Hello. I've written a nice little rant about applications in OSX, and applications I've begun to use now on Ubuntu. Before I tried, I though OS X was superious because of the number of Quality applications; but that's not really the truth, is it?
I posted this here because I want some discussion about this, mostly because I'm so surprised about the many great applications.
From my blog/"microcontent clipbook"
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OS X - Ubuntu switch list. This is a rant about all the different apps I found but didn't think I would find (actually true for almost all on the list.)
And yes, I know the world has lots of OS X junkies talking about Gnome -- but I don't think it's enough. Ubuntu needs more attention.
RSS reader: Vienna - Liferea; Liferea is almost exactly like Vienna, but better! Insane but true, on OS X I always believed the hype that said that OS X had the best RSS readers, and was _the_platform_ for bloggers. It ain't true.
Web browser: Camino - Galeon; pretty even, Camino develops faster than Galeon, but it's the same gecko, and Galeon is more configurable
Illustration tool: Inkscape - Inkscape; on Ubuntu, inkscape flies. On OS X, it's mostly the same, but sluggish and of course gtk-looking, not aqua-looking
File browser: Finder - Nautilus: FTFF is a word in the apple community, always current in OS X rumors. It means "Fix the Freaking (or worse if you want) Finder". Anyway, Nautilus is not too great, being slow, but both apps have the same Ideas about file browsing. More configuration wanted, though.
Music player: iTunes - Rhythmbox: iTunes is a winner, even without the store and the iPod (nothing for me)
Launcher tool: Quicksilver - Gnome-launch-box; Well finally we found a clear OS X winner. This Quicksilver is a launcher, your best friend, a belief and that's just without the (almost) endless selection of plug-ins. I've already contributed one patch to gnome-launch-box, and I hope that it will try to improve times 3, but I still know it can't -- it's not object oriented. Seriously, there is no wonder Cocoa w/Obj-C wins hands down over gtk w/ C. C++, Obj-C, Python, I know not, but my guess is that it's dramatically better
Terminal: Terminal - Gnome-terminal: Same, same, but one has tabs. Gnome-terminal is _even_ slower than OS X Terminal, something I didn't think was possible. Seriously, I need a gnome-integrated term that's fast like rxvt.
Widgets: Dashboard - gDesklets: I haven't run too many of these, but I think the gDesklet platform would be great, if it _wasn't_ sandboxed. Seriously, I wanted a widget that launched evolution when I clicked on it -- I couldn't have it, if I didn't set up a freaking Control or somesuch. Anyway, Dashboard is stupid (they made a new desktop an hid it. Do you know the Mono Desktop idea? That's how widgets should be implemented, and they almost are with gDesklets + ctrl-alt-D.) And, dashboard again manages to mysteriously use even more cpu and memory then desklets.
Workspaces: Desktop Manager - Metacity; Well Desktop Manager is a hack, Metacity is an absolutely no-frills standard window manager with workspaces. This is even, but Desktop Manager makes OS X do those nifty transitions and 3D stuff (properly set up, this actually adds _a_lot_ to the spatial notion of workspaces; if you think it's fluff-- it's not.)
Compositing: WindowServer - Xorg cvs and xcompmgr: WindowServer wins hands down, and you know it. We can do stuff on Linux now that we do in OS X, but the apps and window managers either do not handle that (vlc) or do not take advantage of that (effects and stuff)
Simple text editing: Text Edit/SubEthaEdit - Gedit; know what? Gedit wins. Text Edit is too simple, and SEE is too darn slow. Gedit is simple, so it's perfect for simple text editing.
Instant Messaging: Adium - Gaim: Both use the same backend, the libgaim as (only) Adium calls it. But Adium is honestly much, much better; better-looking and more clear user interface, and lots of skins. I think we need a libgaim for real to simplify the next step - a fork to make Gaim skinnable and nice.
Zip, Tgz, whatever archives: Nothing really - File-roller; OS X just unpacks whatever you double-click, leaving you in a mess of files. I like the simple but powerful interface and features of file-roller.
Other small things that are just the same:
Vlc is vlc, it's nice on both platforms, but compositing is better on OS X.
Irssi is absolutely still irssi, but now it has Unicode, and I can run it in tty2, that's great.
Evince does document preview nicely, and seems to be much faster than the OS X Preview. It's still the same kind of app, even though you might have to use Evince, Eye of Gnome and gThumb to get all your viewing needs satisfied.
Some notes: I don't do OpenOffice, I don't do Evolution, I don't do gimp. Others do, and they know what's good and bad about that. It could be that OpenOffice is so monolithically sucky (that's _not_ a word) on OS X that I never wanted to use it again. I trust it's better on Ubuntu.
What am I missing to make the switch? Quicksilver, perhaps. I make it without it, I know, but I'll miss it. And Xcode is great, but before I learn something about gtk (I only know the basics ofPyGTK so far) and such, I have no idea what to replace Xcode with. Cocoa and Obj-C is a really good pair, so it could be that what Ubuntu and Linux has won't fit me as well as that pair does.
What do I really like about the switch? Synaptic is great, and the selection of packages is great. With a fast connection like mine, it's select an application you need, and in a minute, you got it.
Most people seem to hate sessions, but I like the xsessions implementation, and the gnome-session implementation.
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