In the last few weeks, the tech industry has been buzzing with speculation that Microsoft’s next OS release, Longhorn, will not be ready for its planned 2006 unveiling. If the OS is put off until 2007, some competitors could win more profits, but many analysts say that software and hardware partners will face the most serious challenges and could end up losing more than they anticipated.
Longhorn Delayed Again – Who Wins?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Why?
This was the year where I actually booted Windows ONLY for playing games. So all dektop work I had to do, I could do and even DID with Linux in that year.
Maybe the year of the Linux desktop will never come for other people, but my Linux desktop is very much alive for 5 Years now.
Just to give you an overview of what I do with which programs, look at the following list:
– Internet browsing (including internet banking): Konqueror, Mozilla, Netscape
– E-Mail: Kontact (KMail)
– Watch DVD movies: Xine, play_title
– Watch TV: KDETV, using a WINTV (how ironic) TV tuner card
– Editing Audiofiles (I record the chorus I sing with): Audacity
– Burning CD’s and DVD’s: cdrecord, K3B
– Music typesetting: Lilypond
– Acounting of my private finances: GNUcash
– Writing letters, do some spreadsheet work occasionally: OpenOffice.org
– Watching digital fotographs: GQview, Kuickview
– Image manipulation: GIMP
– Making CD covers: Kover
– Programming small programs (one page): Kdevelop, nedit, gcc
I usually download the Mandrake Linux Official DVD image and reinstall the system when it comes to upgrading. First I do that on a spare partition to test if all the hardware is detected correctly, after that I format the / partition, keeping my seperate /home partition intact. In that way upgrading is done in one day (afternoon). During the last 2 upgrades I had no longer any glitches with the hardware.
well, here is why i use linux
gnome-panel
FAR superior to the windows taskbar. havnt used the kde equivilent in ages now, but since we are talking basic stuff here, I would assume it beats the pants off of it too. The windows taskbar works fine as long as you stick with default settings, which is geared towards < 5 open apps at a time. Since serious work for me usually needs 20-25 open apps, the suckyness of the taskbar is one of the things that bugs me each and every day.
worspaces
there is a windows powertoy to enable workspaces. however, workspaces are almost useless without the ability to move applications from one to another, and have applications show up on all of them
tomboy
There are a few apps in windows that rival tomboy funtionality, and nothing to rival its implementation.
muine
There are no really good album based jukeboxing apps available on windows
gconf
gconf totally and completely blows the windows registry out of the water.
xkill
windows simply does not handle applications going down in any way that could be considered graceful. an xkill equivilent is sorely needed.
themes and colors
usually, I just stick with the default theme/color scheme of an environment, as shifting themes will lower your productivity. However, the windows default theme is just offensive (looks like a teletubby exploded on your desktop), and the one other included theme takes “utilitarian” to the next level. The only way to get something else is either to hack windows yourself, or buy a third party app that hacks it. not only that, but the windows themeing community seems to have an obsession with bright green on black. on the off chance you happen to find a usable theme out there, it needs to follow the default color scheme, or else the many apps out there which incorrectly use system colors will be unusable. by contrast, the garbage ratio of linux themes is suprisingly low, and you can use any (sane) theme and expect to still be able to use all apps.
synaptic
windows has no synaptic equivilent, and never can due to standard liscencing on the platform.
gtk on windows sucks
making things like gaim or the gimp on windows suck by extension. even with the toolkit suckage, they still tend to blow away comparable gratis apps available on the platform
windows cli sucks
yes, there is alwas sfu (the GREATEST acronym of all time, thank you ms), or cygwin. but i have found they dont alwas work properly, and it still requires you to do the manual yoga to hit on many keyboards (nestled between shift and return). not to mention the overall quality of most windows cli apps is total trash.
wildly inefficient file manager
both ROX-Filer and Konqueror blow explorer out of the water.
evolution
evo beats outlook hands down, and has FAR better integration with 3rd party applications.
anyways, i could go on, but that should be enough. keep in mind, im a developer, so my needs are not the same as “normal” users. but when i use linux, i miss some mac things (like services, or the whole dot on the scrollbar thing), but i dont miss any windows apps/features. when i use windows, i find what i am stuck with are kludgy linux substitutes.