Ubuntu GNOME - The best of two worlds.
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Hi, I am one of those who have liked Gnome 3 from the start, and it's nice to see that more people (including the LAS staff) have discovered this elegant, simple and powerful desktop environment over the last couple of years. GNOME 3 had a few rough years being the punching ball of the desktop environments but has matured, remaining the same simple and elegant way to run you computer, I am also one of those who use Linux for work and there are applications and services I have to be able to run. A couple of those (a proprietary VPN client and a group chat application) are only documented to work on Ubuntu. I also like the access to the PPA infrastructure and the vast community and support available for Ubuntu. For playing around with Linux I have fun with Arch and Sabayon, but when I need to work I do Ubuntu. But then again, I like Gnome so I turned to Ubuntu GNOME and thought I would get a stock Ubuntu with a "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-gnome-desktop ubuntu-gnome-default-settings" already run for me. But no, Ubuntu GNOME has the feel of being it's own distro with it's own community and dedicated development team. It has turned out to be the perfect distro for me combining professional requirements with the desktop I prefer. And with 14.04 it has been taken up a notch: It's the first LTS release of Ubuntu GNOME. It seems rock solid and a great alternative for those who need the proven back-end of Ubuntu coupled with the flair of a full featured GNOME desktop. It doesn't have GNOME 3.12 yet, and does require a (well maintained) PPA for you to run the latest and greatest version of GNOME, but if you prefer the proven and safe you can stick with the version of GNOME that comes with Ubuntu. I think more people should look at Ubuntu GNOME since it represents a perfect balance between the safe and sound and the beatuy of true GNOME! http://ubuntugnome.org/
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I am also one of those who use Linux for work and there are applications and services I have to be able to run. A couple of those (a proprietary VPN client and a group chat application) are only documented to work on Ubuntu. I also like the access to the PPA infrastructure and the vast community and support available for Ubuntu. For playing around with Linux I have fun with Arch and Sabayon, but when I need to work I do Ubuntu.
When you need to run proprietary solutions, it's not work in the complete sense. It's not really your work, it's employer's. It's imposed, not stemming from your own creative impulse.
I also "need to work" with e.g. Trados, a ludicrously expensive viciously patented highly closed-source proprietary solution that only runs on Windows and probably Mac, never Linux. In a sense I need it, because I would earn lots of money this way, but I don't and won't. Gradually I have managed to afford to give up on employers who don't let me work the way I get best results - namely on Linux. And now it's real work I'm doing, in the complete and total sense.
The best of the two worlds is to work with a dual-boot Windows and Linux machine. Except that I have discarded Windows (took some effort admittedly). If you like Gnome 3 or Unity, then Mac is completely irrelevant, because Gnome 3 and Unity provide a Mac-like desktop environment and Linux provides the same OS architecture.
My own preferred desktop environments are Windows-like, such as Xfce and Mate. I am also very familiar with Unity and KDE. I am able to get used to Unity, but unfortunately its principle - app menus in the top taskbar - is not consistent across all apps. Ubuntu team has not gone through the labour of putting the menus of all apps on Unity taskbar. The result is inconsistent and occasionally confusing and unworkable, making me prefer other desktops.
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–duplicate removed--
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Is [Zorin OS](Zorin OS) best of three worlds?
On Zorin OS’s homepage one can read that the operating system is “designed specifically [for] newcomers to Linux”. It is based on Ubuntu, and “The Look Changer lets you change your desktop to look and act like either Windows 7, XP, Vista, Ubuntu Unity, Mac OS X or GNOME 2 for ultimate ease of use”.
Sounds like something for me as a newbie to Linux. Anybody here who have tried Zorin OS?
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Sounds like something for me as a newbie to Linux. Anybody here who have tried Zorin OS?
I have. Zorin is KDE. To me KDE does not feel light enough to be a viable Windows replacement, certainly not for XP users. And Ubuntu itself is not light on resources these days. Anything with Xfce comes much closer to Windows both in style and system requirements, with some easy enough tweaking. And then there's this edition http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlgm5psBCQc
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