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

Perennial attitudes

[Waffle Iron]

He also touches on the perennial "I'll run it on my Athlon or not at all" mindset of current Lintel hardware owners.

Well, I might consider OS X if Steve Jobs didn't have a perennial "You'll run it on our overpriced, single-sourced, proprietary, artsy-fartsy hardware or not at all" mindset.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[Waffle Iron]

Do your memories continue to evolve? If not, then I guess you could say you have a static ROM memory, but I'd surmise that you have a problem with short term memory aquisition and you should see a doctor. Of course, you will never remember having read this post.

If your memories continue to evolve, are you saying your static ROM memory is replaced on a regular basis? Wouldn't there be some rather high costs associated behind that?

The whole point, Mr. Anonymous Fscking Moron, is that you can't prove that your memory evolves because you can't prove that your past experience isn't fake, nor can you prove that you will have any future experiences. Try to find some imagination, loser.

I think you're a fucking lunatic who doesn't know a god damned thing about industry terms (otherwise you'd be saying EPROM or something, not a static ROM chip -- a ROM chip by definition IS static, you stupid fuck...once you're written to it, you can never write to it again)

It's an image that statically placed in a ROM, not an image in a "static ROM". Your anal retentive rant is nothing more than a figment of your inability to comprehend a simple sentence.

Linux wins hands down

[euroderf]

I'm fed up of all the nonsense about the BSD OS X flavour. It may seem that OS X is flavour of the month, after all it is a Unix with MS Office and IE and photoshop and even high street games.

But normal people don't need these things. Who the hell needs MS Office except business zealots? Nobody needs anything more than vi or emacs and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the command line. With a bit of effort, I can do simple things like post emails, browse newsnet and rip mp3's too, and as nobody but closed minded GUI maniacs need some brain dead pointy-clicky interface, I don't see how retrogressing into the early 90's fraudulent GUI paradigm can do anybody any good.

GUI's are a productivity waste for dummies. Think how long it takes to move the mouse around and select some obscure option in preferences, as compared to editing rc files with sed. Any decent user worth his salt can make his PC sing with eternal, messianic, orgasmic glory as he ./configures, makes and make installs his way to ecstatic, orgasmic destiny.

Fuck this GUI shit. Look at my uid, I've been around since 1969 and used Unix since 1972, after graduating from Multics, and I still curse the day that the closed sourse idiots in Xerox started getting lofty ideas.

Sorry, but I just had to rant. This stuff makes me see red :-)

OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[mlinksva]

For every *nix hacker who switches from Linux or *BSD to OS X there must be dozens of non-unix users becoming unix users via OS X. This will only make more and higher quality developers and applications available on all unix platforms.

Had OS X become Apple's default years ago (presumably in the form of NextStep), perhaps Gnome and KDE wouldn't have gotten off the ground and *Step would've become the single dominant Unix UI. Now there's no holding back Gnome or KDE.

I'm slightly tempted by Macs now that OS X is shipping. I have mixed feelings: I hate MacOS, far more than I hate MSWindows, but I loved NextStep. Apple's hardware prices decide the issue for me at this time: no OS X.

Even if iWhatevers where cheap and I ran OS X, many of the applications I'd want to run would be Unix or Unix/X apps that I could also run under Linux or BSD.

What's with all the VS Linux?

[zulux]

Good greif,
I love OpenBSD and FreeBSD, but I'd hate to have them take over the world. Diversity in computing is cool and fun. Would we really be happy if Linux took over the world? There'd be no more Amiga users to poke fun at ;)

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:let's not forget something important

[90XDoubleSide]

your typical Linux user and choose from KDE, Gnome, blackbox (my personal favorite), icewm, vanilla, Enlightenment, etc.. etc..

This offers a great advantage in that you can pick a WM that fits your style, unfortunately X11 is a very weak and, as the author put it, "clunky" base that they all must run on, and none of the choices offer the desktop ease of use and incorporation of graphics desktop users demand. It is childish to call OS X a "KDEish environment" when KDE cannot hope to offer an interface at the level of Aqua.

the only other "cool" thing i noticed with it is that you can switch back to Mac OS 9 (which takes about a good 2-3 minutes to do that)

43 seconds on my G4/466 MHz, which should be fairly middle-of-the-road Mac hardware (it's mostly disk operations anyway); I don't know any Mac that would take more than a minute.

unix shell in Mac OS X is nothing special... it's really limited to what you can and can't do in the shell

There are very few limits to what you can do in the CLI; it is essentially a full BSDish system. You can complain about what comes preinstalled, but I think it's fine considering most users will never touch the terminal; power users will most likely want their own favorite tools so it's just as well to let them download it themselves. Apple doesn't bundle make because almost all developers are going to do all of their compiling in Project Builder (why would you want to do it at the CLI when you they bundle such excellent DevTools?)

Re:0.24%

[90XDoubleSide]

It's much easier to write a GUI for Linux through X than for other OS's.

I would have to say that it is easier to write the GUI for an OS X application since it doesn't involve writing any code.

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.

"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux]"

[LazLong]

I take exception with Kimbro Staken's statement:
"the engineer community is abandoning it left and right for Mac OS X."

I work for a government weapons lab and have seen no great move to OS X. And we are the largest Mac site in the world. What I have seen is people dropping their Macs, Windows boxes, and commercial Unix desktops for Linux in DROVES.

Linux is doing a good job of grabbing commercial Unix desktop and server market share; however, there have been practically no inroads into the Windows desktop/server space, and I don't expect to see it. Rare is it the Windows/Novell sys admin who shows any great interest in learning Linux. Face it, mousing around and figuring stuff out appeals to lazy people MUCH more that reading man pages. Thus, I don't see Windows/Novell IT shops dropping their platforms for Linux.

As for the common denominator desktop, do not underestimate the power of Office. A platform can not hope to succeed in the commercial desktop space without Office. Microsoft's contract with Apple to provide Office for the Mac at parity with the Windows platform has either ended, or ends soon as the 5 year contract was announced at MacWorld '97 in SF. Unfortunately MS holds the power to kill OS X as a viable commercial desktop because it controls the number one productivity package. And since the Bush administration has pussed out with the suit against MS, our only hope is that the hold-out states will get MS broken up into OS/App divisions with provisions preventing/limiting their collaboration, and a mandate to provide Office for other platforms at parity to Windows. I seriously doubt this will happen, but one can hope it will. Or pay enough bribes to counter-weight MS's payola to Bush....

OK, I guess I've ranted enough....

Re:Unlikely

[aussersterne]

Apple doesn't have to support a bunch of odd third-party hardware, so instead everything workks REALLY well on their one platform.

This is absolute bullshit... I have a beige G3 that is "supported" by OS X. Wanna know what happened when I bought OS X 10.1.1 to use with it?

The SCSI CD-ROM (Apple 12x) wouldn't boot the disc. I called Apple, they said use an Apple IDE CD-ROM, the old SCSI CD-ROMs didn't have the right firmware, so I bought an Apple IDE CD-ROM.

Then, I kept getting SCSI errors with my 2GB Apple SCSI hard drive. Yes, termination was correct. Apple responded that SCSI doesn't work very well under OS X on G3 systems due to driver issues with the built-in SCSI. They say try an IDE drive, so I go out and buy an IDE hard drive. Finally I get OS X installed.

Then, the graphics were slow and 3D acceleration didn't seem to work properly. Apple informs me that 2D acceleration is only partially implemented on beige G3 systems and 3D not at all, use classic for that since there are no plans to augment driver support for beige G3 systems.

So I was going to send off a letter to Apple to complain. I started up AppleWorks and typed in a nice letter, then went to try to use my Apple LaserWriter IIg, connected to my Beige G3's printer port.

OOPS! The built-in printer port on G3 systems is unsupported (it uses, you guessed it, AppleTalk). I call again, Apple says use classic if I need to print or get a new printer and a USB card since there are no plans to support AppleTalk/LocalTalk. I already bought a new CD-ROM drive, a new hard drive, and a new OS for this Mac. No way I was going to buy a USB card and a new printer just to print.

And unfortunately, the reason I switched away from Mac OS Classic on that machine is because the thing crashes any time you open more than four or five windows that are doing something. On my Linux box, I can open windows until the cows come home without bad effects.

So that's my story. I was all eager to try this wonderful new Linux-killing "perfect Unix" OS X. I shelled out for it, but turns out I got the shaft from Apple on THEIR hardware -- and RECENT, SUPPORTED hardware at that. Looks like OS X is only a bait-and-switch to get you to buy a brand new Mac with each release.

Slashdot readers are right. You can't afford OS X.

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. =)

More browser-based OS lie^H^H^Hstatistics

[Anonymous Coward]

I decided to do my own little research on OS statistics
based on hits to two non-biased (OS-wise) websites: an anime
site I run (www.reimeika.ca), and the Math Department
website at University of Toronto (www.math.utoronto.ca).
The following results are completely unscientific, make
of them what you will:

reimeika:
linux ---> 3.91%
mac ---> 4.46%
win ---> 84.10%
other ---> 7.53%

utoronto:
linux ---> 3.24%
mac ---> 2.75%
win ---> 75.84%
other ---> 18.17%

These stats are for the last 22 days.

Slashdot's Numbers

[rbeattie]

I'd like to see the number of Linux users browsing Slashdot. Just to see what a "utopian" Linux future looked like...

-Russ

I'm an engineer and I'm not dropping Linux...

[SwedishChef]

However, the iBook is a different matter. I can see how an engineer would be interested in one of those. Unix on a small, relatively potent laptop with lots of I/O for network use (firewire, ethernet, USB), decent battery life (5 hours or so), and reasonably priced. So I would definitely consider an iBook running OS-X (but with 256mb of RAM.. the 128mb is too puny).

Perhaps my attitude is not that uncommon, given that most reports of "engineers switching in droves" were based on watching engineeers who were away from their office (at trade shows) using laptops. But no one is moving me away from Linux!

I use Linux on my desktop for 99% of my job (and it will be 100% when we get a Citrix box running). I use Linux on a laptop for 100% of my field work. We had a loaner MAC with OS-X on it to look at last summer and we all liked it fine... but no one switched to it. We set up a VNC so I could get a MAC desktop on my KDE desktop... that was kinda cool. But when it came time to return the MAC no one cried... we just packed it up and hauled it away.

My work habits are sloppy enough to need the four desktops KDE gives me (or more if I wish) and I much prefer the KDE desktop to the OS-X version. Maybe when I can justify paying the $800 (and up) for a iMAC versus the $500 for a comparable PC, or when I can give up the clear path to hardware upgrades, or when more of the cool network tools one gets with a Linux distro appear on the MAC I'll switch. But I don't see that happening soon.

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)

Re:"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux

[update()]

I take exception with Kimbro Staken's statement:
"the engineer community is abandoning it left and right for Mac OS X."

I work for a government weapons lab and have seen no great move to OS X. And we are the largest Mac site in the world. What I have seen is people dropping their Macs, Windows boxes, and commercial Unix desktops for Linux in DROVES.

It depends on the area, I suppose. I was at the big Human Genome Project meeting this spring and there were OS X laptops everywhere. (Linux was the only other OS in attendance.) Molecular biology is a Mac-friendly area and there were a lot of Japanese attendees (another big Mac domain) so the jump to OS X for coders and informatics people is smaller than it would be in areas where Macs are unknown.

"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

Re:"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux

[sakusha]

I work for a government weapons lab and have seen no great move to OS X. And we are the largest Mac site in the world.

Bullshit. You aren't even in the top 5, there isn't any government facility in the top 5. The largest Mac facility in the world is Disney Imagineering in Burbank CA. Disney has a contractual obligation with Apple to never reveal the extent of their Apple CPU purchases. I know this because I negotiated that contract, and I was their sales rep. But now I don't work there anymore so fuck the NDA.

Re:But for how long

[RussGarrett]

The point is there is no widely accepted and standardised interface for these sorts of things on Linux. To pick up on a point I saw mentioned by an AC, how would I go about changing the screen resolution on a typical installation?

The typical Windows user would start looking in the desktop properties. On a Mac it's in control panels. On Windows it's in control panel. On Linux it's in /etc/X11/XF86Config. Granted there may be a gui app installed in that particular distribution, but can you guarantee that if you move to a different distro? The consistency is not there.

The open-source ethos seems to dictate that many smaller applications from different authors are better than a big all-consuming application. I like this idea, but it means that every single unix GUI setup has different settings and applications, and this is not a good thing for the end-user.

This is why I don't like the idea of Linux on the desktop. OK, it may seem simple to the user, and this may be all well and good, but in actuality it *isn't simple*. Continuing the old refresh rate theme, what happens if the user's monitor isn't detected properly and the horizontal refresh range is set too high. If you say to a newbie Linux user "Oh, you'll need to reboot into a lower runlevel, login as root, and edit the appropriate section in XF86Config", they're not going to feel particularly confident about this Linux thing. Most Windows users wouldn't know what a horizontal refresh rate is.

The differences between OS X and Linux are huge: The Linux GUIs are programmed (mostly) for hackers by hackers. They're based on the huge estoteric heap of junk known as XFree. Whether it's the appropriate solution is not the point. The point is, it's yet another layer of complexity onto an already complex OS.

The OS X GUI is developed by a company loved by some for it's gorgeous design. It's developed by paid engineers for non-technical users. It's a window manager and desktop environment in one. It's vaguely based on an existing OS. And most importantly, it's designed so the user should never see the command line, unless they want to. Oh, and it's bloody gorgeous :).

I'm rambling now... I wonder if any of the above made sense...