Operating Systems

[hotaru]

In my experience, Word is much better at not crashing every 15 minutes and fucking up my formatting randomly just because.

really? word is the only program i've ever had that problem with. and interestingly enough it's never happened to me under wine, only under windows.

[Amnesiasoft]

Or perhaps the boycott of Writer is due to Java. I don't like having to install the JRE, so if I can avoid it, I will.

But that might just be me, considering I boycott Firefox, and if given the choice between IE and Firefox on someone elses computer, I grab IE (Hey, it's not my computer anyway )

[Anpheus]

Let's save ourselves some time and say (likely reiterate) two things:

Plural of anecdote is not data, so all of our testimonies are pretty much worth nothing. We should discuss the technical (and philosophical) merits of each OS, not our horrid experiences.

And all software has bugs until you accept them as features. That includes Word, Linux kernels, Wine, etc. So saying that Word randomly crashes for you and screws up your formatting, even if you come up with data to support it, says that the same thing is likely to happen in Open Office or emacs. Now, neither of us has data on this, so I'm not going to bother refuting it with the obvious anecdote that I've never had that problem. Well, your experience != my experience, so let's move on.


Linux sucks because as a monolithic kernel it subjects its users to the instabilities of drivers written by thousands of developers working, much of the time, in isolation of one another. It's fine as a server OS because the hardware profiles there are less diverse and the problems easier to diagnose. But using it as a desktop OS is a bit of a struggle. And unless you pay for support, you're SOL and will be forced to find fixes yourself. As an example, Ubuntu 8.04 Server does not boot in Virtual PC, or I believe, many other VM managers. This "functionality" has persisted to 8.04.1. Not anecdotal, try it yourself with Virtual PC on Windows. Ubuntu 8.04/8.04.1 will crash the VM. The fix is an obscure kernel flag, actually, two, I believe. Or you have to uninstall the server kernel and install a generic kernel. This is a huge, enormous regression of functionality. If anyone who, on their own, runs an Ubuntu 7.10/7.04/whatever Server in a VM, such as my own dad for his sendmail server upgrades it, they will find their machine no longer works. Doesn't that sound fantastic? Imagine if doing an upgrade from Service Pack 1 to Service Pack 2 of Windows XP/Server 2003 caused a hardware support regression that prevented the machine from booting, even if just in a VM? That would be awful, and it would affect thousands of system administrators, cause untold damage to Microsoft's reputation, etc.

In fact, I have a totally non-anecdotal related example: VMWare's ESX has a licensing bug that forces its licenses to expire on 8/13/08 and suddenly it will refuse to boot any virtual machine. This was just discovered today. This hugely fatal bug is going to cost thousands, if not millions of dollars in downtime for thousands of companies. It's pretty bad. Now my example is a widely used distro that when upgraded will fail to boot. Fortunately people running Ubuntu Server don't tend to mass upgrade live systems, otherwise people, such as my father, would run into a serious issue that is difficult to find answers for online.

[EvanED]

This is not the thread for word processor holy wars

Linux sucks because as a monolithic kernel it subjects its users to the instabilities of drivers written by thousands of developers working, much of the time, in isolation of one another.

What OS in common use isn't? There are some strides taken away from that, especially starting with Vista, but they are still early in their life.

[Anpheus]

NT was the first major OS that didn't employ a mostly monolithic kernel. The original idea with NT was to have all device drivers in user space, but that was changed for video drivers and then, later, other drivers that could justify it for performance reasons. The bevy of poorly written drivers that did justify it (stupidly) lead to Microsoft changing their logo certification requirements over time, and then, the driver API entirely. Now even video drivers can crash in Vista without forcing me to reboot. I never have had to reboot my machine except to install certain patches, as Vista no longer requires a system restart to patch most everything. Even the video driver can be taken offline and patched in most cases.

It's frankly, a vastly more impressive kernel than Linux's.

[ash.gti]

What OS in common use isn't? There are some strides taken away from that, especially starting with Vista, but they are still early in their life.

OS X doesn't use a monolithic kernel... Its using a hybrid kernel, so... its sorta a compromise between monolithic kernels and micro kernels.

At least since the Linux kernel release 2.6 it has full preemption support.

The linux kernel can add kernel extensions through modules, which is almost the concept of a micro-kernel but compared to most micro kernels its a bit bloated.

Its hard to empirically say which kernel/OS is the best though because most of the differences are sorta opinion based things. Take the Windows kernel for instance. It allows any program to directly access hardware. They don't have some of the added layers of protection other OS's have, however, it does have a smaller overhead for running programs and higher utilization of hardware because of this. Or look at some kernel scheduling algorithms, its virtually impossible to design 'the perfect' scheduling algorithm. Many of the differences between kernels are just differences that the architects of the kernel choose for whatever reason.

[aleflamedyud]

Linux sucks because as a monolithic kernel it subjects its users to the instabilities of drivers written by thousands of developers working, much of the time, in isolation of one another. It's fine as a server OS because the hardware profiles there are less diverse and the problems easier to diagnose. But using it as a desktop OS is a bit of a struggle. And unless you pay for support, you're SOL and will be forced to find fixes yourself. As an example, Ubuntu 8.04 Server does not boot in Virtual PC, or I believe, many other VM managers. This "functionality" has persisted to 8.04.1. Not anecdotal, try it yourself with Virtual PC on Windows. Ubuntu 8.04/8.04.1 will crash the VM. The fix is an obscure kernel flag, actually, two, I believe. Or you have to uninstall the server kernel and install a generic kernel. This is a huge, enormous regression of functionality. If anyone who, on their own, runs an Ubuntu 7.10/7.04/whatever Server in a VM, such as my own dad for his sendmail server upgrades it, they will find their machine no longer works. Doesn't that sound fantastic? Imagine if doing an upgrade from Service Pack 1 to Service Pack 2 of Windows XP/Server 2003 caused a hardware support regression that prevented the machine from booting, even if just in a VM? That would be awful, and it would affect thousands of system administrators, cause untold damage to Microsoft's reputation, etc.

Yeah, that does suck. Of course, Ubuntu != Linux. You could also try Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, or Mandrake just while remaining in the set of well-known, stable Linux distributions.

I can't say that for OS X or Windows.

[Anpheus]

Which one of those distros that you listed doesn't follow the exact same driver model? Because, eh... I'm pretty sure all those distros still use a linux kernel.

And Linux module support is kind of a joke.

[EvanED]

OS X doesn't use a monolithic kernel... Its using a hybrid kernel, so... its sorta a compromise between monolithic kernels and micro kernels.

...

The linux kernel can add kernel extensions through modules, which is almost the concept of a micro-kernel but compared to most micro kernels its a bit bloated.

But in the context of this discussion, which is about drivers crashing the OS, the architecture doesn't really matter, because both run drivers in user mode, so bugs in drivers will easily crash both kernels.

As Anpheus said, NT is closest to the microkernel architecture from a "what is running in user mode" point of view, but even on that there's still plenty of third-party code running in supervisor mode, and I have had complete crashes because of it.

Take the Windows kernel for instance. It allows any program to directly access hardware.

Not any more than Unix, or [citation needed]. In fact, while MS did a darn good job at keeping old DOS programs working with the move to XP, the things that stopped working did so because they tended to do direct hardware access of sound cards and such.

[aleflamedyud]

Which one of those distros that you listed doesn't follow the exact same driver model? Because, eh... I'm pretty sure all those distros still use a linux kernel.

And Linux module support is kind of a joke.

It's not a problem of the driver model. If a kernel flag's worth of change can make the thing work, then what you're looking for in that environment is a source-based distro like Gentoo that will allow you to compile your own damn kernel configured for the hardware you actually run instead of for the hardware used on the distro's compilation servers.

[Anpheus]

I'm not a kernel developer, so... having a bad driver in my kernel for hardware I have means I'm stuck with it. I don't know how to fix it, I don't even know who to report it to. I'm undoubtedly better off with Ubuntu or some other distro that has a reporting mechanism because at least then I have the distant hope that someone who can fix my issue will, someday.

That's the current state of Linux.

Until then, I'll recommend that people buy Dells or Macs, depending on their budget and ability to resist installing the dancing bunny.

[aleflamedyud]

I'm not a kernel developer, so... having a bad driver in my kernel for hardware I have means I'm stuck with it. I don't know how to fix it, I don't even know who to report it to. I'm undoubtedly better off with Ubuntu or some other distro that has a reporting mechanism because at least then I have the distant hope that someone who can fix my issue will, someday.

That's the current state of Linux.

Until then, I'll recommend that people buy Dells or Macs, depending on their budget and ability to resist installing the dancing bunny.

You don't need to be a kernel developer to configure and compile a kernel.

[ash.gti]

Not any more than Unix, or [citation needed]. In fact, while MS did a darn good job at keeping old DOS programs working with the move to XP, the things that stopped working did so because they tended to do direct hardware access of sound cards and such.

Okay, well I wasn't very clear what I meant, from their security model's point of view they don't have a layered approach to hardware accesses. The kernel does all the usual management of who can do what, like accessing the CD drive or hard drive. But it doesn't stop any user from doing anything. There is no isolation of user privileges when it comes to stuff running in the user space.

[EvanED]

Not any more than Unix, or [citation needed]. In fact, while MS did a darn good job at keeping old DOS programs working with the move to XP, the things that stopped working did so because they tended to do direct hardware access of sound cards and such.

Okay, well I wasn't very clear what I meant, from their security model's point of view they don't have a layered approach to hardware accesses. The kernel does all the usual management of who can do what, like accessing the CD drive or hard drive. But it doesn't stop any user from doing anything. There is no isolation of user privileges when it comes to stuff running in the user space.

Still not buying it. I can't quite call you out on it though because I'm not sure who "they" and "the kernel" refer to... which OS are you talking about?

Because essentially everywhere I know, Windows offers rather more granularity of control than Unix does, especially if you don't turn on things like ReiserFS or Ext3 file system ACLs (which I'm pretty sure needs to be explicitly enabled at least at mount time and possible in the kernel options).

[ash.gti]

Not any more than Unix, or [citation needed]. In fact, while MS did a darn good job at keeping old DOS programs working with the move to XP, the things that stopped working did so because they tended to do direct hardware access of sound cards and such.

Okay, well I wasn't very clear what I meant, from their security model's point of view they don't have a layered approach to hardware accesses. The kernel does all the usual management of who can do what, like accessing the CD drive or hard drive. But it doesn't stop any user from doing anything. There is no isolation of user privileges when it comes to stuff running in the user space.

Still not buying it. I can't quite call you out on it though because I'm not sure who "they" and "the kernel" refer to... which OS are you talking about?

Because essentially everywhere I know, Windows offers rather more granularity of control than Unix does, especially if you don't turn on things like ReiserFS or Ext3 file system ACLs (which I'm pretty sure needs to be explicitly enabled at least at mount time and possible in the kernel options).

Windows does very little to protect the users from its programs. For instance, the Windows Registry is editable by any user for the local machine settings. Granted the program itself has to be designed to use this section of the registry, Adobe does for instance, to store the location of certain DLLs. If you wanted you could replace the registry entry with something else, say a dll that needs to run malicious code on the OS. Its not impossible to do, many vulnerabilities like that do exist.

[EvanED]

Windows does very little to protect the users from its programs. For instance, the Windows Registry is editable by any user for the local machine settings. Granted the program itself has to be designed to use this section of the registry, Adobe does for instance, to store the location of certain DLLs. If you wanted you could replace the registry entry with something else, say a dll that needs to run malicious code on the OS. Its not impossible to do, many vulnerabilities like that do exist.

Limited users can't edit the local machine section of the registry. I would say that's always been true of NT. In a similar way to the fact that non-root users typically can't edit files in /etc.

Windows is definitely checking permissions though... ACLs are stored on a per-key basis.

[btilly]

Windows does very little to protect the users from its programs. For instance, the Windows Registry is editable by any user for the local machine settings. Granted the program itself has to be designed to use this section of the registry, Adobe does for instance, to store the location of certain DLLs. If you wanted you could replace the registry entry with something else, say a dll that needs to run malicious code on the OS. Its not impossible to do, many vulnerabilities like that do exist.

Um, that's wrong. Windows actually has a very sophisticated and complicated security system. Much more complex than what Linux has. (Though Linux can get pretty complicated as well if you turn on capabilities - which I should note are pretty much unrelated to real capabilities in a capability-based system.)

Whether sophisticated and complicated is a good thing in a security system is a subject that I don't want to get into.

[wonnage]

You don't need to be a kernel developer to configure and compile a kernel.

Let me get this straight, one of the technical merits of Linux is the fact that you can fix buggy drivers by recompiling the kernel? Hey, when my drivers are broken the first thing I think to myself is "oh boy! I get to waste 5 hours recompiling the kernel (I sure hope this works)! I LOVE YOU, GCC" Recompiling the kernel should not be a troubleshooting step. Can you imagine the same situation on Windows? Hey, if you have this gizmo remember to install Vista with the -makemyfuckingshitwork flag. Ridiculous.

Going slightly less technical here, Linux hardware compatibility just isn't so hot compared to Windows. It's a fact of life, manufacturers just don't feel the need to write drivers for a userbase that's 5% of the total and is split across a bajillion slightly incompatible distros. If you're running a server or a computer in a business environment, fine, this point is moot because you can be assured that there aren't going to be strange hardware configurations. But if you're a normal desktop user then all bets are off. It's really a chicken and egg problem - more drivers would be written if Linux had greater marketshare, but you can't get that until you get more drivers...If only the OSS folks were willing to pay people to write drivers.

You know how early versions of windows were just fancy GUI wrapped around DOS? Correct me if I'm wrong, Linux feels the same. The shell being wrapped might be a hundred times better than DOS, but try explaining that to someone who doesn't need it or want anything to do with it. Look at OSX, they managed to combine a Unixy kernel and a well-integrated GUI. Of course, their developers get paid for their work...

[Strange Quark]

Dependencies. Linux has a chronic case of dependency hell. Let me explain. In windows there is the win32 api, which is a standard set of function calls that do things like draw buttons or make the sound work. Once a new set of functions is added to the win32 api, those functions are guaranteed to be present on all windows installs. So for a software developer things are simple, the library your using is in the win32 api, it's guaranteed to be in windows and you can leave it out of your installer. If not, include it. What's more, because win32 doesn't change, old software runs on new windows. If the programmer who wrote your favorite win32 gets board, goes broke or aquires a girlfriend then that win32 program will run on each new version of windows forever. Or at least, that's the theory. Joel, from joel on software is an ex microsoftie who has written some interesting articles on the importance of backwards computability to Microsoft and the reasons for some of Microsoft's decisions of the years.

In linux, there is no standard set of libraries installed that a software developer can rely on. If you want your software to install, you need to either include everything (making the exe bigger) or tell the user to find and install the libraries. Finding and installing libraries gets old really fast. Fortunately, if a package is in the package manager then the package manager will install the needed libraries. Often even if the software isn't in the package manager, then libraries might.

Things are a lot better than they were even just a few years ago, but the situation is still not ideal. Interestingly I once tried to persuade a real hardcore religious linux fanatic that there was some advantages in doing things the windows way. I even suggested the solution of gathering together specific versions all the commonly used libraries and putting them into one uber-library. Call this linux standard library 1.0. Make a package for all the common distributions, and get each distribution to put that package in their repositories. Each new standard library sits at a different location on that hard dist, e.g. /usr/lib/lsl-1.0, /usr/lib/lsl-1.2 etc. Now Joe independent software writer can just compile against linux standard library 1.0 and know his software will work forever. A bit later he writes version 2 and lsl 1.2 has come out, so he compiles against that. But nobody is forced to upgrade because lsl 1.0 is still there.

It would probably be a really hard task, but you don't get prizes for doing things that are easy.

The hardcore linux fanatic rejected the idea right away. Apparently that would be encouraging closed source software development. Everything in open source software is supposed to evolve. No girlfriends allowed.

I don't dispute that Linux has Windows beat in this area, but I think you overstate differences, especially if you allow the Windows user to install cygwin. And I don't think you chose very good examples, except for arguably the wireless one since I think you may need a dialog for that. (That said, it's really easy to open and provides all the information I've ever needed.)

They're examples of the commands I know. As you might be able to tell from find | grep html, I'm not a guru the command line. I still like the linux command line a lot more than the windows. The results from ls are colour coded and can be filtered with grep. In windows you have to change disk and then cd, I'm forever tying d:\>cd c:\documents and settings\. There's probably more. I may well be getting to matters of personal preference, so I'll leave it at that.

Win-R brings up the run dialog in Windows. It's rather crippled in comparison though since not much is typically in your %PATH%. However, in Vista, just pressing the Windows key and typing is almost always enough, as it will search the start menu and eventually other things. The times when it isn't is typically when you want to run a command line utility that is in your %PATH% anyway.

I don't actually have Vista, but with google desktop, you can double tap ctrl and type the program you want. I consider google desktop worth installing just as a start menu replacement, never mind the all the searching. I wish the gnome people or the kde people were paying attention. Tracker just isn't in the same league.

More realistically you'll be starting aptitude or synaptic so you can search for the program you want, at which point you're not seeing a huge win over the Windows method.

apt-cache seach maguffin! ...but yes, actually I'd use synaptic for seaching. When I wrote that post, I'd just been fixing my Grandad's PC. He'd go so much crap running at once that needed either uninstalling, or at least deactivating with msconfig. When you need to uninstall 10 or 20 things at once on a computer that runs like treacle (no matter how many processes you kill) you will appreciate being able to check 20 boxes and go make a cup of tea. When I somehow broke the crappy antivirus software and needed to use system restore and had to uninstall everything again more carefully, I really, badly, wished windows installer worked like apt. Maybe that situation doesn't come up too much, but I was really frustrated when I made the original post. The problem didn't turn out to be spyware of viruses, in case you were wondering. Just lots and lots of legitimate crap installed from CDs.

And if I know what I want, I apt-get install. It even autocompleates on ubuntu. Anyhow...

OP: The biggest danger of using linux is that you'll end up defending it pointlessly in an internet forum. I mean, I joined the forums just a weak ago, and I've ended up writing two posts which are much longer than I intended.

All in all, it depneds how much you care for your PC. If you don't pray to it, don't want to have children with it and wish it good morning every day, then stick to the 'normal', 'easy' and 'simple' solution

But if you don't wish it good morning every day, how will it know you care?

[EvanED]

I still like the linux command line a lot more than the windows. The results from ls are colour coded and can be filtered with grep. In windows you have to change disk and then cd, I'm forever tying d:\>cd c:\documents and settings\. There's probably more. I may well be getting to matters of personal preference, so I'll leave it at that.

I don't dispute that Linux has it better. But Cygwin does give you find and grep, and even the standard Windows cmd.exe can do pipes. I actually do almost all my console stuff in the Windows shell rather than a Cygwin stuff. I drop into zsh just when I want to use either a for loop or zsh's killer ** pattern.

(I go back and forth between thinking the drive thing is horribly annoying or kinda useful. If I'm doing something like moving files around that are on two partitions, it's like the shell has a memory of where I was which I can call back with the other drive letter. But overall I think this is probably wrong, though for backwards compatibility far far too late to fix.)

I don't actually have Vista, but with google desktop, you can double tap ctrl and type the program you want. I consider google desktop worth installing just as a start menu replacement, never mind the all the searching. I wish the gnome people or the kde people were paying attention. Tracker just isn't in the same league.

This is totally off topic of even this, but have you tried Yakuake? It's a KDE shell that sits at the top of your screen that you can pop down like the console in Quake or such. If you spend time in Linux, it kicks ass.

[Anpheus]

Hey, that's funny, the same kernel option allows Ubuntu to run in a virtual machine without crashing and giving me a bunch of gibberish I can't understand and no explanation why.

-makemyfuckingshitwork: makes your shit work.

[Dropzone]

In windows you have to change disk and then cd, I'm forever tying d:\>cd c:\documents and settings\.

That will actually work if you use the /d switch (e.g. D:\>cd /d c:\documents and settings\).

[recurve boy]

Look at OSX, they managed to combine a Unixy kernel and a well-integrated GUI. Of course, their developers get paid for their work...

OS X manages it by putting strict controls on all the hardware. They have compromised the ability for a user to upgrade to any piece of hardware they want. The bonus is that I buy a supported printer and installation is a matter of plugging the printer in and hitting the power button. I buy a phone and syncing is just pairing via bluetooth and telling iSync to add the device to the list. I buy an iPod and the machine knows what to do.

This is where the "Linux world" fails. It is useful to make a distinction between the whole FSF/FLOSS thing and just plain OSS here. Writing some software and open sourcing it is something you can do for any platform. There is good free software on all platforms. FSF/FLOSS is more of a political and philosophical agenda. To paraphrase Jack Black "It doesn't matter if it is good. It only matters if [it is free]". You can have a Linux system that just works. But you need to make compromises, so stuff just works. This will never happen.

Anyway, "Linux" is never going to change. Openness and freedom is more important to them than allowing users to "Get Stuff Done"(TM). Which is probably why they view the ability to recompile your entire system as a bonus. I got sick of it a long time ago and just moved to OS X. My goal is to get work done, not dick around with stupid FSF agendas. At the end of the day it's about what you value more, your time and ability to get stuff done, or your "freedom". I use double quotes because I really think the whole movement over states it's case about free software.

Just move to a better platform. It's much more fun to argue OSes as sport.

[OOPMan]

Cute recurve.

Except, as a professional developer, I find using linux works just fine for my productivity. I can code, listen to music, rip movies and write documents as required and at the same time.

For me, switching to OS X would be like handing over the keys to my own personalised car in exchange for a timeshare deal on one of a zillion boringly identical little cars produced by InsertCorporationNameHere.

While dicking around with FSF agendas may seem to be a waste of time to you, the benefits would be clear if in some weird twist of fate Apple went the way of Enron.

Yes, I know, it's not likely.

But the ultimate truth is, if Apple went belly-up tomorrow and disappeared from the face of the Earth, Apple users would be pretty much up the creek without a paddle.

Me, I'll trade a few bits of usability for being future proof.

[ash.gti]

OS X manages it by putting strict controls on all the hardware. They have compromised the ability for a user to upgrade to any piece of hardware they want.

That is not really true anymore... You can, in-fact, upgrade many of the components in a mac these days without anything to worry about. There are very few pieces of hardware in a mac that are not very standardized, which includes standard drivers that shouldn't break if you upgraded a component.

But the ultimate truth is, if Apple went belly-up tomorrow and disappeared from the face of the Earth, Apple users would be pretty much up the creek without a paddle.

And what is the biggest difference between OS X and Linux? Well, the kernel is almost just FreeBSD... Which isn't the same but pretty similar. The GUI is different, but not vastly so from say Gnome, except maybe a few 'pretty' features. You know, I really don't think you realize how similar OS X is to Linux. That and the fact most OS X users I know have/tried Linux and don't really have any problems with it. They just prefer OS X.

[OOPMan]

I am aware of OS X's UNIX heritage. I have, in fact, worked on a Mac and probably spent more time in a Terminal window than elsewhere.

Fact is, though, Apple drives the development of OS X. OpenDarwin is a bit of a joke.

If Apple died, OS X development would stall.

I'm paranoid and just not that ready for lock-in...

[Anpheus]

If one or more of the head developers of your distro were hit by a bus, development would stall, vital security updates would be delayed, the system would break down.

For example, let's say the head developer is the only one that can commit changes to the repository and he has a private key to do so. Great, now it's a personnel and technology issue. Even if you can replace your resident benevolent dictator, you now have to deal with the fact that he held the keys to the kingdom.

Do you even know what the current hierarchy is for your distribution? Who the weak links are? Has anyone even taken the time to compile that information for you?

[recurve boy]

Cute recurve.

Except, as a professional developer, I find using linux works just fine for my productivity. I can code, listen to music, rip movies and write documents as required and at the same time.

I use linux at work too. In that environment it is indeed fine. Now do the following tasks without installing anything new, rebooting or touching the command line:
- Play Diablo II/Warcraft 3 (the 2 games I spent far too much time on).
- Plug in a Canon/HP printer and print.
- Setup wireless (if you succeed please PM me which exact wireless card you are using).
- Search your music collection for files whose bit rate is more than 128kbps, transcode down to 128kbps, delete the original files and put the new files into your library. Create a little icon on the Desktop that can be double clicked to run the task. I keep high quality rips but transcode down for my iPod since let's face it, my earphones suck.
- Start apache.
- Plugin an external HD click an "OK" button and have your entire system backed up with hourly incremental changes.
- A dynamically updated saved search that finds pictures only from my Panny DMC-LX2. (I own 3 digital cameras. I want to know which camera I used to take what).
- Sync contacts and calendar to a SonyEricsson or Nokia mobile.

But the ultimate truth is, if Apple went belly-up tomorrow and disappeared from the face of the Earth, Apple users would be pretty much up the creek without a paddle.

Me, I'll trade a few bits of usability for being future proof.

Hmm. Pictures - JPEG or RAW, email can be exported to standard formats, music - MP3, bookmarks can be exported, documents - well if you have to distribute them you are going to use Office formats, .pdf, .rtf or plain text, address book exportable, some OSS projects use the iCal format (Sunbird) , Pages can export, Keynote can export.

So either I have standard formats or I have an easy way out. The only real issue is iTunes bought tracks. But you can just not buy anything from iTunes.

[Anpheus]

For iTunes DRM, just use the "Requiem" program. It's the first iTunes FairPlay DRM stripping tool that does not use iTunes directly. It uses a few bits of information that iTunes stores in some locations, figures out the decryption key, and it's fast. I think most of the songs were done in about a second or two on my machine, which only has a Pentium D 820. If you have a Core 2, as seems likely if you're on a Mac, then expect some pretty smokin' speeds.

To get Requiem you may have to visit your favorite torrent tracker. I know that if you google for "Requiem 1.7.3" with or without quotes, the first hit on my machine is the correct torrent from The Pirate Bay.

[b.i.o]

Pulseaudio randomly craps out on you? I'm really starting to wonder what kind of system you're running, hardware-wise. If you have strange or cheapy hardware, Linux could fail on you since those manufacturers rarely provide drivers or specs for anything but Windows, forcing Linux developers to reverse-engineer.

Pulseaudio *frequently* dies on me, and my computer running Ubuntu was designed (by the manufacturers) to primarily run Linux.

[quote- Play Diablo II/Warcraft 3 (the 2 games I spent far too much time on). ][/quote]

Oh, come now: http://appdb.winehq.org/

I don't actually have Vista, but with google desktop, you can double tap ctrl and type the program you want. I consider google desktop worth installing just as a start menu replacement, never mind the all the searching. I wish the gnome people or the kde people were paying attention. Tracker just isn't in the same league.

I have Ctrl + ` bound to open a terminal window. Then I can type the name of whatever program I want and it runs. While not as transparent/obvious, it could serve as a replacement if you really want one.

[Anpheus]

By whatever program, you mean, assuming you type it correctly with case sensitivity and it's in your path, right?

On Vista, at least, it's a one-key job. Hit windows key, type case insensitive substring, it'll list the choices or you can feel lucky and just hit enter.

[hotaru]

By whatever program, you mean, assuming you type it correctly with case sensitivity and it's in your path, right?

On Vista, at least, it's a one-key job. Hit windows key, type case insensitive substring, it'll list the choices or you can feel lucky and just hit enter.

zsh has case insensitive tab completion. and if i want to, for example, edit my .profile, all i have to type is "vi .pr<tab><enter>", only 8 keypresses, while in windows it takes at least 10.

[Anpheus]

Red herring, it doesn't matter how many key presses it takes to edit your path, the point is that entering in text in your shell and hitting enter is only going to execute programs you have in your path. It won't let you open documents or search your drive, and though there is a "where" program, it won't let you search contents of files. And my experience with indexing files on Linux systems is pretty poor, though Beagle wasn't that bad.

Still, I'd say Spotlight in Mac OS X is better than Vista's, and Vista's search is better than any indexing search offered on Linux.

[hotaru]

Red herring, it doesn't matter how many key presses it takes to edit your path, the point is that entering in text in your shell and hitting enter is only going to execute programs you have in your path. It won't let you open documents or search your drive, and though there is a "where" program, it won't let you search contents of files.

the example i gave was one of opening a document. my point was that the windows thing doesn't work for documents, while zsh's tab completion does.
and grep and find work just fine for searching.

[Amnesiasoft]

Typing the name of a document in the windows command prompt will open it with the default program, and tab completion works on documents in the command prompt. I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

[EvanED]

and grep and find work just fine for searching.

If you like waiting. Having used the indexed search that comes with Vista, I'm not going back unless I'm dragged kicking and screaming.

[Anpheus]

Are you serious? You're going to grep your entire hard drive rather than keep an indexed database that can be optimized?

Even a default Ubuntu installation is, I believe, well over 100,000 files. I don't even know how many files I have split across my two measly 80GB hard disks right now for Windows and Ubuntu.

[zombie_monkey]

Em... locate?! updatedb? I'm sure they must be integrated in things like Gnome and KDE too, I don't know, I don't use them.

[Berengal]

and grep and find work just fine for searching.

If you like waiting. Having used the indexed search that comes with Vista, I'm not going back unless I'm dragged kicking and screaming.

I found I had to wait for Vista just as long as I have to wait for grep for large querries. Even worse, it would often freeze for a split second when I was in the middle of typing my search, forcing me to retype parts. It worked neat only as long as it's search space was about as small as what grep can search "instantly".
Of course, it's been a while since I used Vista, so it's quite possibly improved now, but the fact is I would rather go look for a file myself in Vista, while I use find and grep at least once every session in Ubuntu.

[Amnesiasoft]

Of course, it's been a while since I used Vista, so it's quite possibly improved now

WEll, I can't vouch for what SP1 has done with it (This one update relating to BitLocker, which I don't even use, refuses to install), but I know they added the ability to change your search provider for the start menu. Basically, you can make it use Google Desktop Search instead.