6 ms·
Why not? Dell sells Ubuntu laptops.
by noamsml 18y ago
Why not? Dell sells Ubuntu laptops.
- ajju 18y agoI use Ubuntu myself but I think it's still a year away from my grandma being able to use it.
- jkmcf 18y agoI love Ubuntu on the server side, but on the desktop it always feels unfinished and I usually have to hack around to get something to work. I'm at the point in my life where futzing around to fix the basics isn't much fun. OS X is polished and works really well. Sure, I have issues with it and Apple's control fetish, but since leaving Windows and Red Hat/Gentoo/Ubuntu/Debian I've been very happy.
- unalone 18y agoUbuntu is not world-class. I think Ubuntu might be close to competing with Windows, though it still lacks a lot of basic stuff. Both Ubuntu and Windows (up to and including Windows 7) are still years away from being on the same plane as OS X. (My policy is, until I see a text editor as good as TextEdit on another operating system, I won't even consider a comparison between the two.)
- jpd 18y agoMy policy is, until I see a text editor as good as TextEdit on another operating system, I won't even consider a comparison between the two. You forgot to mention your first axiom: 1) Nothing is as good as TextMate. Be realistic here: VI(M), Notepad++, and Emacs are all great text editors.
- unalone 18y agoSorry - I was referring to non code-focused editors. The great thing about TextEdit is that it looks like Notepad when I launch it, and yet it has incredible support for design, typography, layout, and positioning. I can write most school papers in it, but it still looks and feels ultrasimple. TextMate does some awesome stuff, from what I've heard, but it's much more focused on coding. TextEdit is more general-purpose, which is why it's my standard. Until another OS spends as much time making a kickass all-purpose editor, it probably hasn't got the level of detail that I want in my operating system.
- jpd 18y agoOh, woops! Misread TextEdit for TextMate! That said, I find that Wordpad is a fantastic simplistic tool for creating school papers. For Linux I tend to use the slightly more complex (yet still very clean) LyX.
- unalone 18y agoWordpad is really good, but it lacks the wow factor of TextEdit (which I'm slightly addicted to). I've never used LyX; forgive me if this is a dumb question, but is it available for Ubuntu? I might boot up a virtual machine and give it a try if so.
- sharkbrainguy 18y agoSure is, it's in the repo so "sudo apt-get install lyx" should grab it. It's also available for Windows/OS X so you might be better off just trying it on your primary OS. http://www.lyx.org/ http://www.lyx.org/ I don't think you're going to find the kind of simplicity you enjoy in TextEdit though. Personally I use text-editors e.g. vim, for every kind of writing I do, code or not. Plaintext formats like http://eleanor.rubyforge.org/ http://eleanor.rubyforge.org/ (for screenplays) and Taskpaper (for planning/todo lists) are really helpful for this sort of thing.
- noamsml 18y agoTextEdit isn't a text editor; it's a rich text editor.