Things I Miss in Linux

I’ve tried Linux many times.  I’ve tried Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Kubuntu, installing and uninstalling each a few times.  But what I’ve concluded is that it doesn’t matter what distribution you use, Linux is Linux.  I install Linux expecting me to use it as my main operating system, then I use it for a few days to a couple weeks, and then I find myself booting up Windows again for random reasons.  Therefore, I thought it would be a good idea to keep track of these reasons for future reference so that maybe I could find solutions to these reasons.  I really like Ubuntu, and I would really like to stick with it, but I always find something that I just can’t do on Ubuntu that I can do on Windows.  I’ll be adding to this list as time goes on.

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Here’s my list (these are not in any particular order):

1.  Gaming – Yes, I know there are programs like Wine and Cedega that work great with some games, but the thing is that games sometimes just don’t work like they do on Windows.  For example, World of Warcraft works under Wine but the mouse lags a little.  I’m sure it has something to do with playing the game in OpenGL.  So far I haven’t found a solution to this yet.  [Update: 9-16-08] I have WoW running somewhat better in Wine/Cedega with OpenGL.  Cedega for some reason lags like crazy in D3D mode.  I’m going to see if I can get this fixed somehow since D3D mode has the hardware cursor option.

2.  iPhone/iTunes – I own an iPhone, and I have not jailbroken it and don’t plan to for a while.  I may jailbreak it in the future, but I’m not sure when that will be.  Right now I have no use for it.  Since it’s not jailbroken, I can only sync it with iTunes, and iTunes only works that way on Windows.  I’ve read about people getting iTunes working with the iPhone through VMWare Player, so I will give this a try as soon as I get a chance.  However, it seems that people are having trouble updating/restoring their iPhone through the virtual machine because of the iPhone rebooting.

3.  Programs only available for Windows – This kind of goes together with the top two, but I thought I’d expand on it a little more.  There are programs like Digsby and Google Chrome that I wouldn’t mind installing, but the only way of installing these on Linux is to use Wine.  I tried Wine for Digsby, and it worked to a certain extent, but for some reason I couldn’t send or receive messages.  Both Digsby and Google Chrome do plan on having Linux versions released, but who knows when that will be.  I’m content with using Pidgin and Firefox for now, but it would still be nice to have these working on Linux.

4.  Can’t run some files on external hard drive – It annoys me that I can’t seem to run some files from my external hard drive.  I have all of this extra space on there that I use for my downloaded files.  Then when I try to run one of these downloaded files, it won’t always let me.  Is it because it is NTFS?  Would partitioning a part of it to EXT3 allow me to run files from it?  [Added: 9-16-08]

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I’ll be adding more to this list whenever I find other things that make me want to go back to Windows.  I just installed Ubuntu over Kubuntu today (during Hurricane Ike; I’m in East Texas) so I’ll be messing around with it tonight and tomorrow.  I plan on purchasing Cedega again to see if that will improve any experience with gaming.  I just got Spore, which is very addicting and one of the reasons why I haven’t been posting, and I’d like to play it on Linux.  If you have any solutions to the above problems, please share them.  I’d love to get these inconveniences worked out.