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

Alot faster, and better than speedstep

[HanzoSan]

Its the new Pentium M series.

Its better than speedstep or so they say. As far as speed its faster than my Desktop which is 400mghz.

I tried an Imac and its definately faster than an Imac which is a G3 used in the Ibook.

So its definately faster than the Ibook. As for the powerbook, even if its the same speed or not faster, the powerbook is over $1500 more.

a functional GUI?

[jonabbey]

Now, OSX has the advantage of a pretty decent Mach/BSD core, and an incredibly impressive and functional GUI.

Mac OS X's Quartz layer is very nice, but in following Steve Job's quest for a unique visual "hook" for X, Apple has rendered the system far less usable/functional than either KDE or Windows. Window transparency is a cool trick and it's wonderful that the graphics engine can do it, but the processor cost for actually turning it on is astronomical. The dock has been widely criticized as being tuned to make a cool demo more than to actually be useful.

Mac OS 9 and before had a really functional GUI. Mac OS X is still a bastardized system that's optimized to look cool on TV more than it is to use.

For my money, the only real advantages that Mac OS X has over Linux are 1) commercial polish, in that all adjustments can be gotten at through the GUI, and all Mac OS X systems will do it the same way, 2) the ability to run your old copies of Dark Castle and SuperPaint, and 3) Quicktime.

For commercial polish, check out Mandrake or the latest Red Hat. They still show more UNIX than OS X does, but they are getting better and better. 2 isn't a factor for me, and as for 3, well, I wouldn't care to run a given OS just because Apple is trying to hold online content hostage to their choice of platforms.