Jamie Zawinski Switches to Mac OS X

iskander writes "After a disappointing experience with sound, Jamie Zawinski has finally given up on desktop Linux and switched to Mac OS X. The future of apps like xscreensaver and Gronk is now ``highly ambiguous''. He has already ditched a free/open platform before, but he seems a lot angrier this time. Indeed, twisted by the Dark Side of the Source, young Zawinski has become."

Comments

Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[Anonymous Coward]

and why should i care what OS he is running ?

maybe i should submit a story about what OS my neighbour runs, or perhaps his brother and wife

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[prodangle]

http://www.jwz.org/hacks/

"Back before you had heard of Netscape, I was responsible for the Unix versions of Netscape Navigator through release 1.1."

"Before Netscape, I was primarily to blame for Lucid Emacs"

"...I was one of the folks who created and ran the Mozilla Organization during the first year of its life"

"But now I've taken my leave of that whole sick, navel-gazing mess we called the software industry. Now I'm in a more honest line of work: now I sell beer."

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[shish]

Does anyone want a list of OS I'm running?

Are you the core (sole?) developer of a base app included in every desktop distro?

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Slashdot used to be a OS advocacy site for Linux. Now, Slashdot is an OS advocacy site for Apple. Of course you should care.

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[matt me]

Zawikski's just this guy, you know?

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[MPHellwig]

"But whining and running off to another OS isn't going to fix them."

Well the problem is fixed for him isn't?

From TFA

[byolinux]

Dear Slashdot: please don't post about this. Screw you guys.

D'oh!

Sounds familiar

[October_30th]

I gave up and went to Mac. I still have a Linux desktop, but I am sick, sick, sick to death of having to tweak every last little friggin' thing.

I also gave up and went for a Mac for exactly the same reason. It's unacceptable that in 2005 a Linux distribution (FC3, in my case) doesn't recognize a three-button+wheel USB mouse out-of-box or that setting up a TV card requires you to edit some config-files by hand.

Re:Sounds familiar

[generic-man]

If I buy a TV tuner card, I don't want to examine the model numbers of all the chips on it just so I can use it to watch TV. I want to insert it into my computer, toss in a CD, reboot, and then watch American Idol until my brain falls out.

Re:Sounds familiar

[October_30th]

My logitech usb mouse has a windows driver

I don't quite understand why you're using Windows as a reference, when I was clearly talking about Mac. I plugged the mouse in and it just worked.

Oh, I know, it needs you to know what you're doing, and that usually needs some brainwork.

Ah yes, the tired old "If Linux is not good enough for you, it's because you're not good enough for Linux" argument. Ten years ago I used to spout that elitist bullshit, too.

I've lost the count of how many Linux computers I've built. I've set up and maintained Sun and DEC Alpha boxes (running both DEC Unix and Linux) and, quite frankly, I feel like I've done my share of tweaking. Now, all I want is a desktop computer that works for me -- not vice versa -- and Linux just doesn't cut it.

Re:Sounds familiar

[Dalroth]

Just because it works for you doesn't mean it works for everybody and that is exactly the problem. Linux developers get things working just well enough, that if you have the right hardware, and the right amount of tinkering things will work for you. Hell, you may even be one of the lucky few who have the exact same setup as the original devs and don't have to tinker at all.

Unforutnately, for the rest of us, I have better things to do with my time that mess around with asoundrc files. All I want is for every freakin program to properly output over my SPDIF channel. Is that really too much to ask for? Apparently it is, and I've almost switched back to windows on numerous occasions because of this.

In fact, the ONLY thing keeping me on Linux right now is MythTV. If it wasn't for MythTV, all my servers would probably be OSX by now and my Media box would be Windows.

Bryan

telling

[bwy]

I think it is pretty telling that someone who has a lot of technical expertise has the same problems that a lot of us have had with desktop Linux. The problem is real, folks.

If Linux on the desktop is to survive, I really think there needs to be a major coordinated effort to get lots of things in line. Maybe some type of consortium that would facilitate dialog between different groups and/or state a common direction. It is really hard to build a solid desktop OS when you've got thousands of developers operating independently or in small groups. You might get a few good solid apps, but the OS itself is going to be a patchworked hodge-podge.

From the blog of George W Bush

[p3d0]

I have decided I'm going to go ahead and invade Cyria.

Dear CNN: please don't report this. Screw you guys.

Bullshit

[bobbis.u]

Maybe he just got tired of fucking around with Linux. He got bored of having to trawl through "help" documents, fiddlying with config files and generally wasting time to achieve a second best result. He probably decided his time was worth the cost of buying a professional operating system that works. OK, so maybe he can't now reconfigure the colour of the drop shadow on the mouse pointer, but he clearly doesn't care about that.

Also, he doesn't really care what the Linux crowd thinks, which is why he posted the remark about Slashdot.

Dark Side

[Ed Almos]

No, he has NOT been twisted by the dark side, he has just been pissed off for the last time by Linux software which does not do the job.

We have a printer system that was developed for line printers and never matured.

We have a sound system that works most (but not all) of the time if you are lucky.

We have power management issues on laptops which Microsoft fixed in 1995.

And finally

I have a laptop running Red Hat 9 because Fedora 1, Fedora 2, Fedora 3 and SuSE 9.x all have so many major problems with their basic installation that the machine is unusable. My next laptop will be an Apple machine.

Instead of adding more features I for one would be grateful if the Linux software developers fixed existing software. Bug hunting is not sexy but it might avoid more incidents like this.

Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary

Funny thing...

[ATMosby]

Some of the same reasons that I'm switching away from Linux to OSX. Don't have the time to fight those battles anymore. *Don't* want to fight those battles anymore

Sound

[ultrabot]

The posts so for have missed the main point. That is, sound in Linux sucks. It just needs to be fixed.

- arts must die, and it will w/ KDE4

- esd must die

- every program should start using gstreamer

- ALSA must learn to do proper software mixing out of the box.

Imagine my "pleasure" when I inadvertly caused a "beep" to emerge from my terminal window, and as a result had to wait a while (20 seconds? can't remember) before I could start playing a video with sound. Or how I had to do "killall -9 artsd" to start playing video in totem after listening to music on Amarok (which is superior to rhythmbox in most ways).

That's it, I'm switching too!

[bgfay]

I've had it with these complicated operating systems. I've never gotten my printer to work correctly on Linux, my Mac is just a total pain in the ass and slug, and I spend hours upon hours trying to do the easiest things on Windows.

The hell with all of you. I just installed DOS on my box and all is well.

Slashdot, please don't post this. You guys are jerks and I'm going to tell my mommy about you.