Keith Yanachik

Well, my latest and greatest attempt at migrating from Windows to Linux has failed again.  There are just certain applications and settings that I cannot replicate that are essential to my computing experience.

1. Quicken – I tried the various Linux flavors of financ ial management suites, and I tried the online applications.  But none of them could compete with the total package from Quicken.  I ended up creating a virtual machine and installing Windows on that and then Quicken on that in order to do my banking.  But it became too much of a pain to boot up the virtual machine, log in, and then run Quicken.  The lack of Quicken is by far my biggest complaint about Linux.
2. Screen Resolution – Even though Ubuntu correctly ran my display at 1440 x 900, it just seems as if the fonts were bigger (even after I set them smaller), and the window decorations seemed to be larger.  Vista seems to be able to fit more on the screen, easier.
3. Remote Desktop connection – When running in full screen Windows has a bar at the top letting me minimize the full desktop and get back to my local desktop. Linux’s version couldn’t do this and I had to log off the remote desktop to make any changes locally – such as read email, send an instant message, or change the music I was listening to.  Ubuntu’s version of remote desktop is supposed to allow alt+enter to switch out of full screen mode, but it appears to be buggy.  It never worked for me, and there were launchpad bugs created for it.
4. iTunes – I know there are a plethora of media suites available for Linux, Amorak being the leading one, but none of the could compare to the full features of iTunes (let alone to store).  Amorak seemed to be the best at syncing with my iPod, but even it had problems.  I did not fully appreciate iTunes until I didn’t have it anymore.
5. Visual Studio 2008 runs on Vista nicely.  I can now develop remotely on my laptop and not have to remote desktop into my work pc.  SQL Server Management Studio 2005 runs nicely as well.  I enjoyed Eclipse in Ubuntu, but my work requires me to run Visual Studio.