More Switching Stories

serendigital writes "Unix guru Simon Cozens wrote about his "conversion" story in the UK Unix User Group Newsletter. He touts: OroborosX and XDarwin. This gives you a rootless X server and Aqua-like window manager. He also seems to like the libraries: the NeXT approach of separating libraries off into their own subdirectories and separating out library versions makes for a much tidier filesystem arrangement than simply bundling everything in /usr/lib. One of the more controversial "differences" in OSX." And on the other side of the switch, there's Wil Wheaton does Mandrake.

Comments

I gotta agree with wil...

[packeteer]

Mandrake has been very good to me. I have helped many people i know move from windows to linux and Mandrake is about twice as easy as anything else i have found. With the latest version 9.0 its even better and i would advise checking it out. As much as people like to flame Mandrake for not being a "hardcore" distro i say i dont care. It is distro's like Mandrake that bring in new people and it was what i used to switch over.

the underlying OS is irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Most users don't care whether you're running FreeBSD or Linux underneath. What they see is the shell and the GUI.

Re:the underlying OS is irrelevant

[ironfroggy]

Never forget that "most" users are not "all" users and those that do care about the underlying OS are probably the ones who will decide then to make or port all that nifty, attractive, customer inducing software for it.

Re:the underlying OS is irrelevant

[MoneyT]

And so Apple has made a system then for all users. For the most users, there's a nice easy to use, intuitive GUI. For the other people who do care what's underneith, there's BSD and darwin.

Re:the underlying OS is irrelevant

[MoneyT]

1)
commercial != bad

I hardly see people bitch and moan when a new game like UT 2k3 is released. Never mind that it's all closed source and you can't change it at all, linux users rejoice when a game is ported to their machines.

commercial software when done right provides a quality that is hard to match let alone beat with free software.

2) I'm not even going to get into this debate.

3) Sluggish if he last time you used or saw (I doubt you've ever used) was OS X Beta

Re:the underlying OS is irrelevant

[NeuroKoan]

1) it's a commercial OS.

Yeah, so?

2) it runs on overpriced slow hardware

Its not that slow. My 600mhz g3 feels faster then my 1ghz athlon (don't have actual benchmarks though...)

3) it has a sluggish eyecandy GUI

Actually, since the windowing system is vector based rather then bitmaped, the eyecandy doesn't hit the windowing system that hard (and if it does, its incredibly easy to turn off).

Re:the underlying OS is irrelevant

[Oculus Habent]

Without the commerical OS market the Linux you love would be nothing like what it is today.

Even if you don't like commercial software, you should admit that commercial isn't bad becuase it gave you many of the tools you know and love.

And I agree with MoneyT on the gaming issue. Have you never played DOOM or Quake?

Re:the underlying OS is irrelevant

[WWWWolf]

I hardly see people bitch and moan when a new game like UT 2k3 is released. Never mind that it's all closed source and you can't change it at all, linux users rejoice when a game is ported to their machines.

I think this is because of the different natures of the programs.

I prefer my work applications as OSS because I want to be able to do whatever I want, now. (Gross generalization =)

But games, on the other hand, are entertainment rather than "serious" programs - and in games closed source does make sense, to certain extent. I wish more companies would do what iD is doing - it makes sense to release a game as closed, sell it and get profit, and then release the program code as OSS when the engine is no longer commercially viable and the program is turning into a support problem.

Take, for example, Abuse: the released binary no longer works (DOS is fading, and libc5 shareware version ain't the way); Nobody wants to buy Abuse because some clever people released Aliens vs. Predator as a 3D game. But, the game itself works just fine because the source is available and people have fixed it a bit. (SDL support. Way cool. No need to use X at 8bpp to play it =)

What's the top speed

[mtec]

of a Sparc

Re:Dread of Mac

[Billly Gates]

Any modern usb mouse/keyboard can work with a mac. Just plug it in. Scroll mouse and everything. I agree on mice. I go crazy if I use a computer without a scroll mouse. Just like a pc, if you do not like the default os then you can use linux. In the future when everything but drm-windows is outlawed, the mac might be your only hope for freedem. Linux will always be there. Instead of paying a ms tax, you just pay an apple tax. However with Darwin you can take off aqua and run a real unix if you like.

Idiots?

[PythonOrRuby]

Everyone who isn't a trained actor looks like an idiot when a camera is trained on them. That's the point. Real, goofy, quirky, neurotic, normal people, not paid actors.

Re:Idiots?

[AvantLegion]

The "idiot" part isn't from their acting on camera. It's from statements along the lines of "I looked at a PC and it made my brain explode." I particularly like the IT guy that tries to convince us that he couldn't figure out a PC. Riiight.

Re:So what?

[MoneyT]

Speaking from personal experience, on laptops, I prefer one button. Since I always keep one hand on teh keyboard, and the track pad is alread close to the keyboard, using the modifier keys is easer then having two buttons on a track pad. And I hav enever had a problem with contextual menues, can you give specifics?

Re:this is all well and good

[Bartab]

Meanwhile, if the idea of a very OS X-like environment on your box is highly appealing, stick your coding where you mouth is and go help the GNUstep project.

Why? I want a Mac for the fact that it's a mac: A unix like system that lets me get my work done yet still has enough of a market share to coexist in the company groupware system and even the occasional game (if frequently delayed) and no Microsoft Tax.

I don't see how Yet Another Freaking Window Manager for Linux is going to give the benefits the Mac does. Other things will, but it will require increased market share and a large userbase defacto standardization on a single desktop and window manager (Which can only start with a distribution like RedHat doing what it has done with Gnome/KDE).

Pricewise, Mac desktops are not all that bad (Dual 867 for $1600) but could still do with some price cutting. However, the real value is in the laptops, and they are -across-the-board- at least $1k too expensive. A 800mhz powerpc laptop with a 40 gig drive a 512 meg memory is $3200. A comparable IBM Thinkpad (1.2 gig, 512meg, 40gig) will be about $1400, and the 1.8 gigs only $400 more.

That $1800 difference sure makes the Microsoft Tax less odious.

Ever heard of upgrading the mouse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it with all these people who when asked why they won't use a Mac, they tout the oh so old "I can't stand the one button mouse" line. Hello?!?!? McFly? Add a multi button one! It's funny how all these uber geeks will proudly show you the greatest modification the've made to their Intel systems, but when confroned with the problem of changing the mouse on a Mac system, the concept is beyond them.

Re:this is all well and good

[bnenning]

This means that if GNUstep ever took off, any Cocoa application could be very easily ported to GNUstep without a rewrite.

And why wait for it to take off? My latest Mac OS X app Gridlock was an easy port to GNUstep. The non-UI code worked perfectly with zero changes; there were a few UI issues but they were simple to work around.

Missed opportunity

[pelorus]

Shame that the wilWheaton does Mandrake was mixed with the Switcher story as it seems to have again brought out the worst in people.

I use Mac OS X and I'm happy with it. I have access to Linux and *BSD and Windows on new hardware but I just prefer running OSX on my 2 year old Powerbook. I don't CARE what you run and that's a GOOD thing. What is nice is that I'm on UNIX. If you're running Mandrake or SuSe or Debian then you're on UNIX too. It's a cliche but we've all got bigger fish to fry.

As for the commercial == Bad? Pardon? I suppose software engineers live on handouts? Pay someone to do it right. Make it open source so people can tell you what's wrong with it.