Well, I’ve been using linux (Redhat Enterprise Server 3.0) at work now for over a month. It’s mostly good, but there are a few problems.
- The CD-ROM drive has issues : for some reason, after about a day of being powered on, the computer loses all communication with the CD-ROM drive. I can’t even open the tray. I don’t recall this being an issue under XP, but it may have been.
- The GNOME interface is kinda crappy: for instance, sometimes, dragging a window doesn’t work; a second click pops the window to that position. If this were consistent, I’d think it’s a feature, but it isn’t. sometimes, dragging a window drags a window. Other times, it just sits there, waiting for the second click. I don’t get it. I’m pretty sure it’s a bug
- Still no good Office alternative: I have to interact with others who are using MS Office. Unfortunately, OpenOffice destroys various parts of these documents, so I really can’t use it. For my own files it’s fine.
- Inconsistency: It’s driving me nuts that every application has a different interface, and different conventions. I never thought much about this before, but even Windows does a better job here. Of course the Mac is great when it comes to this, and I *usually* don’t run into issues.
- No Sound: This isn’t a big issue for me, but the darn thing should work. Apparently, it mis-identifies the sound device, and it thinks everything is okay. However, it just produces no sound save for the system beep. Not too cool.
Other than these (somewhat significant) issues, linux is nice. I like having all the commandline tools at my fingertips (I guess I could just use Gygwin on Windows), but overall, the stability is nice. If I can get these things working, I’d be all set. I’ll try to figure them out, but I’d rather spend my time writing code, which I can do just fine without fixing these things. Oh well
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