App advice wanted to make the switch from Apple to Ubuntu

[iljajj]

Hi, as an 23-year Apple user (yes, since my first SE from 1989, which I still have) I'm mentally ready to make the full jump to Ubuntu. At the moment, I have two machines: a MacBook Pro with 10.7 installed, and a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30 with Ubuntu 11.04. The Panasonic is a great machine, particularly now that I've put an SSD in.

However, there are still some obstacles which prevent me to put the MacBook on auction. The problems are quite specific, and I would appreciate some feedback on them. What I miss in Ubuntu / Linux sofar are:
- A really good PDF editor; something that will allow me to rotate and crop pages, combine files etc. Preferably something that will let me OCR the file's contents, and do a better job than Adobe Acrobat. In short: I absolutely need something equivalent to Acrobat.
- An audio player that I can use for a collection that mainly consists of classical music. iTunes, for all its shortcomings, is ideal for classical: when sorting on composer names, it uses the album title for secondary sort. Sofar, I haven't seen a Linux audio player that does that; Banshee and Clementine come closest, but Clementine misses too many ID3 tags on import to be useful.
- A really good citation manager-cum-PDF-manager for scientific papers. Mendeley is still too complicated, and the standalone Zotero comes close. Nothing with the ease and integration of Bookends or Sente, though.

Some things are markedly better than their OS X counterparts (Shotwell vs. iPhoto, XSane, iPad management weirdly enough), and some other things just require another way to working (Gimp vs. Photoshop, Scribus vs. XPress/Indesign). But if these problems were addressed, it would give me a way out of the Apple juggernaut. Any suggestions?

[Bucky Ball]

Try this:

http://www.osalt.com/search?q=adobe+acrobat

Do some searching for alternatives/the questions you want answered.

[mörgæs]

Moved to the Apple forum.

[iljajj]

Try this:

http://www.osalt.com/search?q=adobe+acrobat

Do some searching for alternatives/the questions you want answered.

I DID try...

but all the PDF tools I found are quite basic, and I'd prefer to avoid WINE-based solutions. The classical music problem seems to be universally felt, but no one can really offer a good solution.

[eric-yorba]

Instead of making the switch all at once, why not give it a shot first? I've got a Mac right next to me running Ubuntu inside VirtualBox. Runs like a charm.

[iljajj]

Instead of making the switch all at once, why not give it a shot first? I've got a Mac right next to me running Ubuntu inside VirtualBox. Runs like a charm.

In fact, that was my first step when considering switching to Ubuntu. I had tried it before (around v8) but found it wanting in too many respects. But now, there is hardly a task (apart from the few that I mentioned) that it can't be used for. Moreover, I'm getting fed up with the increasing closedness of Apple's products and software - I like to tweak, adjust, set up things just as I like them.

Also, I've never really been a fan of Apple's current design paradigms, either hardware or software. I recently picked up a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30, and I adore it to bits. What I most like about it is that I can be casual with it and it won't punish me for it - rain, thunder, snow, no matter what the circumstances it'll deal with it. I'm a big guy, so I don't mind its 8 pounds at all, and although it only contains a 1.66GHz C2D, with Ubuntu 11.04 and an SSD thrown in it actually feels faster than my MacBook Pro 13" much of the time (until you start decoding MP3s, of course). And when it is marginally slower, I generally don't mind. If I could do the things I mentioned on it, nothing would prevent me from throwing out the MBP.

[Dr. McKay]

I'm in a bit of the same 'predicament' : I have a 4 years old early 2008 imac (2.8Ghz Core2duo) which will need replacing at the end of 2012-beginning of 2013. Been thinking about switching to Ubuntu as well. I've been testing 11.10 on my mac (dual boot with refit) but, while it's very good, I don't find that Ubuntu can cater for all my needs.

Maybe 12.04 will make me change my mind. If it can, I might just build my own PC and run Ubuntu on it and keep my mac just to experiment with new versions of OS X (I suppose that even Mountain Lion will run on my machine - I'm still running SL), although I believe that 4Gb of RAM might quickly become less than the bare minimum...).

[iljajj]

I'm in a bit of the same 'predicament' : I have a 4 years old early 2008 imac (2.8Ghz Core2duo) which will need replacing at the end of 2012-beginning of 2013. Been thinking about switching to Ubuntu as well. I've been testing 11.10 on my mac (dual boot with refit) but, while it's very good, I don't find that Ubuntu can cater for all my needs.

Maybe 12.04 will make me change my mind. If it can, I might just build my own PC and run Ubuntu on it and keep my mac just to experiment with new versions of OS X (I suppose that even Mountain Lion will run on my machine - I'm still running SL), although I believe that 4Gb of RAM might quickly become less than the bare minimum...).

I think the advent of 12.04 will make a BIG difference; I'm using it in beta at work now, and I can't get over how much more polished it feels than either of the 11.x versions. But much more importantly, I'm beginning to see the point of Unity. In 11.10 I could deal with it, but already I've had a number of 'a-ha'-experiences with 12.04 in which I just loved it. But I've always been a Quicksilver/GnomeDO/Alfred-user, so its way of thinking appeals to me anyway.