Why I am considering switching back...
 

Switched from XP after a virus attack got around my protection and trashed the system. Turned to SUSE 10 for perhaps what might have been better treatment.

The linux thing isn't working out, I may have to buy windows. I havent got anything against it... but seriously, there's still a LOT lacking and I havent got the patience to tweak every little thing to get it to work, let alone learn a programming language or two just to be able to get a few features I want/need. Not to mention the severe lack of decent software. OoooOOOOh an awesome word processor (OpenOffice.org)! YaaaaaY! What about a decent vector app (fireworks clone anyone?)? What about a stable web development suite (dreamweaver clone anyone)? What about all these things I want damnit! How about being able to view multimedia pluggins in firefox or getting the latest version of flash.

Seriously, yes there's a buttload of code out there and hundreds of flavors of linux... but I am NOT amused with the limitations right now. THIS is why some people think nobody cares about linux people. Because nobody wants to screw around trying to get it to work, they just want it to WORK!

Hey, I love it... I really do. The OS itself NEVER once crashed on me in the like... six weeks I've been running it full-time. The software that came with it WORKS for the most part (barring a few minor and correctable hardware snafus). Best of all, KDE is beautiful and was easy as pie to configure just the way I wanted it. Now, where I begin to run into trouble is trying to do a few things that perhaps weren't expected.

Dual-monitor with a television proved to be a bear with the manufacturers unsupported driver. Worked, sure... but not only screwed up the computer monitor, but it screwed up my 3d support (even AFTER I removed the driver). Default RADEON driver that SUSE uses works just fine, but there's no tv-out (which seems stupid to me since the card tv-outs by default UNTIL the driver loads).

Like mentioned... I can't find anything suitable to even come CLOSE to what DreamWeaver and FireWorks were able to do for me. Quanta+ is great, and I tried several versions... but guess what... it's unstable on my machine, and slow as hell if I try to use the Wysiwyg features. As for fireworks, Inkscape seems promising, but it's not there yet.

Honestly, I can't see how I can get any work done like this... :twocents:

Errmmm.. ok. Have fun with Windows.

I love using vi and The Gimp for all of my web design and graphics use. I use to be a Dreamweaver and Photoshop user but now find myself more productive with vi and The Gimp nowadays.. I can also install Slackware and have it configured to my liking in about an hour tops, last time I installed Windows it took almost 10 hours to do install, install drivers, install software, install updates and let me tell you.. I hate the dozen or so reboots..

So what was the point of this thread again? :confused:

It's not for everyone, that's for sure. There hasn't really been anything I've missed since switching (some years back). Web design I do in vi (but then I've always been a text guy), OpenOffice handles what I need it to (especially now with v2.0), and I had no problem setting Fluxbox to look and act how I'd like. (for the record I still don't know any programming languages :) )

Everyone's experience is different; I'm sorry yours wasn't as great as others'. Would you consider trying another distro?

The Gimp is good. Yup... I truly love it. I actually prefer it OVER photoshop, though I cant put it into words, for all my photo-editing needs. BUT, it's not vector friendly, and I'm DEFINATLY a vector-kinda guy.

As for text-editing a webpage... I like to do my PHP that way, and sometimes I like to clean up and optimize the code by hand (or pull stunts that the visual editor doesn't want me to pull), but I REALLY prefer to do the design in a GUI, especially when I want a really graphics heavy page. Basically the only time I want to use the keyboard when laying out a webpage is when I'm punching in sizes. That's just me though. I dunno... I can do the code, I know what it'll produce, but man I can sit there and look it it for hours and never "SEE" it.

Point of thread? Well, vent frustration... see what comes out of it. See if anyone actually does anything about the big problems with linux... which I do have a vested interest in seeing solved.

I think it would be fantastic if I could REALLY recomend SUSE 10 (or any other distro) to anyone, but my main concern... the big point I want to get across... is that I can never seem to be sure that something new that I try is going to work. I want reliability. I want to be able to answer anybodies doubts with "Sure it'll work, if you run linux."

I hate to say it but most of the things you've complained about are pretty easy to do in linux, there are better GUI page designers than Quanta, Flash works fine and media in web browsers isn't too difficult either. It just seems like you have been trying to do things that hard way or something I dunno, when I wanted Flash in my browser, I opened a console and used the package manager for my distrobution to install Flash. Restarted Firefox to make sure the plugin loaded fine and it was done.

If Windows is what you need then by all means use it, we don't really care either way and I'd personally rather read something interesting that whiners when I visit the forums I do, maybe you should go get a blog somewhere.

Look: http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/node/add/blog
You can blog on LQ now! Now can we please stop posting useless threads like this?

Flash works fine yes... version 7. Eight is out for windows... and it's in pretty widespread use already, and yup I lose out because of the switch. Windows media and quicktime plugins aren't available for linux's version of fireworks (yes you can play them outside of fireworks, and I'm pretty sure there's workarounds and other plugins, but nothing simple nor reliable).

Anyway, I'm not "Switching" just yet. I'm here to spark debate :P

Is it a Windows Vs Linux thread? Oh my, I haven't seem one of those since... last week? :D. I think this thread should be closed, we have a bunch of those already...

I realize that this forum is very kind and so are the moderators, but we all know that those threads usually end up with one member attacking each other, then a few got upset, then it got closed. Why not close now before it gets ugly? As I said, we have so many of those that when a member, as the original poster, not even had the trouble to look at 2 or 3 thread bellow (note: not even necessary to search) before posting is not worthy to read his whinning.

And the problem here is Macromedia's fault, for not porting their bloated applications to Linux. It's not even a Linux fault, making this thread even more pointless than it was from the start. Actually, it has a point: to start a flame war as suggested above:

I play embedded videos in Firefox using the Mplayer plugin. It works very well if it is setup right, I haven't found a site where it won't work. It was an easy install in Debian SID for me, worked just fine without any configuration. I tweaked the cache setting a little for my connection.

What is in Flash 8 that isn't in Flash 7?

I felt the EXACT same way as you do after I was using linux (no windows at all) for a couple months. I just got tired of having to tweak. Now I got a mac - and I love it. The easiness of windows - it just works. Yet its not windows - no viruses, etc.. And I especially like the unix base...

Edit: wow not having to reload when using the quick reply was AWESOME... and this Editing inside the post is even more awesome. :D Awesome job Jeremy!

Nvu, anyone?

coffee anyone?

lol honestly, first time round, it took me weeks to fully configure my UI to how i want it. But if i reinstalled right now, probably only take me 1hr tops to be up and running again fully configured. Only thing that would take abit of time would be reinstalling (downloading) the apps i use from the repos.

Does linuxquestions.org use the same forum code as zgeek does?

Do we have to do this again? Do you want us to convice you to continue using Linux? I understand some people are frustrated with configuring and installing drivers or programs but some have lots of problems and some have no problems, thats not saying some people are dumb and some are not, It simply depends on hardware and how much someone puts into it.
It took me a long time to get my printer working and keep it working. I format every 4 months and have to reinstall slack and everything (Maybe thats why its easy for me?) . Free, Its free! No 300$ for a program, No licenses, Its free, I doubt Something like dreamweaver would be available for Linux. I would have no problem with paying for a Linux version of Dreamweaver or any other program that works good for what I need. Dual boot, use DW in Windows and Use Linux for everything else, There I conviced you. :D

That's called trolling.