I used to use Linux all the time as my desktop operating system. I switched to it from Windows back in the 95/98 days. For a few years now, I’ve been using Mac OS X as my operating system, for its Unix underpinnings (it’s a BSD box, all told), its very nice interface, and the active development community, which gives us tools like QuickSilver and DEVONThink Pro. But it’s time for a change, at least a temporary one.

I’m moving back to Linux.

For a week.

Just to see.

I’ve been getting more and more uncomfortable with Apple, the company, lately. It’s recent decision to close off the Darwin kernel (the heart of Mac OS X’s Unix), for what appears to be the sake of evil DRM, to keep the Mac OS running only on Macs, is really crappy. I’m even further dismayed that Apple is leveraging the BIOS of the iPod for its own accessories, like the questionable iPod “HiFi.” It’s surely in their rights, of course, I’m not saying that Apple’s behaving inappropriately as far as laws and their shareholders are concerned. I’m saying that I want a little more openness and honesty from my software. So, back to Linux, for a while.

The hypocritical part of this is that I’ll be using a Dell laptop, which is sort of the other side from openness and honesty, but at least I won’t be locked in to one hardware vendor. Apple’s hardware is top notch, no question, and I’ll try to keep that in mind as I use a very inferior laptop running Debian for the next week or so.

This is a good time for me to do this test. The class I’m teaching is on spring break, and I’m looking to take some time off from my day job over the next weeks. There will be fewer pressures, fewer deadlines, for the next few weeks. My Powerbook will stay here in the office, as a file server, whilst I get up to speed. I do not plan on taking my Powerbook home during this time, forcing me to get back into the Linux way.

Again, this is just an experiment, to see what I’ll be up against when I replace my Powerbook later this Spring with… something. I’ve been lusting after those MacBook Pro machines, but I’m wondering if Lenovo, Dell, or HPaq will have a Core Duo machine that will run Linux by then. I can tell you the things right now that I know going in that I will miss:

• iTunes. Nice player, and I’ve got so much music on this Powerbook that I could fill up the Dell laptop’s hard drive 2x with just music. That’s gonna be real tough.
• Quicksilver. Gawd, that’s an incredibly cool piece of software. I’ll be hitting Alt-Space by habit more than once on the Linux machine.
• DevonThink Pro. I really don’t think I can do my job at this point without it. So I’ll have to keep the Powerbook close by for those times where I need to look something up, but DTP has some nice export options, so maybe I’ll look at that.

Just for the record, I’m using Debian on this machine instead of Ubuntu for two main reasons:

1. Debian has more packages available. I want to make sure I don’t spend the next week compiling software. Particularly GWorkspace, as I’ll be using GNUstep as my desktop environment (no KDE or GNOME for me, thank you, I’m much too old-school.)
2. I keep a local Debian mirror. I’ve got lots of servers running Debian, so I keep a mirror at the Lab. That makes apt* stuff very very quick.

I’m going to be building the machine during the rest of this week, putting my Drupal environment together on it, getting postfix up and going for mutt and stuff, and getting re-aquainted with WindowMaker. We’ll see how this goes. It’s kind of exciting, but one thing I’m really dreading is learning how ndiswrapper works so I can get the brain-dead Dell wireless stuff working.