There is no question that I would rather be using Linux as my full time OS, and for the most part it is. However, I still find myself booting into Windows for my multimedia content creation needs. Mostly I'm talking about Adobe and Macromedia apps. I know I may recieve some booing for saying this to the/. crowd, but I still feel that their apps are more powerful and mature than any of their Linux counterparts. Also, I grew up on Photoshop... and while I know the GIMP is a decent competitor, I just can't get used to it's UI. Maybe it's poor UI design, maybe I'm just a creature of habit. As for Macromedia apps, I still love them for when I have to do some quick and dirty graphics (or Flash content). I'd rather not battle with the GIMP when I need something done quickly.
One more thing that I miss in Linux desktops is a mp3/audio player with a good interface. XMMS was great when I had a small collection, but now that my mp3/ogg server has swelled to around 70GB it just doesn't cut it. So far I just haven't found a Linux app that does as good of a job as iTunes, WMP, or RealONE. Rhythmbox shows promise though... can't wait for it's 1.0!
One a lighter note though, the Linux community has made SO much progress in the past few years. The apps are definitely coming along! I know that it's only a matter of time till all the application catch up with my expectations. I can't wait!
No kidding... I just got a 10GB iPod a month ago. And my only complaint, aside from the fact that I bought a month too soon with the 20GB coming out soon, is that there's no Ogg support. I'm really not looking forward to comverting my whole 70GB music archive back over to mp3/mp4... I just finished getting it from mp3 to ogg!!!
Is that we have nothing but problems with Citrix thin clients, so much so that noone uses them anymore. We do however have 100+ X terminals running GNOME with no problems whatsoever... Except that the buggers are getting a bit old. (NCD HMXs and HMXpro24s) Therefore we're in the process of upgrading all the clients to $700 Dells running Redhat 7.2 with a couple of central servers serving out the applications over an NFS/usr/local. So we get the benefit of having CPU cycles on each machine, but also the centralized application storage of a client/server model. Combine that with the fact that our operating system is free, and we're left with cheap, reliable, and easily administrated labs. Oh, and we still have that one Citrix box that the users can use Office on... which they never do.;)
I guess you could say I had a non-traditional career path. I have a bachelors degree in music from the Berklee College of Music... majoring in Songwriting. Got a lucky break with a internet radio dot-com doing music programming. Within 3 months they moved me over to doing sysadmin for them. I guess all that bedroom hacking paid off! The dot-com is gone... but now I'm working as a Linux/Solaris admin for a major university. Now I can actually afford to buy all the great music toys I could never have as a struggling musician. Gotta love it.
I actually just did a pretty vigorous test of this the other day. I tested 128, 160, 192, and 256 bitrate mp3s and oggs against the source wav file. At 128 they both sounded similar, but the ogg file did seem a little brighter and clearer than the mp3, and the wav file of course blew them both away. At 160 ogg vorbis really shines... the mp3 remains kind of dull, muddy, and the high end is very "sizzly" compared to the ogg file which sounds brilliant and clear. I barely noticed a difference between the wav file and the ogg at this bitrate. Going up to 192 I found the difference between the ogg and the wav indistinguishable while the mp3 STILL retained some of that annoying high-end sizzle and midrange mud. If you've got the space... 192 oggs amazing... I'm doing mine at 160 because while disc space is cheap, the difference between 160 and 192 is negligible. As for 256... don't bother doing oggs at this level... it's just a waste of disk space. As far as mp3s go... IMO you'd have to encode them at 256 to get the same fidelity as a 160 bitrate ogg vorbis file.(your milage may very... i have been an audio engineer for a while and have picky picky ears.)
Now, if only I could flash my Rio into decoding these files i'd be in digital audio heaven! Also... I'm cannot wait for the 1.0 Ogg encoder to come out... encoding times should be much faster and fidelity even better. Amazing work!
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There is no question that I would rather be using Linux as my full time OS, and for the most part it is. However, I still find myself booting into Windows for my multimedia content creation needs. Mostly I'm talking about Adobe and Macromedia apps. I know I may recieve some booing for saying this to the /. crowd, but I still feel that their apps are more powerful and mature than any of their Linux counterparts. Also, I grew up on Photoshop... and while I know the GIMP is a decent competitor, I just can't get used to it's UI. Maybe it's poor UI design, maybe I'm just a creature of habit. As for Macromedia apps, I still love them for when I have to do some quick and dirty graphics (or Flash content). I'd rather not battle with the GIMP when I need something done quickly.
One more thing that I miss in Linux desktops is a mp3/audio player with a good interface. XMMS was great when I had a small collection, but now that my mp3/ogg server has swelled to around 70GB it just doesn't cut it. So far I just haven't found a Linux app that does as good of a job as iTunes, WMP, or RealONE. Rhythmbox shows promise though... can't wait for it's 1.0!
One a lighter note though, the Linux community has made SO much progress in the past few years. The apps are definitely coming along! I know that it's only a matter of time till all the application catch up with my expectations. I can't wait!
No kidding... I just got a 10GB iPod a month ago. And my only complaint, aside from the fact that I bought a month too soon with the 20GB coming out soon, is that there's no Ogg support. I'm really not looking forward to comverting my whole 70GB music archive back over to mp3/mp4... I just finished getting it from mp3 to ogg!!!
:(
argh
Is that we have nothing but problems with Citrix thin clients, so much so that noone uses them anymore. We do however have 100+ X terminals running GNOME with no problems whatsoever... Except that the buggers are getting a bit old. (NCD HMXs and HMXpro24s) Therefore we're in the process of upgrading all the clients to $700 Dells running Redhat 7.2 with a couple of central servers serving out the applications over an NFS /usr/local. So we get the benefit of having CPU cycles on each machine, but also the centralized application storage of a client/server model. Combine that with the fact that our operating system is free, and we're left with cheap, reliable, and easily administrated labs. Oh, and we still have that one Citrix box that the users can use Office on... which they never do. ;)
-auttie
I guess you could say I had a non-traditional career path. I have a bachelors degree in music from the Berklee College of Music... majoring in Songwriting. Got a lucky break with a internet radio dot-com doing music programming. Within 3 months they moved me over to doing sysadmin for them. I guess all that bedroom hacking paid off! The dot-com is gone... but now I'm working as a Linux/Solaris admin for a major university. Now I can actually afford to buy all the great music toys I could never have as a struggling musician. Gotta love it.
I actually just did a pretty vigorous test of this the other day. I tested 128, 160, 192, and 256 bitrate mp3s and oggs against the source wav file. At 128 they both sounded similar, but the ogg file did seem a little brighter and clearer than the mp3, and the wav file of course blew them both away. At 160 ogg vorbis really shines... the mp3 remains kind of dull, muddy, and the high end is very "sizzly" compared to the ogg file which sounds brilliant and clear. I barely noticed a difference between the wav file and the ogg at this bitrate. Going up to 192 I found the difference between the ogg and the wav indistinguishable while the mp3 STILL retained some of that annoying high-end sizzle and midrange mud. If you've got the space... 192 oggs amazing... I'm doing mine at 160 because while disc space is cheap, the difference between 160 and 192 is negligible. As for 256... don't bother doing oggs at this level... it's just a waste of disk space. As far as mp3s go... IMO you'd have to encode them at 256 to get the same fidelity as a 160 bitrate ogg vorbis file.(your milage may very... i have been an audio engineer for a while and have picky picky ears.)
Now, if only I could flash my Rio into decoding these files i'd be in digital audio heaven! Also... I'm cannot wait for the 1.0 Ogg encoder to come out... encoding times should be much faster and fidelity even better. Amazing work!
Hope this helps.
-auttie
don't you know where you are boy! j/k -auttie