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(When) Will Linux Pass Apple On The Desktop?
EisPick writes "A column posted today on Slate ponders projections that Linux PCs will pass Apple in desktop market share next year. Will Linux do to OS X what it already has done to Tru64, Irix, HP/UX, AIX and Solaris and emerge as the only viable competitor to Windows on the desktop?"
I am not even going to RTFA ...
The mac desktop is millions of times easier to use, better looking, and generally nicer than linux. Never will linux desktop be better than Apple's.
Viable to geeks and freaks. I still can't see giving Linux to my mom. Mom, you should update to the latest kernel, you can finally get that firewire camera to work if you download the latest GCC and compile this and that form here and there.
APPLE CAN EAT A DICK
The Linux crowd is about to be blown away by SCO and still have their heads in the sand, and nothing proves it more than a statement like this. Get real, a great battle awaits (yes, I am an LOTR fan) and until we get to see who is still standing at the end, I wouldn't worry about petty stuff like this
From news.com's story:
If I wanted to build a high-end PC from parts that matched the G5 specs (give or take), here's what I'd build:
(All that came from a cursory glance through pricewatch.com, with part/model numbers from memory, so there might be a little fudge factor built into those amounts and hardware choices.)
You'd have to also buy some misc parts like a keyboard/mouse, floppy (if you wanted it), IDE cables, etc. Most people who build PCs will already have all that laying around. The total cost is $1535, and that's using high-end, name brand parts. That's about half what the Apple costs, if you build it yourself.
There are actually some hidden savings in doing it yourself, too. If I were building this I'd carefully buy parts online, from vendors outside the state where I live (California). I'd have to pay taxes on the power supply (I personally won't buy anything other than PC Power & Cooling) and the RAM (I don't use anything but Crucial if I can help it) -- the rest I can get tax free. Tax on the G5 in California would bring the cost to around $3240. I figure shipping is largely a wash no matter what you get, but wouldn't cost much from the DIY persepctive. When you factor in having to pay for OS upgrades over the life of the hardware, you get even more benefits from building it yourself. The point is, just the cost of shipping along means you could get another hard drive, or double the RAM, or whatever if you built it yourself.
Now if I wanted to build a high-end PC from parts that bettered the Apple's specs, here's what I'd buy:
Total on that is $3089. That's for Opteron CPUs, twice the memory, 60% more disk space, and a top-of-the-line Radeon. For a couple dollars more than what the Apples cost. Granted, there's not many reasons why most consumers/SOHO users would want or need an Opteron system, but corporate America likes it a lot. It means in many cases that they don't have to buy Suns or HPUX boxes, and ca
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
If you paid for Puma (10.1) "just in time" to see Jaguar (10.2) released, then you are a fool. The release date of Jaguar was announced at MWNY more than a month ahead of the actual release in late August. Unless you had some dire need that made it worth paying $129 for a month's use of Puma, you should have waited. Don't blame Apple for your failure to budget your money well.
Sure, blame the consumer. That's the way to win friends, new customers and repeat business.
If you can't do something on the Mac (like run most of the computer games out there, including a majority of the big interesting titles) then what is your response?
'Buy an Apple, you don't need to play that game.'
FUCKING IDIOT.
You, sir, are full of shit.
" From what I've seen/heard, XF86+KDE far outperforms OSX on lower end machines in terms of interface responsiveness."
...just like mac ain't got nothing on linux to the linux nerds who like to fiddle with things more.
yeah, that's because it's outdated.
and who cares about open source oses when it comes to commercial application -- you still have to buy the computer and that's much more costly than the operating system. what apple offers over linux in a user friendly, desktop environment is worth the cost of the os (and ultimately the computer when compared to a pc. true you can purchase a $250 garbage pc but most people want more. so linux, as wonderful as it is, ain't got nothing on mac in the the market place the mac is in.
I did forget sound. Add in a SoundBlaster Live for $25. Firewire isn't much concern to me since I don't have anything that uses it; same with optical audio. The next board up from that Tyan has GigE (as well as dual 10/100 NICs). Again, I don't have any fibre (most home users don't) so that didn't seem important. That next board up also has onboard 160MB/sec SCSI. Would most home users of my hypothetical system which had that capability find any more use out of super fast SCSI than gigbit ethernet? Would they consider the Apple's "lack" of dual 10/100 NICs a deal breaker? I doubt it. Most people only need one NIC, Apple or PC.
You can't copmpare Apples to PCs straight across. If you need GigE, then that's what makes the decision for you: buy the Apple. Or get a GigE PCI card for a PC and call it even (just make sure that your PC has a 66MHz PCI slot).
Perhaps more importantly, that system would be about half the speed of the mac to which you're comparing it.
I'd say that "speed" depends greatly on what you are doing with the computer. The Apple vs. PC benchmark debate isn't one easily settled, and seems strongly weighted towards the application being benchmarked. The "Macs are twice as fast as x86 per clock" isn't all that true, from what I've read. That's getting *seriously* close to religious war territory, but at half the price, even if it was 1/4 slower it's a good deal. For me. If not for you, then add another $250 (or therabouts) and you get basically two 3GHz AMD CPUs, thereby wiping out any "megahertz myth" arguments.
Don't need GigE, optical audio, and all that speed? Then you should be comparing to an imac, which is still cheaper than what you've listed.
Not quite. You wouldn't need the expandability of "a lot" of PCI/AGP slots, much less dual CPUs. That first system is a desktop system, and fairly formidable one at that. I'd love to have one. It's got plenty of speed. I'd certainly rather have it than the high-end iMac. A dual-proc 2.4GHz against a single 1GHz PowerPC? That's not a fair comparison (and not only because the PC is cheaper). And although you do get a monitor with the iMac, I don't think it's a better deal.
A better comparison to the iMac would be a Shuttle SN41G2. Which I actually own, and recently built. It has an AMD "Barton" 2800+ CPU, 768 MB PC2700 DDR RAM, an 80GB/8MB disk, an nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200, and a Pioneer 2x DVD-RW. The case/mainboard has FireWire, SPDIF, Dolby 5.1 sound, and an onboard nVidia GeForce4 MX (I added a Ti 4200 however; I had it "laying around"). It cost $650 to build. It's basically a tiny desktop PC for games, media, etc. You could compare it to those Alienware Navigator media center PCs that were out a while back. They were based on the Shuttle XPC case and came with Windows XP Media Edition (or whatever). Alienware had one roughly matching my specs which retailed for $1999 (I couldn't find a link but if you have the April 2003 issue of MaximumPC, check the ad on the back page).
The Navigator had a remote and some other goodies, but certainly not $1400 worth. A choice between that Navigator thing and an iMac means an iMac. A choice between building a customized version of (essentially) that Navigator system and buying an iMac means I build my own PC.
Certainly more importantly, you haven't accounted for your time spent selecting, purchasing, and assembling the parts. What's your consulting rate? Several hours work at a few hundred an hour dwarfs the cost of the hardware entirely.
I see your point, but I disagree. For some reason I get nearly e
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.