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.

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 :-)

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: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

"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