[wtbob]

> Reading this post I am reminded just how much more work it is to have a functional linux desktop that ends up running worse than a Mac or windows box.

I'm extremely happy with stumpwm. It runs, it switches between emacs, Firefox and a good console just fine. It's infinitely more work to get Windows or an OS X box to the same level of functionality, because neither of them properly supports all of these key features: POSIX; a Common Lisp tiling window manager (which means I always have a REPL a slime-connect away); native X11.

I literally never miss Windows or OS X.

[codezero]

OS X is POSIX certified, no Linux distribution is but that's a minor point I assume.

[wtbob]

True enough; I edited my comment to indicate that I mean all those features at once.

[codezero]

mostly unrelated – but I wouldn't have known/cared about POSIX compliance until I ran into it:

On OS X, getopt is POSIX compliant. GNU utilities tend not to enforce POSIX in getopt, as a result you can do things like ls .txt -la

On a POSIX complaint system, the optional arguments must come before any file arguments. This is super annoying to me, after having been using Linux for 15 years :)

Personally, I've been super happy with OS X for all purposes except servers, but to each their own, and that's where Linux (and the BSDs) shine – giving you access under the hood, which is awesome, but some of us just want the car to drive itself, so to speak.

[wtbob]

> Personally, I've been super happy with OS X for all purposes except servers, but to each their own, and that's where Linux (and the BSDs) shine – giving you access under the hood, which is awesome, but some of us just want the car to drive itself, so to speak.

I can understand that, but I just can't live without a tiling window manager. Every time I have to use a UI with movable windows I feel old-fashioned and clumsy. If you think about, tiling is the interface folks are used to with their phones and tablets already.

There's good UI research potential in discovering the ideal ways to indicate how to split, move &c. windows in a tiling WM.

[codezero]

There are a bunch of decent tiling window managers on OS X but I don't know if any support a Common Lisp connection. Which one do you use on Linux, I'd like to check it out.

I've tried tiling wms in the past but they never stick for me, probably because most of my work is isolated to the browser and email, and I typically have each maximized on separate displays. I've always preferred my terminals to be backgrounded when not in use and to have all the tabs consolidated.