4 ms·

I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs, which are the same on every platform. It really doesn't make much of a difference to

I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs, which are the same on every platform. It really doesn't make much of a difference to me what desktop OS I use as long as it's cheap and it works with my hardware. I use Ubuntu on an HTPC because it's free and it (usually) works. I can't imagine what MS or Apple could do to improve on free + works. To me Linux is a lot closer now than it was in the past because you can pop a Ubuntu CD into a computer and 9 times out of time it you have a working computer with sound and everything half an hour later. 7 years ago, when I first installed linux, that would have been more like 1 time out of 10.

bd 17y ago
Firefox experience in Ubuntu is inferior to Firefox experience in Vista (at least on my Thinkpad). It's noticeably slower and fonts are uglier (even after installing exactly the same TrueType fonts as on Windows).
- bad_user 17y ago
  For me the fonts are better in Linux. The clear-type technology they introduced in Vista doesn't play well with existing monitors. I have a 19 inch LCD display that's very decent, but I purchased it before Vista's release. The fonts on Vista have a red hallow that are unbearable, and I'm not the only one with this problem (and trust me, I played with the clear-type settings, although they don't make that easy). On a big monitor with a typical DPI, clear-type just adds visual noise. In Gnome the standard font anti-aliasing that doesn't use clear-type is great.
bretthoerner 17y ago
> I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs Me too, and I have a Dell laptop in the mail that I'll be installing Ubuntu on and trying to use as my main machine. But you know what isn't the same in all of these programs between OS X and Linux? Font rendering. I can get Linux to "OK" but OS X is always refreshing in comparison.
- mikeyur 17y ago
  Font rendering is a big one for me. For some reason Ubuntu always looks.. ugly. The color scheme, font rendering, icons, etc, etc. Are there no designers in the open source community willing to help out? Or do the project leads not give a crap about design?
  - mquander 17y ago
    I personally find the Ubuntu out-of-the-box font rendering with the DejaVu font family on my laptop LCD to be on par aesthetically with Windows and OS X font rendering, so consider at least that there is an element of taste involved. (Unless some bug is making your fonts exceptionally bad for some reason.) Unfortunately, I am personally unable to duplicate Ubuntu's pretty fonts on Gentoo, no matter how hard I configure X and fonts/local.conf.
    - bretthoerner 17y ago
      The menus and title bars look great. But open Firefox and and go to Gmail or something and compare it to OS X.
      - davars 17y ago
        Even with msttcorefonts installed?
        mikeyur 17y ago
        The problem is that it doesn't look good out of the box. I shouldn't have to hack a bunch of stuff together to get it working properly.
        whatusername 17y ago
        True - but when we start comparing it to Windows - (disable crapware, install firefox, install anti-virus, install iTunes) vs Ubuntu (install restricted-extras) then a Ubuntu setup starts looking pretty good.

bd 17y ago

Firefox experience in Ubuntu is inferior to Firefox experience in Vista (at least on my Thinkpad). It's noticeably slower and fonts are uglier (even after installing exactly the same TrueType fonts as on Windows).

bad_user 17y ago
For me the fonts are better in Linux. The clear-type technology they introduced in Vista doesn't play well with existing monitors. I have a 19 inch LCD display that's very decent, but I purchased it before Vista's release. The fonts on Vista have a red hallow that are unbearable, and I'm not the only one with this problem (and trust me, I played with the clear-type settings, although they don't make that easy). On a big monitor with a typical DPI, clear-type just adds visual noise. In Gnome the standard font anti-aliasing that doesn't use clear-type is great.

bretthoerner 17y ago

> I spend almost all of my time in firefox, emacs and a few other programs Me too, and I have a Dell laptop in the mail that I'll be installing Ubuntu on and trying to use as my main machine. But you know what isn't the same in all of these programs between OS X and Linux? Font rendering. I can get Linux to "OK" but OS X is always refreshing in comparison.

mikeyur 17y ago
Font rendering is a big one for me. For some reason Ubuntu always looks.. ugly. The color scheme, font rendering, icons, etc, etc. Are there no designers in the open source community willing to help out? Or do the project leads not give a crap about design?
- mquander 17y ago
  I personally find the Ubuntu out-of-the-box font rendering with the DejaVu font family on my laptop LCD to be on par aesthetically with Windows and OS X font rendering, so consider at least that there is an element of taste involved. (Unless some bug is making your fonts exceptionally bad for some reason.) Unfortunately, I am personally unable to duplicate Ubuntu's pretty fonts on Gentoo, no matter how hard I configure X and fonts/local.conf.
  - bretthoerner 17y ago
    The menus and title bars look great. But open Firefox and and go to Gmail or something and compare it to OS X.
    - davars 17y ago
      Even with msttcorefonts installed?
      - mikeyur 17y ago
        The problem is that it doesn't look good out of the box. I shouldn't have to hack a bunch of stuff together to get it working properly.
        whatusername 17y ago
        True - but when we start comparing it to Windows - (disable crapware, install firefox, install anti-virus, install iTunes) vs Ubuntu (install restricted-extras) then a Ubuntu setup starts looking pretty good.