I started a new job a couple of weeks ago, and my main computer at this new job is running Linux, specifically Fedora core 4. At home I’m a mac user, but most of my past jobs have involved running a windows box to connect into Linux or Solaris servers, so I thought I’d put down a few thoughts.

Installation was pretty smooth, but then, I’ve installed various flavours of Linux many times in the past, so perhaps I no longer notice the difficulties. My specific laptop did have wireless card support out of the box, but I managed to find some notes on how to get it up and running via google without too much trouble. I’ve not actually got around to working through all the dependencies as yet, but the mere fact that I should be required to download and try to install this rpm only to find some dependancy which was never mentioned was rather frustrating.

Anyway, I didn’t really need the network card, so I started messing with my external LCD monitor to find out what the best resolution was. My very first attempt ended with a ‘monitor does not support this resolution (or similar) message on the monitor, and no obvious way back. Luckily I knew enough to switch to a virtual terminal, flip back to the old X config file and start over, but I hate to think what a newbie would have done. Reinstall for scratch perhaps? I really can’t think of any other obvious option. Anyway, with that crisis averted, I fiddled my way to an acceptable resolution and went on my way.

It was nice to find Firefox already installed, and so I went about setting up my email. As it turns out, Linux machines on our network have to be put on a separate ‘experimental’ network which can’t talk directly to the mail server. Everyone in the team seemed to have a different technique to actually get their mail, so after putting up with web mail for a while I went for the SSH tunnel approach. This means I have to set-up the tunnel again after every reboot (obviously I could automate that), and connect to a weird port on the local machine which is then tunnelled via another machine to the mail server. It all works smoothly (Flipped and chose Thunderbird over Evolution), but it’s obviously sub-optimal. Obviously the real solution would be for the IT guys to let us connect directly to the mail server, but I’m assuming there are security implications I’m not aware of.

By this point I was feeling kinda proud of myself for getting everything working. This thing is, though, I’ve never had these sorts of problems with either my Mac or Windows boxes. I somehow feel like, as a Linux user, I’m willing to put up with an awful lot more, and feel like it’s my fault if I’m not able to do something rather than just saying ‘well, fine, I guess that’s not possible’. In a way, this mentality is what makes Linux interesting from a hacker perspective, but it’s also what will stop Linux from ever becoming a mainstream desktop platform. Our IT department would never get away with saying ‘well, you can use windows as your desktop OS, but you won’t be able to access your email’, but with linux, it’s more like ‘well, you can use linux as your desktop OS, but you’ll have to work out email access yourself’.

So other than that, I’ve gone through a few dramas trying to install work specific software, but that’s more treating my desktop box as a server than a desktop. I have, however, found a few bits I normally use regularly missing.

For password management on my mac, I use the standard Apple keychain access app, and on Windows I’ve grown quite fond of KeePass, but I couldn’t find anything nice in this space for Linux. In the end I settled on Password Gorilla but it really doesn’t have the same feeling of quality about it, I was annoyed at having to separately install tclkit, and I’m frankly embarrassed by the gorilla splash screen every time I see it. In the end, it’s usable enough, but I can’t honestly imagine there are many people choosing to use the mac of Windows versions.

I also have been able to find a nice time tracking app (although I’m not really happy with any on other platforms either), had a hell of a time trying to install the flash plug-in into firefox and really, really miss quicksilver, but those are probably stories for another time.