Graphics compatibility setbacks: cured

The PC runs an ATI X300 PCI Express graphics card, which, up until some recent patches, had some really ugly bugs with X11: running the graphical interface at all would completely crash the machine, forcing a hard reboot.  It was not until a couple months ago that this bug was fixed, so in certain ways I wasn’t heading away from my OS X setup with any speed; and I only had heard of the fix a week or two ago.

Overperforming on aging hardware

I’m running a Dell desktop machine, which was in the high mid-range about four years ago: a hyper-threading Pentium 4 with 1GB of memory.  No matter which way you cut it, the computer just isn’t that fast.  With Ubuntu 9.10, however, coming straight off a more capable OS X machine, I have yet to find it any more daunting or less responsive.

OpenOffice works on the memory and processor rather heavily, though admittedly it’s not that much behind where I’ve used it in OS X.  Opera, sadly, does not work quite as well as Firefox, perhaps due to some implementation issues on the platform.  I have found Opera runs best in Windows, about as well though slightly worse in OS X, and in Linux it just needs a bit more time.  Firefox, on the other hand, seems to handle itself better in Linux than OS X, especially in terms of memory management.

The GIMP, too, seems much more adept and at home in Linux, being in general a great deal more inter-operable with the GNOME desktop than the OS X environment.  This, of course, is to be expected, especially where the OS X version is an adaptation from the Linux version, not the other way around.  I really do love the GIMP interface, though, and find it rather perfect for the level of image editing and manipulating that I do.

I am, of course, missing certain applications in the Ubuntu environment that are readily available in other platforms.  For work, the big app is Adobe InDesign, which despite it’s massive Adobe-level system requirements and resource strains, acts very well for the poster and other print designs that I do at work.  I can, of course, run this on Windows XP in a VirtualBox session.  I have not tried this yet, though it certainly is not going to match up compared to running it natively on the MacBook Pro which has all around heavier specs.

My point here isn’t that Linux suddenly turns some turdy old machine into something that beats out any modern computer.  What I am saying, however, is that there’s a lot of work that’s gone into the Linux kernel and the systems in general.  With GIMP, Firefox, a decent terminal, and good memory and resource management, I can get a hell of a lot of good work done.  I even rather quickly fell back into using Mutt, which, while not as fancy as some of the alternatives, is still incredibly fast, full of keyboard shortcuts, and, eventually, a more efficient path towards managing email.

Linux certainly has a different philosophy underlying its use, though one that I had strong ties to a number of years ago; ties which I feel I’m now regaining and living through again fondly.  OS X may still look a bit more flashy, though I’d much rather have a strictly proper terminal any day.

Or, so I’ve felt, anyway. A few days ago I finally got to using VirtualBox to run a fresh install of Ubuntu v9.10. Even after being away from GNOME and its related systems for a few years, it all still seems familiar. In the process I’ve unlocked a good deal of nostalgia over my experience with the open source operating system.

No, I have not yet gone so far as to head back to FVWM as my primary window manager. I also still am keeping in mind certain advantages to device and software support for media (namely, Logic and Final Cut Pro).. but even so, I certainly do feel as though I’m missing something by not having X as my primary windowing system. I would much prefer to be able to configure most everything via modifying configuration files. I miss the joys of apt-get, and, above all, the very quick and efficient GTK and terminal applications that sip at the CPU and memory.

Hell, at the end of the day, it’s mostly my Mac-only external audio interface and my copy of Logic Studio 8 with all its luscious built-in plugins that is keeping me tied to OS X. I yearn for a future system with proper multi-channel audio-outputting HDMI which can use the sound software I want without the cruft or flash I don’t need.