Solved problems
First, the good news:
- I use Firefox. I'm obsessive about getting a good browser setup. I've tried Chrome. I've tried Safari. No way. Firefox all the way.
- I use Vim a lot - about 80%. I've got a TextMate license (and I use TextMate for most of the 20% of editing done outside Vim). But as and when I move over to Linux full-time, I'm perfectly happy to use Vim.
- For mail, I use mutt (and msmtp, gpg etc.)
- For USENET, I use slrn. And, yes, I do still read USENET a bit.
- For RSS, I use Google Reader. I may switch to NewsBeuter - see Zed Shaw's glorious rant about newsreaders.
- For IRC, I use either irssi or Colloquy. Generally, I use irssi if I want a persistent session, and use Colloquy if I just want to hop on to IRC for a few minutes to talk to someone.
- For IM, I use Adium, but am fine with using Pidgin or tmsnc/mcabber. Of course, it'd be nice if all my friends were to stop being retarded and get on to XMPP.
- For my academic work, I use LyX. It runs pretty well on Linux, OS X and Windows, so that's fine. Obviously, I could bite the bullet and learn LaTeX properly and just write it in my text editor.
Stuff that still needs solving
- iTunes style resume support - it's really simple. Apple have gotten it exactly right with iTunes and iPod: the experience comes from having both syncing completely. That means if you listen to a podcast and get half way through, you plug your iPod in, and then you can start playing from where you left. None of the media player apps on Linux yet seem to support being able to store where you are (without 'bookmarks', which is completely moronic). I've tried. I really have. I've attempted to patch Banshee to do just this. I failed, but that may be because I suck at C#.
- Lack of something like CDFinder. I've looked. I've attempted to write my own. CDFinder is essential for my workflow. I don't even need a GUI. I just want a way to catalogue CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, and then easily search the catalogue to find files on those disks.
- GIMP sucks. You wanna see how to build a good Photoshop alternative? Have a look at Pixelmator.
- I've tried hard to get VirtualBox to work in Linux. Can't get anywhere. The Mac version just works.
- Something that rivals Things for task management. I may end up writing my own.
- Quicksilver is unbelievably awesome. (Sadly, the creator of it has been bought off by Google to work on Quick Search Box, which is nowhere near as good.) I've tried a few things like it on other OSes. I've tried Launchy on Windows, which is okay, but not in the same league. GNOME Do is getting there, but is still a way off. The key to Quicksilver is not just the nouns but the verbs - find files, then do things to them. Nobody - not even Google QSB! - seems to have replicated that well.