Re: linux vs mac

Timberwoof wrote:
In article <N9Rji.29714$19.12027@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
TheLetterK <none@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Timberwoof wrote:
In article <dLPji.29673$19.17396@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
TheLetterK <none@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Timberwoof wrote:
In article <1183769448.309265.117780@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Quadibloc <jsavard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

cyloaft...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi, I'm new to computers. Which is the better: ubuntu or apple
operating sys.?
Ubuntu can run on cheap Intel boxes, while to run Apple's OS X, you
need a genuine Macintosh computer. They cost more money.

There is a lot of software you can get to run on Linux, and the Ubuntu
distribution is a Linux distribution packaged so as to be useful for
relative novices to computing. Generally, speaking, though, that
software will be things like FORTRAN compilers, editors, mathematics
software, and so on. GIMP, a nice picture editing package, is
available for it, though.

If you're looking for the kind of software you can buy at a store in a
box - popular games, utilities - and if you would like to do things on
your computer like play DVD movies, or purchase and listen to
legitimate (and hence DRM-protected) music downloads - then the
Macintosh is a better solution.

Of course, if getting popular software in a box is what is important
to you, while the Macintosh certainly has Ubuntu beat hands down...
you might also want to consider another operating system, made by an
outfit in Redmond, Washington. This operating system, because it is
somewhat more popular than Apple's OS X, would let you choose from a
wider selection of packaged software at lower prices.

However, it is true there is a downside - this other operating system
is _so_ popular that most viruses and spyware are written to run on
it, so indeed you might still decide to go with a Macintosh. Just
check around your city to ensure that there is more than one store
with a good selection of Macintosh software that is reasonably easy to
get to.
John forgot to mention that all that free/open-source software that's available for Linux is also available on the Mac.
Though if you consider it difficult to install this software on Linux,
Hunh? I just upgraded PHP and MySQL on OS X Server from 4.whatevers to 5.whatevers. I got nice precompiled packages with installers.
Now, try something a little more esoteric. Like, say, Cinelerra.

http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3

That's cool. It appears to use QuickTime4Linux. http://heroinewarrior.com/quicktime.php3

"Be aware of one thing: Quicktime for Linux won't read any of the movies you download from the internet. Quicktime is a wrapper for many different kinds of compression formats. What you knew as "Quicktime 4", "Quicktime 5", "Quicktime 6", are really different distributions of compression formats. The codecs we support are mainly uncompressed."



Any time you have to build these apps from source on OS X, you're going to have problems. Even Fink is only a marginal improvement, since the packages are so out of date. Certainly, you get some of the heavy-hitter server packages and a mostly-up-to-date KDE, but as soon as you start digging, you start finding holes in software availability.

Yet again, OS X users get yesterday's technology. For some reason, they seem to think this puts them ahead of the people who actually get updates to their software.

So in other words, if you are running a business and can afford to hire a Linux guru to keep your systems up-to-date, or you can afford to buy Mac OS X systems and tools, then you go with Linux of Mac.

Who needs a Linux-guru to run 'update-manager'? It's a two-click process.

But if you're a tinkerer who wants the minimum of fuss and bother with the tinkering, you go with Linux.

No tinkering required. Just preferred.

Of if you just want to get your projects done without having to futz with the intricacies of Linux, you get Mac OS.

And don't mind spending a small fortune to do it.


you might as well consider it impossible on OS X. Not to mention, the OS X versions are often lacking features,
Cites, please.
Anything involving integration with Linux kernel functionality is either unusable or lacking in features on OS X. QEMU, for example. GNOME for OS X is a few *years* out of date, as is Xorg. Need more?

Huh. Most references I get for Gnome OS X are themes to make Gnome look like OS X.

No ***. That's because few people use GNOME for OS X. I'm a huge fan of GNOME, and even I use KDE, because GNOME on OS X is so out of date. Go look at the Fink packages, they post their package lists online.

or do not perform as well as the same software on Linux.
Cites, please.
OOo has always been painfully slow on Macs, compared to the Windows and Linux versions. This is especially true for the X11 version. For that matter, X11 and Xorg hardly perform well on OS X. MySQL has had performance problems on OS X for years now, and no fixes seem to be on the horizon (the problems are fundamental and specific to OS X). Need more?

So if you specifically need X applications, run them on a Linux box.

Which, I need. Which several people have claimed, in this very thread, "run just fine on OS X", despite the fact that many do not. Even many that do are older versions that someone went through the trouble to port.


Plus, many of these applications require the use of X11, which creates a very disjointed user experience on OS X.
IOW, it would be just as disjointed as when running Linux.
Not at all, since I wouldn't have the whole X11-Apple dichotomy going on. X11 on OS X is extremely disjointed, far more than X Windows on platforms where X Windows is the primary environment. When using X Windows as the primary desktop environment, I can pick one desktop environment and stick with it throughout. I can't do that on OS X, at least not without a lot of work (and forgoing all Mac-specific benefits).

Not to mention, Apple is using an extremely out of date version of Xfree86. None of the major usability and consistency developments of the past few years have made it into Apple's version. None of the freedesktop standards have made it into Apple's X11, which is incompatible with software built against the version of Xorg in Fink.

No, you missed my point.

I have found that Linux, all by itself, tends to be disjointed in "its" approach to UI. Different distributions are very different from one another,

Different distributions are different operating systems. You compare *one* distribution to OS X, not *all* of them. I'm not aware of anyone who uses multiple distributions on the same machine, concurrently.

and even subsequent distributions of the "same" thing change remarkably. For instance, I just installed the latest Fedora Core on an Intel box, and the first thing I had to do was try to find all the various tools and settings and widgets and things that I had finally figured out in an earlier version.

This is one of many reasons why I don't use Fedora, and don't recommend Fedora. Fedora is an unusual distribution, in that Redhat uses is as their experimental testbed without making that abundently clear.

And Yellow Dog, which is "based on" Red Hat, has yet a different layout, including a stupid Menu/Applications/Applications/... path in its menu bar thing.

YDL is "based on Redhat" in that it uses the RPM package management system. That does not mean that it's intent is to clone Redhat.

Every new distribution is an adventure in figuring out how the UI "team" was organized this time: who liked whom, who hated whom, who had his own revolutionary ideas on how UI should work.

So pick one of the better distributions. If you find it difficult to keep pace with experimental distributions, it's probably best to stick with stable distributions. In Redhat's case, that would mean buying a copy of Redhat. In Debian's case, that would mean using the stable distribution instead of unstable or testing. In fact, Debian seems ideal for an OS X user. They're often behind the times as well, since updates trickle down so slowly. Advancement is almost as slow as OS X's glacial approach.
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