Plunging Into the Linux Desktop

That's it.  I'm finished with Windows as my primary desktop on my laptop.  At least, finished enough to give Ubuntu a try.  And by try I mean a dual bootable system so I can revert back to original Windows if I absolutely have to.  I've had no problems with Windows on my home desktop, but have had incredibly sluggish performance out of my laptop.  Both ran Windows 7 64-bit, both have similar horsepower and identical memory capacity.  I suppose I have more business-oriented software such as MS Office on my laptop, but have run massive memory hogs such as the IntelliJ IDEA IDE on both with no problem.  It takes scores of minutes for my laptop to fully settle down after a reboot while my hard drive viciously spins nonstop like someone hopped up on cappuccino and meth amphetamines.  After this process, sometimes the laptop would feel very snappy just like I feel it should.  Other times it felt like running a 100 meter dash with leg weights.  Heavy leg weights.  And there was nothing I could find that would appear to be the cause: Nothing discernible was hogging resources.  The stock Windows task managing software was of no help, neither were the more detailed utilities I could find from the sysinternals site.  The sum total of wasted time per week probably reaches into several man hours, and if I'm going to waste time I want it to be on my terms!  So for the first time since 2004, I took the plunge and went to Linux as my desktop OS.

This hasn't been the smoothest transition as I settle myself into a working environment.  I went with the recently (as of this writing) released Ubuntu desktop 11.04 distribution, which features the new Unity desktop manager.  If you search for reviews on Unity, you'll see that it's gone over like a fart in church.  Fortunately I haven't had any of the major problems that some folks have reported such as a jacked up grub boot loader, but I went through enough pain and suffering to find that Unity is a desktop manager that needs a lot more cooking time before it's something I can rely on.  This has been the worst part, the transition period.  Like anybody in a tech lead position, there is always more work to do than time to do it and deadlines in practice usually come to the development phase with a razor-thin margin of error.  So, deciding to take two steps back in order to take several more steps forward has proven to be a bit of a strain.  I've thought to myself "maybe right now would be a bad time to make this transition", then felt better after asking myself "well, when would actually be a good time?"

I considered the idea of lobbying very hard to get a Macbook instead.  Every other Java-based alignment team in my company has them, and seem to really enjoy using them.  I suppose several small factors played in:

• Doing this would take time.  I'd have to convince my boss that this is a business need, not a want, and I'd need to come up with a better excuse than "Windows is so gosh darn sluggish!".  Macbooks are not the cheapest things around, and I already blew an unspoken IT purchase token by getting a YourKit license to track down a memory leak on our environments which ultimately ended up being because of a non-standard JVM.  I'm sure I could take the time to draw up a good case and build an argument, but patience is not one of my virtues and Linux is something I can control right now.
• I'd have to abandon my two monitor setup at work, as Macbooks only allow for one monitor extension.  Developing on 25" vertical and 24" horizontal monitors with a docking station is nice.  Many people (Windows or Mac) will connect a monitor extension and then prop up their laptops with three reams of copier paper.  To each their own, but that always felt incredibly clunky to me.  It's something I've tried in the past and never really was able to get used to it.
• Macbooks are all the rage.  Apple ranked number one in product placement for 2010 and has really branded themselves as the solution for everybody from the hippie blogger to the hard-core developer.  According to a Business Insider report, consumer PC growth is going negative for the first time ever.  Why go with the flow?  Well, I can think of a few good reasons, but none of them are fun reasons.  One of my favorite quotes is "only dead fish swim with the current".

Does this mean I don't have Mac envy?  No, it certainly exists to some degree.  If I could make a broad generalization about desktop operating systems, I'd lump them into two attributes: the it-just-works factor, and the how-much-control-do-I-really-have factor.

• Windows: High it-just-works factor, low how-much-control-do-I-really-have factor.  Yes, I know there are plenty of situations where Windows certainly doesn't just work, but I'm speaking in a relative sense.  If there is software that you need to install, in virtually every single case there is at least a version for Windows.  Unfortunately though, it can be very difficult to pinpoint where sluggishness might occur.  My laptop with Windows was something I would describe as bi-polar.  Sometimes it was in a great mood, sometimes it was rather grumpy.  It always felt grumpy in times when I needed it to be fast the most: a high-priority issue, a WebEx meeting that I'm already a few minutes late in attending, etc.  What was causing it?  Did IT slap on extra software that was causing issues?  I have no idea!
• Linux: Low it-just-works factor, high how-much-control-do-I-really have factor.  You can really take for granted the idea that whatever you want will support your operating system until you move to Linux.  You'll get lucky on some cases, where a piece of software you use regularly is supported and installs just as easily with Linux as with Windows or Mac.  But the majority of the time you are in for at least a small amount of pain as you kick out several browser tabs searching for a suitable Linux alternative to something that you've used and loved for the longest time.
• Mac: High it-just-works factor, high how-much-control-do-I-really have factor.  They really got it right with this one.  Unix-level control and a stable, attractive and simple-to-operate OS.  Even setting up a local environment of our software was simple.  Need subversion? Already installed!  Need apache? Already installed!  Need Java?  Already installed.... for now.

Just like many Mac power-users, I cannot remove the need for Windows altogether.  For one, I cannot run MS Office on Linux without third party commercial software (and even then with flaws) but I'm maintaining a code base that uses the full Microsoft stack.  Cutting Windows out of my life is just not going to happen anytime soon, so I run an instance under Virtualbox.  This is an open-source alternative to VMWare and so far it has done a pretty solid job.