Ubuntu 8.04 - Almost Possible to Dump Windows… Maybe

A crashing Windows XP installation and plain lethargy to reinstall the system pushed me to bring Linux back to the fore on my primary PC. As a one-time Mandriva (Mandrake) user, I was tempted to pick it up again (especially for the pre-packaged Synce for my WM6 mobile), but decided to go for the ubiquitous Ubuntu. 8.04 Beta seemed stable enough, so…

Weeks later, Hardy Heron didn’t disappoint and I’ve found replacements for almost everything I normally use. Of course, I cheated a bit by using VMWare Workstation 6.5 Beta for some “irreplaceable” applications (here’s a guide on how to install it in Hardy).

• Browsers: Firefox 3 Beta 5, IE 6/7 (via Wine) for web design chores
• Downloading-related: Deluge for uTorrent, Firefox’s DownThemAll for Flashget (yeah, not a real replacement, but works okay enough), XChat for Sysreset
• Media Playing: Amarok for MediaMonkey (MM is still a number of steps ahead though), there’s VLC for Linux as well, and mplayer somewhat handles what VLC cannot. Still prefer Zoom Player + CCCP on Windows, but this will do for now.
• Web Dev-related: PuTTY for Linux exists and so does FileZilla. Geany for Notepad++, kdesvn for TortoiseSVN (partially…)
• Office-related: MS Office 2003 via Wine to replace MS Office 2007. Foxit Reader via Wine (it’s faster for me and more up-to-date in terms of features than the Linux version). See this guide on getting it installed in Ubuntu.
• Graphics: GIMP for Photoshop CS3 (yeah right, see below)
• Eye candy: Avant Window Navigator for ObjectDock. Compiz-Fusion for everything else.
• Security: Firestarter for Zone Alarm, no real need to replace NOD32 yet.
• Misc. Gnome-DO for Launchy, Snippits for Texter, K3b for Nero/Alcohol, FreeMind for MindManager (which I still prefer, but beggars can’t be choosers), there’s Pidgin for Linux, Ubuntu has its own Terminal Server Client and VNC viewer, plus Wine/VMWare for everything else.

Only a few things still bug me:

• Syncing with my HTC TyTN still fails miserably. Synce installs, so so does SynceKPM, but when it comes to OpenSync/Multisync, hell breaks loose.
• Linux (in general) still lacks a PDF viewer that is full-featured enough for an avid PDF e-book reader like me to survive on. Primarily, I want need highlighting and the rest of the commenting feature set. Maybe I’m not searching hard enough, but if so, do give me a hint. Until then, Foxit Reader works great.
• Adobe Photoshop is pretty much irreplaceable. Well, there is GIMP, and it is definitely good enough for the average home user, but just isn’t powerful enough.
• I want Ultramon! Compiz-Fusion’s Place plugin isn’t reliable enough yet. And how do I assign different wallpapers for different monitor screens?
• OpenOffice and its open-source alternatives just aren’t compatible enough with Microsoft Office. Yes, you can install MS Office via Wine, but only up to Office 2003 reliably (there is an Office 2007 install guide, but I haven’t been able to get it to work).
• And… I guess I’m too hooked on MS Outlook to run far from it. Kontact, Evolution, and etc. just don’t cut it for me (though they are certainly excellent applications in their own right).
• Oh yeah, something like TortoiseSVN for GNOME would be nice…. Kdesvn works fine for now, but something that integrates better with Nautilus would be great (so would icon overlays; and no, switching to KDE for that is just not right :)).

For now, VMWare Workstation 6.5 (the current beta is free) with a WinXP guest OS works well enough for all the above needs. Now all I need is for Unity mode and graphics acceleration to work reliably under GNOME. Would be nice if I could assign more than 2 cores to it too, but that’s unlikely enough for a desktop product.

Now, enough ranting and back to scheduled exam revision.