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What's not functional about Linux for music and web browsing? There are certainly areas where it's not quite there for some things, but I wouldn't say those two

What's not functional about Linux for music and web browsing? There are certainly areas where it's not quite there for some things, but I wouldn't say those two had ever been pain points for me..

zavulon 16y ago
I love Linux's elegance and power for development, but can't use it as a "regular computer" for three reasons: 1) The GUI is terrifyingly ugly, in every single distro I've seen. Ubuntu is trying, but they're still way behind. If I only ever needed command line interface on my computer, I would've fully switched to Linux yesterday. 2) It doesn't have Netflix, Vudu or anything else with Silverlight. This is not a "don't have it yet" type of deal - Linux doesn't have it and won't have it in foreseeable future because of philosophical differences (because it's using proprietary Microsoft code) 3) Most things don't work out of the box, and need some tinkering with. This is not such a big deal, since I love to tinker and after tinkering, they usually work much better than anywhere else. But for many non-development things, I love when programs I install on my machine just work. For that, OS X is light years ahead of everything else, and Linux is dead last.
- bergie 16y ago
  GNOME3 isn't too bad, visuals-wise. But it has to be noted the author was talking about Xmonad, which is basically a completely chrome-free, tiling desktop
- technomancy 16y ago
  > Most things don't work out of the box, and need some tinkering with. This is not such a big deal, since I love to tinker and after tinkering, they usually work much better than anywhere else. But for many non-development things, I love when programs I install on my machine just work. For that, OS X is light years ahead of everything else, and Linux is dead last. It depends on the hardware. If you pay attention up-front, it's very easy to end up with zero-hassle just-works-for-everything. Anecdotally, I've been using Thinkpads with Intel graphics drivers as my last three laptops, and the last time I had to manually edit a config file for hardware was back in early '07. With OS X, on the other hand, I can't use my phone to tether without navigating a bewildering driver labyrinth. Anyway, this stereotype is played out.
- hasenj 16y ago
  Unity is pretty cool, although there's still some GTK+ ugliness, like the tabbar in the Terminal and the file manager.
tjr 16y ago
ProTools? Sibelius? Sure, there are free GNU/Linux alternatives, but (last I've seen) they are pretty weak in comparison to the proprietary tools that run on OS X and Microsoft Windows.

What's not functional about Linux for music and web browsing? There are certainly areas where it's not quite there for some things, but I wouldn't say those two had ever been pain points for me..

zavulon 16y ago

I love Linux's elegance and power for development, but can't use it as a "regular computer" for three reasons: 1) The GUI is terrifyingly ugly, in every single distro I've seen. Ubuntu is trying, but they're still way behind. If I only ever needed command line interface on my computer, I would've fully switched to Linux yesterday. 2) It doesn't have Netflix, Vudu or anything else with Silverlight. This is not a "don't have it yet" type of deal - Linux doesn't have it and won't have it in foreseeable future because of philosophical differences (because it's using proprietary Microsoft code) 3) Most things don't work out of the box, and need some tinkering with. This is not such a big deal, since I love to tinker and after tinkering, they usually work much better than anywhere else. But for many non-development things, I love when programs I install on my machine just work. For that, OS X is light years ahead of everything else, and Linux is dead last.

bergie 16y ago
GNOME3 isn't too bad, visuals-wise. But it has to be noted the author was talking about Xmonad, which is basically a completely chrome-free, tiling desktop
technomancy 16y ago
> Most things don't work out of the box, and need some tinkering with. This is not such a big deal, since I love to tinker and after tinkering, they usually work much better than anywhere else. But for many non-development things, I love when programs I install on my machine just work. For that, OS X is light years ahead of everything else, and Linux is dead last. It depends on the hardware. If you pay attention up-front, it's very easy to end up with zero-hassle just-works-for-everything. Anecdotally, I've been using Thinkpads with Intel graphics drivers as my last three laptops, and the last time I had to manually edit a config file for hardware was back in early '07. With OS X, on the other hand, I can't use my phone to tether without navigating a bewildering driver labyrinth. Anyway, this stereotype is played out.
hasenj 16y ago
Unity is pretty cool, although there's still some GTK+ ugliness, like the tabbar in the Terminal and the file manager.

tjr 16y ago

ProTools? Sibelius? Sure, there are free GNU/Linux alternatives, but (last I've seen) they are pretty weak in comparison to the proprietary tools that run on OS X and Microsoft Windows.