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Linux
A page dedicated to Linux
As some may have noticed, Linux is my favourite operating system. I currently use Ubuntu Linux 'Breezy'. I love the fact that the Ubuntu is always up to date and not lagging behind with old versions of software. Doing upgrade even daily is possible. In my opinion, Linux is now ready for desktop use for general population. I have also used Suse Linux (current version we have is 9.3 Professional), but I would like to recommend the Debian based distributions like Ubuntu rather than the rpm distributions. The Debian packaging stuff makes life a lot easier, especially if installations are done with the Synaptic Package manager. All that can be done from command line, but Synaptic is really good for doing multiselections, checking package dependencies (what it is going to do), upgrade the system partially etc. without breaking up things.
Linux comes with quite complete office suite. Gnumeric, OpenOffice and KOffice are quite good and usable already. And the Gimp 2.2 is pretty nice as well. There is no real need for for example Photoshop for seldomly done image editing (such as what I do). Gimp 2.2 has a lot better interface than its predessor.
Linux is also a decent development platform. For example maemo software development happens under Linux/Scratchbox environment. Many hackers like to use Vi/Vim but there are also alternatives for people coming from other systems. E.g. the KDE text editor Kate (in KDE version 3.3 and above) is a very good text editor and has many of the features of the famous and popular Windows text editor called Ultraedit (which was my favourite back then I was using Windows). There are also several very nice integrated development environments available like Anjuta, Eclipse, KDevelop allthough I usually work with Kate and command line alone (Konsole or Gnome terminal). gcc/g++ is a very good and solid compiler and Linux is also bundled with cross-platform toolkits such as GTK+ and Qt/X11 free (by Trolltech). You can do pretty decent things with GTK+ or Qt pretty easily. In the case of Qt, the same code works then in MacOS X (with just recompile) and in Windows if you have the commercial Windows version of Qt. GTK+ has more free licensing policy, in the case of Qt, you would need to purchase a commercial Qt license if you would be interested to do business with the software you write (in other words, your software would not comply with the GPL license). There is an advantage in GTK+ though. You can develop a Linux GUI program and it will run on Nokia 770 and other maemo compliant devices by just doing a recompile for the code (considering that you have done the UI so that it works on the 800x480 display and is not too huge resource eater). It is also possible to run Qt in maemo environment, but that is not the default toolkit and does not come with the Nokia 770 as a standard (nothing stops you to compile it though in the scratchbox, I have tested that it works).
Customizing Linux look & feel
Here is one: This screenshot is from my old Suse Linux installation.
This is KDE. I use more Gnome desktop nowadays
Click the image to see a full size version of it (1400 x 1050).
To get info how to customize the look & feel, feel free to surf to gnomelook.org or kdelook.org. Also these pages might be interesting if you like MacOS X-style: RAqua, RPanther, http://www.r1ch4rd.org/aqua/ and Glossy P - http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/571.
