Okay, this topic is a little long, so let me apologize in advance.
My 12" Powerbook turned 3 last month, and it's time to think about a
new laptop. The Intel Powerbooks are too new for me (if I get one of
those I'll probably wait until this summer or if possible after the
Developer's Conference in August) although the one we have in the
office is screaming fast.
While I love my Powerbook, I am getting a little nervous about the
direction that Apple is taking with respect to DRM. I used to have an
Alfa Romeo, and when a saw one in a movie I rented (they still sell
them in Europe) I want to send the picture to a friend to figure out
the model. So I placed the DVD in my Mac, paused on the frame with
car, and tried to take a screenshot.
A dialog popped up saying that I couldn't do that.
What? I can understand taking steps to protect against ripping an
entire DVD, but a picture from it? Get real. I brought up VLC and
took the picture anyway, but it did tarnish the love affair I was
having with my laptop (no comments from the peanut gallery, please).
Next, Mac hardware is just so darn expensive. Even the switch to
Intel won't do much for that, and it looks like AMD is taking names
in the speed department in any case. We bought an AMD64 powered
Shuttle for demoes that is crazy fast.
Finally, the Linux desktop, quite frankly, has gotten much, much
better in the last three years. I usually run Debian on my servers
and have little interaction with a graphical desktop, but I find it
easier to use CentOS on 64-bit machines, and when I am using KDE on
those systems I have been pleasantly surprised at how nice it is.
So - before I buy my next Mac I was thinking about playing with using
Linux as a desktop again.
On to the questions:
1) What should I look at in terms of a nice, clean, powerful desktop?
I like KDE. Is there a distro out there that is stable enough to use
in a mission critical application (i.e. my desktop) that is current
enough to contain lots of cool, bright, shiny things? I think Debian
is out since I don't want to run sid. CentOS? Ubuntu? I doubt anyone
has duplicated the usefulness of Exposé, but one can hope.
2) Recommended apps? I believe I will have to have CodeWeavers just
because my job requires access to Office and I'd like access to
iTunes, but others:
Office: OpenOffice, KOffice?
iTunes: xmms?
Photoshop: Gimp
Mail: Thunderbird
Browser: Firefox
Widgets: ?
Calendar: ?
Address Book: ?
Adium: ?
iPhoto: Gallery?
iMovie: ?
iDVD: ?
3) Connectivity: How is the current support for wireless (I love the
"Location" feature of OSX) and bluetooth? iSync?
I make my living with open source software and I truly believe in it.
I think that the community has done a great job of porting standard
Linux apps to OSX and creating new open source offerings for the
platform. But there is something in the back of my mind that keeps
nagging me that Apple may be turning evil, and now would be a good
time to figure out if there are some alternatives. I may have grown
too comfortable with my Mac "just working" but it is worth a shot.
Thanks for any suggestions.
-T
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Tarus Balog
The OpenNMS Group, Inc.
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