rvdavid: A Web Developer's Blog

After about a month of playing around with settings and such, I can now confidently say that I am pretty much a linux convert.

I’ve got all the applications I require for development and I’ve got a wicked cool 3d desktop environment in Beryl.

Beryl is an awesome 3d Desktop which utilises X server’s built in AIGLX to provide awesome animation with very little hardware requirements.

My hardware specs for instance, are of the following:

• 2.4ghz P4
• 128MB Video Card
• 1GB RAM (DDR)

That’s it. And it runs smoothly and flawlessly. For those who do not know what it is, check out the countless number of demos at youtube.

What’s more, I can run windows applications on my linux desktop as if it were a native app thanks to wine. I see it as a Windows application loader. With wine, I can basically load up Dreamweaver and Fireworks flawlessly and be as productive as I was when I was on Windows.

I can yack on about other applications I’ve got going, but I’m not going to. Instead here’s a list of applications that I recommend if you have moved to linux.

• Eclipse IDE – What a great IDE! This cross platform IDE does it all, LITERALLY! Thanks to it’s plugin architecture. It has plugins for most of the common needs of a programmer. Java, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript etc. It even has plugins for database manipulation and Plugins for SubVersion. Something which I am truly in awe of. More on this later.
• Amarok – By way of music, this is, in my opinion, the best music player for Linux. It’s built for the KDE Desktop, but it works on gnome also.
• Umbrello – *drool* This modeller application is another great application. No more messing around with crappy and sluggish ArgoUML, this baby is robust, fast and a little less restrictive than ArgoUML. What’s more it reads and saves from and to XMI files – it also has support for PHP.
• Beryl! – Hardly a productivity tool, as I used to get carried away with my rotating cube when I first started. Neil (a co-worker of mine and serves as technical advisor/chess adversary) would know of this as he is always the one I call over to “check out my new desktop dude!” – Well if you have time, try it out.
• SwiftFox – A linux optimised version of Firefox with versions for Intel and AMD processors.
• Evolution – (comes pre instaled with a standard ubuntu edgy or dapper install) A nice groupware suite. I love the integrated calendar, contact book, calendar and task list. However admittedly, I cannot find out how to create separate inbox directories for each email address.
• Tomboy Notes – Yet another awesome program. This application helps organise my day by being post it’s with links in them. I highly recommend this little application. Get your hands on it if you can.

I’m sure I can think of more, however nothing more comes to mind.

To conclude, a month on, it looks like I’ll be sticking to linux as my primary desktop and using Windows as my Secondary (usually for acceptance and compatibility testing). Although it was a little hard to get my head around it in the beginning, I find that Linux – and this distro particularly, Ubuntu – is actually a delightfully powerful OS with lots of options, tools and VERY configurable.

Believe me, I spent a week trying to configure it to the way I like it.

What I found the hardest to pick up was the whole configuration of the display xorg.conf but after that it was pretty much smooth sailing.

Related posts:

1. Linux Finally! I’m all Penguined up!

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