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

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

[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

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: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.