from the .org site or its mirrors, you'll know is a minor miracle), and have it sitting prettily on my desktop - and no blank CD-ROM to burn the thing onto. Arrggh!

Gotta wait until tomorrow...!