Saturday, September 22, 2007

switch 100% to Linux at home?

This is always a tempting thought to me; especially as home Linux distros keep increasing in usability & convenience.

Per one of my earlier posts, I'm less & less locked in to any one software suite - more and more of the things I do with my computer at home are browser based...Firefox & Opera run well on any of the major OS' out there.

Some things I like on OS X that I can't get (exactly) on Linux:

- Garageband
- Itunes
- Ableton Live (but I can get this for Windows)
- iPhoto

Options on Linux that should cover me for those things above:

- Hydrogen, Rosetta, (indeed, there ARE audio creation software options for Linux)
- Amarok (in many ways better than iTunes)
- use WINE to get some version of Ableton Live working
- Picasa or digiKam on KDE (in some ways better than iPhoto)

Things on Windows that I like & can't do anywhere else:

- Sync with my pocket PC (on OSX you can get "the missing sync", but that's ~$40 in additional software costs). Doesn't seem to be a good Linux option for this yet.
- Games - My PC is the main source of my video gaming entertainment; I like strategy games like Civ IV, RTS' like Rise of Nations, and action games like Quake IV. While it's possible to have some Windows games work in Linux (usually major releases from id Software, among others), that's kind of the exception, not the rule.

That's about it, however.

My iBook G4 is still quite healthy and working well for all I need it to do. I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.

After having had such a strong impression made on me from using the mac so much, (hassle-free, responsive, no viruses, only need to reboot once every 2 weeks or so, etc), I was totally inclined to consider upgrading to a Macbook Pro (or equivalent) whenever time for upgrades drew near.

However, I'm now reconsidering that. It might be cheaper (and arguably, just as effective) to get a well-spec'd Linux-friendly laptop, and dual-boot (with Linux as the default, of course), keeping a small-ish windows partition open for gaming.

No rush to really figure this out, as my mac is working totally fine. But, as much as I like OS X, I'm still a little unsure if it's really worth the premium in hardware cost.

On the other hand, if virtualization technology improves further, then in the near-future (if not now, with a healthy-spec'd computer) it should be possible to run several instances of different OS' within one OS, so the whole issue of needing to dual boot to get the best apps across different platforms could be moot...you'd have to worry about ensuring you have Linux-friendly hardware, but that would be about it.





Powered by ScribeFire.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

geekiest post ever???

Anonymous said...

have you tried ubantu?

and the new osx is coming out soon.