hasen

About 4 years ago, I switched from Windows to Linux.

And now, I switch from Ubuntu/Linux to Mac OS X.

The reason?

Very simple.

I upgraded my ubuntu laptop to 12.04, and X won’t start anymore. I spent hours of trouble shooting to no avail.

Yes, my video card is ATI. It came with my “Pangolian” laptop from System76.

You’d think a company specializing in making Ubuntu laptops would carefully choose a video card that doesn’t have driver problems -_-

But you know what, I’ve already been doing alot of my programming work on my macbook air.

I even think brew is better than apt-get.

So, farewell, Ubuntu.

Debian’s APT system is great for installing and updating system tools.

It’s not so great for installing and updating “apps”.

Most of the user-centric “apps” don’t do anything that requires root permissions. Why does it require root privileges to install them? Because APT packages get installed to system directories.

Solution? It shouldn’t be too complicated. Make some sort of a standard way for applications to install themselves to user-specific locations (or maybe some location that’s accessible to all users but doesn’t require root permissions to write to).

There’s also a problem with PPAs. The idea of PPAs is great: provide a channel for application developers that integrates with the built-in “system update” system (i.e. APT).

It takes 3 steps to install something from a ppa:

• add the ppa
• update apt (most annoying step)
• install the application

Additionally, the ppa may provide different versions of some system libraries — not a good thing. I once had a ppa install its own version of the kernel, and one of those updates killed wireless for me (fixing the issue caused a lot of un-needed headache). The worst part is the user doesn’t realize that some ppa’s are overriding part of his system.

Why not instead, just have one command to install “app” from “ppa”, such that:

• The installation doesn’t require root permissions (see above).
• The ppa is not added to APT’s sources.
• Only the installed application knows about the ppa and can somehow update itself through it.

The introduction of Unity as a desktop environment is a great win for Ubuntu and the Linux Desktop.

Unlike gnome, which is designed by a committe of techies, Unity is designed by a small group of designers and techies. And unlike gnome, the goal is not to just offer a “free” desktop (that may or may not offer a good user experience); the goal of unity is to offer a great user experience (that happens to be free).

So even if 10.04 unity sucks (I think it will rock, but hypothetically speaking ….) in the long it can only get better, and therefor Unity will be awesome.