The Linux Feasibility Thread (Desktop Centric)

[FanIn80]

I'm hoping this thread can be used to have a positive discussion on the feasibility of Linux as a legitimate desktop alternative for workstations. I've had experience with Linux boxes, but mostly on the server side - not much on the desktop side. I'm very intrigued to see how far some of the various flavours out there have come...

Some concerns:

- Office compatibility
I know about OpenOffice.org, but every time I've tried their suite I've been less than impressed. Same with NeoOffice. What's the best Office suite right now?

- Visual Studio
Is my only option for doing VS stuff to just dial-boot into Windows, or is there a legitimate alternative in the Linux world for developing using MS technologies?

- MobileMe
This is Apple related. Does anyone have any experience using the MobileMe service from within a Linux environment (not including web access).

Note: This is nothing against Windows. I happen to think Win7 is quite nice. I'm just wondering if Linux is ready for desktop primetime yet, or if it's still just primarily Geekware. When I say "primetime," I mean can I run it and actually get some real work done without having to sacrifice functionality or compatibility?

Edit: Also, I just realized I forgot the most obvious question of them all: Which flavour? Ubuntu is an obvious one, but I've historically been more fond of OpenSUSE and Fedora. Which one do you guys suggest?

[photon]

It depends entirely on what you mean by getting some real work done, it'll boil down to the apps you need basically.

OpenOffice with the latest version I think has come a long way.

If you want to develop .NET apps in Linux, Mono is what you want. Though really 99% of .NET apps are for Windows, so it makes more sense to develop there I think. And I wouldn't dual boot, I'd run Windows in a virtual machine (if I wanted Linux as my primary OS).

No idea with MobileMe with Linux, but isn't that just browser based? Wikipedia says Firefox 3 works on Linux with MobileMe with a warning. Or you could maybe use Wine to get Safari running?

The latest version of Ubuntu just came out and it's probably the closest thing to a real primetime desktop OS, and its come a long way but I still wouldn't say it's for the general public.

[FanIn80]

I should have expanded on the MobileMe thing, I guess mostly what I'd need is mail client that supports IMAP (easy, I'm sure) but also a contacts and calendar sync. I guess, ideally, something like Outlook.

Interesting about OpenOffice coming a long way. I can take a look at them again. Mono looks really promising as well. I was looking at them right before I posted this thread. I just wasn't sure if there was something better out there or not.

Also, I didn't even think of the VM from within Linux thing. I'm so used to going the other way around. I'll look into that, awesome.

To elaborate on my "real work" comment, I just meant that while Linux has been awesome on the server side of things, each time I try to give it a go as a primary OS, it leaves me wanting. It installs easily enough and looks neat and I can turn the desktop into a cube and all that... but whenever it's time to get some work done, I end up having to switch back to Windows. Admittedly, most of that is due to my lack of knowledge about decent application options... Every time I hit the repository to try to search for a possible app, I get inundated with far too many options.

This is why I wanted to make this thread, so I can maybe weed through some of those options and get to the apps and solutions that people are already using.

[photon]

Yeah it really can be difficult I agree, I still develop on Windows, though I'm finding myself more and more wishing throughout the day that I was on Linux for various reasons, so dual booting or VMs are probably not far off for me. Might help me to stay on task too.

But yeah finding the right app to do what you need can vary from really easy (as in I already use the open source version of the app in Windows) to difficult or even impossible (because there's no Linux alternative, doesn't work in Wine, etc).

Thunderbird supports IMAP, but not sure how contacts and calendar are synced with MobileMe. I use Google as the center for all my contacts and calendar so my phone and my desktop with Thunderbird (through plugins) can all sync automatically and a change I make in one place gets reflected everywhere else over the air.

[Rathji]

My mom used Ubuntu 9.10 exclusively for about a year with no complaints, but she isn't what you would consider a power user.

OpenOffice really is fine. Not sure how it compares with MS Office 2010 though.

As for .NET, I have no personal experience, but as Photon said either use Windows or a VirtualBox.

I have zero experience with MobileMe, but I know when my mom got her iPhone I was not willing to mess around to get it to work with Linux so I switched her back to Windows. It probably would not have been that hard but it was easier to reinstall XO than figure it out.

[calumniate]

I'm a Linux fan and used to use Mandrake / Mandriva as a desktop. But a couple of things were very annoying. Such as getting wireless routers to work, enabling opengl 3d on my graphics card. But who knows now.

Oh and I secretly can't wait for the new Microsoft Office 2010. Excel is going to have some features that is going to blow some business intelligence software out of the water, putting pressure on even things like cognos. Has data mining ability, SQL server and analysis services integration, can have millions of rows in your spreadsheets and custom calculations on aggregates. I think open office will fall behind a bit here.. yeah it's not fair!

[BlackEleven]

I use Ubuntu as my primary OS. I find its particularly great if you have a bit of an older machine since it runs super smooth compared to Windows XP on the same box. I don't use any of that comp/viz stuff or anything else that would bog my machine down though. I care much more about performance than I do about window dressing (pardon the pun).

The repository is my favourite thing about Ubuntu. Yeah, there's a lot of apps, but it is searchable where you can narrow it down to a few. Failing that, there's always google to find out other people's opinions on what is the best app for doing a certain task.

I still keep Windows around for Photoshop. GIMP is powerful and you can do a lot with it, but until it has adjustment layers, I'm going to keep using Photoshop. What I do like though is you can install a plugin (can't remember the name just now) so all the RAW (or CR2 in my case) files show up as thumbnails in the file browser Windows. I've tried to get that working in Windows, but have failed every time.

For programming I use mostly C++ and Python, which is far easier and simpler to do on a Linux box anyway, no need to muck about with something as heavy as Visual Studio. But if you want C# or something like that, you're either going to have to keep Windows around in some way, shape or form or use something like Mono as photon suggests.

I've received a few .doc(x) and .xls(x) files by email and such and have never had a problem using OpenOffice to view them but I've never created much content in it myself. When I do I usually stick to its native format and convert to a pdf afterwards if I need to send it to anyone.

I run a few other small Windows apps (like the pokerstars client for an occasional poker game) through Wine and it works well enough for those. I wouldn't bother trying something like Photoshop in Wine though.

I've never had a problem with wireless like a lot of people seem to. I think that was something that turned some people off it in the past and it still has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to wireless, but setting up my network on it was seamless. I use mediatomb to stream media to my PS3 over wireless.

[MickMcGeough]

Our development team is a pretty even split between Snow Leopard and various linux distros. Nobody misses windows, but we're not doing .Net development either.

My experience with OpenOffice has been great for when I'm creating my own documents, and awful for when I'm trying to read someone else's. Our sales teams sends over plenty of word, excel, ppt files and over half of them are borderline unusable.

Between the need for Office, CS5, and TextMate, it doesn't make sense for me to switch to linux full-time. But Sun's VirtualBox is free and very good - if all I needed was Office I'd run it in a VirtualBox and never look back.

[Azure]

I don't think OpenOffice will even come close to comparing to Office 2010.

I've used both Linux and Windows, and while Linux does have its benefits, if you manage Windows right it can do a pretty damn good job for you.

[FanIn80]

Yeah, I have to say that I'm a pretty big fan of Office 2010. I haven't been this interested in an Office platform since OfficeXP came out.

[Flames0910]

one thing i liked about open office was that you can save as pdf without printing workarounds, which is always nice. although i agree that in general, i've never been that impressed with it. just copying what somebody else is doing is never a great strategy.
edit: looked at screenshots. still less than impressed. has a '5 years old' feel to the interface. MS going to the ribbon really screwed open office over.

then again, you're probably using a mac and can do that anyways.

something that has saved me immeasurable time with cover letters and resumes recently.

i suspect we may be in the same boat fanin80. i'm a former comp sci major turned marketing. got tired of windows and tried ubuntu. couldn't get my wireless card to work reliably (at the time) so I bought a macbook and never looked back.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Flames0910

one thing i liked about open office was that you can save as pdf without printing workarounds, which is always nice. although i agree that in general, i've never been that impressed with it. just copying what somebody else is doing is never a great strategy.
edit: looked at screenshots. still less than impressed. has a '5 years old' feel to the interface. MS going to the ribbon really screwed open office over.

then again, you're probably using a mac and can do that anyways.

something that has saved me immeasurable time with cover letters and resumes recently.

i suspect we may be in the same boat fanin80. i'm a former comp sci major turned marketing. got tired of windows and tried ubuntu. couldn't get my wireless card to work reliably (at the time) so I bought a macbook and never looked back.

Office 2007 and (I assume) Office 2010 have plug ins to save directly as a PDF as well.

As for wireless, Ubuntu 9 and higher have really good wireless support. I installed it on my wife's laptop and all I needed to do was pick the driver it used (ndiswrapped proprietary or another one)

[Flames0910]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Office 2007 and (I assume) Office 2010 have plug ins to save directly as a PDF as well.

As for wireless, Ubuntu 9 and higher have really good wireless support. I installed it on my wife's laptop and all I needed to do was pick the driver it used (ndiswrapped proprietary or another one)

looks like they do have a plug-in for 2007. I used to use one of those printing programs which was a pain. 2010 looks to have it built right in which is long overdue.

as for your wireless experience, obviously I had a different one with wireless when I was trying 2-3 years ago as my card was one of few that were not supported. there were lots of workarounds but none worked reliably. I'm just sharing my story, sorry if it clashes with your worldview or whatever. I tried ubuntu, and for me, it didn't work. believe me, I tried, spent hours on the support forums. But I wasn't going to write the drivers myself.

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by BlackEleven

I use Ubuntu as my primary OS. I find its particularly great if you have a bit of an older machine since it runs super smooth compared to Windows XP on the same box. I don't use any of that comp/viz stuff or anything else that would bog my machine down though. I care much more about performance than I do about window dressing (pardon the pun).

Que-eff-tee.

I run a PIII 1.0ghz with 256mb RAM and a wireless G card on Ubuntu and I have absolutely no complaints. Best porn machine ever.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Flames0910

looks like they do have a plug-in for 2007. I used to use one of those printing programs which was a pain. 2010 looks to have it built right in which is long overdue.

as for your wireless experience, obviously I had a different one with wireless when I was trying 2-3 years ago as my card was one of few that were not supported. there were lots of workarounds but none worked reliably. I'm just sharing my story, sorry if it clashes with your worldview or whatever. I tried ubuntu, and for me, it didn't work. believe me, I tried, spent hours on the support forums. But I wasn't going to write the drivers myself.

The reason I brought it up is in the new versions of Ubuntu, it is much much better. You thinking it sucks doesn't clash with my 'worldview', but I was letting you (and others in this thread) know it was different now, because as you stated wireless on Linux used to be borderline impossible.

[FanIn80]

Performance isn't really my concern. My laptop is running a Core i7 with 8GB of 1333 DDR3, a second-gen Intel SSD system drive and a 1GB GDDR3 ATI card.

Getting real-world work (and my homework) accomplished is all I really care about. The reason I'm even looking at Linux as a desktop OS right now, is so that I can get some experience under my belt on the dev side of things. I'm already pretty comfortable with a lot of the web and db server stuff in Linux.

[psicodude]

^ My experience with Linux is that driver support is the Achilles heal, and my guess is that a brand new, high end rig like that will give you more headaches than anything.

To answer the original question - No, I don't think Linux is ready for prime time yet. Apple and Microsoft have both been pushing hard to make computers as easy to use as possible for years now. Linux, IMO, is still pretty far away from easy and still has that "made in a dudes basement" feel to it.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Getting real-world work (and my homework) accomplished is all I really care about.

Linux is only free if your time has no value - keep that in mind. If you have work to do, use the OS that will make you immediately productive.

The proper tools are going to make you 10x more productive than merely acceptable tools - do not accept mediocrity when there are better tools available to you. If linux is merely mediocre at your intended task, choose something better.

Linux people spend a lot of time tinkering with...Linux! It’s a great OS, but its not, in my experience using it since the days when you downloaded individual floppy images from the local bbs (because there were no ISP’s for non-university students) the most productive OS out there for most people.

Edit: you mentioned Office and Visual Studio, both of which are world beaters in their fields. Linux is not the best choice for you right now, there is nothing as polished, and particularly with Visual Studio, as high quality for dev work.

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Linux is only free if your time has no value - keep that in mind. If you have work to do, use the OS that will make you immediately productive.

The proper tools are going to make you 10x more productive than merely acceptable tools - do not accept mediocrity when there are better tools available to you. If linux is merely mediocre at your intended task, choose something better.

Linux people spend a lot of time tinkering with...Linux! It’s a great OS, but its not, in my experience using it since the days when you downloaded individual floppy images from the local bbs (because there were no ISP’s for non-university students) the most productive OS out there for most people.

Edit: you mentioned Office and Visual Studio, both of which are world beaters in their fields. Linux is not the best choice for you right now, there is nothing as polished, and particularly with Visual Studio, as high quality for dev work.

Yeah, that's kind of what I've been expecting to hear. The more I look into this, the more I see that Linux is just going to mean more fiddling and less time working.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I think we can put this one to bed for now. It's a shame, really. As a utility OS, it's pretty much second to none. I'm not sure it will ever be ready for primetime desktop use though.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Yeah, that's kind of what I've been expecting to hear. The more I look into this, the more I see that Linux is just going to mean more fiddling and less time working.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I think we can put this one to bed for now. It's a shame, really. As a utility OS, it's pretty much second to none. I'm not sure it will ever be ready for primetime desktop use though.

The prime-time Unix based desktop OS - you already know the answer to this one.