"email, web browser, text editor and a compiler" and Ubuntu manages to screw up even this. I somehow find that Ubuntu seems to have less vertical space on the s

"email, web browser, text editor and a compiler" and Ubuntu manages to screw up even this. I somehow find that Ubuntu seems to have less vertical space on the same laptop than Windows. Too many window bars etc. The consolas programmer-friendly font renders better under Windows (maybe patent problems), so my preferred way to work "on Linux" is to ssh using a full-screen putty to a tmux session running on Linux. It almost seems like all the elves left the world of Unix in the early 80s, and nothing imagined after the 80s is actually of any use (X11 onwards). And I take it you don't own a smartphone and hence are uninterested in viewing/organizing photos and videos (forget editing videos!). Ubuntu's tools have always been pathetic. The ease of use of iPhoto and iMovie is ASTOUNDING. And from the "tinkering" point of view, apparently Apple provides scriptable APIs for almost all of iPhoto's functionality; and in the worst case you can just 'cd' into the iPhoto database (all photos in a single giant file!) with command line tools (like 'find', 'cp' etc) and DIY.