My experiment of running Linux on my laptop is over. I hate moving away from Linux, but it simply is not an option for me. I tried to fight past the glaring problems, but I’m no longer able to fight it. What pushed me over the edge, was the past 3 weeks I spent using a “loner” laptop, while mine was in the shop. Everything I wanted worked, without any radical install, download, configuring on my part.
Originally, my list of problems with Ubuntu Linux was long. I worked through the majority of them. The hardest was getting dual monitors working. The joke is that with Win XP I simply plug the 2nd monitor in and it works. Crazy! No excuse for it being so hard to configure in Linux.
Anyhow my 3 roadblocks that moved me off Ubuntu (for the time being):
1. Lack of a recent Flash player. How long has Flash 7 been around? Flash 9 is out now and I’m finding a ton of sites that won’t work with Flash 7 (espn.com is the biggie)
2. iTunes. I need access to iTunes. I’ve got two iPods that I need to sync between a standalone music library that I keep on a separate harddrive. It’s a NTFS drive that Ubuntu doesn’t want to write to. Plus, the last few weeks I’ve been using my Nike+ and I assume it will force me to use iTunes and not some alternate iPod application.
3. I am unalbe to listen to streaming radio from the two sites I use daily (TheTicket.com and KLIF.com). I have no idea why this doesn’t work. It is not related to a sound problem with my hardware because I’ll play and listen to audio CDs just fine. It is most likely related to a Flash player problem.
Yup, proprietary drives et al are the biggest downfall of linux. ie flash and monitor drivers.
For me iTunes is not the issue, bit torrent is. Ktorrent is down right horrible where utorrent on W2K/XP is rock solid. As for streaming, it’s podcasts for me so any player that has USB works great with podnova.com. Getting back to BT, I’ve been told that http://qbittorrent.sourceforge.net/ is pretty solid but until I try it I cannot say.
For me, a combo of VL (BTW I can’t use the full name because your filter is stopping me from posting. You know what version of linux I run so you know the first 5 letters that are setting it off) linux with some W2K/XP is perfect.
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/
I can completely relate. I’m a long-time Linux advocate, but after spending a number of years on a ThinkPad with sketchy wireless support, and absolutely no ability to suspend/resume safely, I picked up a Powerbook. While I’d still be leery of using a Mac as my primary development station, as a laptop, it serves all my purposes. As always, YMMV.
The problems you have are possible to overcome, as other commenters have noted.
I am a bit worried by your confusion between the concept of an operating system and its applications. Linux in general may not be endowed with the best and latest multimedia gadgets, because if you want those you should choose Darwin (which is also Linux). What you get is heavily distro driven, and you should really shop around for a distro that suits you (ktorrent being a case in point).
You may miss the Linux kernel though. There are very few OSs out there that do a better job of general resource management. Where OSs do differ is in support for proprietary acceleration, Linux uses very few of these closed shop tricks.
I actually have the opposite experience to your other commenters. I am bound to use XP at work and I have a Linux (FC5) notebook, Win2k notebook and iMac mini at home. The commercial operating systems are fine for normal level activity but they fall way short of Linux when things get tough. Linux is the only one that does networking properly (yes even wireless), it has much faster file access and good memory management. Originally I expected Mac to be better, but it is not a better operating system, it is a much better collection of applications though. XP may be more plug and play, but it is also more plug and hack.