Switching From OS X to Ubuntu: 10 Things I Miss
October 18th, 2007
About 2 years ago, I stopped using Windows on my main computers at work and home. I switched to a Mac Mini, then to a Macbook, for all of my daily work, web design, programming, photo organizing, etc. We also have a large install base of Ubuntu Linux machines and a few Windows 2000 boxes at work, so I didn’t use OS X exclusively, just whenever possible.
Then, about two months ago, I switched to using a new Dell with Ubuntu Linux at work. For the most part, I couldn’t be happier, but there are a few things I really miss about my Mac. Here’s a list of the 10 things I miss the most. If you know of replacements for any of these under Ubuntu, please leave a comment and share your solution.
1. Dashboard 
When I first upgraded to OS X Tiger, I thought the Dashboard was silly and a waste of processing power. After almost two years, it became the thing I instantly missed the most when using Ubuntu. With a selection of Dashboard widgets including clocks displaying multiple time-zones, the weather, system stats, and website stats, the Dashboard can become quite addicting. When using Ubuntu, I keep wanting to press F12 to check my widgets, but I haven’t found a good desktop widget solution for Ubuntu yet.
2. Quicksilver 
I love Quicksilver on the Mac for quickly launching apps and doing repetitive tasks. I can’t use a Mac without Quicksilver because digging through the Finder to launch something like the Activity Monitor drives me nuts.
I’ve only scratched the surface of what Quicksilver can do, but I can’t find anything on Ubuntu that does these tasks quite as well. I’ve tried Deskbar but find it slow and annoying. Is there something out there that compares with Quicksilver on Ubuntu?
3. Adium 
Adium is simply the best chat client I’ve ever used. Because it is based off the same messaging library as Pidgin (GAIM), it supports just about ever IM network out there. The interface, however, is much nicer than Pidgin’s interface and integrates perfectly with OS X.
When Using GAIM on Ubuntu 7.04, I feel like I’ve stepped back 5 years. GAIM under Ubuntu is clunky and rather ugly. It’s also much more difficult to see when new messages arrive because there is no notification system similar to Aduim’s Growl based notices. The version of Pidgin shipping with the Ubuntu 7.10 looks more promising, hopefully it is more polished and fun to use.
4. Professional Graphics Software 
Yeah, I know, this is probably the number one complaint that everyone has about using Linux, but I’ve found it to be true - I can’t find any really great professional graphics software for Ubuntu. I know, GIMP is great, but I’m accustomed to using Adobe Fireworks for web design and site mockups, and GIMP just doesn’t fit my needs. Come on Adobe, start supporting Linux already!
5. TextMate 
The Free Man’s TextMate: Gvim + Nautilus
I spend a lot of time working in a text editor. I got hooked on using TextMate for my web and Ruby on Rails work. It might not be the best text editor in the world, but it seems to be the best on the Mac.
On Ubuntu, I’m using a combination of Gvim and Nautilus to replace TextMate. Gvim is fine, but I’m not yet a Vim expert and the lack of a good integrated file browser really bothers me. I think I’ll get over this one pretty soon.
6. Dictionary 
Mac OS has a great built-in dictionary application. I often find myself launching this app (with the help of Quicksilver) to check a word or find a good synonym. The high quality entries are from the Oxford American Dictionary.
On Ubuntu, there is a dictionary application, but it can only look up words in free dictionaries (results and quality vary). This means that you must be online to look up a word, which is kind of a bummer. There are some cool features like multi-language dictionaries, but the quality often leaves much to be desired. Is there a really great dictionary app for Linux?
7. Quicktime 
Quicktime is one of those things that Mac users take for granted. It’s just there and it plays almost any media file you throw at it (especially if you’ve installed the Perian plugin).
Playing your favorite media files on Ubuntu is not a great experience. Sure, if you hunt around the web enough, you find instructions on how to make just about any media file play in Linux, but the results are usually buggy. I often find it possible to play a file but not possible to fast forward or rewind without the player crashing. I miss Quicktime and its simplicity.
8. Bluetooth Support and Syncing 
Bluetooth support in OS X is simple and easy to use. I have a mobile phone with Bluetooth and it only took me a few minutes to pair it with my Mac and start syncing files. A few minutes later, I was using the phone as a mobile modem that can connect my Macbook to the net while on the road. Transferring files to and from devices like mobile phones and the Nokia N800 is also a breeze.
While I was able to get rudimentary file transfers working with the Bluetooth module in my Dell N1420, it was not easy. Syncing contacts and calendars also seems to be impossible. Much work could be done to improve the Bluetooth experience in Ubuntu.
9. System-wide spell checking
Mac OS X has system-wide spell checking for all Cocoa based apps. This means you can have just about everything you type into your Mac spell checked. This unified system means that you only have to train one dictionary with your new words.
Of course there is spell checking in almost every Ubuntu application, but each one has its own system. You need to train the dictionaries for each app and get used to each system’s little quirks. Hopefully, someone out there is working on a system-wide spell checking framework for Linux.
10. Smart Trackpad
I prefer to use an external mouse instead of a notebook’s trackpad, but if I have to use one, I want it to behave itself and be easy to use. Apple’s implementation of the trackpad is simply brilliant. You can customize the trackpad to ignore accidental clicks, use two-finger scrolling, and the all-so-cool two-finger “right click”.
After using a Macbook for over a year, the trackpad included with my Dell Ubuntu system seems horrible. First of all, the scrolling feature of the trackpad doesn’t work at all. What’s even worse is the lack of a setting (that I can find) to make the trackpad ignore accidental taps. I’m constantly having the cursor jump to another spot on the screen because I accidentally tapped the trackpad with my palm while typing. I’m really hoping that Ubuntu 7.10 addresses some of these issues.
Overall, I have to say that I’m very happy with using Ubuntu. These are just a few little things that really bug me about my Dell Ubuntu notebook. With a little patients, I’m sure most of these issues will be solved. There are also a lot of things I love about Ubuntu that I miss when I use OS X, maybe I’ll share those in my next post.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:09 am
re: Quicktime - Ubuntu plays every media file I’ve tried and automatically imported codecs to do so.
Are you using an old version?
October 18th, 2007 at 2:10 am
Hey, this is cool. With all the hype on Ubuntu vs. Windows, about time someone compared it to OS X.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:23 am
for video, check out VLC
for widgets/gadgets, check out gDesklets
October 18th, 2007 at 4:51 am
I switched my mac over to Ubuntu, but had to switch back. Flash in Linux on a PPC doesn’t exist, so I was SOL. It’s sad because I truly loved my time in Ubuntu, but the lack of flash support crippled my enjoyment.
October 18th, 2007 at 4:54 am
Alt + F2
October 18th, 2007 at 6:25 am
re: Quicksilver: learn shell programming and never look back.
October 18th, 2007 at 7:16 am
Okay, for the trackpad, http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Feisty#Touchpad
For deskbar: remove beagle, install Tracker (tracker is *much* faster than beagle)
Also you can find plugins on the deskbar project page.
For a good text editor…especially for ruby, I recommend Scribes (you’ll have to install it from source, its not in the repositories), its written in ruby, and has some *very* nice features.
Hope That helps.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:04 am
1) Dashboard — If memory serves me correctly, Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon has Compiz Fusion installed by default. Compiz Fusion has a great little “dashboard-esque” widget system that I like quite a bit. Check it out!
2) Quicksilver — GnomeLaunchBox works pretty well.
3) Yes, Pidgin is MUCH better… there were legal issues that had stalled Gaim’s development.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Not being that familiar with macs, I can’t say how closely these will meet your needs, but here goes…
1. Check out the WindowMaker DockApps. While they can be used with WindowMaker in its dock (obviously), the various *box WMs have support for them as well. Usualy termed either “dock” or “slit”. Currently I’m using openbox, with about 11 dockapps, from wmCalClock to wmtz to wmweather+ to wmwave running for clock/calendar, multiple timezone clocks (and julian dates, internet/swatch time, sidereal times, and probably others I’ve forgotten), current & forecast weather and radar maps, and signal and noise levels for my wireless. DockApps are usually named wm[whatever]
3. Look at the Guifications (pidgin-guifications) and Libnotify Popups (pidgin-libnotify) plugins. Guifications is its own little self-contained thing, while Libnotify Popups use the dbus/libnotify libs to do a sorta-growl-like setup. Chances are good that you’re already running the daemons needed for libnotify, and if not, they auto-launch. Replace “pidgin” with “gaim” if your system doesn’t know about the transition yet.
4. Yeah, this drives me up a wall, I really wish there was Photoshop, if only so that I could stop trying to translate tutorials into GIMP, which is a pain, considering I know neither package all that well.
5. Emacs with ruby-electric (ruby1.8-elisp), rails (completely external tarball), mmm (mmm-mode), filecache (emacs*-common), ecb (ecb) modes. Of course, editor choice is one of the great holy wars/debates, so you may want to ignore this one.
6. Along with the various dict clients, there’s the dictd server, and the various dict-* dictionary packages. The data quality will still be the same, but you should be able to configure your dict client so that it hits your local dictd, at least enabling offline access.
7. mplayer. I’m not sure if ubuntu has internally the same packages that are at http://www.debian-multimedia.org/
8. multisync (multisync0.90) and/or opensync (opensync*) and/or kitchensync (kitchensync). Multisync was the original, 0.90 is a gui on top of opensync, kitchensync is part of the KDE PIM suite and also uses opensync under the hood.
10. This is mostly a hardware thing. If you’re lucky, your Dell is using a synaptics or ALPS touchpad. You’ll need xserver-xorg-input-synaptics and possibly gsynaptics/ksynaptics/qsynaptics/tpconfig. Unfortunately, not all the touchpads are created equally. I can get scrolling and sometimes various button presses (left, middle, right) with mine.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:17 am
There is a Quicksilver type launcher for Linux, called Katapult. Look into it.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Try Kubuntu 7.10.
Better text editor KATE better mouse configuration
October 18th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
For Dashboard, Use Screenlets, http://screenlets.org/index.php/Home, they first will appear on your desktop, but then you can set them to act like widgets. Then set up compiz-fusion in the advanced settings to use the Widget Layer plugin.
This is exactly what you are looking for, I promise. I have a macbook pro so I know where you are coming from and was supprised to find this.
Also, a quicksilver alternative for gnome is gnome-launch-box, http://www.linuxedge.org/node/31 , and theres what it looks like with the newer version.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
It looks like you should go back to os x…
October 18th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Looks like that system-wide spell checker really is handy…..patients???
October 18th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
[...] read more | digg story [...]
October 18th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Why are we looking for alternative OS to begin with??? Please don’t forget that the majority are tired with Windows and the no-freedom Apple products. We want something better, friendlier, and stable. Yet losers are suggesting that everyone should ‘learn shell programming.’ WTF? If this is nothing more than having bragging rights, “hey i’m god, I’m better than you, b***h” then forget it. Stay with OSX or Vista. I couldn’t connect to my wi-fi or get my webcam to work on Ubuntu so I gave up after 2 days. Call me stupid but time is money and I got better things to do. I was alright in highschool and college and I have nothing to prove.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Ubuntu 7.10 is great, but so is Leapord. IMO Leapord is much advanced than Ubuntu, but Ubuntu will eventually ctachup
October 18th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Photoshop 7 runs well in WINE (I know it’s old, but it’s still a great app)
October 18th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
That is what I was about to say Rich … “patients?”
October 18th, 2007 at 10:59 pm
Quicktime is such a memory hog… go with VLC, or mPlayer, or even Totem… install the codecs your all set.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
As for a replacement for dashbar widgets try out gdesklets. As for a decent text editor why not just use gedit (which is part of ubuntu). It is very configurable and has decent syntax highlighting features (and even lets you map function keys to perform various commands). Problems with system wide spell checking are slowly being fixed (latest gutsy release should be much better). If you want quicktime then drop a comment to apple. It is only when many people ask apple why they dont support linux that they will realize there is a demand and consider it. But i was able to get quicktime to play quite easily in ubuntu going back as far as dapper drake. there are numerous sources of info on how to do media in ububtu.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Have u tried Screenlets and Gedit ( http://grigio.org/textmate_gedit_few_steps )
October 18th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
If you’re liking gvim but wish it were a little more standard in how it works as compared with other editors, give cream a shot. It’s available in the Universe repository. Also, deskbar does a pretty good job at being both an app launcher and a quick search tool - it should be installed by default.
October 18th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Pidgin is EASY to install on Ubuntu 7.04.
Open up Terminal
Type in `sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list`
Add:
deb http://repository.debuntu.org/ feisty multiverse
Hit Save.
Back in Terminal type in `sudo aptitude update`. It will now get the listing of the new repository.
Once done type in `sudo aptitude install pidgin pidgin-data`
You now have the latest and greatest version of pidgin (2.2.1 at the time of this posting.).
You can also install `sudo aptitude pidgin-libnotify` to install the notification plugin. It won’t give you the coolness of growl but it will do message bubbles and what not (the basics).
October 18th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
There are probably even more things to miss if you wait long enough.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Uhm, well, about point 8…
Your great experience was between a Mac and a Linux (N800) which probably, i had the impression, worked basically like the ubuntu bluetooth menu?
October 19th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Funny, I always describe TextMate as “Vim, if it had been written for OSX”
As for graphics software, there is no replacement for Adobe products but Inkscape is very good for vector work. Wine or Crossover are always options as well, but of course they will run at about 75% compared to if you were booted into Windows…
October 19th, 2007 at 12:34 am
For that graphics software, I recommend checking out Pixel - http://www.pixelimageeditor.com … it works on Mac and even on Linux.
October 19th, 2007 at 12:54 am
In regard to TextMate, you might want to try out Geany; I recently discovered it and found it to be quite nice.
http://geany.uvena.de/
October 19th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Andrew, Pidgin is Gaim. I fail to see how it is MUCH better. They simply renamed it to Pidgin to avoid the legal issues with the name Gaim.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:26 am
You see, there are people waiting to help you even in these blog comments. You could have had all these problems solved via ubuntuforums.org
October 19th, 2007 at 1:48 am
It’s pretty easy to install media codecs in Ubuntu. You can either let the media player software help you install them automatically, or you can do it manually though the package installer. I’ve documented both ways quite a while back in this wiki document: http://www.camerahacker.com/myink/ViewPage.php?file=/docs/DivX%20and%20MP3%20Codecs%20for%20Ubuntu.html
October 19th, 2007 at 2:45 am
As for Pidgin notifications, just do (pidgin-guifications on Gutsy). The trackpad on Linux has far more features than the trackpad on the Mac, but they’re only accessible on the command line… and the two-finger-scroll implementation isn’t great.
October 19th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Try KDE! Install it from synaptic or try another Linux distro that supports it right off the disk. I recommend OpenSUSE…
Why? Many of your complaints are met by applications in the KDE suite:
1) Dashboard - SuperKaramba is very much like the Dashboard, but not a total rip-off. OS X widgets may are even planned to be directly supported in future versions.
2) Quicksilver - try Katapult
3) Adium - Kopete. Kopete may not be as good as Adium but it’s a LOT better than Pidgin / GAIM.
5) TextMate - I find Kate / KWrite (a simplified version of Kate) to be the ULTIMATE text editor.
October 19th, 2007 at 7:28 am
@ 16. Berlin
Nobody is asking you to prove anything. We all have our difficulties. But I did spot a problem with your approach that I’ve been seeing a lot of lately. It appears that you just tried Ubuntu and then gave up when it didn’t recognize all of your hardware. First of all when hardware doesn’t work with a Linux distro it is almost always because the hardware manufacturer wasn’t forthcoming with the specs. Microsoft ju$t love$ thi$ and mo$t likely encorage$ thi$ behavior. It’s not Ubuntu’s fault. Second, Ubuntu is NOT Linux anymore than California is the United States. It is one distro among many fine distros. If Ubuntu doesn’t work then try PCLinuxOS, or Mepis, or Fedora or…. You get the picture.
The first distro I tried didn’t work completely but the second one did. I would have kept on trying no matter what because I didn’t like being watched over by Microsoft and I was tired of trying to stay one step ahead of the crapware that was constantly trying to invade my computer.
I don’t know what your motives were for trying Linux but I can tell you this: Linux is progressing at a rate that will leave Microsoft’s OS in the dust and any Apple offering seriously challenged. Don’t wait too long before you try Linux again or you will find you’ve been metaphorically slamming a brick into your forehead.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
What I really miss in linux is some united and great looking notification system (like growl is) + painless sync with mobile devices.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:39 pm
Thanks everyone for the great responses! And thanks to Mike over at dragonflymarsh who wrote a good response to this post. Ten things I miss when switching from Ubuntu to OSX http://www.dragonflymarsh.com/blog/2007/10/ten-things-i-miss-when-switching-from.html
October 19th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I second the “try KDE” suggestion. A lot (if not all) of the things you’re missing are available in a much easier and more desktop-integrated format in KDE. Although I think Gnome is wonderful, I think KDE brings the full package. In other words, convert your Ubuntu into Kubuntu. :-)
October 20th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I’ll second using Scribes for text editing. Personally, I like using Aptana, which I think works on Linux too.
Linux needs flash and needs photoshop or something similar. Heck Paintshop pro would be great. Or someting new with a single window interface and dependability. Corel could do a full linux suite of graphics, like their X3. that would rock to have Corel Draw, corel office, corel painter.
Gimp and Compiz don’t get along from what I’ve seen. The Tab key doesn’t hide / show windows when compiz is active.
Video editing seems to be OK on linux. there are quite a few programs out there that do it and with all the convertors out there and ffmpeg, it’s much better now than even two years ago. Get KDENLIVE for video editing and try it. Those guys are busting ass and making a great program. Blender can do video editing too, but sound is limited I think.
Ideal Linux for me: Photoshop, Flash, Aftereffects, Xara (or illustrator) pro video editing such as premiere. Dead simple screensharing across the web, and an easy screen capture vid capture program like Camtasia. I know there are some apps that do it now though. And last but not least, some really killer games, FPS games that feel current, like Call of Duty2 Bioshock, WOW, Resident Evil4, Tony Hawk..
What’s great now? Clean interface and file access. wireless is good, heck blue tooth is pretty good. I like installing apps, I love the easy OS updates, I love the community. Memory card and USB stick access is good. Reading NTFS is good. Flash player is pretty good. Having inkscape and blender and gimp is pretty good. I think Lightzone is free for Linux right now, which is a cool image manager.
October 20th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I think one of the best things about linux is really just being the type of person who is open to try it and learn it. The annoyances can be overcome by asking the community, people are really open about flaws and things missing, unlike some mac people, which have often said things like “why would you ever need that anyway” to me.
If you are open to try it, you will learn more about computers. I didn’t even know what IRC was until a couple years ago, and now I’m like, heck yes IRC rocks. The channels I mean. before that all I knew was 1 on 1 chat and the stupid yahoo chat rooms. I like learning little console stuff and just knowing about the console and how some commands get a lot done for you instantly is really cool. I like the fact that when a really awesome computing thing comes out, say an innovation, there is almost always something that can be created by the community to match it. Not always great (synfig as flash replacement) but the potential is always there. Widgets are a positive example. a linux widget layer didnt’ take long to find. Linux seems easier to strip down for special purposes and runs on everything I think.
October 20th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
[...] trovato in rete un articolo molto interessante nel quale l’autore elenca le 10 cose che più gli mancano di OS X durante [...]
October 21st, 2007 at 8:07 pm
To all the Photoshop “lovers” and GIMP “haters”, take a look at KOffice’s Krita. It’s really a wonderful app. I can’t believe no one seems to know about it and only bring GIMP as a Photoshop alternative.
October 21st, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Ubuntu, as nice as it is just one of many Linux distros. But unlike Apple and Mac when you use Linux you have a choice of what distro you decide to use.
If proprietary codecs and plugins are one of your major bugaboos, why not try a distro that includes them like “Linux Mint”…which is a “fork” of Ubuntu.
I’m running the “stripped down desktop” XFCE version on an old AMD Pro1200 box with only 256 MB RAM. The desktop is quite a bit like the old Windows 2000 desktop and it runs like a champ on an old “low spec” machine. (I rescued this box out of the garbage! How’s that for “low cost computing”).
October 21st, 2007 at 8:12 pm
40euro for TextMate!!! That’s a bit expensive!
October 21st, 2007 at 11:25 pm
Try DreamLinux, maybe the best Mac-like distro:
http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/english/index.html
For the Dock:
There are many different Dock-like launchers available for Linux these days, some of them better than others. One such program is Avant Window Navigator. It bills itself as:
Avant Window Navgator (Awn) is a dock-like bar which sits at the bottom of the screen (in all its composited-goodness) tracking open windows.
http://fosswire.com/2007/08/28/avant-window-navigator/
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:02 am
For the guy who had hardware problems your solution is easy, why doesn’t he do a Mac equiv, buy something like a Dell or other maker that puts the Linux on for them. You know you are getting it assured or working then. To grumble that your hardware didn’t work is just lazy, it’s (an extreme example) like saying you picked up this old 486DX with 32M of memory and Vista wouldn’t run on it or find all the hardware. Well yeh neither was never built with support for that in mind!
Editor, I use Kate under Ubuntu fine. I also use gvim, scite, gedit and scribes because all offer something different as an advantage. For example I prefer the search in vim, the folding support in scite, the templates in scribes.
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:05 am
2) Katapult is the answer. I love Katapult and couldn’t work without it.
3) You might want to check out Kopete. Kopete actually supports some types of addons from Adium if I am not mistaken.
7) It may not be the prettiest thing without being skinned, but VLC can play pretty much anything you throw at it.
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I think Jedit.org is much more poweful than textmate, check the Ruby plugin:
http://rubyjedit.org/
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Have you ever tried Dreamlinux?
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:27 pm
I couldn’t agree more with using aptana for web development. For most other text needs I use SciTE (handles colorcoding and indentation for about 30 languages).
“Quicktime is such a memory hog… go with VLC” - I’ll second that.
October 24th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
try bluefish for textmate replacement, its way better then textmate, and comperes very much to barebones BBedit
October 28th, 2007 at 1:40 am
+1 for jedit. Best text editor I’ve used, albeit the current beta won’t work if you choose “open with” from menu but works fine if you just open it then open the file you want in it. I use it for web design and it does everything. as for dashboard, with compiz fusion, you can have a widget level which gives you a dashboard-esque look and you can use screenlets as widgets. There are a surprizing number of screenlets out there. This technology is not very intuitive yet, but if you keep waiting, I’m sure there will be an extremely easy way to get your dashboard back. filetypes are very easy…I don’t quite understand your problem. If you download all of the gstreamer plugins under add/remove programs and install ubuntu restricted extras, you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t work perfectly.
On gutsy, the deskbar application works much better than in previous versions. It is extensible and very nice. You might want to give it another try. Also there are a couple of other quicksilver-like apps for ubuntu but i don’t remember what they are called right off the bat.
If you really spend time with GIMP it is DANG near a replacement for photoshop in every respect. I will admit, however, that it takes a LOT of time to get used to GIMP.
Pidgin is the best instant messenger i have ever used.
for the touchpad there are very easy soulutions to make the type touch stuff work correctly. You just have to look online. I have done it before, just search for ubuntu touchpad typing delay.
October 28th, 2007 at 3:29 am
OK you can compare this or that Linux distribution with windows, but with Os/X…? It must be a Joke.
I like my Mac and I like my Mercedes SLK, I’d never switch to Windows, Ubuntu a Honda Civic or whatever…
October 29th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Interesting article. However, most of your points above are actually non-existent if you switched to Kubuntu with the KDE desktop environment. KDE answers to your problems are:
1: Superkaramba (soon to be massively enhanced with KDE4)
2: not sure, but alt-f2 works for me :)
3: Kopete is far nicer than Gaim (and Adium IMHO)
4: Krita is better than Gimp. It’s also the only linux graphics software which supports all colourspaces in a full-on professional way
5: persevere, GVIM is good. However, Kate has your file browser and is a good editor
6: there is a KDE taskbar applet which allows you to search all internet dictionaries at once and return all their results aggregated.
7: mplayer/xine/ kmplayer/kaffeine are all better than Quicktime imho. If you’re having trouble with codecs then it may be because they aren’t installed on your system or you’re using 64bit Ubuntu (w32 codecs is 32 bit only)
8: All integrated with Kontact, KDE’s PIM. Has syncing and Bluetooth (configured from KDE’s control panel)
9: KDE sets a default dictionary for the whole system and allows you to customise it. All decently written KDE apps will share this. It also allows check as you type spelling in all apps (I’m getting my words highlighted in red as I type on this page)
10: Not sure. There are loads of options in the control panal, but you’re wanting things I’ve never looked into.
As you can see, Kubuntu/KDE fixes all your problems. You can install it alongside Gnome and try it. It won’t mess up Gnome so you’ve got nothing to lose. Give it a go!
November 4th, 2007 at 11:07 am
To the commenters:
Give me a break? gDesklets as a replacement for dashboard? Alt+F2 replacing Quicksilver? Are you freaking kidding me?
All these people are leaving comments suggesting things you can do as replacements for the stuff you miss in OS X but don’t quite get it. Sure there are replacements but NONE of them work as well as the things you listed that you missed. Not only do they never look as good but the whole user experience is 1/2 as good as it with the mac apps.
I’m an every day Linux and OS X user and I like my Gentoo desktop a lot but ultimately there are lot of things (like the 10 you mentioned) that are just better on the mac.
November 5th, 2007 at 4:55 am
Just in case, Xara is available on Ubuntu:
sudo aptitude install xaralx
November 9th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Well Mr. Starry Hope, I have enjoyed reading your blogg and the comments posted and am not going to post any ideas on how to replace the tools/apps that you miss from OSX. I am also a previous apple user, and hell things improved once they based their OS on *nix code. However apple are in my opinion worse than redmond themselves when it come’s to protecting their proprietry property. Ubuntu is evolving fast and every new day negates one more shell command due to the good work of all the contributors evidently making Ubuntu emerge as a new and ultimately user friendly operating system for all. PS to those with complaints about linux/hardware compatability issues, I used to work for a large retailer and nothing ever came back as not linux compatable and there were crates of the stuff lablled works with W…… X. & A…. O.X, but sadly for average Joe with no inclination to spend days working it out or waiting for a driver update, it did not.
November 12th, 2007 at 7:50 am
blueglue: Why shouldn’t Apple protect their intellectual property? If Apple had done more to protect their intellectual property in the 1980’s, Redmond wouldn’t be a problem. How is Apple worse anyways? Is it the software product key or the tedious task of activation? Maybe it’s how I always have to prove to Apple that I bought my software legitimately. Oh, that’s right. I don’t have to do any of that, I own a Macintosh.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see any Linux distribution catching up to Mac OS X anytime in the near future. Linux has been generic for as long as I remember and it will continue to be generic. They’ll never have the Mac’s style. They’ll never have the attention to detail that goes into Mac OS X. On a more technical level, there’s a lot of great Apple technologies Ubuntu will never have. It doesn’t matter how much you simplify Ubuntu’s UI. Apple’s technological achievements are much deeper than it’s interface.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
As a professional graphic designer and filmmaker, I simply don’t have the time to constantly fiddle with Ubuntu (or any Linux variant) to get the system running the way I need it to, and to get the kind of results I need out the software. There simply is no professional-quality alternatives to Adobe CS3 or Final Cut Studio 2 on Linux. If my choice is between stable, feature-rich software that costs a little but runs out of the box, versus underpowered, poorly-designed software that is free but never quite works right, I’ve got to go with the former. I love open-source philosophy, but I need the right tools to do my job, and they just don’t exist on Linux. My advice is weigh it out according to your own needs. Some of the applications you listed have alternatives in Ubuntu. Most of those alternatives are a little clunky. If you’re prepared to lower your standards a little, there are a lot of really nice tools available for Ubuntu…particularly Pidgin. As for Quicksilver, there is no application currently (and I doubt there ever will be) that can do what Quicksilver can do with even half of Quicksilver’s elegance and power. You may just have to let go of that one.
November 16th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Well, as a person who has used OSX, Windows (98-Vista Ultimate), and Linux (Kubuntu), I would have to say that anything can be done on Linux that can be done on the other operating Systems. Granted, the things may need to be installed and configured, but that will only take a few minutes per application. I have to disagree with the previous two commenters. Linux, at this moment, quite a contender for Vista and OSX. It has all of the functionality and all of the aesthetic qualities, (although they may need a little attention). I have been using Kubuntu for a very long time now, and it has everything that you need. The newest version of Kubuntu, (7.10 Gutsy Gibbon) has all of the applications, with all of the “elegance and power” of the comparable OSX programs.
As for the Dashboard, there are many options. With Compiz-fusion installed on Kubuntu, you can have your widgets in a Dashboard-like “widget layer” using either Screenlets or Superkaramba. KDE4 will also add new functions to superkaramba.
In terms of a chat client, try Kopete. It supports almost every chat service as well as video chat and multiple language input.
As for Professional graphics software, in Kubuntu, there is a “Add/Remove programs” utility that tells you all about the many programs that you have the option to install. I am still working my way through all of the ones that I have installed. There will be one there to suit any and all of your needs.
When it comes to text editors, there are many. Personally, I love using the native “nano” editor that is built into the terminal in KDE, but I have also found KATE to be an amazing text editor, and use it when it is not possible to work solely in the terminal.
As for a dictionary. There are many, most of which are pre-installed in Kubuntu. But if you find that you want more, they are all in the package manager. Just type “dictionary” in the filter field, choose the ones you like, and hit apply changes.
As many here have said, Quicktime is no problem in Ubuntu. The same applies for Kubuntu. All types of codecs are supported, and the media players play them flawlessly. If you want certain features, just install another media player. They work flawlessly together.
In Kubuntu, bluetooth is native, and works flawlessly. Right now, I am typing on the new Apple Aluminum Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard, and using my Samsung M610 as a modem. It’s that simple.
System wide spellchecking just works.
As they said before, the touchpad can be reconfigured.
If you installed Kubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, you could have all of these things up and running within 1-2 hours, and minimal work and confusion. I wish you all the best.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:04 am
There is a solution for maclike two button clicking. If you have a x86 PC this version of synaptic will deliver the two click transformation https://launchpad.net/awn-py-applets/trunk/3.0rc1/+download/xserver-xorg-input-synaptics_0.14.6-0ubuntu11_i386.deb
Just add
Option “TwoFingerButton1″ “2″
to your xorg.conf under the synaptics section
Check out here:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Synaptics_Touchpad#Two_Finger_Click_Transforms
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MacBookPro/Feisty
December 6th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Yes You are very right RKMJ,
have Little time, Ubuntu is fast, excellent, and sleek…
I miss the neat simple yahoo messenger with voice video chat and OS X presentation software with so many effects…
December 12th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
How about just using both Ubuntu and OS-X.
I’m running virtual Ubuntu 7.10 through the vmware fusion on my iMac.
I’m impressed with vmware performance.
So you can have the best from Linux and Mac world simultaneously…
February 1st, 2008 at 2:03 am
Some still don’t understand what is Quicktime! of course there all codecs for Linux but Codec != Quicktimes! with Qt you can edit Movie or add a Text Layer on it!
A lot of you just tell things but you have never used a Mac OS X!
there is no replacement for Core animation/Data/Audio on linux!
And I can’t live without Keynote, there is no better Presentation Application than Keynote!
February 14th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Nice post. I’m really looking forward to Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron… I switched in the Feisty days myself, and I had the horror of installing ndiswrapper based on instructions I read on the Internet, not having a clue about using Linux. It took me an entire morning to figure out that Windows can’t burn ISOs to discs out of the box and to get an app that can burn ‘em in Windows, then installed Feisty and erasing all the data on the hard disc, including some I hadn’t backed up, then I tried getting WLAN to work. Too bad it wasn’t a 3 click process back in Feisty! By mid-afternoon I had a fully functional Feisty Fawn on my Dell (@Berlin 16. that would be quite unfortunate had you spent an entire two days trying to get your WLAN working in Ubuntu, unless you would require the RALink driver, in which case you should get a custom install disc). I later upgraded to Gutsy and installed XAMPP and I have a LAMPP home server on it with my own webspace. Since Gutsy, Ubuntu includes all the codecs in one package, plus Gnome’s Totem allows fetching for codecs right off the Internet for files where the codecs have not yet been installed. Windows Media Player would not even consider doing that for me if I tried opening an unsupported media file extension.
GIMP has extensions, they’re free, and the better ones become part of the app over time. If it weren’t for Flash, I’d be free from Adobe software… Fortunately Gnash will catch up and soon enough I won’t need Adobe for anything (Gnome’s Evince can handle forms in PDF). Sure there’s open-source software for Windows and OS X, but Linux has a better file system and runs apps faster. Linux For The Win!
February 27th, 2008 at 1:25 am
I think this is the whole idea of OSX, i have my Macbook Pro with OSX, Ubuntu and XP
each have things they are good at (yes, there are things XP is good at too)
I see the point of what Pakk99 was saying, if you don’t have the time to fiddle, Ubuntu will never be as nice. OSX works out of the box, and even if Dell ships Ubuntu with their computers, you still need to go install this, this this, and that.
And the thing is, reading the comments alone, you see everyone suggesting this program over another and that program to replace Quicktime, etc…. it is not centralized enough for someone to just pick it up and go.
I am not saying Ubuntu is bad, i use it, i like it. with Compiz-fusion the desktop cube is cool, alot of cool features. but if I want a very stable OS without the need to fiddle, i’ll stick with OSX.
People use windows because it is windows, it is everywhere, you THINK in windows. people use OSX because they are the power users who windows don’t give enough. But people who use Linux (as in not OSX) like the challenge and experiment (maybe also just to go away from windows but don’t want to buy a mac)
anyways, each OS have things that the other don’t have
be it style, functionality, or general acceptance.
If my mother or sister or the TV commercial’s 60 year-old Grandpa can’t get Ubuntu to work on their computers, is it because they are lazy?
OSX is linux enough in that I am able to work very well in vim, python, R, C languages, java, ssh, sftp, and alot of other linux things that most people don’t even know about. Darwine is stepping up (hopefully soon). and well, though we don’t want to think of it this way, just treat OSX as a flavor of Linux (well, BSD), one that you can only get with the purchase of a mac (kinda like ubuntu on dell, but as we all know, ubuntu is free to download, etc)
March 10th, 2008 at 3:54 am
Switching from OS X to Ubuntu:
Quicksilver -> Gnome Do
http://do.davebsd.com/
TextMate -> NetBeans (IMO better than TextMate)
http://www.netbeans.org/
Quicktime -> SMPlayer (VLC is good too)
http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/
Growl -> Mumbles
http://www.mumbles-project.org/
iTunes -> Amazon MP3 Downloader for Linux
http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/help/amd.html
And all these are free.
If you need more than GIMP, try (paid): Pixel
http://www.kanzelsberger.com/
Hope this helps!
Next time, ask here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/
March 13th, 2008 at 5:15 am
Here is what happens: people use software to get things done, they try linux but linux just keeps getting in their way, so, eventually they ditch linux.
April 1st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I agree with #55, I use Macs exclusively at home, but have to use Ubuntu at work (as they’re too cheap to buy me a Mac). I tried all of those supposed replacements for OS X’s features on Ubuntu, but they were all buggy as hell and required the most ridiculous tinkering around. So I abandoned what was essentially an exercise in ‘turd polishing’ and went back to using Metacity and the rather ugly default desktop.
And I’m a relatively recent Mac convert: my background is in Sun Solaris (since the release of 2.5.1) and Linux (since RedHat 6) as a Sys Admin. Apple’s switch to BSD Unix completely passed me by until a colleague mentioned to me 2 years ago, while I was asking why no one had managed to create a usable desktop for Linux that didn’t require endless frigging.
Here are the things I miss most when I’m forced to use Ubuntu instead of OS X (which I use when I’m working from home):
1. Cisco VPN Client - you have to build the Linux version yourself (ffs!), and I’ve never got this to work. I’m therefore forced to use the abandonware that is “Network Manager”, which removes all my DNS settings from /etc/resolv.conf every time I connect and frequently disconnects from the remote VPN server while I’m using it.
2. Proper wireless network support - another problem with Network Manager… which always prefers to connect to the unsecured BTOpenzone wireless network that belongs to another company (isn’t this actually a criminal offence in the UK?) instead of the one for our office, which is WPA2 protected, but has a visible SSID. So every morning, I waste 10 minutes waiting for it to finish connecting to BTOpenzone, disconnect and then reconnect to the wireless network I want. It also never remembers my passphrase, so I have to type it in each time.
3. Bluetooth/Mobile Phone support - how easy is it to set up a connection to a bluetooth enabled mobile phone on a Mac? Ridiculously easy. The set-up wizard then asks you if you would like to sync your phone’s data and/or use the phone to connect to the Internet… and, in my experience, it just works. I wasted a whole day wading through countless forums trying to get Ubuntu to connect to my Nokia N73 to do the same. The best I can do is retrieve files off my phone, that’s it… no syncing my calendar, todo lists or contacts and no connecting to the internet. Pathetic.
I now try and work from home at least 3 days a week if not more… as working on my Mac is far less stressful than Ubuntu. OS X has Maven and SUbversion already installed and all the other tools I need (Netbeans, JBoss, MySQL) work fine. I’m even using JDK 1.6 preview 9, which hasn’t let me down yet.