I try very hard not to come off as a Linux zealot. I do recognize that it has a lot of flaws and functionality yet to be implemented. However, in my opinion its positive sides far outweighs its negatives, and that’s why I use it as my primary system.

But it’s not the only platform I use. While I don’t have any dedicated Windows boxes anymore, I still have at least one dual boot system for those applications or games that I want to use - just not every day. Right now I even have an iMac that I use every now and then (I do not own it, however).

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Whenever I use those systems, there are some things that make me think “Why doesn’t Linux have this?”. Things like Time Machine, for example. But more times than not, I get extremely irritated over tiny things that Linux does, but the other platforms don’t.

Contained within this post is a short list of little Linux things that I miss whenever I’m not using Linux. I’m not going to include big things like being able to install software from repositories, or anything like that. Just the tiny things that I can’t stand not being able to use.

Scrolling in applications that don’t have focus

Man, do I love this feature or what? It’s such a tiny thing, but being able to scroll one window while another window has focus is just so awesome. One example of when this comes in handy is when you’re in a chat and want to be able to respond quickly without having to switch windows, while still being able to read an article in a full sized browser window.

Middle click pasting

It’s almost like having a second clipboard! To those of you who aren’t running Linux, X - the Window system used in most Linux distributions - lets you paste any piece of text that is currently highlighted by simply clicking the middle mouse button. This allows you to hold one piece of text in the normal clipboard, and another piece of text by selecting it and using the middle mouse button to paste.

Moving windows with Alt

You know how you can move windows around by grabbing the window decoration bar? What if you for one reason or another can’t reach the window bar (or if there is no window bar at all)? That’s when it really comes in handy to be able to just hold the Alt key and grab the window wherever you want!

Restarting X with Ctrl + Alt + Backspace

Regardless of what operating system you use, it will eventually lock up on you. Usually that means you have to press the allmighty power button and do a hard reset. Not in Linux. Just press Ctrl + Alt + Backspace and the graphical environment will restart itself, almost certainly killing whatever application it was that froze up your desktop.

This behaviour has been disabled since version 1.6 of X.org, but re-enabling it is quite easy.

Instantly killing applications

While we’re talking about applications freezing up, xkill is another great little feature that I find myself missing whenever I’m not in Linux. If an application has gone on strike, instead of having to do Ctrl + Alt + Del, selecting the application from a list and then waiting for it to die, I can just open up a terminal, type xkill and simply click on the application I want to kill. Boom! It’s gone. No waiting required.

Print Screen gives you a saving prompt

I don’t know if this holds true for all distributions and all desktop environments, but in Ubuntu, Gnome, pressing the print screen button brings up a promt that allows you to specify a file name and directory to save the picture in. This way you won’t have to open up an image editor just to save your screenshot. This functionality is in Mac OS as well, kind of. There you can’t choose where to save the image, and you can’t set the file name either. But at least you don’t have to fire up Photoshop just to save it.

What can Linux learn?

Those are some of the small things that I miss when not in Linux. But as I said in the first couple of paragraphs, Linux is far from perfect. I’m sure there are things that other platforms have that Linux lacks. If you’re a Windows or Mac user, what do you miss when you’re not logged in on your platform of choice? Leave a comment below and let me know!