OS X Vs. Linux On The Desktop

saintlupus writes: "There's an interesting article about the recent web browsing stats of Linux by Charles Moore, a fairly well-known web journalist in the Mac community. He asks whether OS X is the deathblow to Linux in the desktop and scientific computing markets. He also touches on the perennial "I'll run it on my Athlon or not at all" mindset of current Lintel hardware owners. Definitely worth a read." The article that Charles uses as his jumping point is the recent stats on Linux on the desktop. That article cites .24%, but Charles article has some pieces on why that number could be wrong.

Comments

OSX has already won, short-term...

[TellarHK]

To quote "Sean Connery" on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy ''My time has come, Trebek!''

I've been ranting about this for a few weeks now, ever since purchasing my first Mac to use, and my rather surprisingly pleasant introduction to OSX.

Linux has always had two major things going for it. Free as in beer and speech, and the open source development model for the kernel. But at the same time, what it's had going against it were a difficult install (not difficult for me, difficult for grandma) and the clunky, quirky system that is X11. (clunky compared to what it -could- be, not necessarily the current competition)

Linux isn't ready for prime time just yet. It could be, but it's not ready yet. Say what you will about Mandrake, but grandma can't use it.

Now, OSX has the advantage of a pretty decent Mach/BSD core, and an incredibly impressive and functional GUI. Aqua, for being as young and closed as it is, does a damn good job at innovating in the 2D paradigm. Transparencies, dialog boxes that attach to the affected window, an actually useful style of windowshading. And all this with the environment of *nix beneath. With OSX, more than half the work Linux needs to do to make it on the desktop has already been accomplished. People may call for Apple to open the GUI, or they'll whine and complain that it's not open enough. So be it. If you want it that badly, make your own that's better. Open source doesn't have to simply follow other ideas, it can innovate too.

I Don't Care

[krmt]

Ok, first off... 0.24% is not bad. I personally don't care, because that number can still go higher. I know Linus isn't aiming for world domination, nor is Redhat, Debian, or anyone else really (maybe RMS, but that's Ok.) The point is, it's there, it's usable, and people can move to it if they choose.

As for OSX, yeah it's a fantastic product. The best OS in the world for desktop in my opinion. But that doesn't mean it'll stay that way.

Anyone remember 1984? Apple was the best desktop OS then too. They were really something to cheer for then. It wasn't just a new pretty and slick interface, it was a whole new way of working with computers. Sure, it was clunky in some ways, but Apple had the best system on the market for years.

So what happened? Well, most people know about this, but they got greedy and lazy. They overcharged. They stopped building the coolest stuff. They let the OS wither and die as we salivated over the ill-fated Copland. 3rd party developers abandoned us and unless you were willing to fork out hundreds of dollars for dev tools and docs, there was no way you were going to help the problem. They still had their strengths, but they were a shell of the vibrant company that they once were.

So here we are now. Apple's fixed things. They've got the best system on the planet. They've got slick hardware. They give the dev tools and docs for free again, AppleII style. People gush about the system left and right, and they should! It's really nice.

But who's to say that it'll be that way in two years? Apple could get lazy again. They could get greedy again. They could fire all their talent or let them leave again. And then everyone with macs will be back where they were five years ago, fretting over whether or not to move to windows.

And you know what? Linux will still be there, .24% or more or less, but it will still be there. So I personally don't care about what this article is talking about. I felt screwed by apple, and I'm never going back, no matter how nice their stuff is. There's a reason people push free as in speech, and it's because you will not get screwed over when some company like apple decides you're not worth the effort because you don't use photoshop.

I love Linux because it frees me, not just to work and learn, but to work and learn with confidence that my skills will be worthwhile, and that I will never be a commodity because I can contribute. I'm proud to be part of that 0.24% because that 0.24% isn't just something to be treated like pennies that someone is afraid to lose. It's 0.24% people who care, who can and do contribute. Linux is that 0.24%: it's people not stock options.

So you can keep your flashy system. I'm staying right here where I'm not just revenue on a balance sheet.

Re:I Don't Care

[krmt]

I know, I was a big time supporter of the community myself back in the day.

The problem with the mac community though, is that you control nothing. Apple owns you in every way, and when they drop the ball, you get dropped with it. You have no sway over your own destiny. I personally wasn't a graphic designer, so in the mid 90's I really felt fucked over. I didn't do photoshop or quark or freehand or premier or Kai or any of the other programs that Apple really loved. As a result, I felt alienated. I especially felt out becuase I wanted to create programs on the platform that was described as the platform for creative types. And I couldn't because I couldn't afford it.

What a load of shit.

Apple likes having a community around, but you have no power. You had no power to save cyberdog or OpenDoc or Quickdraw GLX or any of the other great stuff Apple put out. You had no power to say "I want OSX to support my older Powermacs!" You had no power to demand that games be made for the system (only recently has that even started to change). And you have no power to say "I want to buy my system from someone else." This is key, especially if you've ever tried to deal with upgrading a mac, and finding you're paying the price for a whole new machine (something I've experienced).

The Mac community is a strong and rabid one no doubt, but they hold no real sway. If Apple moves, you move with it, no ifs ands or buts. If IBM moves, I don't. If Redhat moves then I don't. I control my own destiny here because Redhat and IBM don't own Linux anymore than Slackware, Debian, or even Linus does. And if someone with a balance sheet decides not to bother with something I need because it's got nothing to do with Adobe products, then I'm not screwed. That's the difference between Mac and Linux, and that's why I made my switch.

Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Albert Schueller]

Cost and openness are the key. Linux will completely dominate the non-US markets over the next 5 years. Desktops and servers alike. This squabble between OS X and Linux is laughable US-centered viewpoint. Neither OS X (nor M$ for that matter) will ever see the non-US growth that Linux will see. Cheap software on cheap hardware will win in the long run. Third world nations aren't interested in paying Apple for its hardware or M$ for its software. Nor are they able. Yet that's where ALL the people are.

Re:Unlikely

[staeci]

MS wants you to buy new machines cause of OEM contracts.
Apple wants you to buy new machines because they are a hardware company.
GNU wants you to be productive with your software no matter what you run or how old it is.

Maybe in 10 years Apple will be gone and MS will rule the world or maybe the other way around. Either way GNU and Linux or HURD will still be there pottering round with a couple of % user base, one of which will be me.

Re:Unlikely

[softsign]

It's not about performance or commodity hardware. Since when do professionals or researchers care whether or not their personal machines are made from bargain-basement components? These are the same peole that are springing for $10-20k workstations out of their budget...

It's about having a computer that:

1. Travels well - Powerbooks and now even the iBook are dream laptops.
2. Allows you to prepare and deliver presentations, often just minutes before you step up to the mike - with a native Powerpoint you are leagues ahead of anything Linux can offer.
3. Gives you the Unix underbelly all geeks know and love.
4. Gives you a beautiful, functional GUI - say what you want about Aqua, amidst a sea of Winbooks, it still raises the occasional eyebrow at conferences and makes people just that tiny bit more likely to remember your talk specifically.

I'm not just saying this as a rabid Mac advocate. As an EE grad student I look around my department and I see a sizeable chunk of profs and students using Macs - myself included (though I still have a PC at home). My supervisor - a hardcore Mac user - has just switched to OS X exclusively. We don't all use Macs because we are a bunch of Luddites... we use them because, all things considered, we'd rather just get our work done: easily and effectively.

I won't even touch the x86 argument except to point out that re-compiling an app for a different hardware platform is done thousands of times a day by Linux developers - what makes you think it would be any harder for Apple developers to do? Though I agree we might be long accustomed to airborne swine before Apple publishes OS X for x86. =)

OSX and the Engineering desktop

[wdavies]

Hi,

If anyone wants to know why Engineers might want a powerbook, look at the specs of the Titanium Powerbook - 1 gig ram - and the fact there is a clean Nix underneath.

A few months ago I did an experiment with OSX 10.1 -- basically I got my company's entire tree built just fine in 2 days. No code changed, just a few softlinks needed to be set up (Perl for example was in usr/bin instead of usr/local/bin. This tree is normally only run on Linux or Solaris's box.My next laptop wil be a TiBook -- especially now they have the CDRW/DVD combo drive.

I have been evaluating getting a PC laptop -- I can't find anything close to the TiBook -- try finding a slim design, with a 15" display and 1 gig Ram -- Sony slim Vaios max out at 512 or 384. Toshiba at 256mb. Please will someone point me at an x86 with those kind of specs, and I might go with Linux instead. I'd be totally convinced if it came with the cinema-scope style screen (2 emacs sessions side by side).

Now, for Desktops a whole different story -- we just got a rack mounted box for $4k -- twice the power of a E420, at 10% of the cost (and a 1/4 of the footprint and weight). I just couldn't fit it in my rucksack (close though, maybe in my 70 litre one)

Winton

p.s. This isn't a troll. I want a laptop with a gig of RAM (we're doing some hard memory intensive work)

"grandma" can't install Windows any better..

[leereyno]

So grandma can't install Linux, well she can't install windows either.

Show me a group of people who can sucessfully install windows and all of the necessary drivers, and I'll show you a group of people who can also install Linux. Technical ignorance plagues the Windows world just as much as it does the Linux world, just ask anyone who does tech support. If systems didn't come with windows pre-installed the barrier to entry for it would be just as high as for Linux.

Lee