Win/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS/WinPhone/other

Miscellaneous General
1

For about a year I’ve been using a desktop with Ubuntu 12.04 as my daily driver, booting Win7 on a second HDD when I had to, with XP on a third drive for emergencies. My mouse has an extra button by the thumb that I can use to show all windows and then middle-click (scroll button click) to shut windows from there and that’s infinitely more userfriendly than alt+tab. Also, I love how Unity combines menus and window buttons into the top bar, and the general OS integration of rythmbox.

I’ve been using iPhone 4S instead of Android because I’d hacked so many Androids I wanted a new toy. So I jailbroke it and use BiteSMS, Infiniboard, musicbox, pwntunes, and password pilot, and showcase, to make the horrible UX as friendly as possible. Naturally, I realized, this makes it much more like Android, and Ubuntu lets me use it as phones are intended to be used, as a USB stick. I’m hoping the Galaxy S4 meets expectations later this year so I don’t have to use this ridiculous (albiet gorgeous) 4S, but I’m really really hoping Ubuntu Phone has respectable reviews so I don’t have to use Android any more.

For a tablet I’ve been using the Asus Transformer TF300T, which has amazing mid to high end specs, but is utterly useless because a piece of hardware causes a bottleneck that makes it slower than an old Android phone. It had so much potential because it has a keyboard dock to make it like a netbook.

I wanted to replace that with something I could put Ubuntu on, and for the last month I’ve been holding out for word on the release of Lenovo’s Helix, which is the highest spec’d convertible that’s announced right now. It’s rumored to release late February, it would have Win8 (cool, especially since it’s a touchscreen laptop and/or tablet) but I can’t wait any more and since the version with the highest specs is likely to run over $2000, I caved in and got the highest spec’d Retina MacBook Pro (well, 500GB SSD and 2.6 i7, which I believe are each one step down from the top)

This will replace my desktop and my convertible android tablet (which I can never use like a netbook as intended because it’s too ridiculously slow). I plan to install Ubuntu through boot camp as my daily driver, Win7 as a backup, and keep OS X around for emergencies—we have all mac equipment at my work, laptops, cell phones, tablets, and imacs, and the UX is utterly horrible, hands down the worst (albiet gorgeous) experience I can imagine.

So I’m an Ubuntu fan, not because I’m a Linux fanboy but because I genuinely find the UX pleasant. I can’t wait for Ubuntu Phone this year. Alternatively, I like Android for phones and tablets, but I’d much rather use a Win8 convertible before I’d ever use a Win8 tablet or iPad.

How about you guys?

2

If I had more character space in my signature, I’d seriously consider putting this there. It reminds me of the Mustang19 quote Aristophanes put in his.

3

I dropped Ubuntu when they went to their new interface, not good for a laptop.

Used Mint for a while, and Wattos.

One day I realized that if I put most of my free space and files [ e.g. ebooks] on the windows partition, instead of the linux partition, then I could use them both in windows and in linux.

I did it, and that was a catalyst to start using windows 7 most of the time. It’s quite good, superior by far to vista and 8.

BTW, a little off topic. I used to love VLC for videos, but I now realize it’s inferior to Smplayer. With Smplayer you can have your movies restart where you left off watching, increase or decrease subtitles size with a click, move the subtitles forward or backward with a click if they are not matched with the video, download subtitles with in the player. With VLC all those are complicated or impossible.

4

I’m using iPhone 4s. It is easy to use and I consider Androids to be flaky. The (mobile software) developers I know prefer iPhone, probably in part because iPhone executes native code, whereas Android has its slow virtual machine. No offense, but I find that it’s generally lower class people who use Androids.

I do not enjoy playing games on my phone very much though. For example, I downloaded Final Fantasy Dimensions and it makes you use this virtual joystick on screen to move around, so a lot of times your hand is covering your main characters. I really enjoy playing games on my Nintendo 3DS.

On my PC, I tried installing Ubuntu recently and it wouldn’t boot up, so that OS was out. I like Windows 7 and MacOS is not bad either. Windows 8 is ridiculous in light of most PC screens being non-touch, the fact that touchscreens are more expensive, and also the painful ergonomic problem of “gorilla arm” that vertical touchscreens can cause.

5

Using Ubuntu is like eating donated food at a homeless shelter. The homeless people eating donated food aren’t customers. The true customers are the philanthropists who donate the food and remove their felt uneasiness through acts of charity. That the food serves as a nutriment is a mere side effect not subject to market disciplines.

Wouldn’t you rather eat at a nice restaurant where food commands a high market value, and where the owner faces financial losses for failing to please its customers? Because of patent law and copyright law, commercial software is not a truly free market, but at least market disciplines are in effect.

6

Using Ubuntu is like eating donated food at a homeless shelter. The homeless people eating donated food aren’t customers.

Not exactly. The homeless usually cannot afford a nice restaurant where food commands a high market value, and where the owner faces financial losses for failing to please its customers. But Ubuntu users can.

The correct analogy is rich people eating at Mom and Pop’s Pizza instead of a nice restaurant etc. They probably know something about bang for the buck.

7

On second thought, it’s like paying for a meal in advance at a nice restaurant where food commands a high market value, and where the owner faces financial losses for failing to please its customers, walking out with the food untouched, and going to eat at the so-called homeless shelter.

Because nobody buys Ubuntu out of the box [it’s more expensive that way]. What everyone does is buy a computer with windows, pay full price for the windows, then reject windows to install ubuntu on the windows computer.

8

Ubuntu? Are you serious?

Cmon man you can do better than that.

Slackware, freebsd, anything other than ubunutu.

One can always order a computer with a bare drive. And also one can always pirate windows/freely download nix distros.

Well, the interface of ubuntu is just GNOME. You can install the same interface on other linux distros. There are also a variety of other uis like KDE, XFCE, and various minimalist ones…

9

One can always order a computer with a bare drive.

What percent of linux users do that?

And also one can always pirate windows

Or that?

/freely download nix distros.

Yes, we are talking about freely downloading the nix distros.

10

Probably a few percent, usually most linux users have built their own computer before so it wouldnt be a problem.

I was just pointing out a possibility.

11

“The correct analogy [for Ubuntu] is rich people eating at Mom and Pop’s Pizza instead of a nice restaurant etc.”

No, Mom and Pop’s Pizza is still subject to market forces. Using Ubuntu is like a rich person eating at a homeless shelter.

I continue to believe that an organization developing commercial software that has paying customers and paid employees can assign prices to internally produced goods and services more accurately than a loose mob of people (however well-meaning) that has no paying customers and no formal expenses. I’d expect that the “managers” who guide the overall development of Linux features cannot exploit the tools of rational economic calculation.

I could see using freeware software in protest of patent and copyright law. But freeware software is not “free market” because there is hardly a market at all. Remember also that freeware software developers remain hampered by copyright and patent law. And commercial software developers to some extent benefit from their ability to judiciously use freeware software.

12

What?

That’s what I’m worried about. The two reasons I use Ubuntu are for the Scale plugin (which is only more useful than alt+tab because I have an extra thumb button on my mouse) and because it lets me browse and copy files to/from the iPhone without the need for extra software or hacks. I guess we’ll see how my flow changes when I’m stuck with a clickpad and no right click.

Coming over to the iPhone with the mentality of someone who likes what Android has to offer—specifically, it’s a mobile device first and foremost, and calls/texting happen to be part of the functionality of it as a device—I find iPhone 4S to be incredibly locked-down and unfriendly. It’s “easy” in the sense that it does elementary things well, and distracts you from thinking about how much it prevents you from doing. But, far from easy, it’s downright impossible to do accomplish other standard tasks. It’s telling that the highest-demand, paid jailbreak apps provide features that Android users take for granted. Tethering, bitesms, ifile, musicbox, being able to use your phone as a usb drive (without itunes), being able to download files, being able to consume those files through the default player, and on and on.

iPhone is gorgeous. “Higher class” people tend to go with iPhone because for a plethora of reasons it’s percieved as a “higher class” device. As for lower class people buying Androids, well, I see lots of lower class types with iPhones.

As far as the Ubuntu/homeless analogy, it’s going over my head. Ubuntu is free, sure. It’s probably cliche to say I use Ubuntu for the UX. Also, maybe I’m unique in that I’m not invested in any win/mac apps. Everything I do, I can do on any OS, so I’m free to choose the one with the most friendly UX.

I also don’t like being locked down, which is why I intend to have mac and windows and Ubuntu.

13

Mac OS Classic until a couple of years ago, then Mac OS X on an older PowerPC Mac until later last year when I got a more recent dual-core PC and decided to give Ubuntu a try again (12.04 this time; had used 10.04 a few years back). It was pretty nice and covered all the important application areas well enough, so I stopped using my Mac.

My main motivation for Ubuntu as an open-source OS is not having to be on the paid upgrade treadmill that always abandons you at some point (PowerPC was abandoned at OS X 10.5.x). I can be running the latest Firefox and Chrome web browsers and visit whatever sites I want, even though I have a 7-year-old PC.

Bug-wise, it’s kind of depressing, and as someone else mentioned here, there doesn’t seem to be very strong forces to direct developer attention to the important things. I have the impression that developer-directed open-source will always be like this.

14

I can use my Galaxy Note as a pen drive when connected to my Windows 7.

I’m just glad that I don’t have to deal with Itunes, i hate that software.

15

Have been running the latest version of Ubuntu since 11.10 in my household (desktops and laptops). I was using the classic gnome desktop for a while, but then later I switched over to XFCE (‘xubuntu-desktop’ package for Ubuntu). With that, I use many workspaces (7+) and each program that I am using at any moment gets its own workspace and runs fullscreen. Way better workflow than default Ubuntu imo. XFCE is also a lot lighter, which you will notice on older hardware. And then also takes up less of the screen, which Unity does.

We have two Google Nexus devices now, running latest Cyanogenmod: Nexus 7 3G and Nexus S. I too have high hopes for Ubuntu Phone, but however it works out, open source seems to be winning hard on mobile.

I have a Windows 7 license that I use in a virtual machine (Oracle Virtualbox), when I have to. Video editing under Linux appears to be slowly improving. Hopefully will be able to do that completely without any Windows usage soon.

I really like Google Docs. It’s great for writing things that I want to release to the web. Don’t have to worry about losing your latest edits, and privacy isn’t a concern for that usecase.

Gimp wasn’t so easy to learn for me, but I’m getting better at it, together with Inkscape. Found this free ‘photoshop-in-a-browser’ recently: http://pixlr.com/ . Maybe that has some use for me.

The less people use paid proprietary software (in favor of free open-source alternatives), the less tax-money the government gets and the less money proprietary vendors get which they can use to lobby government. And the more people use open-source software, the better it gets, and the faster society at large can see how those business models can function.

16

…This is of course assuming all these people not only paid for their software, but bought it retail. Pretty bold assumption, considering.

17

I just got my hands on the new blackberrry z10 (have to set it up for a guy at work) and I have to admit i realy like it. I currently have a blackberry 8520 from work that i use daily. I spend a lot time on my desktop at home and at work so i don’t feel the need for a tablet or smart phone yet. But the new Z10 is awesome, if i was rich i would definitely buy it and use it instead of my 8520.