Apple Mac Mini Desktop 1.5GHz Intel chip

gromituk

Sorry, this is getting completely off-topic now and should really be on the Techie Board, but just to answer your question...

"Why Ubuntu?" is indeed a very good point. The reason is that, after using SuSE for years, half way through a messy upgrade to OpenSuse 10.2 (all those images, and no documented way of installing them from a USB drive) I decided to try Kubuntu on my laptop and it was a bit of a revelation. It just worked. Screen resolution, wifi, sleep and suspend, laptop buttons, proper mounting/unmounting of external drives (unlike SuSE), scanner (unlike SuSE), DVD playing (after getting the DeCSS as an update for legal reasons not applicable in the UK - only available from third parties with SuSE). The Debian-based package management system and controlled repositories, so you just select software to install with one click, rather than having to search on the net for it and be likely to end up with incompatible versions. And documentation that actually existed and was written in an understandable manner. A huge amount of effort has been put into making it just work: the last thing someone new to Linux needs is a confusing array of tweaks to perform.

Of course there may be other distributions that are just as slick, but I can recommend this one, and I know that Mark Shuttleworth (the man behind it) has made it a priority to be easy to use.

And I must add that Linux is not just about "the basics" - it is just as competent as Windows. It only lacks things that are Windows-only, and has brilliant open source replacements for a lot of these, such as OpenOffice, Firefox, many email programs, DVD players and burners, etc etc. And more and more closed-source software is being written for it too, such as printer managers and Google Earth. Unless you're a hardcore gamer or use some particularly esoteric peripherals, you can do just as well with Linux as Windows, more securely, and for free. Microsoft does not want you to know this, and instead has to keep pushing paid-for software at you to keep its shareholders in dividends.

bobson_2

gromituk wrote:

...And I must add that Linux is not just about "the basics" - it is just as competent as Windows. It only lacks things that are Windows-only, and has brilliant open source replacements for a lot of these, such as OpenOffice, Firefox, many email programs, DVD players and burners, etc etc. And more and more closed-source software is being written for it too, such as printer managers and Google Earth. Unless you're a hardcore gamer or use some particularly esoteric peripherals, you can do just as well with Linux as Windows, more securely, and for free. Microsoft does not want you to know this, and instead has to keep pushing paid-for software at you to keep its shareholders in dividends.

Sorry, I should have clarified that I consider the basics to be Office, Email, Web and DVD playback..

However, the girlfriend is away for the weekend, so I've had plenty of time for geeky stuff :-) I downloaded Ubuntu for a play. On my Windows box, most of the software is either Open Source or free - Open Office is my Office app of choice. I run Firefox, Opera, IE 6 and IE 7 and a host of other browsers. I use thunderbird as my email client and I also run XAMPP. Notepad ++ for code. Itunes for music and so on. The only paid for applications I use are Photoshop, Windows XP pro (needed it for IIS so I could do some asp stuff) and dreamweaver. Photoshop is the big deal for me as nothing exists (that I know of) in the open source world that is anywhere near as complete.. although for vector graphics there are some killer illustrator beating apps such as Xara. So for me to make the Linux switch I'd have to have Photoshop running...


Anyhow.. Ubuntu.. it rocks. Really am very very impressed. Booted on my laptop without any driver probs. It's super polished. I felt instantly at home - indeed if you use Windows or OSX you'll feel at home. I've managed to get photoshop installed via Wine. It works. Not got dreamweaver working yet. Of course I wont ever get IIS.. but thats no biggy.

I'm thinking of switching. As I said earlier, I use mostly open source / free apps. I need Photoshop, and, to a point Dreamweaver... but Windows XP pro set me back a £200 when I bought it. Thats £200 that could have been in my pocket and not M$.

As I mentioned earlier, I dont use MS Office, I use OOO ( http://www.openoffice.org ) , but had I gone the MS Office route, thats another few hundred out of my pocket.

So that's around £500 gone, when you can get the equivalent for free. Ok, so OOO does have some slight incompatabilities - but minor ones. For example, the Moneysavingexpert.com budget planner will load, but the formulea wont be recognised.. May I suggest a port of the budget planner to OOO? Could also push the use of OOO too ;-)

Although benchmarking apps tell me there is a performance boost under Ubuntu my actual user experience isnt any faster than when using Windows - but it is perhaps nicer. Windows is a bit of a pig when it comes to memory usage.. not clearing it out properly which does hit performance. From what I understand, Unbuntu is more efficient in how it uses memory, so I wonder if you bought a cheaper machine (slower) would you get comparable performance to a faster windows machine? Of course memory is not the only factor that affects performance - but it is an important one.

Reasonably good PC's from dell only cost a few hundred. You could effectivly have everything you need for £300 - OS, Apps, hardware, the works... It doesnt make financial sense to go the windows root. So from a money saving point of view Linux is by far the best OS. In fact.. linux is big in the embedded markets... embedded systems traditionally use next to no power... so you could argue, that linux cuts your electricity bill too.. hehe... but maybe that is a bit too tenuouse a benefit ;-)

Has anyone compiled a list of their top Open Source software - or replacement apps?

misskool

bobson wrote:

Photoshop is the big deal for me as nothing exists (that I know of) in the open source world that is anywhere near as complete.. although for vector graphics there are some killer illustrator beating apps such as Xara. So for me to make the Linux switch I'd have to have Photoshop running...

did you have a look at GIMP? I was recommended it but am not techie enough to run it under x11 for mac osx. It's supposed to close enough to photoshop in linux but I wimped out and paid for cs2.

bobson_2

misskool wrote:

did you have a look at GIMP? I was recommended it but am not techie enough to run it under x11 for mac osx. It's supposed to close enough to photoshop in linux but I wimped out and paid for cs2.

Yes. I played with GIMP a while ago, I was very impressed by it, but found it lacking in a couple of areas, but really good in others. Although, GIMP may have changed and got better since then. Photoshop is my weapon of choice though, simply because I use it daily.

gromituk

Thanks for a great posting Bobson. Yes, as I understand it (not a "power user"), although very capable, Gimp is very different, and hence frustrating, to use by Photoshop devotees, and it does lack some features which professionals need. However, Photoshop may work under Linux using wine.

normal

Just out of interest. Did anyone manage to get one of these or are they available on a similar deal anywhere else?

gromituk

bobson wrote:

Has anyone compiled a list of their top Open Source software - or replacement apps?

There was an "official" thread about it once, but as you can't search your subscriptions, I can't find it. If you do an advanced search (in titles) for "free software" there's loads there too.

Sui_Generis

normal wrote:

Just out of interest. Did anyone manage to get one of these or are they available on a similar deal anywhere else?

This £!99 deal came around at TRU last year and therre were only half a dozen even then. You can buy them on the Aplle refurb store but not as cheaply as this.

poopscoop

bobson, you don't need desktop apps anymore. Just use writely or the many other apps you can do through a browser nowadays with AJAX.

gromituk

The big problem with these web apps is security - not only is all your data passing over the public internet, but it is being held by a third party which, even if it has a good privacy policy, is subject to external attack, internal attack, and interference from governments with too much power (such as the USA). You might not care about this, but it's worth pointing out.