New computer

[ewx]

I bought a new computer. The main reason for wanting a new one is that for some time the images my current camera produces are large enough that my Mac Pro was rather slow on them. I’d have replaced it with another Mac but Apple’s current lineup was unattractive on both price and performance grounds, so I got a PC from World Of Computers instead

Comments

[mobbsy]

I've found that when I need to do a lot of Unixy things on Windows, these days the easiest thing is to have a VM running to switch to. RAM is cheap...

[ewx]

I've got a Linux machine on the same network and an X server on my display, so I'm reasonably well set up. But I was going to give Hyper-V a try at some point.

[gerald_duck]

I always feel that tabbing shouldn't be part of the application, it should be part of the window manager: it's not clear that it benefits one application more than another.

For one thing, applications are the wrong conceptual groupings. I want the editor windows, compiler windows, Wikipedia look-up and e-mail thread for a problem I'm working on grouped together, rather than all my editor windows in one place, PuTTY windows in another, etc.

For another, I seem to know better than application designers whether I want virtual desktops, MDI, tabs, tree tabs or separate windows in any particular circumstance.

[ewx]

If window managers actually supported that it would be a good reason to leave it out of applications, but as it turns out they don't.

[ext_1903]

I want [many windows] for a problem I'm working on grouped together

I use virtual desktops for that. When I run out of virtual desktops, I know I'm trying to do too many things at once.

[gerald_duck]

It's not really "at once". I might, for example, do something for a bit and get to a point where I need turnaround on some question from someone in a different timezone. At that point I'm not going to close the windows, but I'm going to put it out of my mind for many hours.

In any case, I don't personally like virtual desktops much. Frames I could move around within my desktop like windows, into which I could group other windows, would be considerably nicer.