ACK!!'s Journal: 7 things I miss about Linux

So, here I am stuck on a windoze box at work.

Yes, for the three years previous to this vaunted position I worked from a linux desktop. Sure, my last job had us all on Suse but at least it was linux right?

Anyway, I have read more than a few reviews of linux from a Windows user's experience and viewpoint. So as a pretty steady linux user, what do I miss about linux?

1. I miss that damn middle click paste.

I mean hell I have three button logitech mice for a reason. Other people complain about cut and paste in linux but for goodness sakes I typically use only gtk2 apps anyway so I almost always shrug my shoulders and never really got all this cut-n-paste angst among some linux converts. In fact, I miss my little highlight text and paste it into a window without keyboard acrobatics and the right click context menu stuff.

2. I miss multiple desktops.

Sure I got Virtual Dimension right off the bat. I did not bat an eye or pass go or collect 200 dollars. I went straight out and found this app and I have pretty damn happy with it but its still not quite the same at all. From Windows centric funkiness in window size behavior to the fact that its not embedded in the panel so I can cover it up with windows and .... Well, it just ain't the same.

3. I miss that damn bash command line.

Yeah, I know all the gnu stuff on windows crap and I have installed that before to get some apps to compile on windows for uses and stuff. But the path issue gets weird between a forward slash here and reverse slash there and scripts work oddly and some things just refuse to compile or you have to go through hoops that would make a contortionist take their own lives and it still just is not the same.

4. I miss well organized application menus.

Oh yeah, that came out of left field now didn't it? I hate that vendor specific menu crap. The start menu is a clutter fuck mess and web of entries that can span all across your desktop with each vendor having their own entry. If you did not personally install the OS and all the apps one by one, finding crap can be a hunt fest. Hence, this is the reason so many windows folks even the ones that know what the hell they are doing typically have a desktop cluttered with shortcuts to apps.

5. I mess a well organized control center.

Uh huh, yeah I said and what are you going to do about it?

The windows control center is a one stop dump all the crap all into window freakin' mess. I mean with SuSE in KDE it may be a huge maze of stuff and options but at least its organized. I mean come one even with Fedora all the stuff lies underneath three well-marked logical menu subdirs of Preferences, Systems Settings, and System Tools. With Windows all that crap is just kind of dumped into one big window. Ugh.

6. Uniform look and feel.

You are laughing right now aren't you?

Hush right now and listen.

What if the user does not like using Microsoft only products, huh? What about that?

No, really. Here I am and Microsoft Office is perfectly integrated and all the apps have the same look and feel and widgets are all uniform and everything is wonderous and grand with the world. Then I fire up Firefox. After all, who in their right mind uses Internet Exploder anymore?

What if I want a decent app to listen to mp3s with? I use iTunes and that look and feel is completely different than other MS apps.

Wait a sec, what if I use gaim in Windows? There you go once again a different look and feel even though in some ways AOL's AIM is not exactly the most windows perfect app for look and feel either. vim for Windows and putty and Firefox and iTunes and Firefox all have different looks and feels to them. Sure, I guess I could find MS equiv products for the most part but damn I had a more uniform look and feel using Linux. Then again I use the gtk2 equipped version of Firefox and rarely launch OpenOffice since Abiword improved its table support. I mean come on I don't get that many Power Point files sent to me at home and gnumeric beats the socks off of Calc.

7. I miss Nautilus scripts.

And I think I am the only one. Listen, one of the neatest nifty tricks in Nautilus is the ability to run shell scripts on files from the scripts menu. I think it is one of the clear advantages over other file managers where I admit fully Konqueror or Windows Explorer tends to beat out Nautilus in many other ways. Still, I like being able to highlight six postscript files and convert them to pdf files without dropping to the command line or convert ogg files to mp3 and back again with the naudilus script or maybe open a terminal in any window I happen to be browsing through with Nautilus just in case I do want a command line. I miss being able to highlight a file adn scp it in one shot. Ok, maybe its just me.

Does this mean there are not things about Windows I miss when I go to linux?

Sure, I miss being able to burn an audio CD from Rhythmbox directly like I do with iTunes.

I miss not having a decent Visio equiv for network drawings.

Its nice to know that any odd piece of crap piece of hardware will work with no big issues on my windows box. Yes, I still have to recompile the madwifi stuff because I did not check the HCL before buying my Netgear wireless card every single time I upgrade my kernel and the same goes for the days when all I had was a lucent technologies winmodem in my laptop. Yeah, the recompiles are painless but they are also a reminder I am still using an alternative OS.

But still, the transfer from Linux to Windows was not as painless or perfect as I imagined.