In Which OS Do You Feel More Productive?

HTMLChecker asks: "I found an article in which the author talks about how she is more productive using Mac OS X. What about the people of Slashdot? Where do you feel more productive, in Linux? Windows? DOS? Mac OS X? Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"

Comments

Science's dependence on MS Office

[Noksagt]

As a scientist, where I do most of my work in MS Office...I basically have to use MS Office because I need to interoperate with my peers and coworkers.

This is sad, but true. If I am primary author, I do it in LaTeX & get it done in a tenth of the time. But people are locked into Word & Powerpoint and my life is occasionally made a little more painful because of that. OO.o and abiword go a long way, as does latex2rtf. Depending on how much content I am creating, it is often faster to use my preferred tools: LaTeX and vim.

Furthermore, Excel (every scientists best friend), is still far and away the best spreadsheet application and to me is Window's so called "killer app".

While Excel is a fine enough spreadsheet (I can't think of anything I like from it that Gnumeric and OO.o don't do), most scientists need much more than a spreadsheet. They need an industrial strength plotting program, a'la Microcal Origin, Kaleidagraph, grace, gnuplot, Matlab, Igor, hippodraw, etc. It isn't my best friend & even the people who are stuck on Word that I collaborate with discourage anyone from using Excel for anything other than quick & dirty.

Re:OS X

[therevolution]

Doesn't work properly, or doesn't work how you expect it to? Two different things...

Anyway, what you want is Command+LeftArrow and Command+RightArrow. That goes to beginning of line and end of line, respectively, on OS X.

Re:OS X

[joh]

I like OS X, but every time I've used it I am amazed that Home/End doesn't work properly.

Create a file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict with this content:

/* Home/End keys like Windows */
{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* home */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* end */
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + home */
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + end */
}

Re:It depends

[Porter Doran]

There is no real limitation to the window managers you can run in OS X, using X11.

Re:I'm a switcher,

[starglider29a]

You need to do this.

http://www.apple.com/switch/tell/us.html

Re:OS X

[rushfan]

You should also add in control-home and control-end (done here) to make it more windows like.

Here's an updated DefaultKeyBinding.dict file.
/* ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict - Home/End keys more like Windows */
{
"\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLine:"; /* home */
"\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLine:"; /* end */
"$\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + home */
"$\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfLineAndModifySelection:"; /* shift + end */
"^\UF729" = "moveToBeginningOfDocument:"; /* control + home */
"^\UF72B" = "moveToEndOfDocument:"; /* control + end */
}

Learning LaTeX

[Noksagt]

If you want to benefit from it without learning it, you can use a number of GUIs. Scientific Workplace on win32 (commercial, but good to push on those using Word) or LyX (F/OSS) for nearly any platform or many others. Even abiword can write LaTeX!

It isn't difficult to learn & becomes much more powerful when you eventually ditch the GUI & either use a quality TeX-focused editor like KILE (KDE), TeXnicCenter (win32), TeXShop (OS X) (all F/OSS) or your favorite multi-purpose editor. I prefer vim with LaTeX-Suite.

The best way to learn is to look at other code. Either get some from peers, from the net, or make some in either the GUIs or the friendlier editors. Then just write.

If you need a reference, you can usually learn to google for how to do something (or post to comp.text.tex). I maintain a list of www links. You might find something useful, but I can't suggest the best starting point from that list. The best introductory book I've used is Guide to LaTeX. The other books in LaTeX Companions are also excellent for reference, particularly The LaTeX Companion.

Re:OS X

[daviddennis]

One thing that's not too well known in MacOS X is that a nice subset of emacs commands works.

So if you want to go to the beginning of a line, Control-A does it, and Control-E goes to the end of the line.

I love this because I don't have to take my hands off the home keys to make it work. It's a real godsend to die-hard emacs users such as myself.

(This works only in Cocoa applications, so Internet Explorer users are out of luck, but in most programs, such as Safari, Mail, OmniWeb, etc, it works great.)

D

BBEdit

[sjf]

How do you rate productivity on a particular platform ?

Simple: does the platform support BBEdit ?

BBEdit still doesn't suck. I write code on both the Mac and XP. I often mount a Windows share on my Mac so that I can edit the Windows code in BBEdit.

-S

Re:Erm...

[Monx]

/etc/hosts is only used very early in the boot process on Mac OS X. So you can't actually use it to block addresses. You have to use netinfo instead

Actually, you can set the lookup order. In 10.1, the default was something like netinfo, dns, then /etc/hosts. Now the hosts file is examined first. You can change that to suit your preferences in any version of OS X.

Re:Easy.

[xcreature]

Copy/Paste operations in X-Windows are usually quick, except that I often copy a URL and then expect to highlight-and-paste in the Location bar of my browser; Unfortunately, highlighting replaces what I put in the clipboard intentionally, and I paste the URL I'm trying to remove!

I've never quite gotten the hang of the focus-follows-mouse setup, but I can certainly understand your reasoning - It's very quick once you adjust. But you must be running OSX 10.2, because Expose in 10.3 has blown away anything I used to know about finding windows. Sure, my screen is cluttered beyond belief behind the front window, but I can quickly find any one I'm looking for with F9, or any of the same application with F10. If I need my desktop, F11 - No fussing to find the "Show Desktop" icon on the taskbar.
Also, 10.3 comes with X11.

I also think that Comparing "Linux" to Windows or MacOS is a bit confusing, since I am a PowerBook owner. Linux/PPC doesn't have nearly as much development going on as Linux/x86. I recently installed YDL4 and was horrendously disappointed. I should give Debian/PPC a shot one of these days but haven't gotten around to it yet. Even if I did, OSX is still my OS of choice for most day-to-day stuff.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Easy...Ninnle!

[Welsh Dwarf]

Just a couple of points:
1) Windows hasn't always had a predictable UI (and IMHO still hasn't). Case in point: drag n drop a file between 2 folders on the same disk: it moves the file, do the same between 2 disks: it copys the file, do the same to the desktop: it links the file. This is unpredictable in the extreem.

2) X bashing is so last century, and today is not much short of trolling. X has never been slow, and when you use the proper video driver, and a (reasonably) modern machine (Athlon XP 1600 here) Gnome and KDE aren't eather. Personnally I've always found KDE more responsive than XP on the same config (Gnome has some lag, it's true)

3) You're 'nothing works' shows me that you probably haven't used slack since the version inflation, and in anycase it isn't the distro for you. I'm currently running Slack 10.1 and DLG 2.8.2 on my machine, and Mandrake 10.1 on my gfs, and, surprise: everything works!

4) Try real, quicktime, wmv, shockwave, flash: all work (yes, on my Slack!, without tweeking!)

5) Trying out apps (from source) is done either in /usr/local (if you don't mind wiping it on occasion) or in /tmp. If you're not up to that, choose a distro with better dep resolution (if you still want bare bones, go to gentoo or Debian, otherwise try Mandrake or Suse) and use the Contrib.

6) smb shares work out the box with modern DEs (XFce 4.2 found my Windows network at work all by itself, no problems , nothing)

7) Free software is about scratching your own itch, for some people it's KDE, for some Gnome, XFce or Screen, there is no war, each borrows from the other, tries to get an improved user experiance, and both improve. XFree in itself should show you why this is a good thing.

Oh, and 8) Win95 doesn't act exactly like XP, you're moving the goalposts there, and 9) A WinXP BSOD is either bad drivers or massive spyware infestation, that one doesn't work anymore either.

HTH

David