Viable Windows Replacement

Jeremy Zawodny talks about the needs for his workstation and his decision to go back to Microsoft Windows from his Mac in a recent post. (See: I’m Joining the Majority by Putting the Mac Aside in 2005)
I’ve struggled with this as well, actually I seem to be constantly struggling with this. There always seems to be something missing from Windows for me. I cannot exactly put my finger on it, but I haven’t found what I am looking for in a Unix (Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, XFCE, etc…) platform either. For a while I thought that the OSX platform would give me the best of both worlds. A good polished desktop with support for modern applications, and the Unix core that I end up constantly using.
It just doesn’t do the job.
Jeremy is absolutely right with this statement, “On the Mac I always feel like they don’t quite belong–they are second class citizens.” On the Mac you are a second class citizen. The platform is not large enough to get the attention/resources of the commercial software houses. Sure there is commercial software for the Mac, but in most cases it has been ported, and usually not the latest and greatest. Apple is trying to combat this, and lately rumors are circulating that they will be releasing an office suite.
Don’t get me wrong the Unix support on the OSX platform is really cool. However, it is just not all the way there. Having to launch an X11 application in its own windowing environment sucks. Apple really needs to integrate this so when you launch an X11 application it loads in their window manager. And hence the second class citizen for the unix applications as well. Console applications work fine, but when you want to run a GUI, you just feel disconnected.
And so what do I end up with… A laptop running Windows that I work primarily on, and a series of Unix based servers that power my environments. SecureCRT/Putty for an SSH client, and when necessary Exceed or Cygwin for an X client so I can export a Display. Not perfect, but it works.