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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.
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.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Most users don't care whether you're running FreeBSD or Linux underneath. What they see is the shell and the GUI.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
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?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
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.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
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.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.