In Which OS Do You Feel More Productive? 1391
HTMLChecker asks: "I found an article in which the author talks about how she is more productive using Mac OS X.
What about the people of Slashdot? Where do you feel more productive, in Linux? Windows? DOS? Mac OS X? Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"
Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, invite a flamewar (Score:5, Insightful)
Serious research is one thing, trolling for a flamewar is another.
It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
windows (Score:2, Insightful)
When I use my ibook I spend too much time exploring
When I use 2000 I am at work and just program
Mac OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DOS? (Score:5, Insightful)
OSX vs Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows XP (Score:2, Insightful)
* CandyColor theme disabled.
Unpopular opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing about comparing operating systems is that frequent users of each OS are blind to the failings of their own, and are driven insane by the failings of others. For example, I find scrolling in even the latest OSX to be painful, but I love it on Windows. People get driven nuts by explorer pausing when it tries to find things that aren't there, but I don't notice it and instead go batty when Finder wastes time panning to the right in column view.
On Windows, I have a small set of utilities (notably strokeit [tcbmi.com], trip [glenmurphy.com]* and remote desktop) that I rely on heavily, and while other platforms have their equivalents, I just don't find them anywhere near as good (remote desktop, in particular).
Now don't get me too wrong - I would rather use default OSX over default Windows, but give me a customised Windows, and I'll take it over any other OS. It's the same reason I use an IE shell (iRider [irider.com]) over FireFox - one may be the technically 'better' solution, but the other just does exactly what I need it to, and lets me do it faster.
I guess my point is the obvious - people are most productive in whatever they're used to, and whatever suits them.
"Feeling productive" is not productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Well that's a silly question (Score:5, Insightful)
However, generally, people are the most productive in the environment they are the most comfortable in. They know it, understand it, and thus can use it effectively. So Linux people will be the most productive in Linux, Mac people in OS-X, and so on. I'm also willing to bet that any of those people, properly retrained and acclimated to a new OS, would be basically equally productive, provided the new OS provided the same quality of tools.
For most jobs, a computer is just a tool that gets things done. When you get down to it, the OS holy-wars don't matter since most of what is talked about doesn't affect normal user productivity in a noticable way.
It's different than saying what OS is the best technical solution for a given problem. For example UNIX/Linux have a better text-mode remote access soltuion. An SSH terminal is nearly as good as being at the console. Not so with Windows, you need a graphical remote desktop session, there's a lot you can't do command line. Thus if text mode access is technicly better for a soltuion (perhaps bandwidth is extremely limited), then clearly a UNIX base is a better idea, for that factor at least.
But trying to ask which OS is generally more productive is just flamebait. All the zealots are going to say their OS is the fastest/easiest/most powerful and will probably have irrelivant personal anecdotes about how they can't deal with other OSes. In reality they are all different ways of doing thigns, with good points and bad points, and it's mostly just learning one and becomming proficient with it.
Riding a bike isn't a natural activity. You don't just sit down and do it. None the less, once learned and practised, it's literally second nature. Likewise no OS is so intuitive that all people can use it isntantly as though they'd been doing it their whole life, in part because what is intuitive vaires by person. However once you are used to the methods, you can get quite productive with all the majors.
Re:Which hat am I wearing? (Score:3, Insightful)
And, if you do science with any math, MS Office is totally worthless. Latex all the way there.
Whatever you know... (Score:5, Insightful)
In absolute terms, I think the best productivity would be whatever OS or environment where the tools are forgotten about and your attention is solely focused on the task you are trying to accomplish. I think this might also be tempered by how long it takes to become an expert on the system (and how much effort is required to maintain that status).
Probably command line Unix type environments used by experts who really know the system are the have the highest level of productivity (most useful results for the least efforts). However, it takes a long time and lots of effort to become extremely proficient on the Unix command line.
Plus, comparing them like that is only valuable if you have no experience with computers or else want to maximize your efficiency in the long term at the cost of learning a new system.
The OS isn't relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares what OS you use?
It seems to me that most users choose their applications first and then find an OS that supports them, not the other way around.
Have used many; prefer MacOS X (Score:4, Insightful)
I started on 360s and have run the gammut since then. I've worked extensively on LINUX, Solaris, DOS, Windows (all), MacOS since 1985, and many, many more. I can say without hesitation that MacOS X has been the most productive non-programming environment for me.
Development environments vary and, of course, it is impractical to do Windows development on anything other than Windows. But, for development where you really do have a choice, like with Java, you can see a strong gravitation towards MacOS X. In fact, a couple of JavaONEs ago there was such an observation in the daily rag put out by the conference: WHERE DID ALL THESE POWERBOOKS COME FROM?!
Apple did what many said could not be done: making a UNIX that could be used by mere mortals. They put a GUI on UNIX that even covers all the nasty sys admin stuff. And, it isn't just functional, it is beautiful. When you spend 12 hours a day on something, having it be beautiful goes from optional to manditory. JMHO.
-- Scott
Not sure I buy all of these arguments... (Score:3, Insightful)
OS X by far (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac Zealots ahoy! (Score:1, Insightful)
emacs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OS X (Score:2, Insightful)
Touche.
Anyway, what you want is Command+LeftArrow and Command+RightArrow. That goes to beginning of line and end of line, respectively, on OS X.
Someone did follow up after you and provide a workaround to get Home/End to replace this functionality. Having to use a two-key combo for something I use constantly while programming would be incredibly annoying.
How many Mac users actually use Home/End for what it does now? (I.e. throw you to the top or bottom of a document without moving the cursor.) Seems pretty useless. Those rare times when I want to go to the very top or bottom, seems like I wouldn't mind a two-key combo. Option-downarrow and Option-uparrow or something.
I thought the point of Macs were they were supposed to make sense... it doesn't make sense to optimize the keyboard for least-used things does it?
This is a bunch of BS (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, the majority of the issues she complains about with Windows are settings. That means, if you don't like the way it's set up, you can just change it. Since many people obviously don't share her (somewhat bizarre) preferences, this can only be a good thing.
Lastly, I think I'll simply mention the fact that she refers to GUI design choices (which happen to align with her own ideas) as "logical." What a joke.
It so happens that the very features she's so gleeful about annoy me to no end. I wouldn't give up GNU/Linux running XFCE 4 for anything, but I certainly wouldn't spew a load of crap onto the internet about how "logical" the design choices in XFCE are, because that is, in itself, illogical.
Re:OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
Or handle it like Mozilla... if you are selecting text or editing text, Home/End works within the line, moving the cursor to the beginning/end. If you are viewing a page without the cursor positioned, Home/End works as it does in OS X, sending you to the top or bottom of the page.
That's smart.
Re:OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which hat am I wearing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, back to the main topic, I am a recent convert to OSX, and as an OS I love it (in a way that I find a little alarming)
When it comes to coding frankly, the Kate/Kdevelop is just *way* better than anything Xcode can do (even if Interface builder is truly lovely). We're trying to port our code to OSX now, so probably my perspective will change once OSX is really as usable as Linux (for us)...
But what it boils down to: OSX is the best OS I have ever used. It is simply wonderful... and even though I still miss a few tools/functionality the closeness to *NIX means that this isn't an issue (apart from the APPLE-C / CTRL-C mess that I sometimes get in when running X apps in OSX)
Bottom line: I cannot imagine ever buying a non-OSX machine again (and two years ago I'd have laughed in your face if you told me I'd ever say that
Re:Easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
My productivity (as a programmer) has almost nothing to do with how easy it is to move the mouse around and hit key combos. Even imagining the worst environment - unfamiliar key combos, no copy/paste etc. - I think typing is very quick compared to deciding what to type.
The key to productivity really is: not reading email, not browsing the web, just firing up the editor and just getting down to reading, thinking, and finally writing code.
Re:OS X (Score:2, Insightful)
They do do something useful, which is go to the beginning & end of the document. I realize that's not what you were expecting, which can be frustrating, but I don't think there was some grand UI ten commandments handed down on high which specifies that home and end have to go to the beginning of the line. That said, some other poster pointed out how you can change that.
Re:OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
(I especially do not like how the cursor moves in documents when scrolling using the keyboard.)
Re:OS X (Score:4, Insightful)
Ctrl-A/Ctrl-E
M-x utter-os-preference (Score:3, Insightful)
How I rate an OS. (Score:1, Insightful)
How do I rate productivity in an OS?
Being able to do everything I need to do while being as secure as possible with the fewest problems.
Office work, internet work, communications, graphics design, software design, multimedia. Linux has it all and it was totally free of charge. Linux is perfect, IMHO.
Re:Which hat am I wearing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I did. I tried binding a key combo to "cd ~/web/pics/ && find -name "*.jpg" | xargs -l1 -ifoo convert foo -geometry 128x128 foo.thumb.jpg && scp *.jpg $site/pics/ && rm -f *.thumb.*", so I could thumbnail and upload some images with just a couple of taps, but it didn't work under windows :(
It worked in linux, so what did I do wrong?
Re:OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
I can see what you want though. When I'm writing something like that comes in handy. Usually, I just up/down arrow and arrow over to the correct place.
Of course, I usually write in BBEdit, with paragraph wrapping turned off, so there is always a blank line above and below me, which makes that trick work.
Re:Not sure I buy all of these arguments... (Score:2, Insightful)
Is a nametag or sign better if it is easier to discern its meaning at a distance?
If an icon can help you get your work done faster by saving you from having to hunt for it... then bam! You're instantly more productive, aren't you?
But if you've never really used OS X, you wouldn't know that, now would you.
One caveat: The icon for Adium, a great OS X IM app, is a duck... Now, if nobody tells you the duck is IM, you'd never guess it... which is not a good thing. But most others are good metaphors or something related and 99% have a distinctive look that makes them easy to find. But I guess it's not a uniform advantage.
Re:OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the problem here?
Re:Mac OS X has been a dream come true for me. (Score:3, Insightful)
True, but only if you get a choice...
Many work environments force a system on you, and if you've got an IT Manager who has the attitude "No Macs ever, over my dead body, I hate them and everyone who uses them" then it's hardly surprising the little Mac'ites get a bit vocal!
Re:Which hat am I wearing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Weird, I've never heard anyone refer to Interface Builder as counter-intuitive. My experience (and the experience of most I've talked to) is quite to the contrary. I couldn't imagine an easier way to make a GUI. I haven't made very many GUI apps outside of the nextstep/openstep framework, though (I've used tk from perl and tcl, motif, xaw, raw xlib, awt, swing, glut, the palm toolkit, newtonscript...probably some more). Starting with just the simple tutorial, I've made quite a few GUI apps in OS X I use every day (some in objc, some in python. I've done some in java as well, but I always end up porting them to objc).
Reference counting, I suppose could be considered counter-intuitive if I haven't programmed in C a lot. It's pretty much summed up as, if you do something that allocates memory (alloc or copy), release it again (release or autorelease). If you want to hold onto something, retain it.
It may not be what you're used to, but things seem to work the way I'd expect them to.
Most of this article is utter dogmatic bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I find the Start Menu to be completely useless. And for the record, I didn't like the Apple Menu, so beloved to OS 9 users either.
What the fuck does that mean? I love the Start Menu. Especially the part where it has my most frequently used programs - that thing is a godsave. It seems like the author just isn't used to windows and so is bashing everything on sight.
The tree view causes more useless motion and mouse clicks than anything else in the whole interface.
Actually, the tree view is something that is intuitive, since our filesystem is organized in a hierarchical form. What the hell else do you want? If you don't want the tree view and prefer double-clicking your way through every single folder in your path, you can do that too.
Seeing Desktop and My Documents at the top of the hierarchy, above My Computer, still sends my brain into tailspins. My Documents and My Computer at the same level...huh????
Actually, no it doesn't send my brain into a tailspin you retard. Having My Documents there is easy for non-computer folks so that they can have easy access. And for the record, the actual My Documents is found on C:/Documents and Settings/UserName/My Documents so it's not a random magical folder at the top of the chain - it makes complete sense to have a quick-access shortcut.
Why do I need this moronic , multi screen wizard just to find a file????? Why does it ask me what type of document I'm searching for? More unnecessary decisions to make.
What the fuck does that mean? I want it to ask for what type of document in case I want to search only for movies or something. It is absolutely useful - if you want a general search, you can do that too!
On the Mac, the icons are so crisp and clear and realistic, that most actually convey meaning to me. The ones that don't immediately convey meaning are easy for me to remember due to their shear impressiveness.
Wow what a scientific analysis you made. Crisp, clear, and realistic. Well I for one have no problem confusing the Recycle Bin with My Computer or My Documents. Only a retarded idiot who is trying desperately to say windows sucks no matter what would point this out. Remembering Windows icons is very easy, and I am completely accustomed to it. I wonder if the author of this article has ever used windows for prolonged periods of time.
ONTO THE BONUSES OF OS X. But before I begin showing more examples of why the author is a moron, let me tell you that I do absolutely admire the OS X interface, and think it is very slick and intuitive. I am not a MAC HATER or anything like that. I am only trying to reduce the blind hate of Windows that seems to be abundant in this article.
It is powered by pure drag and drop. When I drag stuff off of the Finder Sidebar, it goes away. On Windows, a useless link is left I my desktop that I've got to get rid of.
Some people see the dragging off to create a new shortcut as a feature in windows. I would find it annoying on OS X if that deleted it, simply because I am not used to it. This doesn't mean either OS is bad, each has its own way of doing it - just because one is different doesn't make it bad.
I just enter my search string and away it goes..no questions, no wizards, no dialogs, no thinking. And back it comes with everything that qualifies, regardless of document type. I can't wait to see what Spotlight adds to what is already powerful and simple.
Again, you can do blind searches in windows too, without regards to file type.
The absence of a Windows-style tree view bothers me not a bit. I don't even think about using it on my Mac. I know my directory structure and I've bookmarked all of the important places in the Finder sidebar. No need to ever waste time navigating up and down the tr
Re:OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
Again...what's the problem here? Isn't a powerful, usable, flexible OS what we're all after?
Can't live without scripting (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is just one example. I use wireless to connect to the internet. Usually, I have "connection sharing" enabled so that the ethernet serves DHCP to a slave computer. Now and then I don't have access to wireless, so I have to reconfigure the ethernet *and* the wireless.
How? With XP (classic mode):
Start
settings
network-and-dialup-connections
wireless connection
properties
advanced
unclick "allow other network users to connect through this computer's internet connection"
OK
Close
(wait a long time)
local area network
internet protocol (TCP/IP)
properties
obtain IP address automatically
obtain DNS server addresses
OK
OK
(wait a long time) I've done that a hundred times. If only I could type it into a script.
But I can't. Although somebody probably post some arcane way to do it in this particular instance, that won't enable me to write scripts to walk through the myriad of other gui mazes that Windows throws at me.
Linux, Unix, OS/X any day. Windows with Cygwin, if I must.
Re:Whatever you know... (Score:3, Insightful)
In the CLI, for example, I can write a script that automates things like burning a CD. So a single command "burn" can look at the content I'm trying to burn and determine if its an iso file to burn it with cdrecord, if its a bunch of mp3s or ogg files to uncompress them to wavs and burn them as an audio CD, if its a directory and there's a blank CDR to burn it as a CDR, if its a DVD, burn it with DVD writing software, etc. So I type "burn blah" and it burns it. This is all done through scripting and once its done the user can spend their time automating the next task and so on. Eventually nothing can compare for efficiency. But who wants to learn all that stuff just to burn a freakin CD?
Well, besides me.
Re:Not sure I buy all of these arguments... (Score:3, Insightful)
On a related pet peeve, Windows dialog boxes all have a "yes" and "no" button, whereas Mac guidelines say to use verbs in buttons, such as "save" and "Don't save". You never need to read Mac dialog box text, but you are forced to in Windows. The yes/no makes no sense until you read "Do you wish to save?"
I am literate, I do multiple platforms, but I just hate taking more of my time than needed.
compiled/interpreted/emulated (Score:3, Insightful)
About 10 years ago I worked in a carefuly homogenous environment (both home and office Windows machines had the same versions of the same software and all the same Ctrl-Alt keyboard shortcuts defined in ProgMan or the Start Menu), which I'm sure was more productive most of the time. But when I sat down in front of a Quadra or a Vax terminal, it was like I was moving in slow motion... like running in emulation.
Lately, if I spend a lot of time using just one of system, I do find myself speeding up to take advantage of it. Maybe I'm doing some incremental compilation of often-used routines?
Anyway, I guess you could say that I've ported myself from running in Win-only machine code, to running in cross-platform Perl. Whether that's an improvement or not is left up to the reader... but I'm happy this way.
Re:OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the concept of "everything just works" and "everything works through the GUI" are separate, the former being mostly applicable to the Apple OS(es) and the latter being a Bill Gates formulation.
From some articles I've read, even the Microsoft designers have learned that putting everything in the GUI (or even trying to) leads to a very confusing, buggy, and hard to document interface.
In my opinion, both Apple and Microsoft would do well to learn one more lesson: That separating the base operating system from the GUI entirely is the best way to go. With Linux (my preference by a thin margin over OS X) I can have a complex GUI like KDE, a simpler one like Gnome, or a dozen others with their own strengths and weaknesses... or I can run them all at the same time! Both companies however, particularly Microsoft, can't resist the urge to lock users into a single way of doing things. Since users have hardly rebelled from these tactics I don't expect them to change any time soon. The existence out there of Linux as an alternative and other things like X and KDE for OSX may eventually pry their fingers from this point of view and convince them that in the long run KILLER APS need to stand on their own merit and not be dependent on advertising budgets, government bribes, or secret OS hooks to keep users buying them.
Tough question - here's a shot at it (Score:5, Insightful)
So I'm a MacOS X person by choice and preference. But, with a little tweaking I can feel comfortable and productive on whatever OS I need to sit down with. For me, I think a more valid statement is "I use MacOS X because it lets me use less of my brain on the computer, and more on the task at hand". But if I'd been using Windows as my primary OS for my whole career, I'd probably feel the opposite way about Macs.
Re:Not sure I buy all of these arguments... (Score:3, Insightful)
As for me, I've used Mac OS X for years and have never yet found a use for the "Services" menu. But I guess I'll keep trying...
Integration of tools (Score:3, Insightful)
As some users before, I've used a Commodore C128, then CP/M, DOS 3.xx after it became available, Geos, Windows 3.1 onwards, Mac OS 7, Linux since 0.99 using various window managers, such as twm, fvwm, KDE since 1.x up until 3.0 and lately OS X 10.1 until 10.3. And this mainly for programming, web development, scientific writing (LaTeX), web surfing, recently much of Office documents (unfortunately), and for entertainment.
As a desktop platform I must admit that OS X beats the rest hands down. And the reasons are stability and integration.
- Not having to fiddle with XF86Config when plugging in a new external monitor helps.
- Not having to recompile the kernel from source once you get an obscure USB or Firewire drive helps.
- Not having to mess with the network configuration scripts as soon as you visit another lab helps.
- Having a unified user interface helps (you save lots of time using the keyboard if you know that Command-Q quits every program, that Command-S saves files, that Command-N opens a new document, etc.).
- Having Emacs bindings in forms like the one for posting on Slashdot helps.
- Being able to watch a DVD without much fuss helps.
- Being albe to sort my music and my photos easily helps.
- Being able to run the system without crashes (BSD underbelly) helps.
- Being able to use the shell and all UNIX tools helps.
- Being able to open my laptop and to continue working within 2s helps. Especially if you spend lots of time in airports.
I'm not saying that none of this could be done under Linux. For almost every one of those items there's a tool that would allow me to do this. But this means that I have to go and configure it. It means that I have to spend my time on fixing it. For sure, Linux could do it. But it would mean that someone would have to produce a system that really works. Not just 90%, not just for most of the cases, not just something that nerds and geeks like me can use.Switching from Linux (after 10 years of use) to OS X was a matter of 2 days of inconvenience. When my Mac broke and I had to switch back to my old system temporarily, it took me almost a week getting used to all the disincongruous interface tweaks again. And it's the first OS I'm not swearing at.
In particular, if you want a Unix capable laptop, you'd probably spend over 3 weeks tinkering with Linux until the system works properly (and it might not for recent hardware unless you hack it yourself - software modems, suspend to disk, wireless access, switching to external display, good power management). In a commercial environment that isn't worth it. Think your salary for three weeks vs. the price of the computer. And that's why in computer science you now see so many mac laptops when you go to conferences ...
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
~X~
Emacs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends on... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Easy...Ninnle! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not even gonna read any further because everything that will be said has been said a million times before, every other time this jihad has been launched. Thanks
OSX and Linux are both wonderfully productive for me, I see no reason to have these two kindred spirits turn on each other in internecine strife when we all know who the one true enemy is.
Re:command line and windows management (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
PS: nobody gets paid to post on a web log.
Re:Mac OS X--no viruses or spyware (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, technically viruses for Mac OS X exist, but I have never actually encountered one, and I have never met anyone else who has actually encountered one. I'm a Mac professional and I have come across hundreds of other Mac users in recent years. No viruses.
The practical, real-world reality is that there are absolutely no viruses that affect Mac users. None. Zilch. Nada. You can talk all you want about the existence of experimental proof-of-concept viruses on Macs, but in the real world there are none, and Mac users have, in all these years, never needed to worry about them.
Oh, yeah. I use Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux every day of my life. I'm technically competent on all three. You have to be in order to consider yourself educated and well-rounded. So I'm expressing an informed opinion here.
Re:Which hat am I wearing? (Score:1, Insightful)
The only characteristic of a workstation that makes a significant difference to my productivity is desktop surface area. Dual monitors (Windows and Linux) or cinema display (OSX) greatly enhances my ability to work on multiple things at once.
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're comfortable with Linux, that's your choice, but you haven't mentioned a single thing that necessitates the use of desktop linux if you didn't want it. Expressing a preference is one thing, making it seem like a forgone conclusion is quite another.
I find my OS relatively removed from my productivity, after certain settling-in pains. Once I've got my OS customized to my liking, it's irrelevant which one I'm using for day to day work. I can code just as efficiently on Windows as OSX as Linux. Now that my most used apps (Firefox and Thunderbird) are tri-platform mostly-identical, as long as I can launch them and find a terminal with vim, the world is my oyster. If I need something advanced, I've never had any trouble getting it installed, ie: Apache on Windows, MySQL on OSX, recompiling PHP under Linux...whatever. I get the job done.
Re:Which hat am I wearing? (Score:1, Insightful)
The idea that biologists use more basic stats than physicists is complete crap. Stats are simply tools used to answer questions - you use whatever complexity of stats are required for that, whether biologist, physicist or student.
Re:Easy...Ninnle! (Score:2, Insightful)
I use suse on another partition, started with slackware in 1996. I've managed redhat, freebsd and openbsd servers for years. XP at times becomes boring, and I switch back to suse, and fool around with cross-compiling toolchains for embedded arm projects.
I play games like Giants, monkey island, and counterstrike. Two of those cant be run reasonably on linux even with winex. I'm also a sucker for predictable UI... like windows has since win95, despite their poor performance/price/feature/flexibility/security records. I can tab between windows faster, copy/paste faster, use alt-tab alt-space, alt-f4, F5, etc heavily and I have yet to find a good responsive WM that does all that, I dont care about KDE/GNOME. By default theyre too heavy, and I'm lazy to remap keys and the likes. Yes I do use nvidia drivers for my geforce4ti 4400, still not QUITE as responsive as XP in the GUI, sorry to say. Also visit flash websites, read PDF and msword and excel files, listen to real and quicktime. I try out/install apps frequently, and making manual links, and command line configuration slows things down for trivial stuff that you'd just want up and running. I also share files between other machines via CIFS, manual mounts are a pain.
I used to be all for slackware, until configuring a responsive and predictable GUI overwhelmed me, nothing works well in default (not talking about slackware, but the packages in general, installed manually). So I'm busy looking at Xandros, Lycoris, Linspire etc, while OSX has impressed me. I've come to the conclusion that X in itself, while being extremely flexible, is inefficient and suffers from being entirely in the userspace and treated as such. Also come to the conclusion that the window manager scene is still not settled.. the war between kde and gnome is simply a pissing contest and going the way of mozilla.. and not yet firefox, where people have realized the public's needs, and made a product for usability.
I'm not a linux basher. At work I've been trying hard to pile reasons to move everyone and everything to linux, thats 70+ machines. The biggest reason why we cant is binary compatibility of critical apps, a much smaller reason is the GUI should act exactly like win95-XP, retraining everyone is much more painful for us than deploying mini macs and osx even.
I'm not complaining. I'm explaining why XP still manages to keep people productive until the BSOD, yeah every 6 months to a year you have to reinstall windows, much more frequently if you have spyware. But the reinstall takes less time than configuring x and the wm, mapping keys, setting screen sizes, linking all apps to the wm, and retraining the user. Quite unfortunately, in real life, samba fvwm95 and openoffice's success are absolutely critical for Linux's eventual success on the desktop.
And ported games help too
Re:Science's dependence on MS Office (Score:3, Insightful)
The key to LaTeX is that once you are part-way up the learning curve, you have sample files that become the starting points for everything else you do. You really only need to figure out a certain style of LaTeX document once, then it's just copy the template and fill in the content.
There are a couple really good books out there. The one I have is A Guide to LaTeX 2e by Kopka and Daly.
One thing about something like LaTeX is that it gets better and better and better the bigger your document gets. At a certain threshold, having a text-based system is really nice when Make and CVS can help manage everything.
Re:OS X - Panter Hand Down (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's a better deal than you think: you can sell your Apple mouse on eBay, use the money to buy a quite-decent Logitech mouse with two buttons plus scrollwheel, and have money left over!
Re:OS X (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what you are expressing is ability to adapt. I'd only ever used a mix of DOS and Windows (3.11/95) but when I finally got a Mac in 1997 I felt more at home than I ever did on DOS or Windows. I also thought PC GEOS was a nice little DOS extender and except for feeling limited, liked it. When I got my Indigo 2 in late 1998 I had no problem using IRIX, much to the surprise of an Oracle DBA I was living with.
I find most versions of Windows awkward at best, annoying most of the time. I think Gnome and KDE are good desktop environments but have no clear focus on who they are for (end users or power users). I liked OS/2 Warp a lot (there's still no true object oriented OS besides it) but I thought Merlin stunk. I think BeOS should have completely replaced Windows, if only it had come out AFTER the DOJ trial.
After all that I think I have been most productive on Mac OS 8.5. I created more digital works, designed more websites and created more scripts/workflows having used that version of the OS than anything else. I am looking forward to Tiger since it will finally implement all the functionality of Classic Mac OS.
Re:Emacs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ugh (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a lie. Panther needs 40 megs of patches after first install (and a reboot). Jaguar needs to download over 100 megs.
I cringe whenever that software update icon starts jumping like a 5 year-old looking for attention. It's rare that even the smallest OSX update doesn't require a reboot.
Re:Easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
I will agree, to a point - that point being when the O/S resettles itself. Drivers get screwy, system slows down, registry gets loaded with crap, a virus comes along...
But, I've been using the exact same filesystem for over 5 years on my personal system (now a laptop) with no trouble. I upgrade O/S, all my data stays. Bookmarks, documents, preferences, etc. Nice, sweet, simple.
I've never had to reload Linux to fix a problem, but I can't name how many times I've had to do the same to fix various Windows issues. (can't comment on OSX - I *almost* bought that OMFG-sexy Mac cube a few years ago, but I held off and stuck w/Linux, a decision I haven't regretted)
I guess if you mean "productive TODAY" I'd agree - the O/S is largely irrelevant. But what about tomorrow?
Resizing does not have to be that tricky (Score:3, Insightful)
On resizing, X is nice - but you can have that method back if you really need it. I'm actually not quite sure what you need to resize a window for often that is not generally taken care of by the zoom button... but if you really need to be able to hit a key and resize a window you can use a program like Keyboard Maestro [keyboardmaestro.com]. Myself I used X-Windows for a long tme before and don't really miss that aspect of X-Windows as I generally settle windows and then they live at a size they are at pretty much the whole time.
On both Windows and OS X you can achieve focus-follows-mouse, which I used to use all the time on X-Windows myself. The problem is that there are some aspects of the windowing system that do not play well with focus-follows-mouse, at least on Windows - I figured out how to turn that on but quickly decided it just did not behave in a friendly way, and reluctantly had to abandon it.
Interestingly when doing a little research for focus-follows-mouse on OS X I found a href="http://acs.pha.jhu.edu/general/computing/fa
defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES
Basically what I would say is that you need to spend more time researching utilities that help you gain shortcuts and quick workflow you feel you have lost - just about everything is there. Personally I do not use a lot of them because for many things I do the Mac workflow as it is does it for me, even though I used to be a very heavy consumer of all sorts of interesting customized window managers.
You can of course always resort back to X11 for terminal (or other windows), but keep digging and I think you'll find a lot of cool tricks with what is there already.
after working for my first 7 hours on MacOS X... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Linux (now 95% of usage time)
2. Windows from 2.11 (really
3. MacOS X 10.3.2
and while I'm a Linux junkie I must confess: setting up the Mac was done in a glimps, using the UI and all programs that come with it was "without thinking", and productivity on the first day on this host was about 40% I think. On Linux, I would still be installing applications.
After all I think MacOS X is the best, because you have a lot of time to work and don't have to tweek the OS a lot, Linux comes second because you HAVE to tweek it a lot, but after that it finally works, and Windows comes at the third place because it's - like the good old Doom Operating System aka MS-DOS - mostly installed to play Doom 3 with proper surround sound. Nothing to work with, though, especially after seeing Mac OS X in action.
Yep, call me an Apple Enthusiast. I have learned programming on an Apple ][e...
Re:Easy...Ninnle! (Score:3, Insightful)
Give it up people. Let go of your petty prejudices and actually give another OS a real try. Try it to it's fullest potential (like the author of TFA did) and then start talking about which OS is better than another OS.
Re:Easy...Ninnle! (Score:3, Insightful)
I find that using a homogenous GTK+ desktop (gnome minus nautilus desktop (to boost speed) and plus goffice (faster than OO.o, plus uses native widgets)) the UI is far more predictiable that Windows. What do WMP, MS antiSpyware, MS Office, Windows Explorer, and Notepad have in common? Not the same widget set for sure. They all use different widgets.
Re:Easy...Ninnle! (Score:3, Insightful)
How about:
c) They're not arrogant enough to assume that their choice should be embraced by everyone else.
Also:
I'm confused - are you using this as proof that Linux is better than Windows, or worse? Common sense suggests the latter, but your tone suggests the former.
Easy (but you'll hate me) (Score:3, Insightful)
In my experience, it comes down to one thing: what you're used to.
That gives you about 90% of your productivity, if you're talking about the OS (as opposed to whether you keep getting distracted or read slashdot all the time, etc).
I've heard people tell me many times that Windows or Mac OS or Linux is much better at doing job XYZ, but on investigation it's just slightly different, and basically 'what they're used to'.
Case in point for me: I've used Windows on and off for long enough that I use Alt-Tab habitually. I can't live without fast keyboard based task switching, that lets me flick through all the main windows with a simple keypress. Everytime I use a system that doesn't have it, I feel restricted and constrained. The OS X dock annoys me with its Alt-Tab analog, because it almost copies Windows, but gets important things wrong (like the order of windows is based on the order in the dock, not the Z-order, etc).
However, ask most Windows users what Alt-Tab does, and they won't be able to tell you. When I use it on a non-developers' machine, the user is like "Woah! What was that? What did you do?" So it's clearly not a widely used feature. However, it really bugs me when it's not there.
Most other things are like this - I hated the Mac OS network chooser, because I was used to a different model, but Mac users were fine with it.
It's the way it goes - it's what you're used to. I don't personally believe that the Mac or Windows or Linux desktops have much to separate them.
By the way, this goes double for casual users. I upgraded my Dad's PC from Windows 98 to Windows 2000, and for many tasks, he was lost, because the buttons/menus had moved/changed. Imagine how he would cope if I changed it to OS X or a Linux desktop. It has nothing to do with the superiority or otherwise of Windows - it has to do with what he's used to.
Re:Easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
These are not really experts then. I always thought that this was the case as well, and on my linux box, I'm usually much faster than most developers on a window box. However, there came the expert windows user. Using the IDE, using the file explorer, that guy was extremely fast. He never touched the mouse for anything, just opened everything through the keyboard, navigated the file explorer with the keyboard, opening/creating directories, firing up an application, using the thing. Never seen anything like that. He was probably twice as fast doing the stuff on the windows box as I was on my linux box. Humbling.
It might be that the mouse handling in X can be a better experience than that of Windows, but true speed is reached on the keyboard. If you know what you're doing, you can just fire up a sequence of keystrokes that will do what needs to be done, while with the mouse you always need visual feedback to what is happening. Very tiresome and slow.
It's my experience that the keyboard shortcuts on X applications are at the very least inconsistent and too often not complete. A good GUI should be 100% usable without a mouse to help in being productive if you want to (and remove the risk of mouse related injuries). Both Apple and Microsoft got this (mostly?) right. Maybe at one point in the development of both Gnome and KDE, the developers should just get rid of their mouse for a couple of weeks, and see how to make the thing usable without one.
Re:Easy...Ninnle! (Score:5, Insightful)
Having used Windows, Linux and OS X (in that order chronologically), I have found that: