Just tuning in? Have a look at [Part 1][1] to find out how I installed Fedora 20 on a MacBook Air and why I am so interested in trying to duplicate or even surpass the user experience that I previously enjoyed with OS X.
A little background here: I have been a Mac enthusiast for a number of years now. I would not say that I am religious about OS X, but if the OS X user experience is a philosophical application of “[opinionated][1] [software][2]”, then I find myself in agreement with most of the opinions that the Apple UX team has expressed.
However, I am also an open source developer. I’d like to believe that it is possible to create a similar and possibly even superior experience with a Linux-based desktop environment. And lo, this is what lead me, a few weeks ago, to get Fedora 20 running on a MacBook Air. If you’re interested in trying the same thing, check out Matt Hicks’ [invaluable blog post][3] on setting things up.
Over a series of blog posts I am digging into my impressions of the Fedora 20 user experience as I work through this total switch-over.
My recipe for not losing important stuff on my home desktop system...
I've inherited a project that is seeing some performance issues. We knew this was at least partly to blame on the UI, but most of the problem is down in the application. Fine; we've got a plan for the application-level issue and that'll get solved. But right now, I've been picking through the UI because even though inspection with FireBug reveals that the site is loading at a reasonable clip, it doesnt seem to be rendering the main page until every last linked resource is loaded in the browser.
Well, that was a bad call. SunRocket basically imploded this week, and I'm unlikely to see a prorated return on my flat $200 for a year of service. So now I'm on the fence; I'd sure hate to come crawling back to Vonage in time to watch them implode the same way.
When you publish something! And let me tell you, its a page-turner. Oh well; you gotta start somewhere :–)
Without going into too many details, I started Sunday with two computers and finished with none. Hardware problems were the order of the day, and so I am ditching my miserable SFF case (I'm looking at you, Soltek) and going with a comparitively gigantic microATX case and motherboard. With the investment of a mere $140, I'll be able to cram the best parts of the two dead machines into something that is quiet and, ideally functional.
After some consideration (and paranoia about the direction things seem to be going on the web), I decided to reign in control over my own ideas (unoriginal as they are). So thats why I'm blogging under my own steam now, despite the excellent tools afforded to me by the likes of LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, and Blogger. I'm also syndicating my blog via RSS so that folks with aggregators can read me without actually coming to my website.