This that and 'tother

[kerravonsen]

Well, I've now posted my entries for the current tardis_icons challenge (#20). I learned my lesson from the previous times: this time I only made as many icons as I could enter, so I didn't have to angst about which ones to choose. I am quite pleased with all of them! Especially the last one, I really like it. That one is going to have a full-size version in my gallery as soon as the challenge is over.

Investigations of laptops is continuing. (My father said he'd buy me one for my birthday, see) My primary requirements are (a) must run Linux well (b) must be not too big or too small, so as to work well both portably and generally. Right now, the two leading contenders are:

1) get a ThinkPad from http://www.vgcomputing.com.au/ because they will give you Linux pre-installed, and what is more, one of the distros they offer is GenToo (which is my current distro)
2) get a Mac; an iBook or a PowerBook, I'm not sure which.

There are pros and cons for both, but they both have these very attractive advantages: (a) very good reliable hardware (b) less hassle!

Comments

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

I don't think you'll get any less hassle from the iBook if you run Linux on it.

[kerravonsen]

True, but maybe OS X is good enough that I might not even need to run Linux.

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

Well, on Apple hardware OSX has much better support for the hardware and a much better GUI. And it's a unix, so you can run all your old such applications as well. On my OSX machines I still have the same old dotfiles I've always used. Although one of these years I probably should take out the bits that are only useful on SunOS 4.0.x...

[kerravonsen]

And it's a unix, so you can run all your old such applications as well.

I'm counting on that.

and a much better GUI

Depends what you want. It may be much better than KDE or Gnome, if you go for that style of GUI, but I don't like that kind of GUI. What I require is perfect keyboard navigation and multiple desktops (such as one can get from wmi, Ion or Fvwm). However I note that Darwin Ports has Fvwm, so I could probably use that instead of Aqua, if I could figure out how it all works.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'd go for option 1. I'm hoping to inherit Greg's Thinkpad when he upgrades. :-)

[kerravonsen]

Reasons?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

It's closer to what you have now and it seems less hassle.

[kerravonsen]

True.

But Macs are so shiny...

It seemeth I am having difficulty in deciding...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they are nice. They've always been a attractive piece of tech but I've always gone for boring utility.