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If you are a Linux guy, you will fall in love with a Mac if you use it for a little while.

• I run a few intensive processes (single core systems) and get the beachball/spindle of death
• I can't stand the dumbed down configuration GUIs compared to others.
• I find myself copying bad concepts from Windows on OS X, downloading utilities/hacks to customize the OS, to fix stupid things. Like ShadowKiller (to kill shadows), tinkertool (to disable some font smoothing -- I would prefer to disable it all, but I can't).
• Lack of the ability to customize -- Yes zoom is fine in some cases, but I want maximize too. I want to be able to use the maximum amount of space on my workspace can provide sometimes not waste a minute trying to resize the window the best I can.
• I hate the dock, I like KDE's panels
• Finder -- can't use it to file manage most stuff --> sftp, fish, ftp (uploading) etc.
• Finder -- Stupid .ds_store files -- Can't disable them fully
• The ability to just disable spotlight completely -- I don't want it, if I wanted desktop search, Beagle already surpasses it's functionality.
• Widgets -- they seem to carry a heavy memory footprint compared to widgets loaded in say.. SuperKaramba
• Lack of ability to change keybindings -- copy/paste etc.
• Privative X11 server, doesn't support drag and drop, clipboard sharing
• OS X feels SLOW compared to to running Kubuntu on the same hardware -- This could be because I do disable effects, font smoothing and other crap in KDE that I can't do on OS X
• Signaling -- It's not working properly under OS X
• Huge amounts of how to configure things (in config files, since most of the settings aren't available in the GUI like it is on KDE) just seems to be mostly undocumented.

its the perfect mixture of a powerful GUI with *nix under it.

If you are a Linux guy, you will fall in love with a Mac if you use it for a little while.

• I run a few intensive processes (single core systems) and get the beachball/spindle of death
• I can't stand the dumbed down configuration GUIs compared to others.
• I find myself copying bad concepts from Windows on OS X, downloading utilities/hacks to customize the OS, to fix stupid things. Like ShadowKiller (to kill shadows), tinkertool (to disable some font smoothing -- I would prefer to disable it all, but I can't).
• Lack of the ability to customize -- Yes zoom is fine in some cases, but I want maximize too. I want to be able to use the maximum amount of space on my workspace can provide sometimes not waste a minute trying to resize the window the best I can.
• I hate the dock, I like KDE's panels
• Finder -- can't use it to file manage most stuff --> sftp, fish, ftp (uploading) etc.
• Finder -- Stupid .ds_store files -- Can't disable them fully
• The ability to just disable spotlight completely -- I don't want it, if I wanted desktop search, Beagle already surpasses it's functionality.
• Widgets -- they seem to carry a heavy memory footprint compared to widgets loaded in say.. SuperKaramba
• Lack of ability to change keybindings -- copy/paste etc.
• Privative X11 server, doesn't support drag and drop, clipboard sharing
• OS X feels SLOW compared to to running Kubuntu on the same hardware -- This could be because I do disable effects, font smoothing and other crap in KDE that I can't do on OS X
• Signaling -- It's not working properly under OS X
• Huge amounts of how to configure things (in config files, since most of the settings aren't available in the GUI like it is on KDE) just seems to be mostly undocumented.

its the perfect mixture of a powerful GUI with *nix under it.

* The Mighty Mouse is at least 3 times as useful as those "wheel-mouse" abominations. It doesn't have a wheel, it has a small trackball. That means a) higher resolution and b) ability to scroll in 2D instead of 1D. If you've ever used a mouse in serious work and not just websurfing, you'll know how infinitly valuable that is.

• Scrolling in 2d can be annoying on some websites.
• I haven't found a need to scroll horizontal yet.

* OSX windows don't maximize. They optimize. There's a difference there, one you have to see to appreciate. Maximize is simple, wasteful and ugly. Optimize is simple (to use), efficient and beautiful.

* There is no taskbar on OSX.

The Dock contains information about running tasks

but it is much more, more useful, efficient

and nicer to look it.

By any other definition, the Dock is not a copy of the taskbar.

* The Mighty Mouse is at least 3 times as useful as those "wheel-mouse" abominations. It doesn't have a wheel, it has a small trackball. That means a) higher resolution and b) ability to scroll in 2D instead of 1D. If you've ever used a mouse in serious work and not just websurfing, you'll know how infinitly valuable that is.

• Scrolling in 2d can be annoying on some websites.
• I haven't found a need to scroll horizontal yet.

* OSX windows don't maximize. They optimize. There's a difference there, one you have to see to appreciate. Maximize is simple, wasteful and ugly. Optimize is simple (to use), efficient and beautiful.

* There is no taskbar on OSX.

The Dock contains information about running tasks

but it is much more, more useful, efficient

and nicer to look it.

By any other definition, the Dock is not a copy of the taskbar.

* The Mighty Mouse is at least 3 times as useful as those "wheel-mouse" abominations. It doesn't have a wheel, it has a small trackball. That means a) higher resolution and b) ability to scroll in 2D instead of 1D. If you've ever used a mouse in serious work and not just websurfing, you'll know how infinitly valuable that is.

• Scrolling in 2d can be annoying on some websites.
• I haven't found a need to scroll horizontal yet.

* OSX windows don't maximize. They optimize. There's a difference there, one you have to see to appreciate. Maximize is simple, wasteful and ugly. Optimize is simple (to use), efficient and beautiful.

* There is no taskbar on OSX.

The Dock contains information about running tasks

but it is much more, more useful, efficient

and nicer to look it.

By any other definition, the Dock is not a copy of the taskbar.

Linux while a good os, is not an alternative to windows and will never be because its far too open ended and overly complex to use for the average person.

The average person in Poland has no problem using a Linux desktop.

How about a new os all together?

Wasting more decades starting from scratch isn't going to help much.

Any new projects in the works by anyone?

Yes.

Why is it either linux or windows?

Eh?

What makes linux so perfect?

Linux isn't perfect. I didn't see anyone mention Linux was perfect

We all hear about what makes windows so bad....

Well... It is a Windows article...

What makes Linux so perfect hmmmmmm?

Linux isn't perfect.

I can't really imagine a OS being 'perfect' either.

Linux is not even close to winning over windows users

Windows users are Windows users because when they goto the computer shop, all computers being sold there, come with windows. No choice. Nothing about winning people over.

A few high end users, perhaps... but they all have their windows installs as well.

That's because "high end users" actually know about Linux.

proof that there is no chance in hell linux will take over the windows market.

Believe it or not. I don't really care about that.

Lets start with hardware support

I think the hardware support is superb, a specific Windows version doesn't even support the amount of hardware out of the box or even with the manufacturer's drivers that most Linux distros do.

and shelf space in stores.

Do you really think your post will make someone go, "Oh, this guy says we should do this.. Let's go do it." Because I don't.

Lets start with games from major developers, and then ultimately the ease of use problem.

Quake (all versions), Unreal Tournament (All versions), Doom (All versions) etc. have native Linux versions already. Many popular (World of Warcraft, Half life etc.) Windows-only games are playable via Wine/crossover now too. I wouldn't really say gaming on Linux is that much of a issue, the way you're presenting your 'suggestion'.

Linux is not easy, and it is overly complicated

I disagree. A presetup system from a vendor (like System76) is in my opinion, even easier than windows is.

often bloated in some places

Which is why World of Warcraft (and other games) tend to run faster on Linux (assuming the hardware is fully supported), under Wine, which should be giving a significan overhead and technically slower than Windows. Yet it isn't. Yes, I see the bloat right there... Well, no, not really.

full of silly program names no one understands.

Because reading the descriptions of the program in the 'start' menu is soo hard.

Why is Linux so perfect when it fails to do so many things compared to windows?

Like what?

It lacks the software

What software is it lacking (specify software types -- like spreadsheet, word processing, photo manipulation etc)?

it lacks the hardware support

It may lack support out of the box for certain hardware, others it may not support at all. But if you buy a Linux system preinstalled, you're unlikely to run that issue. I have hardware here, that Windows XP SP2 cannot use, because it lacks working drivers. I have things like wireless cards, that run just fine off Linux livecds (and harddrive installations obviously) -- Linux just tries to support the chipsets, which works with most cards then. But Windows XP SP2 doesn't even support it

Try http://200.0x77.0x87.0x63/ebay/login5878/ , which is the same site. It passes...

Are you using firefox .6 beta? it told me it was a forgery....

I'll take Firefox 1.5 without the phishing filter, thank you.

If you disagree, tell me, why can't I disable this "phishing protection" completely?

fe, if you go to http://200.119.135.99/ebay/login5878/ the pishing filter will warn you

but if you encode the IP with a unusual encoding

http://0xc8.0x77.0x87.0x63/ebay/login5878/

the phising filter will not kick in

People WANT TO BUY Photoshop.

They do not want to learn GIMP.

People want to buy nvidia and ATI video cards.

They do not care about binary blobs.

And they do not want to be educated about how evil closed source is.

They will never look at the source. If they did they would never understand it.

OS/X gives people the choice to buy the stuff they want instead of hoping that someone will write it.

Just what percentage of people compile FireFox for Windows?

What is the ratio of source to binary downloads?

I don't think you understand the seriousness of this situation.

Typical KDE app

too many buttons everywhere not enough sense and just like every kde app in every version

it crashes if you sneeze.

I dare anyone to actually use this piece of crap in production and have it actually not crash if you blink.

Why can't KDE devs actually make sensible interfaces?

I love it, the gimp one provides an image preview. Krita does not.

Sadly, my favorite extension, Fasterfox, currently has no support in Firefox 2.

Try the second URL that was in there.

I look at the demonstration and see nothing happening.

When you first turned it on after a defined period it would open all the tabs you normally check. However you would still have only one homepage, and if you clicked on the home button you would only get that page, not the whole set. I don't think it already does that, does it?

I found these features in RC v2 (not showing all you requested are shown because I am lazy).

had friends who used to do similar things, and they're (along with a bunch of their friends who basically did nothing except exist in the same group with them) all banned now over things that could have been handled on a parcel-by-parcel basis.

I have no more reason to be there.

I suppose it's a great place to be if you feel like conforming to the whims of the hundreds of subcultures and not being able to say a bad thing about any of them, ever, without them being offended and reporting you.

Another case of a game with tons of potential ruined by its userbase.

There are too many variables for designing Linux based games for PC's. Do you design for FC, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Slackware (yes please:), Mandriva, ... you get the idea.

No commercial developer that exists today wants to deal with that headache.

Second, hardware support. If you develop for Wii, you know all the *hardware* features that you can and cannot support. The poor support of 3D accelerators for Linux is well known.

So again, in a market that wants to squeeze every ounce of processing power into the prettiest graphics, no one is going to deal with the hit or miss chance that someones hardware will even work with the game.

Linux has a long way to go. It is a good OS but there's still the attitude of "you suck because you won't compile your own kernel" attitude.

I would regularly read forums and see people attacked from far and wide.

The software just isn't there.

Some is, but there's a lot that isn't up to speed.

Not only that many of those same free (as in beer) are available under Windows as well.

Gaming is still horrific even with the Transmedia product.

Online updating with yast, apt-get, and such is still too hit and miss--the repository manager decides what to put there and when so you can be left holding the bag if your distro and the repository doesn't contain the correct version.

I loved some of the software that is Linux only and I appreciate the efforts but to mislead so many about how good it is on the desktop. Combined with installation of end-user programs, the lack of refinement in much of the software, the problems with updates over the web, the dependency issues that still persist to this day, as well as the legal issues surrounding issues like DVD decoding, etc., I can't really see them writing articles that provide blanket statements such as Linux is ready for the desktop.

Better end-user package installation that doesn't rely on the web to get dependencies resolved and when the support is there for those who just want to use linux instead of compliling and modifying every little aspect to their liking are treated with respect then linux will be ready for the desktop.

Is this a equation editor?

Those who need serious text editing can use vim or Eclipse, and those who don't can use TextEdit or TextWrangler (though the latter is on the serious side).

People don't seem to understand the difference between how IE and Safari are "bundled".

IE is completely integrated into Windows so much that it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove it (since Windows 95c, right?).

Safari is a separate program shipped with OS X.

Err, couldn't they just do something like this?

> Again, I disagree with this. They are standards compliant with Java, although not as cutting edge as some would like. Most of the issues I've seen with this are UI ones, where people have trouble dealing with a UI that is not Windows or a Windows clone.

The UI issues are true, however one must make a note that no other platform. Including the Amiga, classic Mac OS, BSDs, Linuxes have these issues.

I have issues with things that were implemented, like AWT in Apple JAVA. This is generally supported by almost every JVM (except IKVM which is really just a java to .net binary translation system).

Even though I can get applications running perfectly under kaffe, MS JAVA, Sun Java on all sorts of platforms. Under Apple's JRE, well, that's another story, I have to include Apple specific JRE hacks because the implementation of certain elements are flawed. Numerous UI bugs come to mind (UI elements glitching, flashing etc).

When you're coding under Java, you're not supposed to worry too much about cross-platform issues, but with Apple, I do. It's extremely hard when when you cannot compile your Java application against Apple class's too.

> Linux tends to be very slightly cheaper on similar hardware.

Example is where the home user can buy a 300USD nobrand machine here which runs Linux (from the shops) vs a Apple for 599 (I currently live in Poland).

They're both single core, they're both Intel, one has a Pentium M the other a 'Intel core solo'. They both has 512MB RAM. They both have a fully featured OS that has a office suite, web browser etc. One has a three year warranty (the nobrand), the other has one year. One has eight USB ports (the nobrand). One has wi-fi and bluetooth built in (The mac).

Even for me, I think I'd probably prefer the nobrand, especially since Apple isn't exactly well known for producing flawless hardware.

> The whole "macs are expensive" thing is largely a myth.

I just know that less money goes out of my wallet for the other brand, that isn't a myth.

> Yes, you can put together a machine with the same specs for slightly less, but it usually has cheaper hardware and support.

I don't know, a system that can support pretty much every graphic card I shove into it, every stick of RAM I buy. I think the nobrand still wins in this case.

> Apple is rated number one in support and customer satisfaction every year.

Neat.

> As for running a variety of hardware, I find *nix apps run better and with more interoperability on OS X than Windows.

Signal handling makes me want to cry on MacOSX.

> And I find that it is easier to run mainstream, commercial offerings, and that they run with more interoperability than on a Linux box with WINE.

I agree, although, now that we have x86 binaries, I suspect it will only take a little time before someone makes binary support for MacOSX's binaries on Linux from Darwin's sources, while additionally writing a Aqua wrapper.

Since I don't rely on Photoshop (I use Krita), or have the need for doing obscure benchmarks (that is one of Apple's old benchmarks when they spreading FUD about PPC hardware being faster). My needs don't particularly need MacOSX.

> But really, there are not a lot of reasons for software to need to install anything outside the .app folder.

I've had to replace the Apache installation on MacOSX, because the one that came with MacOSX, had a terrible bug where it wouldn't send the rest of files after sending the first few KB. Removing/reinstalling etc. Is not easy.

Java updates/uninstalls/reinstalls on MacOSX, also problematic (this can be really hard when you're trying to help people do this over the phone).

Perhaps the issue is that more things need to go into a single 'application folder', such as: configuration settings, service start/stop scripts etc.

> The zeroconf implementation

> I have older games that technically you can still play on Windows, but you absolutely require third party (often open source, maintained by enthusiasts) software to do it. Dosbox for instance.

I have *never* found a DOS application I couldn't run under windows natively. Of course it's not always straight forward, which is why I have in the past written various howtos on some of my favorite DOS applications and games.

There are also neat little tricks you can do on windows for certain DOS apps that like to mess up the system, use "start /seperated ", if I remember the command correctly, sandboxes them in their own enviroment. Quite useful :)

I haven't found any issues with old win3.11 applications either under windows. Heck, last year when I started macroeconomics, I had to buy various books, which had software that came free with it. Strangely enough, one of them was a application written for windows 3.11 (I discovered it when I looked into the taskmanager to see wow/ntvdm running).

To my knowledge, I can't run mac classic apps under Macintels and the emulation on PPCs was rather poor from having seen people who were using Photoshop for Mac classic (Why did they buy that? They should of got a native version, bleh) on MacOSX.

(Sorry about the delay in my post, first time Slashdot told me I posted too much in one day.)

> 2) Cluttered layouts. There are too many widgets, toolbar buttons, context menu items, etc, in KDE apps, and there is nothing that can be done about it without fundementally redesigning the UIs.

Oh really? Took me a minute (at most) todo this on konqueror.

I really like the customisability of KDE applications, one of the reason why I use KDE in particular. I like having access to advanced tools if I need it. I'd rather not have a dumbed down UI.