i'm currently thinking either ubuntu hoary (for that comfy old debian feel) or gentoo (which i kinda liked before). anything way better?

"My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more ;)"

and now boris too!!

i think i should be next. don't you?

no, i haven't gone crazy, but.... for those of you that don't know, i've used linux on my desktop machines exclusively since around '98 or so. i've spent countless hours over the years trying to tweak my desktop to get it "just right". i've been through enlightenment, sawmill/sawfish, and most versions of GNOME (and, yes, i've tried KDE too). I've churned through installs of most every redhat / fedora version, every debian version since slink (which I still use on every server I have control over), and even recently gave gentoo a try. I may be just getting old and grumpy... but I've had it with needless tweaks. for the time being, I'm working exclusively off my powerbook.

actually, it all started because my current desktop machine ( a dual 1ghz pIII box) is noisy as hell (as boris recently pointed out in a skype call). it was giving me a serious headache on a grumpy morning. so, *perhaps* i really just need a new desktop machine. i'd love something a bit faster and a lot quieter. but i still have some real complaints, but the main one is that: there doesn't seem to be a conveniently up-to-date yet stable enough for daily use distribution. now, i have isos of fedora core 3 and ubuntu sitting around waiting to try, both of which claim to solve that problem (fc3 even claims to have fixed yum to a usable state). ubuntu is promising, in that it is debian-based, and would thus be usable with other apt archives (in theory).

so, maybe it's possible, and i've just not tried to the "right one". what do other people use on their desktop workstations?

I'd also *love* to see some compliments to a few OSX apps, namely : AddressBook and iCal. I've started to use these apps religiously. i tried evolution , but i don't want another outlook. i want good, simple apps for each task that integrate well together. i think apple "gets it" in that respect: perhaps i just want evolution-data-server ? still seems too complicated.

i have a longer list of gripes, but many of them are nit-picky and would bring on flames should anyone every stumble upon this blog, so i'll keep them to myself. but the bottom line is, i'm getting old, and have to "work for a living" - rather than fiddle with my conf files. so, for now, i'm enjoying mac os x's "just works" factor. long term, i still believe heavily in free software. i want to see (and even help) the gnome project succeed. i'm not gone for good. but i need a "just works" distribution / set up. anyone got any ideas? or am i out of luck for now?

• no search or filter on flagged messages. i can't believe that this hasn't been addressed! actually the one mail client that seems to have this right is evolution, which lets you save a search for flagged messages. maybe my workflow is wrong. but i use IMAP mail exclusively and when I get new messages that require action, I flag them.
• on that note, am i crazy since i can't find a keybinding in thunderbird to flag a message? i mean even mail.app has that.
• no on the fly spell checking. it's a minor nit, but it does get old. when sending work emails, i like to avoid nasty spelling mistakes, but having to run through each misspelled word (especially when my email routinely refers to "bryght" or "drupal") can be a pain. my eyes are pretty good at ignoring red squiggles that don't apply.

So, for now, i've switched to Mail.app on my powerbook as my primary mail app. I know, it doesn't satisfy the flagged message thing - although i saw a preview image of tiger's mail.app : which promises to have "smart folders" for things like flagged messages. that would be awesome. plus, mail.app comes with the nice features of - a) showing address book images with messages (the power of images - behold!) - for that matter, address book integration in general. the linux world should take note of simple, specialized applications that then work well with each other. b) the unread message count in the dock is great.

but, mail.app isn't perfect. it will start to bug me again soon, i'm sure. so what do other people use for mail?

go now. getfirefox.com . take back the web.

UPDATE: apparently one of the big secrets was that the new firefox start page is really a firefox-branded google page. welcome to the future, google. :)

however, there's even a cool drupal tie-in! check out spread firefox, a new site devoted to firefox advocacy - and oh ya, it's powered by civicspace / drupal. right on.

firefox

maybe it's wishful thinking, but firefox 1.0RC seems to be a bit snappier on os x than 0.9 was. my only real complaint is that the incredible tabbrowser extensions don't seem to be updated yet. (i'll live). however, that extension allows you to put close buttons on each tab, re-order tabs by drag and drop (and a whole lot more).

the latest version also includes a funky RSS - bookmark thing. i'm not sure i really would ever use it, but when you're browsing a site that has an atom/rss feed there's a little "RSS" button that you can click to 'bookmark' the feed... which then creates a folder in your bookmarks that contain a list of headlines. nice i guess, though it ain't netnewswire ;)

the #1 reason i still love firefox though: the webdeveloper extension. it kicks serious butt. if you're unfortunate to spend most of your life building websites or web applications you should try it.

thunderbird

thunderbird 0.8 brings one big new improvement (as far as i'm concerned) and that's the ability to quick search by different fields in a manner similar to mail.app. the other feature (on os x) is that the dock icon now shows a count of new messages (instead of the green checkmark) - though i wish it was persistent a la mail.app.

i still have some nit-picky complaints with thunderbird, namely i wish that you could quickly limit the message view to all 'flagged' messages (on IMAP accounts) or if the thunderbird markings were stored on the IMAP server (rather than the local cache) so that they persisted across machines. the only other thing is that, i agree with jonas here, not doing addressbook.framework integration is stupid on os x, though it looks like there is a patch.

i was a long time mutt user... and still use it on occasion. but mutt's imap support sucks (no local cache makes imap unfun for lots of mailboxes & messages). and, it's _really_ hard to compose multiple messages at once on a text mode mail application.

i'll still stick with the mozilla* family. the apps are good - but the #1 motivation for me is that they provide me (in combination with gnu emacs) a truly cross-platform solution for my "mission critical" applications.

... now if only there were a linux equivalent of ecto. ;)

so, after brief stops with various revisions of redhat/fedora, i finally decided to give gentoo linux a try. i must say, this is not aunt millie's distribution :)

one of my big reservations about trying gentoo had always been my fear of a 3 day lapse to get the system to a usable state. well, thanks to a stage3 live cd and the outstanding install instructions in the gentoo handbook, i was up and running in a single afternoon (and still worked on my powerbook for most of the afternoon).

it's been a couple weeks now, and i'm quite fond of gentoo on the desktop. apps are always current, so far emerge has "just worked" and there isn't an application that i use regularly that isn't available.

one thing that i really dig, is that there are "ebuilds" for a couple of the other distributions' artwork packages (notably redhat and ximian). one of the main reasons i kept trying fedora was because i really like the bluecurve theme. well, on gentoo it's a simple "emerge redhat-artwork " away.

i also get a wide array of j2sdk options, and there's even a package for transgaming's winex.

all i can say is performance is much better!