Comments on: Refresher Course: The Free Unix Desktop

By: Mark from Bloglyne

Mark from Bloglyne — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:25:38 +0000

Totally agree with the Vista assessment – but I find myself “time poor” when it comes to everything I have my hands in (which is also why Vista ticked me off… cuz I had to relearn everything). But, learning a new OS has got to be one of those things that is WAAAAAAY down at the bottom of the list of things I do NOT ever want to do – not to mention having to deal with the headaches of finding new office software, etc.

Switching to a unix based system is more of a time/fear issue for me. It is good to hear that you have had a good experience on FreeBSD, but Phil makes my point for me – if we switch over and can’t get that one feature, piece of hardware, or software feature to work, then we are faced with the horrible task of switching back – more time consumption with little or no payback.

Thanks for the detailed article!

By: mlankton

mlankton — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 01:07:03 +0000

I began with Digital Unix around, oh 1994. It wasn’t long before I had linux on my home computer, and not long after that that I had moved to a combination of FreeBSD and in 1996 OPENSTEP was added to the home network. I’ve also had a fair amount of Solaris experience.

My preference is for unix, any flavor of unix, over windows. But think back to when I started using unix. Windows was simply unusable. It’s better now, but it’s still a pig, and I’ve been a unix guy for almost 15 years.

As I’ve said previously many times here on Connected, I use a Mac at home, and it does everything I need it to. If I needed my laptop to fill the same role my Power Mac does, you’re right, I would be better off saving my money til I could justify a Macbook Pro. For my laptop usage (web publishing, light graphics manipulation, remote server administration, web browsing and email) FreeBSD or linux fit the bill, and are more familiar to me. Besides years of experience using FreeBSD, my web server is a FreeBSD box, and it never hurts to spend more time on a system you administer.

I also feel that Xwindows is a lot closer than it was to being a comfortable desktop than it was 8 years ago, by a long shot.

By: Nish

Nish — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:14:29 +0000

I have been working with UNIX for over 6 years and personally, I wouldn’t use UNIX on a Desktop cos of Driver issues and so on… Having said that, UNIX is still my #1 choice when it comes to servers and EXPECIALLY Hosting…

Its all about, time and money, If you have a lot of time, you can indeed fiddle around with UNIX desktop and trying to make every hardware work… But I presonally would just use windows, IMO it’s hell of a lot easier to manage servers with a laptop preinstalled with Windows than UNIX…

I might be wrong but I have been doing it for quite some time… At the end of the day, it’s personal preference…

By: Phil Benwell

Phil Benwell — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 09:00:55 +0000

I’ve always used Widows but last year decided to try out Ubuntu, I like the interface but could not get my wireless adapter working so unfortunately have reverted back to Windows.