Nerds Switching from Apple to Ubuntu?

Mindpicnic writes "The recent switch of two lifelong Mac nerds to Ubuntu hasn't escaped Tim O'Reilly's radar. He cites Jason Kottke: 'If I were Apple, I'd be worried about this. Two lifelong Mac fans are switching away from Macs to PCs running Ubuntu Linux: first it was Mark Pilgrim and now Cory Doctorow. Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.'"

Comments

Mac nerds?

[linvir]

Mac nerds? Are they the same sort of people as Windows hackers and Linux gamers?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac nerds? Are they the same sort of people as Windows hackers and Linux gamers?

Rarer if you ask me. Probably along the same lines as geek girls.

Re:Mac nerds?

[NemosomeN]

Not quite, I'd probably be considered a Mac Nerd. You never hear from us because we (Well, I) hate most Mac users. I love OSX, but I'm tired of everyone who has an orgasm every time they see a Macintosh. Computer = a tool. Computer != a religion. It's usually not important enough to talk about. I don't know what it is about the less common operating systems, but they seem to attract the asses. (Free/Open/DietBSD etc. seem to be immune to this, not sure why.)

Re:Mac nerds?

[someone1234]

Haha, i thought the same, a pity, i couldn't mod you up as insightful :)

Re:Mac nerds?

[pyce]

"Oh no! Apple should be worried about two guys! Two guys have switched. What ever will Apple do about two guys?"

The other two Mac users were unavailable for comment.

Re:Mac nerds?

[killjoe]

"Mac nerds? Are they the same sort of people as Windows hackers and Linux gamers?"

Did you know that you can play PS2 games in linux?

Re:Mac nerds?

[linguae]

This isn't 1995 anymore. Mac OS X has changed Apple's demographics quite substantially. Most computer geeks wouldn't touch the classic Mac OS with a 10 foot pole. Now half of the CS professors and students that I know own a Mac, solely because of OS X.

(Spoken by a soon-to-be MacBook user currently using FreeBSD)

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

You really need to get a life.

Re:Mac nerds?

[HiThere]

I really doubt that it's up to 15% again. It's been decades since Apple was that high. (Unless you are also counting iPods, of course. That would bump the numbers up.)

Re:Mac nerds?

[nekura]

You linked to a PSOne emulator.

Re:Mac nerds?

[projekt2]

The same place OS X is in the server room.

Re:Mac nerds?

[dhanes]

Hear Hear!

I've been in the I.T. field since it was a subset of I.S. At one job I had to support over 200 Macs at ValPak DMS (although I tried to slip those tickets to the Mac gurus in the dept. whenever possible). Vowed never to touch one if I could help it.

Just about 3 months ago I bought a friend's G4 Quicksilver running 10.4.6 . I think it's pretty cool, am having fun relearning an OS. Other than that though, I haven't the foggiest idea of what to do with it. Samba's setup and hooked into the 2003 AD domain, I've installed a ton of fun widgets, but other than that.... Windows unfortunately as my main OS for gaming, multiple Linux installs on various machines including my dual-boot laptop, and they all have dedicated purposes - Myth - with Samba sharing out all the multimedia :), OESSP2, GW7, FreeRadius, Apache, Asterisk w/AMP, etc.

Driving home after picking up the rig (came with a sweet NEC Diamondtron 20" FP2141sb) I kept looking into my backseat and just kept shaking my head.

Now that I have one, what the fsck do I do with it?!

Re:Mac nerds?

[soft_guy]

He said "installed base", not "marketshare". And he's probably right.

Re:Mac nerds?

[kimvette]

It was FUNNY. Try laughing. It doesn't hurt.

Re:Mac nerds?

[mrbooze]

Come on, if they were *real* nerds they'd be switching to Gentoo, not Ubuntu.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Millenniumman]

Real nerds build their own distro.

Re:Mac nerds?

[oursdekoala]

Got it out of your system yet? Do you feel better about yourself now? Heh maybe I'm an exception.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

ahem, that's "Computer == a tool", buddy!

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then get {bored with it, tired of all the hassle} and switch to Gentoo.

Re:Mac nerds?

[rramdin]

It'll still return true, it just might screw things up... The next time I try to find a computer in my house, I'll end up with a hammer.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

And then get tired of that in turn and switch to Arch.

Re:Mac nerds?

[dotgain]

Or a type casting error

Re:Mac nerds?

[Admiral Ag]

> I'm tired of everyone who has an orgasm every time they see a Macintosh. Dude, what's wrong with you? This is the best thing for picking up girls ever.

Re:Mac nerds?

[killjoe]

Google is your friend. PS2 Emulaters exist as well.

I just don't get the "I can't play games on Linux" trolls. First of all who the hell cares, secondly you CAN play games, tons of them. DOS games, PS1 games, PS2 games, linux games and even lots of windows games. Stop bleating because you can't play THE game on linux, nobody gives a shit about your stupid game.

Re:Mac nerds?

[jpardey]

I have a similar point of view to you. Macs are all very nice, and it is pretty awesome that they run on a *nix, but I'm not going to pay that much for that. There are/were incredibly bad security flaws (sorry, no examples), which escape mainly because of the lack of use.

Anyway, I met a Reality Distortion Feild victim once. I was talking to a proffesor in the physics lobby at my college. He asked me about my Sony mp3 player... talked about it a bit. Then he asked when I would get an iPod. This struck me as extremely odd. My Sony thing works alright, why would an iPod be better? I just mentioned that I didn't want an iPod because they make users look like yuppies. RIGHT THEN, another proffesor (who I will call B) in the adjacent room shouts "No they don't!" Me and B talked about apple for a bit, and I saw his apple laptops in his room, talked about the Nano, cameras, etc. Pretty normal electronics conversation.

Why do I say he was an RDF victim? Because B was wearing a turtleneck.

Re:Mac nerds?

[WuphonsReach]

This isn't 1995 anymore. Mac OS X has changed Apple's demographics quite substantially. Most computer geeks wouldn't touch the classic Mac OS with a 10 foot pole. Now half of the CS professors and students that I know own a Mac, solely because of OS X.

I'd be willing to switch now (I find Parallels to be an interesting solution and I like the dual-core Mac laptops) except for 2 things:

1) I don't care for the keyboard on the MacBook. I was setting up a 13" MacBook on Friday and the keyboard just isn't quite right for extended use. My Tecra 9100 and the ThinkPad keyboards are much nicer. (I don't use external keyboards or mice, so keyboard feel is very important.)

2) No mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard like is found on the Thinkpads or the Toshiba Tecra line. For a keyboard-centric user that little pointer is just enough mouse to do the job 99% of the time without having to take my fingers off of the home row. It lets me click on wayward dialog buttons or for drag-n-drop of the occasional item.

Since I still need to use a laptop as my day-to-day machine those two desires are a deal breaker for me to switch to a Mac. I'm not interested in replacing my dedicated game PC for a Mac and am leery about switching my video editing / development box over to a Mac.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

This crap again, are all Mac bashers as ignorant as you?

WTF are these constant gaping security flaws that are never exploited? I mean, I should have expected to hear something in the news already except of studies by anti-virus companies with a vested interested.

Except on some computer forums, I never mention to people (unless they ask me) why I use a Mac or that I even do. I don't try to sell it or evangelize it but why does every other anti-Mac post have the same f-ing cliches about yuppies in turtlenecks and shit.

I mean, give me a break. iPods, one of the most popular audio players there is right now, makes you think of yuppies? It seems every other college aged kid has one.

Leave the fucking cliches at home, I heard them enough already: I pulled out my Mac once during a break in a college class and some 18 year old punk turned around, squinted, and said "Eww! A Maaaaaaaac!" That's usually the reaction I expected pre-OSX (not that I owned a Mac back then but knew people who did) - but it's one I get from enough users that know Windows (and only Windows). I ended up talking to him and he was on the Comp Sci track: 1st year w/o job experience criticizing me for what tool I use to do my job:/

The world is hetergenuous enough with Windows, you don't have to put down all Mac users as reality distortion victims - there's enough that don't proselitize and don't wanna hear from the other side.

BTW - I use Linux at home on all my computers but as for a notebook - Linux just ain't there yet for notebook but I'd love it to be. And no, Ubuntu doesn't do it for me there. Desktops, yes. Notebooks, no.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing more pathetic than a PC user is a PC user trying to be a Mac user. We have a name for you people: switcheurs.

And the only thing more pathetic than a "switcheur" is people like you. Get a life, and by that, I mean a real life. Being an emo Mac luser doesn't count.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the main reason why people don't like Macs is snotty Mac users like you, who seem to completely lack a sense of humor. You can make a jab at a Windows user, and they'll brush it off or chuckle along with you. Make a jab at a Linux user, and they generally will react the same. Make a jab at a Mac user, and they get all defensive and start attacking for daring to make a remark about their precious little computer.

So lighten up a bit.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Kadin2048]

If Apple has a marketshare of 3% (and has been around there for quite a while), do you really think that their installed base is as much as 15%?

For that to be the case, the longevity of a Mac would have to be, on average, 5x longer than a PC.

Most Mac users I know have a somewhat slower upgrade cycle than most PC users, but not that much slower.

Or am I missing something about how you're comparing market share and installed base? (Market share, their revenue expressed as a percentage of the total revenues of all operating system sales; installed base being the percentage of current running systems that have their OS installed.) For their marketshare to be low and installed base to be high, the systems must be lasting longer. Right?

Re:Mac nerds?

[LilGuy]

Now if you were programming this in VB you would've been alerted to this fact before you ever ran the program.... vb pwns u ;)

Re:Mac nerds?

[Rydia]

So, by "your game" you mean "games that aren't available with native unix builds or are for PSX or PS2, and perhaps some windows games (for a fee)." That's... uh... a pretty big definition for "your game." Although it makes sense, since the "your game" category seems to be larger than the "not-your game" category.

But you know, whatever.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe I'm not using programming syntax... Shoulda stuck with .

Re:Mac nerds?

[epee1221]

FWIW, I know plenty of Mac users who hear "nano" and think "text editor."

Re:Mac nerds?

[NemosomeN]

oops, last minute "HTML is gonna fuck up < >".

Re:Mac nerds?

[NemosomeN]

I dunno, I've never run into them. To be fair though, I don't read the BSD section. Most BSD issues are of little interest to me.

Re:Mac nerds?

[jma05]

Someone tells you that your link is wrong and your response is

1.) Tell him that he needs to learn to use Google.
2.) Accuse him of being a troll.
3.) Construe his comment to "You can't play games on Linux".
4.) Assert that nobody cares about his game tastes (without a mention of a single game from him).
5.) And finally tell him to stop bleating.

Does it hurt that much to be corrected?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Kadin2048]

Actually I can almost guarantee that:

{{Playstation Games}+{PS2 Games}+{DOS Games}+{Native Linux Games}}>{Windows Games}

Probably because I suspect {Playstation Games}>{Windows Games}, or is at least pretty close.

Actually, I've wondered whether there isn't a market for a bootable Linux distro that could run off of a removable disk that would contain a minimalist system set up with emulators for a lot of other games platforms (if you don't mind the questionable legality, with loads of ROMs?). All the older consoles, up through NES/SNES/PS1/PS2. I think there are a lot of people who would like to be able to just stick something like that into a Windows computer's drive and play, without having to worry about installing all the emulators onto their system.

Re:Mac nerds?

[BandwidthHog]

While I won’t even attempt to address specific numbers, the service life of a Mac is markedly longer. Five times as long? Frequently, yes. Both of my Macs are about that old, a G4 tower and a G3 iBook dating from 2001. And my previous desktop machine was a 7500 that orginally shipped with a PPC601 chip that I later replaced with a 604 and then a G3 chip when I moved to OS X. Granted, I’m not typical, but then again neither is the typical Mac user. I find that ten year old Macs are not uncommon in the real world. In fact, my girlfriend is hoping I’ll get one of the new Core Duo iBooks later this year and give her my G4 tower. I’ll either do that or put dual G4s in it, not quite sure yet. But it’s still a great machine even if it’s used primarily for running Opera and doing Access development work under VirtualPC. I would appreciate more than a single 533mhz G4 for using Canon’s RAW software, but Photoshop runs just fine, even when I start going all layer-whore on high-res photos.

Re:Mac nerds?

[James_Duncan8181]

Ironically, Counterstike runs even on vanilla WINE now.

Re:Mac nerds?

[pyite]

(Free/Open/DietBSD etc. seem to be immune to this, not sure why.)

Obviously you haven't been in #openbsd.

It's a joke, laugh! Note: I haven't been there in some 8 or so years. Wow. That's scary that it's been that long.

Re:Mac nerds?

[gerddie]

not in a bash script nor in Pascal ...

Re:Mac nerds?

[bXTr]

I don't know what it is about the less common operating systems, but they seem to attract the asses. (Free/Open/DietBSD etc. seem to be immune to this, not sure why.)

Nobody wants to talk about *BSD, there's nothing wrong with it. 8)

Re:Mac nerds?

[Prof.Phreak]

...solely because of OS X

More likely solely 'cause of the stylish design. CS professors/students are not beyond getting something 'cause it looks cool---without thinking too much about how it works. I know many people who think Apple's stuff looks cool... but then find them impossible to use. Over time, they get used to it ('cause if you buy one, you sort of have to live with it for a few years---and many do get used to it eventually---many even start saying it's functional!).

And yes, I tried to use OSX (forced myself to use it for a few weeks, in fact), and no, I don't find the interface intuitive. Not at all! Everything is ``in the wrong place''; at least that's how -I- see it. I use Linux as my primary box, and Windows on my laptop.

Re:Mac nerds?

[ClosedSource]

Most computer geeks you know probably didn't touch the classic Mac OS during its heyday simply because they were still in diapers.

If someone can't find any value in the old Mac OS it's hard imagine they'd find much unique value in OS X. OS X is really just UNIX + a Mac style GUI. If you don't like the GUI, you'd be happier with some other UNIX derivative.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

The average lifecycle of a PC is 4 years, 5 x 4 = 20 years. You've still got a long way to go.

Re:Mac nerds?

[scotty321]

Exactly! I wrote an entire show about my love for my Mac, and the girls are flocking to the show in droves! Check it out here: http://www.computergeekshow.com/

Re:Mac nerds?

[cfuse]

The other two Mac users were unavailable for comment.

That's because they were off listening to their iPods like the other eleventy billion people who own one - does Apple make computers?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

All the "real nerds" I know have much better things to spend their time/energy on than reinventing the wheel. RYOL is about wanking not about being "real".

Re:Mac nerds?

[Haeleth]

While I won't even attempt to address specific numbers, the service life of a Mac is markedly longer. Five times as long? Frequently, yes. Both of my Macs are about that old, a G4 tower and a G3 iBook dating from 2001.

I'm supposed to be impressed by 2001? Dude, I'm typing this on a 1999-vintage PC running Windows 98. Still working just fine for general office work. I somehow think you've got a while to go before your machines have been going "five times as long" as this one, and it's far from the oldest PC I know that's still in regular use.

My own daily-use PC is arguably even older, in fact. It depends on how you measure the age of a computer. Some components of my own PC, like the keyboard, date back to the early 90s; others, like the motherboard and CPU, are about 2002 vintage; the monitor is only a couple of years old, and the memory was just replaced yesterday. See, it's this concept called "upgradability", which I understand never really caught on in the Apple world... :P

Re:Mac nerds?

[Vishal]

More likely solely 'cause of the stylish design. CS professors/students are not beyond getting something 'cause it looks cool---without thinking too much about how it works

I used Linux religiously for 10 years (I was the first Linux user of India - stuck with it when the kernel did not even have networking built in). I used Mac OS once in 2003 summer, switched and haven't used anything since. The interface _is_ intuitive, and I don't have to worry about rpms not matching with libc versions all the time (and variations of the same problem with different linux distributions). I have bought 6 different Mac machines since then and am very happy with it and have no plans on going back to any other OS in the near future. Yes, I am a computer science professor and no, I didn't buy it for the "coolness" factor, but for it's usability. I get a nice GUI and most applications "just work", and MS Office compatibility becomes important in one's life at some point.

  -Vishal

Re:Mac nerds?

[Viol8]

>OS X is really just UNIX + a Mac style GUI.

Plus a non standard filesystem layout. That IMO makes it unnecessarily harder to
use for unix people. And its not like the Macs tradition user base is ever going to
delve into the command line filesystem so I'm not 100% why they had to mess about
with the layout compared to "normal" unix or linux.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Cal Paterson]

The reason it's important is that these are two quite important members of the "Mac Community". Both are big, much read bloggers, and both are probably pretty influential.

Two people can be a huge loss if they're big opinion formers. Imagine if George Bush decided that the War on Terror was a bad idea. Would it still be just one person with a different opinon?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other two Mac users were unavailable for comment.

Who? Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Down_in_the_Park]

Dude, what's wrong with you? This is the best thing for picking up girls ever.

You do realize, that this is slashdot, not MyTube...

Re:Mac nerds?

[Jesus_666]

Where is Linux on the desktop again? Just askin'.

~/Desktop/linux-2.6.17.3.tar.bz2

Re:Mac nerds?

[captjc]

The future switch of one FreeBSD nerd to Apple hasn't escaped captjc's radar. He cites linguae: "Spoken by a soon-to-be MacBook user currently using FreeBSD" If I were FreeBSD, I'd be worried about this. One BSD fan is switching away from PC's Running FreeBSD to Macs running OS X. Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.

I am captjc, and I approved this message.

Re:Mac nerds?

[grrrl]

I'm a mac user too...

Re:Mac nerds?

[bursch-X]

No mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard like is found on the Thinkpads or the Toshiba Tecra line.

Oooh, I would never trust a computer with a clit.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

i like to call those that orgasm around macs: macolytes :)

Re:Mac nerds?

[SenseiLeNoir]

Dude, if you want a "girl" to see that rig of yours, you need to get her into your house first!!! (Oh, and dont think about flashing the iBook either!).

Seriously, anyone who thinks a computer can pick up girls, are seriously mistaken. In my experience, the most important things have also been (in descreasing order)
1. Smile
2. Humour
3. Personality
4. Looks
5. Money (Though can be a negative too)
6. Car (though can be a double edged sword.. I have a jag, some love it, some hate it)
7. Job
8. Family
9. Home.
.
.
.
.
103. Flash computer.

Re:Mac nerds?

[eldacan]

No that would be like comparing Apple to Orange...

Re:Mac nerds?

[jimfrost]

Plus a non standard filesystem layout. That IMO makes it unnecessarily harder to use for unix people.

This cracks me up. I've used, oh, pretty darn near every UNIX since V7 and you know what? Stuff moves around, names change, even amongst the classic UNIXen. OSX is way less weird than AIX, for instance. And any loss in terms of filesystem reorganization is more than made up for by excellent GUI tools.

I think the reason you see a lot of geeks not using Macs is that they can get more or less the same thing using a dirt-cheap laptop and Linux and there is a lot of do-it-yourself ethos amongst geeks. If you're doing development work or just using it for Internet access there's little difference between that and a Mac, and you have a lot greater choice of hardware -- especially at lower price points. The differences in usability and ease of administration are not that material to a geek.

On the other hand there are benefits to using OSX over Linux, amongst them the fact that you just unpack it and it works (some geeks have less free time than others), and of course there is a lot of commercial software for OSX. I know a lot of people poo-poo about this benefit, and I realize the free stuff is often good and sometimes excellent, but let me tell you there is a reason I was willing to fork over $600ish for Photoshop rather than using The Gimp and even if the Mac is a backwater to Windows in the gaming world it's still head and shoulders better than Linux. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Now, there are still lots of times when I would prefer Linux over OSX (or, if I'm on the desktop, Linux over Windows) but luckily VM technology lets me run both at the same time. And if I'm using Windows perhaps the coolest thing is that builds, cvs checkouts, and source tree greps are much faster in Linux in a VM than they are under native Windows. Nice.

YMMV, of course, but amongst the geeks I know it's pretty common to see them run a mix of hardware and OSs and OSX certainly improved the standing of Macs in that community. They were rarer than hen's teeth back on OS9, today they have good representation, far better than what you'd expect from the couple-percent market share Apple holds overall.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Jonathan]

In addition, biologists have traditionally been Mac users even before OS X -- many programs essential to biologists, such as PAUP were originally Mac-only (although many were ported to other systems in the mid-90s, when Apple's future looked dim). And most people would consider biologists nerdy/geeky, right?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

People who use Ubuntu are not nerds in *any* sense of the word. I hope that Apple does not lose any money to Ubuntu, yet another example of the obnoxious misuse of resources (instead of spending all that time and money on yet another Windows replacement, Shuttleworth could have significant;y improved Debian or some other *good* distro.) Seriously; most people who use Ubuntu are completely new to Linux and don't want to take a few minutes of googling or reading to _learn_ how to do something, and would rather drool over GUI bloatware, not at all understanding what they're doing.

Re:Mac nerds?

[matthew.thompson]

They had to "mess about" because older Apple users expect a certain number of files to be located in a certain number of places.

Personally I love that ability to drag and drop a full Office Suite from the install CD to the Applications folder and it just work.

I also like that I can type ls -l into a terminal session and see /dev /bin /etc etc and find half of the core of the system waiting for me.

Let's face it - would you want Mom or Grandma trying to work out what all these files in /opt are for or do you want her to open hte Applications folder on the Machintosh HD?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone "make a jab at a Mac user"?

Re:Mac nerds?

[rjshields]

AC: Hello Haeleth aka Kokgobbler! Haeleth: Gobble Gobble Gobble! AC: What are you trying to say? It's hard to understand with that big kok stuffed down your throat. Haeleth: GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE! AC: Alrighty then! Thank you for that dose of nonsense that was your post. Now let me back up very so slowly and get out of here so you can continue fellating the /. crowd in peace....

So this is the mentality of a typical Mac fanboy...

Re:Mac nerds?

[Nutria]

Come on, if they were *real* nerds they'd be switching to Gentoo

Those are rice-burning dweebs.

Nerds use RHAT & SuSE.

Hard-core geeks use Debian.

Lite geeks use Ubuntu.

Re:Mac nerds?

[BlueStrat]

Dude, if you want a "girl" to see that rig of yours, you need to get her into your house first!!! (Oh, and dont think about flashing the iBook either!).

Seriously, anyone who thinks a computer can pick up girls, are seriously mistaken. In my experience, the most important things have also been (in descreasing order)
1. Smile
2. Humour
3. Personality
4. Looks
5. Money (Though can be a negative too)
6. Car (though can be a double edged sword.. I have a jag, some love it, some hate it)
7. Job
8. Family
9. Home.
.
.
.
.
103. Flash computer.

I would change that list slightly:

1. Play lead guitar in a decent band
2. Smile
3. Humour
4. Personality
5. Looks
6. Money (Though can be a negative too)
7. Car (though can be a double edged sword.. I have a jag, some love it, some hate it)
8. Job
9. Family
10. Home.
.
.
.
.
104. Flash computer.

As John Mellencamp wrote; "Forget all about that macho shit, and learn how to play guitar!"

I would say that goes double for "computer shit".

I confess, I'm a *bsd/linux user, but that's about the last thing I would bring up when talking to a honey between sets! (Even if I *was* a Mac-user) :D

Cheers!

Strat

Re:Mac nerds?

[torpor]

Yo. Linux has got plenty of game.

Re:Mac nerds?

[SenseiLeNoir]

Good point! yes.. i play the guitar.. thoguh not in a band.. i do solo strumming..

Re:Mac nerds?

[Gropo]

Dude, I'm typing this on a 1999-vintage PC running Windows 98

Windows 98!? Jesus Haeleth, he's probably running 10.4.7! Terrible comparison! You just blue screened your entire argument!

Load up Windows XP Service Pack 12 Security Pack 419... No wait I'm sorry that doesn't even have contemporary features... Load Vista Beta on it and get back to us!

-Typed on a year 2000 G4 running 10.4.7

Re:Mac nerds?

[Fordiman]

I gots to be the luckiest boy in the world then. Amy's both a mac nerd and a geek girl.

Re:Mac nerds?

[ghostbar38]

Those are real geeks!!

Re:Mac nerds?

[Viol8]

"This cracks me up. I've used, oh, pretty darn near every UNIX since V7 and you know what? Stuff moves around, names change, even amongst the classic UNIXen."

Feel free to crack up. I've used lots of unix too: AIX, OSF/1, HP-UX, Dynix, *BSD, Linux,
Solaris, Irix and a few others I can't even remember. Yes , all their layouts are
different but not by very much and certainly you'd recognise most of the directories.
However OSX is the wierdest one I've seen yet.

Re:Mac nerds?

[jimfrost]

However OSX is the wierdest one I've seen yet. I guess I'm not seeing why it is so difficult to deal with /usr/lib moving to /Library and /home (itself a modern change) to /Users. Other than that it's very BSD (with good reason).

I will grant that the organization /Library is like nothing else I've seen, but AIX's library system at least asunique. OSX has its quirks, but so does every UNIX I've ever used and for the most part you don't even have to think about the stuff that differs from BSD because it's hidden behind an excellent GUI system (kind of like IBM hiding all their weirdness behind SMIT, except that SMIT sucks).

YMMV, and apparently does, but I don't see people skipping OSX on account of it not being UNIXy enough. No, the UNIXy nature attracted a lot of people, including myself. Rather, I see them skipping it primarily because they think the hardware is too expensive.

Re:Mac nerds?

[G Morgan]

What about CS:S

Re:Mac nerds?

[Conanymous Award]

Heh. Good one.

The only trend I have noticed is people switching to Mac from Windows in droves since the introduction of Intel Macs, especially the MacBook. I'm one of those guys, too.

Re:Mac nerds?

[BandwidthHog]

I never said I believed that guy’s 5x assertion. But I am really skeptical of your 4 year assertion. Considering the vast number of people that buy a new PC when theirs gets infected by malware and salesdroids at Best Buy tell them that its slow because it’s so old, it would take a whole damn lot of people using their WinBoxes for ten years to get the average up to four. And considering that very few (if any) ten year old PCs can run WinXP, which is what most web servers see a solid majority of their page hits coming from, I kinda doubt it.

Also keep in mind that at least half the Wintel market is made up of rock-bottom dirt cheap eMachines and similar stuff whose hardware is lucky to see two years above-ground. Granted, there’s probably substantial overlap between that market segment and the replace-it-yearly segment, but it still serves to require even more people to keep their Wintel machines in use for a decade to bring the average up to four years.

Re:Mac nerds?

[G Morgan]

More like the hardware is overpriced. Theres no such thing as expensive though there is such as thing as value. Macs take a huge number of cost cutting measures* then charge you more for the privilege. I can get a top of the range PC for much cheaper than a Mac and the top line PC will be better in terms of pure hardware.

If I can save myself £300 and get a more powerful machine while running an OS more to my taste I will.

Re:Mac nerds?

[linvir]

And then they get jobs and move back to Windows.

Re:Mac nerds?

[linvir]

A bit defensive there. First that sarcastic tirade, and then this irrelevant attempt to draw out some sort of flamewar with the Linux community. Not only is that post a perfect example of flamebait, but the AC troll is actually right, too.

Re:Mac nerds?

[linvir]

I just don't get the "I can't play games on Linux" trolls.

s/trolls/jokes/
It was a lightheated joke about platform stereotypes. It's kind of pitiful that you felt the need to give me a link to some Linux games to try to convert me. This second comment is even worse: incoherent, presumptious, and inflammatory. You lose the internet, please kill yourself at your earliest convenience*.

* another joke

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I'm typing this on a 1999-vintage PC running Windows 98.

You just lost all credibility.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt George Bush could even switch the power on - Mac or PC.....

Re:Mac nerds?

[rainman_bc]

Hard-core geeks use Debian.

Nay hardcore geeks probably still like Slackware =D

And you might find the oddball who likes Mandriva...

JMO of course... You might find the odd one who actually prefers Peanut Linux ( aka aLinux) or something goofy too :)

Re:Mac nerds?

[John Nowak]

Er... /usr/lib is located at /usr/lib. You clearly don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Mac nerds?

[John Nowak]

It's unix plus a Mac gui... and a ton of other features like spotlight, coreaudio, coreimage, etc, that can let you do some amazing things. As for "if you don't like the GUI", just run X11. I use wmii (http://www.wmii.de) under X11 daily. Install a package manager like darwinports and you really have the best of *all* worlds.

Re:Mac nerds?

[John Nowak]

The thing is, unlike many (but certainly not most) nerds/geeks, biologists are actually primarily concerned with getting work done rather than dicking around with their computer all day. The Mac is a great way to do this.

Re:Mac nerds?

[jrockway]

Exactly. Library is more like /usr/share. With some /var mixed in. /Library has your site_perl directory, your htdocs directory, some configuration, some binaries. I would call it "etc", but that means something else :)

Re:Mac nerds?

[elakazal]

If you don't believe a computer can pick up girls, you've either never been out with a shiny new MacBook or you're so thoroughly lacking in other features that they're outweighing it.

I'm not hideous, and historically I've done alright with women (I'm married now), but I'm not by any means exceptional looking. I study a lot in coffee shops and the like because the library is a pain to park at and I can't get a thing done at home. No computer with me, I get left alone. No one talks to me. Brand new MacBook two weeks ago...only once out of about ten nights did some girl not strike up a conversation with me about it (some guy did that night...not going to guess at his motivations). Same thing happened when my old iBook was new 5 years ago, and continued happening with diminishing frequency the whole time I had it. Chicks dig mac laptops. Maybe not all girls, but what would you do with all of them anyway?

Re:Mac nerds?

[killjoe]

So let me get this straight. Because you didn't get a link from me you were not able to find any resources on how to run PS2 games in linux. From this you have deduced that you can not play PS2 games in linux and that linux is an inadequate platform for playing games.

The fact of the matter is that there are thousands of games for linux. SOmebody informed me that countestrike now runs under wine for example.

Re:Mac nerds?

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Heh... like the yuppies comment. Love all the douchebags strutting around campus with their iPods and white earbuds. I'll stick with my ugpraded Nomad Jukebox Zen w/Koss PortaPros, thank you very much ;)

Re:Mac nerds?

[jpardey]

You should have seen my old headphones. No one would have mistaken me for upwardly mobile. They were held together with that red tuck tape stuff. And masking tape, when the other stuff was inappropriate. Sadly, one of the wires broke. Those were good headphones... right amount of bass for me, no crackle, good response at all frequency, and about $15 Canadian. Don't sell em like that any more.

Re:Mac nerds?

[SteeldrivingJon]

For the most part, /Library and the corresponding ~/Library are meant for Mac-oriented stuff, as opposed to Unix-oriented stuff.

There are some exceptions - the site_perl stuff you mention, for example. I would say those aren't a quirk of the filesystem layout, but rather a quirk of the way Apple has configured their bundled apache dictated by the default configuration of OS X such that /Library is visible in the Finder, but the Unix directories are not.

Granted, if you configure your Mac so that you can see all the directories, then it seems weird, but there is some logic behind it.

More importantly, there is nothing that requires the use of /Library or ~/Library instead of /usr. So for the most part you'll have a few quirkily-configured programs using /Library, but everything else will be installed in typical Unix directories.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Listen Up]

I am certainly a Mac Nerd, especially since I work as a full-time Java developer on OS X both natively and using Parallels, and a computer is absolutely not just a tool. It is not a toaster. Just as a car is not just a device to get you from a to b. There are those people whose mentality is the same as yours, but they are incredibly boring, meaningless people. There is absolutely an emotional connection with computers and correspondingly their operating systems for many reasons, not just for what you can do with them, but for how they connect with people personally.

Even you say that you "love OSX". What you should figure out is why people emotionally connect with computers and operating systems. Is it how easily they allow you to accomplish what you want to do? Is it the overall look and polish of the user interface? Is it how the operating system works? Is it the ease of allowing the user to hack and alter the operating system the way they want? Is it simply a better way of doing things and attracts those people who look for those qualities? Why do people use Unix/Linux over Windows? Are there people using Unix/Linux wishing it was more user friendly? Is it a matter of overall productivity? Is it a matter of overall reliability? Is it just one or a combination of those things which makes an emotional connection with people?

Re:Mac nerds?

[PHPfanboy]

can anyone else guess which part of the above post is a euphamism?

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anymore, in Poland if you see someone acting like an asshole you've got 50% chance that it's a *BSD user.

Re:Mac nerds?

[linvir]

Okay, I concede. You are right, period.

I retract the disparaging comments I made about Linux gaming in your post, and I apologise for any offense I may have caused you with those wicked lies that you put into my mouth.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. I believe that the service life of older macs, such as the ones you mentioned, is quite long, but that has not been my experience over the past 4 years. I see weaker and weaker standards being enforced in the mac production scheme, and at this point I would say that the average life of a mac laptop is about 3.5 years. I have had 4 mac computers in the last 5 years and only one of them is still functioning anywhere near the level that I would have expected when I bought it. On the other hand, their desktops tend to be not less awful.

Re:Mac nerds?

[51mon]

He's got Vista on his other PC -- it is still booting.

Re:Mac nerds?

[GrahamCox]

Plus a non standard filesystem layout. That IMO makes it unnecessarily harder to
use for unix people. And its not like the Macs tradition user base is ever going to
delve into the command line filesystem so I'm not 100% why they had to mess about
with the layout compared to "normal" unix or linux.

Well, apart from the obvious comment that Unix filesystems in themselves are rarely "standard", there are good reasons. One of them has to do with making OS X familiar to Classic Mac users, so part of the filesystem layout is to do with that. Other features such as personal web sharing which require some config changes to Apache are great improvements for the average user - it allows them to dump files in a folder, click a checkbox and hey-presto! a working website. Another example is applications that can be run from anywhere, more or less. That's what Mac users expect (and quite rightly).

It's exactly because the average Mac user probably won't be delving into the comand line that Apple are reasonably free to move stuff around to make the system easier to use for the average person. Unix geeks are smart enough to figure out the differences if they need to.

Re:Mac nerds?

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Heh... the PortaPro looks weird enough as it is (IINM, it's still the same design from the early 80's). :P Sound quality is darned near unbeatable for a pair of cans that are normally ~$40 (though you can find it for ~$20 from time to time).

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will grant that the organization /Library is like nothing else I've seen, but AIX's library system at least asunique.

Why do you keep blopping on AIX and not another UNIX about the organization? I'll tell you why: it's the only example you can pull out of your ass.

OSX has its quirks, but so does every UNIX I've ever used and for the most part you don't even have to think about the stuff that differs from BSD because it's hidden behind an excellent GUI system (kind of like IBM hiding all their weirdness behind SMIT, except that SMIT sucks).

Yeah, IBM sure as hell has taken a hit from Apple in the server arena because of it. *snigger*

YMMV, and apparently does, but I don't see people skipping OSX on account of it not being UNIXy enough. No, the UNIXy nature attracted a lot of people, including myself. Rather, I see them skipping it primarily because they think the hardware is too expensive.

I do. Three years ago OSX was dead sexy on a Powerbook... a bona fide full power UNIX workstation in a laptop that was under 5k. Add in a retarded single button on the track pad and there you have it. Now, I can buy a rock solid Intel based laptop from any number of vendors running Ubuntu, Slackware, Gentoo, or whatever and have a somewhat standard config/library layout on cheaper hardware. I can also get a better price/performance ratio on non-Apple desktops.

And this comes from somebody who runs a G5 tower at home and Solaris at work.

Re:Mac nerds?

[jimfrost]

Mea culpa, you all are nitpicky, I wasn't trying to be literal. What I meant was that an awful lot of stuff that would have traditionally been under /usr/lib (like graphics, "traditionally" /usr/lib/X11 so long as you are young enough to think of X11 as "traditional") is found in /Library. There's some truth to that, but it's really a lot closer to the traditional use of /usr/lib (before there was a /usr/share).

The point remains: OSX is not wildly different from the UNIX norm these days; other than the Mac stuff laying on top it's actually fairly close to the way BSD was maybe a decade ago. Same shells, similar directory layout, many of the same configuration files. I dropped right into tcsh (ahh tcsh!) and had no trouble finding my way around and I have a hard time believing many UNIX diehards would either, except maybe people who are unfamiliar with BSD. As such it seems unlikely to me that very many people would skip it purely because of these things.

But the cost of the systems, well, that is a very commonly cited reason for not buying Macs. A number of people on this thread said exactly that. We could of course debate that, too; it's a lot less true than many people believe. But it makes no difference, the perception is enough to keep people away.

As for myself, I buy what works best for the task at hand. I'm fond of Mac hardware when it makes sense (like wonderfully designed laptops and high-end systems for graphic work) and I buy cheap PC stuff when it doesn't (especially servers). FreeBSD, Linux, OSX ... it's all good, and you have no idea how satisfying it is to see UNIX make its way into consumer products.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

But there isn't really a reason to upgrade to XP, OS X, Vista, 2.6.14, KDE 4.0 or whatever.
My Parents are quite happy using their Win 98 standalone PC (vintage 98) for Office. I estimate, that they use it about 20 - 35 hours per week.
They actually prefer it to the Win Xp box (vintage 2001)

Re:Mac nerds?

[Jerk City Troll]

Plus a non standard filesystem layout. That IMO makes it unnecessarily harder to use for unix people

Care to give an example?

Re:Mac nerds?

[SilentChris]

While I won't even attempt to address specific numbers, the service life of a Mac is markedly longer. Five times as long? Frequently, yes.

Yes, but what are you doing with the box? Up until recently there have been very little titles on Mac that really push hardware sales: games. Any old computer can run Word/Outlook/etc. Now that Apple has Intel machines, there's a reason for more people to buy the hardware. There's a reason for people to upgrade the hardware more frequently.

Let's put it this way: at my last company they were running 7-9 year old PCs. Why? These ran Windows XP (albeit slowly), but all they were really using was Word/Outlook. If your needs don't demand top-of-the-line hardware, there's no reason to get new machines. Apple, up until this point, has had customers primarily focusing on stuff that didn't require up-to-date hardware. Outside a few people doing highend video, most could get away with older Macs.

This is all going to change in the next few years. Expect more people to upgrade and replace new Macs, quicker. A 6 year old Mac may make a fine Internet browsing/Word processor, but it isn't going to keep up with the gaming market, which Apple is actively trying to court.

Re:Mac nerds?

[WilliamSChips]

They only exist in science fiction?

Re:Mac nerds?

[__aaclcg7560]

I don't own a iPod (not yet) but I'm going to replace the white ear buds with a conventional set of headphones to avoid ruining my already ruined hearing and not to be a yuppie. For me, it's the herd mentality that I want to avoid. If the herd is going in one direction, I'm going into the opposite. I'm not sure what direction I'll go in once I get my black MacBook laptop this week. :)

Re:Mac nerds?

[WilliamSChips]

All of the Command and Conquer games except possibly Generals(aka only marginally C&C) run on Wine as well.

Re:Mac nerds?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, anyone who thinks a computer can pick up girls, are seriously mistaken. In my experience, the most important things have also been (in descreasing order)
1. Smile
2. Humour
...

Bwahahah... Smile and humour??? you poor sucka!
Have you ever seen comedians mobbed by girls?

Re:Mac nerds?

[jabelson]

There is absolutely an emotional connection with computers and correspondingly their operating systems for many reasons, not just for what you can do with them, but for how they connect with people personally.

and you call others boring and meaningless! If you have an emotional attachment to your OS or your computer, you need a shrink, not a computer!

Re:Mac nerds?

[jabelson]

are you really comparing Cory Doctorow to the President of the United States? I read Boing Boing for a about a wekk before boredom set in! He's a nobody...(I bet more people know E.L.)

Re:Mac nerds?

[jellomizer]

Waa, Waa, Waa.
It sounds like you don't want to learn something new, or different. I use a Mac Laptop Keyboard, a Sun Keyboard, a Dell Laptop Keyboard, A Toshiba Notebook keyboard, A Standard 104 Keyboard on a weekly bases. After you work with anything for a while you get comfortable with it like second nature. Saying I don't want to use X because Y sucks then you are just finding reasons not to use it, and you are the only one who is really loosing out, because you are preventing yourself from truly learning new things. (Just using them and after a week saying it sucks is not learning it)

Re:Mac nerds?

[infosec_spaz]

/Quote/ but amongst the geeks I know it's pretty common to see them run a mix of hardware and OSs /Quote/ You would be correct...Currently, I am running Solaris, Windows, Ubuntu and OpenSuSE. I don't run OSX yet, but would like to some time when I have time to play with it. Not that I am the sterotypical geek, but am somewhat geeky :o)

Re:Mac nerds?

[steeviant]

I agree to a certain extent, if your computer can't be an extension of your personality, work methods and experience then you're using the wrong system. Computers are like vehicles, if your computer or vehicle doesn't stir something emotional inside you, then you're missing out on a whole other side to using them, enjoying the experience at an emotional level is an important part of selecting a computer or a car or a stereo for me. But not more important than having the appropriate tool for the job at hand.

Re:Mac nerds?

[andrewman327]

"All of the Command and Conquer games except possibly Generals(aka only marginally C&C) run on Wine as well."

I think that this is important, as there are many people out there (like me) who play older games and still greatly enjoy them.

Third Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Third Post

Two users!

[pedantic bore]

OMG! That's 0.0004% of their installed user base! In a single week!

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this. Or not. Jeepers. Someone out to FUD Apple this week, or something?

Re:Two users!

[bunbuntheminilop]

Reasoning and common sense has NO PLACE in this argument, you insensitive clod!

Re:Two users!

[Millenniumman]

Closer to .00001%. If that occurred every week, and no one switched to the platform, no one would be using Macs in 20,000 years.

Re:Two users!

[pedantic bore]

That's assuming that mac users live 20,000 years. Otherwise, Apple will have to pick up some new users -- they don't necessarily have to switch from windows, but they do need to be born.

Re:Two users!

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise, Apple will have to pick up some new users -- they don't necessarily have to switch from windows, but they do need to be born.

Don't worry - as far as Mac users go, there's one born every minute ...

Re:Two users!

[Millenniumman]

That's assuming that mac users live 20,000 years.

That's always been my experience, or did you think we used Macs for the intuitive interface?

Re:Two users!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it just feels like 20,000 years.

Re:Two users!

[sporkmonger]

Not really. Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby, and Tim Bray all have very strong influences on an extremely important segment of the market. Cory Doctorow has a very strong influence on a slightly different segment of the market. In the former group's case, we're really talking about the fact that the architects of some major systems are switching to Ubuntu. This will ultimately have virtually zero effect on Apple's market share, and honestly, I don't think anyone believes it will. However, it does mean that Apple may start losing PowerBook market share at certain conferences. Instead of 90% PowerBooks at the next RailsConf, we may only see 80% instead.

At least in my case, I know that ever since Sam and Mark started talking up Ubuntu, I've been wanting to find an excuse to set up an Ubuntu box. I doubt I'll leave Apple for my primary machine, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to explore Ubuntu. But who knows? I might really like it.

Re:Two users!

[mjwx]

Like the old saying goes "theres a sucker born every minute".

Re:Two users!

[rramdin]

It does!! Yesterday I thought I accomplished 200 years worth of work on my PowerBook.

Re:Two users!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting that Tim Bray isn't considering switching to Solaris even though a) he works for Sun b) all the apps he talks about using instead of their OS X equivalents are open source and therefore work on Solaris (including many that even come bundled!). If Sun's own employees are not willing to use their OS instead of Linux, why should anyone else?

Re:Two users!

[DA-MAN]

It does!! Yesterday I thought I accomplished 200 years worth of work on my PowerBook.

Wow, 200 years of work on a G4 proc, damn you must be slow upstairs . . . or only do the most trivial of tasks. . .

Re:Two users!

[MidnightBrewer]

Never heard of them, and Fedora Core has superior support for Mac hardware, anyway. I respect any distro that can properly detect and configure an Japanese Apple keyboard. I tried Ubuntu first, but it just wasn't up to snuff when it came to proper hardware detection. Of course, this is Linux; your mileage may vary.

Re:Two users!

[Weedlekin]

It's also interesting that the Mark Pilgrim blog article linked to from the main one can be summarized thus:

I don't like Apple anymore because:

1) There are some open source apps that I like better than the ones that come with OS X. I am going to mention how great they are without noting that Apple also think they're great enough to list them on their web-site together with links via which they may be downloaded.

2) I have been writing open source apps for Macs since 1993, when MacOS was entirely proprietary and closed source. They are much more open now, so I am abandoning them because they aren't open enough.

3) After over 20 years advocating Macs, I have discovered that Apple are more expensive than some other PC manufacturers, especially as they refuse to give me an IBM employee discount. Of course, they used to be massively more expensive rather than merely a bit more expensive, but I supported them then even though it sometimes meant paying thousands of dollars more instead of a couple of hundred.

4) Having bought a laptop from Lenovo, I am pissed off to discover that nasty old Apple won't let me run MacOS X on it. Of course, I've been happily supporting Apple since 1983, despite the fact that they did everything possible to stop people from running MacOS on Atari STs and Amigas which had compatible hardware but lacked Apple ROMs, sued anyone that dared to attach a mouse to something vaguely graphical, and generally behaved like arseholes. I used to justify it on the grounds that Apple weren't obliged to support people whose computers weren't made by them; this time however it's me that's affected, so I'm going to condemn Apple for it.

5) I don't like iTunes and iPhoto, and have said so for years (well, one and-a-bit years actually, but longer in reality, as my wife will tell you if you could ask her, which you can't). My main reasons for this are that they lost some of my settings, but not my songs or photos. Of course, I completely neglected to make any backups because alpha geeks don't do that sort of crap, but now put all my photos in other directories _on the same machine_ as well, despite the fact that iPhoto didn't lose any photos, only some metadata that my cleverly constructed directory system also completely lacks. These directories are organized by date because despite my alpha-geek status and all the amazing software I've written, I cannot write a small program to read the date information in each photo's EXIF header and automatically display them in that order despite the fact that there are libraries in a variety of languages that do most of the work for me.

Meanwhile, the Doctorow blog in the link says he's _going to switch_, but so far has only ordered a machine (again from Lenovo!). He has not yet actually tried installing or using Ubuntu, but intends to do so on his Lenovo, apparently because Mark Pilgrim's done it on _his_ Lenovo.

So the sequence goes thus: Mark Pilgrim gets pissed off at Apple for behaving just like they always have during the many years that he defended and justified their actions. He buys a Lenovo, and after discovering that he can't run MacOS X on it, decides to use Ubuntu instead. Cory Doctorow reads Mark's blog, and buys a Lenovo because that's what Mark has. He already knows he can't use OS X on it because Mark's told him, and therefore decides to use Ubuntu because that's what Mark is using. He's never actually tried it out for himself, and has no idea if there are any better distros out there for his purposes -- Ubuntu is for him because Ubuntu is what Mark's using, and Mark is so clever that he never needs to back stuff up at all.

If these are what pass for influential Alpha geeks in the Mac world, then their versions of Gamma and Phi geeks must have trouble pulling their knuckles of the floor to wipe away the drool that constantly run down their chests.

Re:Two users!

[squiggleslash]

Erm, ok.

I think suggesting someone's reasons are poor because they didn't seem to consider the same things issues fifteen years ago is stretching it somewhat.

Apple has moments of positiveness and moments of negativity. Frequently, it's easy to miss instances of the latter. Right now, they're suing bloggers, refusing to release source for a project they've touted for years as their open source jewel in the crown, releasing hardware that, frankly, is no more innovative or interesting than any other PC manfuacturer's, and their software is over-proprietary as usual (Pilgrim mentions Mail.app's switch to a closed mailbox format, I'd had my fight with iTunes during the 4.x to 6.x debacle. I'm surprised more people aren't screaming at them, to be honest.) So Apple is at a low point.

Anyone who's spent 20-25 years using proprietary software with an emotional, rather than logical, attachment to their primary supplier is, at some point, going to realise that they're being screwed over, repeatedly. The move will come during a nadir in the support and offerings their supplier goes through. For Pilgrim, and many other Mac fans, the question isn't "Why weren't you complaining 25 years ago when Apple was worse, jack-ass", it's simply the subtly different "What took you so long?"

And I can't answer that, except to suggest that since 1997, most Apple fans expected "the perfect system" to be just around the corner, that with the Steve in charge, making changes, the real problems users had with Apple's products would be fixed with new, better, products. And Mac OS X was released, and now we've kind of come to a head in terms of how good OS X will ever be, and it's great, but after three or four years of using Mac OS X, some are realising that not everything that was wrong in the Apple world was a matter of products, that a hell of a lot of it is because of Apple's mentality and its proprietary approach.

Re:Two users!

[Elektroschock]

It is intresting that the most propretary operating system gained support in the geek community just because they build it on Unix. I understand when an anti-DRM activist like Doctorow switches. But why Ubuntu and Gnome? It is important for me to support communities. Some misbehaviour of Gnome activists make it impossible for me to support the Gnome plattform.

Re:Two users!

[sporkmonger]

As I'm quite sure I'm better acquainted with Mark's motivations, I feel it's fairly safe for me to say that you've distorted his main issue.

Mark is very concerned with digital archival. He's worried that databases of photos or videos or music or whatever will no longer be usable 20 years from now. He's worried that the proprietary database formats will become corrupted and that he'll lose that information. And he's worried that the formats that the files are saved in aren't open enough and thus can't be migrated to a more useful modern format twenty or fifty years down the road. Apple doesn't provide him with enough assurance of future-proof-ness.

Beyond that, as a programmer, when you create a program that is designed to run on a single platform, especially one that's proprietary, that's kind of like building your life's work on a quicksand foundation.

All of the other reasons Mark listed were very probably just supporting points he used to convince himself that giving up 20 years of history was the right choice.

Also... Mark -does- back stuff up. IIRC, once an hour. He uses rsync and Strongspace and backs up the most important directories on his system. I personally do the exact same thing (though Mark had no influence on this, I just happen to use TextDrive as my webhost and they run Strongspace so it made sense to use them for backups). But yeah, Mark does backup -- probably more often than just about everyone else. But I have a funny feeling that Mark didn't set his backup script to backup anything in the /Library or ~/Library directories, which is probably why it didn't really do any good. But even if he had done a full system backup, databases like Apple's are a real pain to restore when you have the files intact but not the metadata, because the files and metadata typically are out-of-sync after the restore unless you use the app infrequently. I don't know how well Apple's apps deal with that situation, but I'd be willing to bet it's not a fun recovery from backups by any means.

Re:Two users!

[Enrique1218]

Why assume they are giving up on their Macbooks. Just run Ubuntu on it. Masochistic I know, but do what you like.

Re:Two users!

[sporkmonger]

It's not an assumption? They've said that they are?

Re:Two users!

[bortizc]

but you miss the point.
they don't switch for technical reasons. they switch because the got tired of DRM (something that few people dare to discuss about osX). to them percieved technical advantages (and that is open to discussion specially since these are power users who can tweak both operating systems), are not worth it when compared to DRM hindraces.
Although this may sound political in the end taking a firm stand against it by switching will send a message.
of course two users aren't much of a statement. but if it does get to the news probably more people can switch to free alternatives.
in other words, RTFA.

Re:Two users!

[goMac2500]

I have used Mac OS X since public beta, and Classic Mac OS before that. I have never heard of Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby, or Tim Bray. I don't think they are strong influences on the Mac market. I think, however, they are strong influences on the ego of the Ubuntu crowd, but I can't say they're all that important in the Mac community. If Cabel Sasser, Wil Shipley, or someone who really is important switched to Ubuntu, maybe I'd care a little bit.

I think the people who know who Pilgrim, Ruby, or Bray is, is a very small niche already within a niche.

Re:Two users!

[Sentry21]

I second this. I've been using Macs since youth, and I haven't died once so far. Obviously Jobs' promises of immortality were genuine.

Re:Two users!

[Scudsucker]

Right now, they're suing bloggers

You forgot to mention what for. They're being sued because they are trying to get employees to break their NDA's and post the information online. They also have delusions of grandeur and think that because they 1) write something online and 2) somebody reads it, that they are suddenly now "journalists". And of course they don't want the responsibility that comes with journalism, just the rights and prestige. You also forgot to mention that Apple isn't sueing these asshats for money, but for the names of the employees who broke their NDA's.

refusing to release source for a project they've touted for years as their open source jewel in the crown

Nobody cares. Really. And Apple it's only the kernel on Intel that's closed, the rest of Darwin X86 is still there.

releasing hardware that, frankly, is no more innovative or interesting than any other PC manfuacturer's

Really? How many other OEM's are shipping all their new computers with a built in camera and a remote?

nd their software is over-proprietary as usual (Pilgrim mentions Mail.app's switch to a closed mailbox format

"As usual" how? And yes it is annoying that the Mail.app switch wasn't publicized by Apple, but there are other mail clients out there, and you could probably copy over an old version of Mail from a different system and use it just fine.

I'd had my fight with iTunes during the 4.x to 6.x debacle

Which was...? I've been using it all that time, and by making sure to stay away from "consolidate library" and doing my own file management of the songs, I haven't had any problems.

Re:Two users!

[SteeldrivingJon]

"refusing to release source for a project they've touted for years as their open source jewel in the crown,"

For a small part of it.

Sheesh, you people are a bunch of spoiled brats. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. What makes you think you're *entitled* to constant instant satisfaction?

Re:Two users!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to mention what color shirt Mark as wearing today. Also, does he drink Coke or Pepsi? Inquiring minds want to know.

Re:Two users!

[StikyPad]

I don't use Linux regularly, although I've played with it extensively in the past. I've been having some network problems in XP, so I decided to install Linux over the weekend as a bit of a troubleshooting aid, and I'd heard a lot of good things about the distro with the Worst Name Ever, so I gave Ubuntu a shot.

My XP installation is on a RAID-0 array (I like to live dangerously), and I decided I wouldn't worry about getting a boot loader menu; I'd just change the boot priority in BIOS. I've had bad experiences mixing OSes in the past, and I prefer to keep them as seperate as possible within one machine. So I downloaded the "Desktop" CD (as opposed to the "Server" CD), which turned out to be a Live CD with a very basic installer on it. I decided to view that as a feature, and sat back and relaxed while the installation made most of the decisions for me. Surprisingly, Ubuntu saw the individual drives on the RAID controller, but I was careful not to do anything with them as I pointed it to the "new" 40GB drive and let it partition it as it saw fit. The installation went off without a hitch, and I was soon rebooting. Little did I know that would be the last time I'd see a functional Ubuntu desktop. After POSTing, the computer hung without any sort of protest. After resetting a couple of times with the same results, I finally raised the boot priority of the RAID array so I could get back into Windows. That's when I discovered that the installer had installed GRUB onto the MBR of the RAID array without asking, God knows why, which of course didn't work.

Despite this setback, I was undeterred, and after repairing the MBR I headed to the Ubuntu forums. After posting my problem, someone suggested I should use the "alternative" installation CD, because it would let me decide where/how to install GRUB. Right then. So I downloaded the alternative installation CD, chose the proper drive for GRUB, and I was on my way. Once again, installation appeared to proceed smoothly, however after rebooting, the system hung at "Mounting root filesystem..." and eventually dropped to a shell, telling me it couldn't find the drive it had just booted from. After searching for "Mounting root filesystem," I found a slew of similar problems on the Ubuntu forums, although the causes and solutions appeared to be many. After making my own request for help, I was greeted with some helpful, but less-than-knowledgable replies.

After a couple of days of waiting for more replies and trying to troubleshoot on my own, I decided I had done enough work to try to get a simple installation to work. I downloaded Debian and it installed and booted perfectly the first time -- something I'd expect of any modern distro.

Anyway, your milage may certainly vary, and it could just be the luck of the draw that I picked a bad version to try; nonetheless, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Personally, I've had an easier time installing OSX on non-Apple hardware.

Re:Two users!

[TropiCHAOS]

Nice post. It seems to me that Mark is somewhat in need of attention. After all, why would anyone actually need to *switch* nowadays? As those people from some vectorial space with p^5 degrees of freedom would say, "This is the dawning of the age of triboot.."

Re:Two users!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used all the major Linux distro flavors. Combining apt/dpkg w/ a commitment to maintaining reasonably up-to-date packages sounds good. So now I'm running Kubuntu, for the second time, on my latest laptop. I'm not impressed. I would really like to be, but I'm not. The font rendering and overall look and feel is sloppy. It resets the clock incorrectly on boot if I'm disconnected from the network. Konqueror crashes on certain websites. Etc. I think the philosophy of Ubuntu mirrors the philosophy of Redmond: get it 80% of the way and release, because mind share and market share matter more than stability. Nice packaging system - check. Commitment to being up-to-date - check. Attention to detail - bzzzt. The only reason I continue using it is because I've been to lazy to revert to Debian Stable. Not as snazzy, but it's solid as a rock, and I dare say, it even looks better.

Re:Two users!

[sporkmonger]

That may be so, but you're not the market segment we're talking about. If I mention that I'm going to go over and talk to Sam Ruby at a Rails conference, typically, the nearest 5 people will turn and go, "Seriously, Sam Ruby is here?" Sam Ruby or Tim Bray or Mark Pilgrim are not going to radically change Apple's market share. That is a fact. But you may see a lot more of the hardcore hacker crowd switching off of OS X and onto Ubuntu. Does that matter to Apple? Who knows. Doubtful. The point isn't so much that Apple has become a lousy choice, but rather that for some people, Ubuntu has become a better one.

Re:Two users!

[goMac2500]

You're talking about the segment of [b]rails developers[/b] within the [b]Mac user's market[b]. All 500 people in that segment must be paying a lot of attention. Not that I think there is anything wrong with Ruby. But this isn't the Mac PHP developer's community we're talking about.

Re:Two users!

[Zhe Mappel]

OMG! That's 0.0004% of their installed user base!

Heh. Then again, George W. Bush is only 1/300,000,000 of the American population. But just look at the little pooper go.

If you're Apple, you don't care if two stray sheep wander off. High-profile defections suck, though. Doctorow's blog, BoingBoing.net, had 2.3 million unique visitors in June. That's not an insignificant number who will be reading his ongoing series about switching.

Re:Two users!

[Weedlekin]

"I think suggesting someone's reasons are poor because they didn't seem to consider the same things issues fifteen years ago is stretching it somewhat."

Except that I didn't suggest any such thing. My point was that Apple are behaving in every way like the extremely proprietary company that they've always been, but these so-called "Alpha Geeks" are now using that established and extremely well-documented pattern as a reason to dislike them. If it's a reason to dislike them now, then it was equally a reason to dislike them last year, five years ago, a decade ago, twenty years ago, or at any other point since the Mac first appeared (and perhaps even before), because _nothing has changed_. And conversely, advocates who excused their behaviour last year, five years ago, etc., can equally well excuse it today, because it is the same behaviour, so the same excuses can be used to justify it.

"Apple has moments of positiveness and moments of negativity"

The same can be said of anyone, person or corporation.

"Frequently, it's easy to miss instances of the latter"

Only if one is living in self-imposed denial. I've been involved with computers at least as long as Mark, Corey, etc., and have been very aware indeed of Apple's shenannigans, just like I was aware of the nasty things IBM did, and Atari, and Computer Associates, and Lotus, etc., etc., etc.

"Right now, they're suing bloggers"

The only new thing about this is that it concerns bloggers, who are a relatively new phenomenon. Apple have always been one of the most litigious (if not _the_ most litigious) computer-related companies. They've sued people for crafting GUIs, sued people for putting computers in coloured boxes, and sued people for publishing _anything_ Apple don't want published. Again, a long-established pattern of behaviour that only those living in denial could have failed to notice.

"refusing to release source for a project they've touted for years as their open source jewel in the crown"

Which is suddenly troublesome despite the fact that nobody had any problems with the fact that there are massive portions of MacOS X that are not, and never have been, open source. And to be honest, the fact that Apple selected a core which is under a BSD license rather than (for example) the GPL should have served as a warning that they were under no obligation whatsoever to put any of Darwin's source code out there, and the fact that they did at one point was no guarantee that they would continue to in the future. Windows XP for example contains code from the BSD network stack, but Microsoft don't publish the source code for their modified versions, and are not required to.

"and their software is over-proprietary as usual"

The "as usual" bit says it all. It's simply the same well-established, long-term Apple behaviour that these same Mac fanatics have been defending and justifying for years.

"Anyone who's spent 20-25 years using proprietary software with an emotional, rather than logical, attachment to their primary supplier is, at some point, going to realise that they're being screwed over, repeatedly."

Anyone stupid enough to get emotionally attached to a corporation _deserves_ to get screwed over repeatedly. A corporation is an entity whose entire reason for existence is increasing its value to investors, and like every other corporation, Apple and its CEO are legally bound to do everything in their power to maximise that value. The fault does not therefore lie with Apple, but with those who were silly enough to believe that it was somehow different from all the other corporations out there, and therefore became emotionally attached to what is by its nature an entirely sociopathic organism.

"since 1997, most Apple fans expected "the perfect system" to be just around the corner, that with the Steve in charge, making changes, the real problems users had with Apple's products would be fixed with new, better, products."

And Steve did indeed launch new, and (in some cases) b

Re:Two users!

[Weedlekin]

"He's worried that the proprietary database formats will become corrupted and that he'll lose that information. And he's worried that the formats that the files are saved in aren't open enough and thus can't be migrated to a more useful modern format twenty or fifty years down the road. Apple doesn't provide him with enough assurance of future-proof-ness."

I presume you're referring to Mail.app here, as neither iTunes nor iPhoto store their contents in proprietary database formats. And quite honestly, I cannot for the life of me see that not liking the way a bundled EMAIL app has evolved as being a justification for ditching an entire system.

"Beyond that, as a programmer, when you create a program that is designed to run on a single platform, especially one that's proprietary, that's kind of like building your life's work on a quicksand foundation."

Then don't write software that requires a specific platform. Nothing forced Mark or anyone else to write for Macs just because they were developing on them, just as developing _on_ Windows doesn't mean one is automatically coerced into developing _for_ Windows. Conversely, developing on Linux doesn't automatically turn everything into magic platform-neutral wonder-code, hence those cussed projects that have dependencies on things that haven't been updated since 1998, and do not therefore work with the libraries of any distro less than five years old.

"databases like Apple's are a real pain to restore when you have the files intact but not the metadata, because the files and metadata typically are out-of-sync after the restore unless you use the app infrequently. I don't know how well Apple's apps deal with that situation, but I'd be willing to bet it's not a fun recovery from backups by any means."

Any database will be a pain to restore even if you do have the metadata twenty years down the line, irrespective of whether it's closed source or open source. Take for example the stupid Mork format that Thunderbird uses to store contact lists, which I'm willing to bet that nothing will be able to read in a decade, let alone several of them, because it will be one of those awful memories that we automatically suppress because remembering is too painful. Ah, you say, but we have the source code! And indeed we do, tens of thousands of lines of it, just to handle Mork files. And as we all know, those tens of thousands of lines will compile happily with the compilers of twenty years in the future, which will of course have all the same libraries. This will be the case because, as everyone knows, we can just grab thousands of lines of code from 20 years ago and compile it for any and all of today's systems without any problems whatsoever!

Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cory Doctorow has switched to Ubuntu GNU/Linux?

Not PROMINENT INTERNET BLOGGER Cory Doctorow!

NOT PROMINENT BLOGGER CORY DOCTOROW!

Re:Oh no.

[tktk]

Who?

Re:Oh no.

[sharkey]

Look, up in the sky!!!!

It's a bird!

It's a plane!

No! It's the joke!

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Cory "Self-Promoting Trendoid is my Middle Name" Doctorow is doing it, it's guaranteed to be a fad.

If Doctorow heard that the "cool kids" were removing their own testicles with a fork, he'd quickly do the same.

Re:Oh no.

[kirun]

Not to be the joke-missing joke-misser or anything, but maybe you've heard of Boing Boing? Either way, extrapolating from two people is dumb.

Re:Oh no.

[NoMaster]

And that's the point, really. Two people, who owe their positions in the pantheon of 'Internet celebrities' to a certain amount of nerd-cred, find they have to [be || appear to be] even nerdier to keep those positions. What better way to do that - and generate a nice little publicity storm in a teacup at the same time - than to "switch" to Linux?

Wake me up when RMS buys a Mac...

Re:Oh no.

[Dixie_Flatline]

Look, up in the sky!!!!

It's a bird!

It's a plane!

No! It's the joke!

Yes, I meant to copy and paste that. It applies very well to you.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow, a blog!

Re:Oh no.

[trawg]

It's not the who that is important, it's the number of people involved here. TWO whole people! It is a mass exodus!

Re:Oh no.

[colmore]

Meanwhile I switched from Slackware to Gentoo this week and nobody seems to notice.

Maybe if I put Plan 9 on my FreeBSD box, someone will care.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

find they have to [be || appear to be] even nerdier

I think the word you're look for is nerdlier. Consider me the French Resistance of the speling Nazis.

Re:Oh no.

[Ohreally_factor]

You don't think this is a big deal after he made a long term commitment to the Mac platform by getting an Apple tattoo? =)

Re:Oh no.

[nbvb]

To quoth Mr. Arlo Guthrie ...

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a
study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm
singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar
situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a
situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into
the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get
anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if
one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and
they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony,
they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them.
And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in
singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an
organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said
fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and
walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and
all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the
guitar.

Re:Oh no.

[VGPowerlord]

Well, I couldn't wake you up when Linus buys a Mac, because that's already happened.

Or did you mean to imply "and uses OSX on it."?

Re:Oh no.

[ValiantSoul]

I thought that was donated to him from IBM, and he does not use OS X on it.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, don't call it "removing one's own testicles with a fork." You miss the big picture. The trend is called balliberation and it is taking the blogosphere by storm. You, a devotee of the MSM, clearly don't Get It. You're off my blogroll.

Re:Oh no.

[VGPowerlord]

I don't think he has ever said who gave him the G5 or if he bought it for himself.

He doesn't use OSX (and I'm fairly sure that I implied he didn't, even if I didn't say it).

Re:Oh no.

[Chemicalscum]

If Cory "Self-Promoting Trendoid is my Middle Name" Doctorow is doing it, it's guaranteed to be a fad.

Oh so you mean the Mac fad is over now. Thats my view too.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Cory "Self-Promoting Trendoid is my Middle Name" Doctorow is doing it, it's guaranteed to be a fad.

Does that mean that Ubuntu is a fad, like the pet rock was?

Ubuntu, solid like a rock. I get it. I think.

Re:Oh no.

[eclectro]

Wake me up when RMS buys a Mac...

I hurd that RMS will follow the hurd, no matter how bad it hurdtz.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

And that joke was its cousin, the turd.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it great when Mac users turn on other Mac users who dare to actually think different.

Re:Oh no.

[TheoMurpse]

If Cory "Self-Promoting Trendoid is my Middle Name" Doctorow is doing it, it's guaranteed to be a fad.

No, not that Cory. He means Cory "fought-for-our-electronic-freedoms-in-Europe-whil e-you-did-nothing-exerts-enormous-influence-by-bei ng-one-of-the-five-who-work-on-the-blog-that-gets- over-two-million-unique-visitors-a-month-all-while -winning-Hugo-Awards-for-his-prose" Doctorow.

Yes, I am a fanboy; however, this is one deserving individual. I cannot think of a more important website on the internet than Boingboing, and the EFF is one of the most important organizations on the net.

Re:Oh no.

[tpv]

Wake me up when RMS buys a Mac...

Don't you know, RMS invented the eMac

Re:Oh no.

[Crayon Kid]

Post a story with screenshots of you playing Duke Nukem Forever on a Vista box and I think I can guarantee you'll get plenty of attention. Plen-tee.

Re:Oh no.

[aaronmcdaid]

> Meanwhile I switched from Slackware to Gentoo this week and nobody seems to notice.

Of course we haven't noticed - it hasn't compiled yet.

Re:Oh no.

[Anonymous Coward]

the eff bumble and lose very case, they are more like ringers!

that said, doctorow and lessig are huge worthy types

Re:Oh no.

[stinkytoe]

goddam +5 insightful for just the word "who?".

lemme give this a shot,

why?

Re:Oh no.

[Al Dimond]

This is a bit off-topic, but I actually just did install Plan 9 on my FreeBSD box a few days ago. It's pretty neat. I am going to try to write a version of vi to Plan 9 just to prove a point.

Re:Oh no.

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Yes, I am a fanboy; however, this is one deserving individual. "

The only thing Cory Doctorow fights is the urge to buy every piece of cheap Disney crap that comes out.

He's a petulant little fanatic and authoritarian who demands that the world entertain him for free, and wants to force everyone to live by his rules.

Give me a break...

[jeblucas]

I've been using Macs since 1992 and hating PC's since they stopped supporting NT4.0. These "nerds" have come and gone from my chosen platform, and I'm supposed to get in a tizzy about it? They want the best thing out there, and I can appreciate their efforts to achieve it. That doesn't mean I am willing to unlearn everything I've got invested in Macs because some gadfly can't stand to look at another Terminal.app window.

Tell me when the nerds shut down Apple, Inc. That's news.

Re:Give me a break...

[savala]

1992, eh? These people have been active users and developers on Macs since respectively 1983 and 1984.
They have indeed come to the Mac. And now they've gone from it, and you might just want to listen up and find out why.

Re:Give me a break...

[MustardMan]

So, these guys used macs back when they were good, then stuck it out when macs turned into complete pieces of shit (os 8 anyone?) and now they have moved on to ubuntu.

Who cares?

Give me this example of a whopping two users who switched away from mac, and I can list off the top of my head ten colleagues who have switched from linux to macs because they have all the command line utilities we need from a *nix machine, plus a well designed GUI and easy configuration.

It's not exactly like the switch of a few longtime windows fans to linux brought on the doom of microsoft.

Re:Give me a break...

[laffer1]

But they switched to ubuntu. I don't consider them true geeks. Almost any other linux distro would have gotten my attention. We're talking about 2 users here. If two users stop using linux do we have a slashdot story? Ok.. lets try it. I stopped using linux in 1999. Anyone care to write a story? What did i switch to? Solaris and Mac OS 9. Oh no... is that a trend? I think not.

I literally know 3 linux users, but I know 35 mac users. Who's in the minority? Ubuntu is trying to gain apple and microsoft end users. Thats their target audience. Sure some will switch to ubuntu with their weird network patches and lack of full compiler (ppc version at least) but I doubt we'll see a huge run to ubuntu. More linux users will switch distros than anything. Then when ubuntu isn't cool anymore, the next one will get all the users. This has happened to redhat and gentoo already.

That said, I have to agree that Apple's support isn't what it used to be. Worse yet, their quality of software is extremely poor. Look at the patch list lately. I've had to upgrade iTunes and Quicktime for security related issues way to often. Their windows software is extremely buggy. Mac OS 10.4.7 seems slower on 2 of the 3 macs running tiger here than 10.4.6. Apple better seriously wow me with 10.5. Its an odd release so it should be stable.

In reality, i think the open source community needs to focus on the application layer a bit more. Most open source systems have decent kernels these days. (presuming they don't screw with them often) Get some control on the linux QA process and lets start focusing on applications. You want people to switch to your platform, give them software replacements for what they use today. If I were to suggest linux to my mother today, she'd ask me the following:

1. Does it have iTunes?
2. Does it play movies?
3. Does it play my yahoo games?
4. Can i get my email?
5. Will i get another virus?

Now linux has 3 4 and 5 going for it. If I illegally use decss i can satisfy number 2. Hmm.. what to do about iTunes... (yes she uses the store)

That didn't work out. Lets try my dad:
1. Can i use aol? right off the bat...

There's two windows users who aren't switching.

How about my mother in law?

1. can i use aol? No. Well forget it.

One mac user stuck on 10.3 :)

I could see my father in law switching but he's the least technical of the group. I wouldn't recommend it to him.

Re:Give me a break...

[Baloo Ursidae]

I've been using Macs since 1992 and hating PC's since they stopped supporting NT4.0

PCs didn't stop supporting NT4, Microsoft and vendors stopped supporting NT4. Which isn't a bad thing: As this article points out there are better options than NT4.

That doesn't mean I am willing to unlearn everything I've got invested in Macs because some gadfly can't stand to look at another Terminal.app window.

Get over yourself. KDE with the Aqua look and feel reduces relearning from OSX to zero.

Re:Give me a break...

[jalefkowit]

I've been using Windows since 1992 and hating Macs since they stopped supporting System 7. These "nerds" have come and gone from my chosen platform, and I'm supposed to get in a tizzy about it? They want the best thing out there, and I can appreciate their efforts to achieve it. That doesn't mean I am willing to unlearn everything I've got invested in Windows because some gadfly can't stand to look at another PuTTY window.

Tell me when the nerds shut down Microsoft Corp. That's news.

Re:Give me a break...

[savala]

Who cares? Well, some very smart people do. (Of those, Tim Bray himself switching as well.)

Whether you personally know or respect Mark, Tim and Cory, they're being looked to by a huge amount of others for guidance. This isn't a lightly made switch - "oh you know, I have a spare box lying around and I'm going to see how this shiny new OS works out, and then next week I'll go and play with Gentoo, and I've always been meaning to give Solaris a try as well". This is people with a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge, having spent their whole life on Macs, deciding that enough is enough, that the bough has broken, and that they care more about their data than about anything else. They all have a huge following, and their thoughts will reverberate.

Most people who will actually read their thoughts (rather than going for the knee-jerk "no, it's Monday so apple is good!" slashdot reaction that I've seen far too many posters here resort to) will probably be set thinking because of it. And everyone will make up their own minds, and most people will probably decide not to switch, for reasons that for them will be very valid. But you can sure as hell bet that the importance of open data formats and lack of DRM will become more of a talking point in the months to come, and that if Apple doesn't heed this warning, more and more people will come to the same conclusions as Mark, Time and Cory have.

(If you want to get the whole story, I'd read the following articles in this order:

1. Mark Pilgrim: Bye Apple
2. Mark Pilgrim: When the Bough Breaks
3. John Gruber: And Oranges
4. Mark Pilgrim: Juggling Oranges
5. Tim Bray: Time to Switch?
6. Cory Doctorow: Mark Pilgrim's list of Ubuntu essentials for ex-Mac users

Re:Give me a break...

[Monkelectric]

I have to agree. I am a recent Apple convert *FROM* linux (and I helped found Gentoo, so I think I have a little street cred here). I think the *failure* of open source is the failure to adopt unit/integration/etc testing, in otherwise, quality. The big name applications for linux are generally very stable. But you need more then *big* applications.

Just the other day I did an emerge world which replaced some LVM library which was incompatible apparently with what I'd previously used. It was extremely frustrating because I couldn't access my array... it basically highlighted to me the fact that the reliability of a lot of applications on linux simply sucks.

Re:Give me a break...

[MustardMan]

Wow, so some bloggers are interested? It MUST be important then!

I hate DRM and closed formats as much as the next guy, but o'reilly readers aren't exactly the target Apple audience. Except for the old school zealot types, nobody has even heard of these guys, and nobody gives a shit if they dump apple. There might eventually be some DRM backlash towards Apple, but it won't be because of these couple of guys - it will be when some national news celebrity thinks a story about it can generate ratings.

Re:Give me a break...

[lokiomega]

Seriously. Why don't developers go out and ask regular people what they want, and just give it to them? I see more useless pedantic features everyday when we should just be concentrating on the things most people want.

Re:Give me a break...

[ericdano]

"Look at the patch list lately. I've had to upgrade iTunes and Quicktime for security related issues way to often. Their windows software is extremely buggy. "

What? Has there been documented security breaches yet? No. Look at Microsoft's Windows patch list and compare it to Apple's.

"Worse yet, their quality of software is extremely poor."

What software? Applications or System? They are both excellent. Do you actually use OS X 10.4.7 or are you referring to the FUD out there?
Linux is not something I'd want my mom to use. She uses a Mac. She is totally a iPhoto pro, using it to create DVDs of her Preschool classes. I didn't have to show her a thing on how to make it work. You simply cannot do this on Linux with anywhere the ease that you can on OS X.

Re:Give me a break...

[Holi]

Wait, you helped found Gentoo and now you've switched to OS X, I think that says more about Gentoo then anything else.

Re:Give me a break...

[jeblucas]

Your post contains my response: "KDE with the Aqua look and feel reduces relearning from OSX to zero." Ok, so I need to use KDE? Ubuntu uses Gnome by default, yes? Oh, and the default KDE isn't right either? I'm going to use the Aqua look-and-feel version. Now, please kill off my shortcuts like command-K, command-shift-3 (or 4), command-1, &c. Let's make sure to toss all the default file locations--I'm sure I could set them up and edit some file to make seem like old times. Let's tack on any apps I've ever used--barring Azureus--that shit runs everywhere!

Yeah, easiest transition ever. Get over me.

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

How does one illegally use DeCSS? Removing the COPYING file from the distribution?

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

Btw, it takes less time to install packages on ubuntu - no wait for the compile...

Re:Give me a break...

[laffer1]

Who's throwing FUD. I didn't bring up ease of use. I'm not going to argue on that anyway. I do personally feel most mac software is easier to use.

There are documented security breaches. I've seem macs attacked as i used to be a Mac sys admin. It doesn't typically happen on a current box (latest os) but it does happen. I have looked at microsoft's patch list since i also use windows. I can tell you that apple, microsoft and redhat release updates to their software all the time. Microsoft updates less often than redhat does (or at least when i ran it). Its all the same. Apple tends to hide security patches in updates to their software. If you count those (by reading the change list), you'll note its about the same as Microsoft. I said i had 3 tiger based macs in the house so i obviously use it. (4 macs total)

If you think tiger is excellent, I feel for you. Its a POS. Its not better than XP. I hate to say that, but its not. It might be faster (not disk io) if one were to benchmark something like WoW on an intel Mac. That doesn't make it better though. I've actually reinstalled Mac OS X and Windows XP the same number of times on my two main machines. The mac is 6 months older, but all the installs have been tiger (it shipped with panther). Tiger like 10.2 does not handle upgrades well if you actually use the bsd subsystem and run anything but standard gui apps in their default config. My wife's upgraded from 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 on the same machine but she doesn't tend to do any changes to the defaults either. (aside from using fink a bit) If you run a mac network, you'll see all the problems with tiger. 10.4 server is even worse than client. Read the OSX server mailing list for a few months. Learn the dark side to your beloved apple.

Apple even lies with their ad campaigns now. There are claims of no virsues (there are at least 3 for osx), not having to remove crap when you buy one (office trial, iWorks trial, etc). And intel macs are not rediculously faster than the PowerPC systems they replaced either. (native code is fast, but rosetta is a joke)

I've been a Mac user at home since august 2000 and at work i had used os7 and os8. I've supported them. I've used them. I even used to feel like you that apple could do no wrong and their software was amazing. If you want to see amazing, try NEXTSTEP on an old pizza box style NeXT machine. There was attention to detail, and consistancy. Its not there with newer OSX releases. I won't even start in on the hardware problems some macs have. (yes dell is worse)

Re:Give me a break...

[jeblucas]

I loved System 7.5.5. That was a great OS. What clunky downers 8 and 9 were. Vive le X!

Re:Give me a break...

[Xabraxas]

it basically highlighted to me the fact that the reliability of a lot of applications on linux simply sucks.

Reliability on other platforms isn't so hot either. iTunes and iPhoto are perfect examples on the Mac. When they crap out, which they do, you can lose everything. Windows is no better. The update to SP2 broke a lot of stuff. No software is perfect and no one with a clue is going to believe otherwise. My personal experiences have shown Linux to be more reliable, but this of course is not only situational, but subjective. The biggest win for me on Linux is not having to deal with binary black boxes. If something goes wrong, it is generally recoverable. With proprietary platforms, most of the time nothing can be done.

Re:Give me a break...

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I have to agree. I am a recent Apple convert *FROM* linux (and I helped found Gentoo, so I think I have a little street cred here). I think the *failure* of open source is the failure to adopt unit/integration/etc testing, in otherwise, quality."

Frankly, I think this is more Gentoo's problem than open source in general. I used to use Gentoo and had no end of problems, but my time with Ubuntu and Debian before that has been without incident.

OTOH, Apple hasn't exactly been free from issues, like 2005-007, the security update that broke every 64-bit application because they forgot a file.

Re:Give me a break...

[thopkins]

But you can compile everything!!!

Re:Give me a break...

[ericdano]

There are documented security breaches. I've seem macs attacked as i used to be a Mac sys admin. It doesn't typically happen on a current box (latest os) but it does happen. I have looked at microsoft's patch list since i also use windows. I can tell you that apple, microsoft and redhat release updates to their software all the time. Microsoft updates less often than redhat does (or at least when i ran it). Its all the same. Apple tends to hide security patches in updates to their software. If you count those (by reading the change list), you'll note its about the same as Microsoft. I said i had 3 tiger based macs in the house so i obviously use it. (4 macs total)

So, lets recap. The current box (latest os) doesn't typically happen but it does happen. FUD. Prove it. Give me some examples. I mean, there are millions on the Windows side......

If you think tiger is excellent, I feel for you. Its a POS. Its not better than XP. I hate to say that, but its not. It might be faster (not disk io) if one were to benchmark something like WoW on an intel Mac. That doesn't make it better though. I've actually reinstalled Mac OS X and Windows XP the same number of times on my two main machines. The mac is 6 months older, but all the installs have been tiger (it shipped with panther). Tiger like 10.2 does not handle upgrades well if you actually use the bsd subsystem and run anything but standard gui apps in their default config. My wife's upgraded from 10.2 to 10.3 to 10.4 on the same machine but she doesn't tend to do any changes to the defaults either. (aside from using fink a bit) If you run a mac network, you'll see all the problems with tiger. 10.4 server is even worse than client. Read the OSX server mailing list for a few months. Learn the dark side to your beloved apple.

Totally disagree. I use Windows XP and OS X side by side. I constantly have to reboot XP, and have to run CHKDSK on it all the time. Nothing seems to fix it. Strangely you didn't mention the virus problems with Windows. Is that what makes it better? You like running Antivirus software?

Apple even lies with their ad campaigns now. There are claims of no virsues (there are at least 3 for osx), not having to remove crap when you buy one (office trial, iWorks trial, etc). And intel macs are not rediculously faster than the PowerPC systems they replaced either. (native code is fast, but rosetta is a joke)

Again, that is FUD. Prove it. Name the virus. Give us links.

Removing Trial software on the Mac is simply moving the files to the trash can and emptying. On windows.......lets see, gotta get the manual out on that......page 232 on Control Panel->Add/Remove Application

Intel Macs are way faster than PowerPC ones. iPhoto, iTunes, Garageband and Logic run easily twice as fast. I get way more plugins on my Intel iMac than I do on my previous G5 iMac. It is about double, probably more. Rosetta isn't there to be a speed thing, but its there to allow you to run those PPC programs you love until they have a Intel version out.

I think the Microsoft Koolaid is a little strong today....

Re:Give me a break...

[SaDan]

No kidding. I gave Gentoo a fair shot on x86, x86-64, and sparc64. Wasn't all that great, to be honest, and now I'm running Ubuntu everywhere, because apps just freakin' work.

Macs have been a pain when it comes to interoperability with other non-Mac systems since day one. Mac OS X isn't much better, and has quite a few annoying aspects for me.

Re:Give me a break...

[ac3boy]

Anything can crap out at a moments notice. Do you not all run a tap/or HD backup nightly?

Re:Give me a break...

[ac3boy]

err...tape backup.

Re:Give me a break...

[barutanseijin]

Gentoo mystifies me sometimes. "Stable" ebuilds are often unstable, but some of the ebuilds marked ~ are perfectly safe (e.g., the memoir latex package was marked unstable last I checked.) Portage is nifty, but how well it works depends on the quality of the ebuilds and testing.

Re:Give me a break...

[DeadPrez]

Sorry, umm a bunch of open source geeks who have different values than more regular consumers aren't convincing me of squat. One guy bought a Lenovo ThinkPad T60p (6.4 lbs) over a MacBook Pro (5.4 lbs) because of a couple hundred dollar price gap. Sorry dude, I'll eat that to lug around one less pound. Another blogger has a solid, but limited list of "essential" software he uses that can run on many different platorms. Umm, so? Cheers, if the only way to define the computer experience by the cheapest initial costs that still allows for successful compiles of Emacs and VLC.

Re:Give me a break...

[Ohreally_factor]

er, thanks. better late than never. My house is now flooded from running the tap over night and my data still isn't backed up.

=)

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

(If you want to get the whole story, I'd read the following articles in this order:

Well, I started to read, but stopped after the first "article", wherein some guy starts off with "Things I bought this weekend". Uh, yeah, right. Like I want to read what you fucking bought this weekend, and felt so proud of having purchased that you had to post about it on your site.

Another "I blog, therefore I am fascinating" web site... although I think he's not as bad as Dave Winer.

Re:Give me a break...

[temojen]

I think it says more about his ability as a sysadmin. He replaced some kernel module dealing with his RAID array, without knowing it would work first, or what to do if things went wrong? Bad move.

This says nothing about the stability of Gentoo, merely the skill of one person. That person apparently decided to move to a system that holds your hand more.

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this not get modded "Funny"?

Re:Give me a break...

[steve_bryan]

Thank you for the references, I'll probably read them. I am aware of the context and was present at WWDC 2002 when Tim O'Reilly was first making his observation about how he was using alpha geek behavior to predict favorable results for OS X. I don't think this recent tempest in a teapot is comparable to what Tim was observing and reporting. For example even if one were inclined to identify some of these individuals as ubergeeks their stated reasons seem more ideological rather than technological.

It has always been my observation that Macs suck less than the alternative and despite also having a PC and dabbling with linux that remains my suspicion. Today after visiting the newly opened public library in Minneapolis with my daughter (too much detail?) we stopped at the Dunn Brothers coffee bar in the same impressive building on the Nicolett Mall (if you are close to Minneapolis you really should visit it). I was surprised to see that their free internet stations were running a linux variant. I mention it because I was surprised how sluggish the whole experience was. I don't know what was specifically at fault (low bandwidth internet connection?) but it was not a favorable demonstration of the state of the linux desktop experience.

The closest to a reason that resonates for me against OS X is the tedious DRM in the OS and iTMS. But that could be viewed as a consequece of Apple making the moves necessary to enable the iPod to live up to its potential. In any case I think it will be interesting to see the followup on these conversions. I remember one of Nicholas Negroponte's columns at Wired (circa 1999) indicated his intention to dive into Windows from his comfortable position for years as a Mac user. The next column detailed a series of horror stories (from his viewpoint) that he was enduring. In any case let me know when James Gosling or John McCarthy deem the Mac unworthy and that will be a bigger story.

Re:Give me a break...

[Mattintosh]

He only saved a couple hundred bucks? What a tool.

I saw a deal at Costco on an AMD Turion X2 laptop with everything my new MacBook Pro has, except it was $1500 cheaper. It even had a larger screen. (15" MBP = $2500, 17" off-brand AMD laptop = $1000 w/coupon or $1150 w/o coupon.)

I'd love to be the one to point out to any of these guys that if Apple was going to lose marketshare because of his publicity, they would've given him the computer for his continued support. Apple knows that these nerds mean jack shit to their bottom line.

And as far as "essential software" goes, what doesn't run on an MBP? Ooh! Ooh! I know! Macsbug! Break out the burning 5300c!

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I started to read, but stopped after the first "article", wherein some guy starts off with "Things I bought this weekend".

No shit. It looks like a list of "Stuff you puds can't afford but I got discounted/free on for mentioning it in my blog. Thanks for honestly recommending top quality stuff. Read on for the next couple months and I might give you a ongoing bullshit session of my thoughts of these products."

Cynical, but true. So long Mark, that was the first and last time I'll ever read your self-aggrandizing POS.

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally disagree. I use Windows XP and OS X side by side. I constantly have to reboot XP, and have to run CHKDSK on it all the time. Nothing seems to fix it.

Perhaps if you were as competent as my 60+ year old mother who manages to run XP without constantly having to reboot it, then maybe you wouldn't have as many problems...

I mean seriously. You chirp on about this guy having no credibility and then you spew out the stock windows-crashes-all-the-time diatribe straight from 1995. Get real.

In my experience XP is a very stable OS. Reports of 'constantly have to reboot' from my users has always come down to hardware... or an incompetent user wanting to assign blame to someone other than themselves.

Which is it for you?

Re:Give me a break...

[Monkelectric]

Give me a break. It was either LVM or dm-crypt which I replaced (don't recall), and either way -- the package was in world as stable, it shouldn't have had a compatibility issue, end of question.

Re:Give me a break...

[MoeDrippins]

> I use Windows XP and OS X side by side. I constantly have to reboot XP, and have to run CHKDSK on it all the time.

I'm no Microsoft shill, but I'm calling bullshit on this one. I don't have any double blind quantitative data, but my entire office runs XP and of the people I work with directly (about 10-15, for 3 years in my current position), I have not yet once heard of anyone having to run chkdsk routinely. Reboots, well, more than I'd like, but generally not more than once a week (for me), and I know of many who undock/redock for weeks at a time.

If you're having to reboot "constantly" and run chkdsk "all the time", then there's something else seriously wrong with your machine.

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

P.S John Gruber, after reading your thoughts on Mark's announcement - I realize you too are a wordy self-referential ass. Would it be out of line to add STFU already?

Jesus Christ, I can't believe what people go on and on about. It's crazy.

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason this Pilgrim situation is so hideously complex is that all modern operating systems are complex. It takes a lot of work and investigation and expertise just to understand and form opinions about one of them, on its own; comparing one against another can't be done by reducing the comparison to some single metric because they're different in so many different ways. It's easy to choose between two things that differ from each other in just one way -- and it's easy to explain your decision. Not so when choosing between things that differ in hundreds or maybe even thousands of ways.

..............(and on)

And the truth is I'm not entirely sure he's making the right decision, even for himself. Forget all the niggling details he cites, and focus only on his central beef -- that Apple is a company that does not "get" openness, and that this deficiency is going to hinder Pilgrim's long-term access to the data he's creating. But if that's the case, and Pilgrim has been using Apple computers for 22 years, why hasn't it happened already? Openness isn't binary, a choice between totally open and totally closed, it's a continuum. The question isn't "Does Apple get it?", but "Does Apple get it enough?" But from the perspective of someone immersed in the free software culture, where everything operates near the extreme edge of the open/closed continuum, it's easy to see how things begin to look binary -- not open/closed, but totally-open/not-totally-open.

It's like reading the thesis of a student who needs to write 5000 words but only have 275.

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

So let me get this straight... your response to XP bluescreening due to hardware problems is... get new hardware?

I hate to break the news to you kid but Mom 'n Pop aren't going to replace their motherboard, video card, etc. just because it's the source of their problems (in no small part because they're not going to be able to figure out WHAT the source of their problem is) - they're going to replace the whole kit 'n kaboodle.

And what if the new PC they buy has another component whose hardware & driver were also "engineered" in the third world? What does mom 'n pop do then? Keep buying PC after PC until they finally get one that has properly designed hardware & drivers?

This is your great solution? Just how much disposable income do you have, anyway? Not everyone has a trust fund you know.

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who bloody cares? A couple of no-name bloggers switch from Mac Linux and I'm expected to care? Does Adobe CS work on FC5 out of the box? No? Does Linux have a GUI that looks nice and functions well at the same time without having to hack it? No? I guess I'm staying with my Mac 15" powerbook then.

Hey, guess what, I'm a no-name person too and I'm staying with my Mac for graphics work and FC5 for my PHP coding. Where is my article!?

Re:Give me a break...

[munpfazy]

Now, please kill off my shortcuts like command-K, command-shift-3 (or 4), command-1, &c.

When choosing an operating system, the number one question to ask is, "Will it come out of the box with exactly the keyboard shortcuts I happen to already know, or will I have to spend an entire MINUTE changing them to match my preferences."

Everything else is secondary.

Re:Give me a break...

[WatertonMan]

I think the problem I have is that most of their comments are basically along the lines of "it's not opensource." I'll be the first to admit that there are some big problems on OSX. But having dealt with various upgrade hell of Linux systems at times I do think that all platforms have their weaknesses. And frankly Linux isn't for the faint of heart although it gets better each year. But I frankly think the "no DRM and no closed source" arguments are terribly weak. Yeah, if it's a major political issue go for it. But I kind of look at people making those arguments akin to the "organic food *only*" folks. It's less about an effective system than it is some political point that frankly most people don't give a damn about. That's not to knock those who think it important. Just that calling this a major trend is . . . a bit much.

Re:Give me a break...

[10Ghz]

"Frankly, I think this is more Gentoo's problem than open source in general. I used to use Gentoo and had no end of problems, but my time with Ubuntu and Debian before that has been without incident."

I wish my experience was like that, and I have been using Linux for YEARS. I'm running Dapper Drake on my PC. And Firefox crashes constantly. One second it's there, the other it's not. Epiphany seems to be more stable, but it's useless as a web-browser. Deskbar crashes constantly. Just about every time I load the desktop I get a message telling me that it has crashed and that do I want to remove it from the desktop entirely. F-spot had problems importing my pictures from my camera, and it insisted on copying those pics tro my home-folder, even though I explicitly told it NOT to do so. The admin-tools... Sometimes they simply refused to load at all. Beagle was just useless and it slowed everything down to a crawl.

I tried re-installing Ubuntu from scratch (I thought that something went wrong when I dist-upgraded from Breezy). And it did fix the performance-issues I had (previously everything seemed sluggish), and SOME of the crashes. But the apps still crash way too often.

end-result of this? I used to have a Mac Mini that acted as a "server" (running Ubuntu-server). I put it back on my desktop and loaded OS X back on it so I would at least have a usable computer.

Re:Give me a break...

[Kadin2048]

I just thought I'd toss in my experiences here.

I'm a longtime Mac user, but I also use a WinXP machine (work), and I've been toying with Linux since the early Slackware days, although I never really gave it a fair shot until a few months ago. Right now, at home, I have a P4 and a G5 hooked up through a KVMP switch so I can A/B them. I use the Mac as my primary machine, but I play around with the PC as well.

I run Kubuntu. I use it instead of straight Ubuntu, because Gnome is retarded when it comes to menus and seems incapable of putting them at the top of the screen. KDE is nice in that you can configure this. And with Baghira, you can put the close-window box back at the left side of the title bar (where God intended, clearly).

I did all this because I'm switching back and forth between the two systems -- sometimes I'll run Firefox on the Linux machine while doing heavy FCP work on the Mac -- and it was too disorienting to have the close boxes moving back and forth from left to right. I wanted a consistent visual metaphor.

But if you were switching platforms completely, and found yourself doing all this, I really question if you were ready to switch platforms. It's not complicated, but it's not trivial, either. To get everything Mac-like (and you'll never get it 100% -- there will always be little annoyances, like my current one: 'how do I get the mounted-drive icons to appear on the right of the desktop?') takes a while, and if you're anything but unemployed, I question the value proposition at this point. Why are you switching again, if the first thing you're doing is making your new system look exactly like the old one?

I've read the reasons why the columnists in question in this article switched, and I'm not going to debate them. Choosing a platform is, at best, a very personal decision. Although sometimes when I get my blood up I try anyway, it's really not worth debating Mac versus PC any more than it's worth debating boxers versus briefs. Some things work for some people, others work for other people -- that's why they make both.

Too often, particularly here on Slashdot, there seems to be this mindset that there is an ongoing "OS War" from which there can be only one victor. Or that computing, in general, is on a steady, linear path towards a Single Unified Operating System, and that we're waiting with baited breath to see who will win. This just isn't how things work. There shouldn't be just one choice for everyone, and even though I think my choice (Mac and Linux) works great for me, I'm not naive enough to think it works for everyone.

Re:Give me a break...

[waferhead]

Item 6 is VERY useful.

I installed Ubuntu on a spare partition of my (getting) ancient Mand...riva box

It installed fine, as one would expect
(box is homebuilt Athlon 2800+ etc, nothing in it or attached to it DOESN'T work under Linux, as I don't run Windows)

Ubunto works... But I felt underwhelmed, as Mandrake "just works", and I already know where evberything is system management wise.

And the PLF... Viva `le PLF!

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're whining because your full-volume encryption setup using BETA software explicitly marked as EXPERIMENTAL in the kconfig broke when your DISTRO (not linux, not the software vendor) didn't test and integrate a new version properly.

Gee, at least you weren't using OS X when FileVault came out... unlike those poor souls, you didn't lose a big chunk of your data.

Honestly, I really don't think Gentoo has done a favor for the Linux community. For enough time it was the default distro all the Kool Kidz were trying, and it exhibits every one of the problems with testing you talk about.

Re:Give me a break...

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I wish my experience was like that, and I have been using Linux for YEARS. I'm running Dapper Drake on my PC. And Firefox crashes constantly. One second it's there, the other it's not. Epiphany seems to be more stable, but it's useless as a web-browser. Deskbar crashes constantly. Just about every time I load the desktop I get a message telling me that it has crashed and that do I want to remove it from the desktop entirely"

Linux has all sorts of issues, I make no attempt to deny this. But different, independantly maintained applications randomly crashing so often like sound more like a hardware issue than software bugs.

Re:Give me a break...

[10Ghz]

Well, the thing is that things used to work in Breezy. When I moved to Dapper, all hell broke loose. And it doesn't seem like hardware-issue. Epiphany does not crash (but it's otherwise useless), but Firefox does. Many apps do not crash, but some do. Most of my panel-applets work like they should, but deskbar crashes all the time. I would guess that if I were facing hardware-problems, I would see them everywhere. But I'm not.

Re:Give me a break...

[squiggleslash]

I don't think the argument, seriously, is that people will switch because of Pilgrim, Doctorow, et al. The argument is that two (more than two?) prominant long time Apple enthusiasts are switching, and their reasons are worth listening to because if that's the way they feel, then imagine how easily Apple users with less of a record of rabid loyalty will switch over the same issues.

Of course, a small group will listen to both and will consider switching when they didn't before. But that's not the major story, the major one is that proprietariness (it's not just about DRM) is becoming a sore spot, and some long time Apple loyalists are no longer prepared to put up with it.

One has to hope Apple is listening, even if the celebrity-obsessed-but-in-denial Slashdot mob isn't.

Re:Give me a break...

[laffer1]

The hardware problem isn't microsoft's fault though. Its gateway, dell or whoever built the machine. While I've mostly bashed apple in my recent posts, there is a reason they charge 600+ for a computer. Lowend hardware doesn't hold up as well, especially when some old person buys a computer desk with a front door cover to the computer and the damn thing overheats. No one seems to think about air flow going to electronics anymore. My father has killed a computer and a receiver because he sticks them in little tight enclosed spaces.

Re:Give me a break...

[kalidasa]

Some very good points here. However, they don't convince me. Why not? Two reasons:

1. I think they're overstating the openness problems on the Mac, and overstating the advantages of open source when it comes to data retention.

Take Apple Mail as an example. Describing .emlx as an undocumented format is problematic: the .emlx file is just a text file with some kind of integer at the beginning (for indexing purposes, I assume), the content of the email including all headers, and then an XML plist fragment at the end. Not much harder to reverse engineer than mbox, I think- unless you can't understand XML, in which case you by definition are not an ueber geek.

Now, open formats are better, yes, because competing programmers can provide solutions for the same format, decreasing the likelihood that the format will become unsupported. That said, the fact is that even open formats will, eventually, become unsupported - software will die, and sooner or later no one will be hosting the source code any more, and the source will rely upon libraries that aren't available for your platform (though maybe you'll still have the source for those, too), and there will be known security issues that were never patched because no one was using the software anymore. Sure, if you want to waste the time, you can always write your own software to handle documented open formats (assuming that someone did a good job on the documentation - never a sure thing with Open Source). But the reality is that most of the time it will simply be more effective to handle open formats the same way you handle closed formats - convert them to a new standard when the old one looks like it is dying. You gain a few more years of being able to rely upon the original file, but not much more than that. Yes, if we could switch everyone over to open formats today, and open source, we should: but that's not going to happen any time soon; and we should not pretend that open source or open formats are silver bullets.

I've had problems with Apple Mail, too. However, I've had worse problems with Thunderbird. Using the mbox format doesn't help much when the mbox file is emptied out for some unknown reason: you still have to pull a backup.

2. I spent several years using Linux as my primary OS, and you know what? I'm too damned old to waste two hours trying to get a new program running, or a new piece of hardware to attach. I'm sick and tired of the way in which so many Linux features and applications only work the way the programmer thought you should work: it's like Microsoft Word, but with all the menu options written in Ainu. Either you know it, or you don't, and you have to rely upon the charity of some HOWTO file, or some discussion list or bulletin board where the reigning despots will deride you for not doing "the obvious" if they deign to help you at all. I'm also too damned old to worry about making my way through poorly commented C spaghetti to try to figure out what I should be doing as a user. And I'm not that old.

Linux isn't there yet with some hardware support that I need. WiFi: on Linux, it simply isn't reliable. This alone is enough for me to use OS X.

Re:Give me a break...

[Gumph]

or I might want to use my time more productively and do some work/play some games/spend time with my wife rather than waste another nanosecond reading that two USERS have moved to linux.
gee whiz, golly gosh - who gives a flying feck? I couldn't care less if Bill used OSX and Steve used Windows. I'll use whatever OS I happen to favour regardless of two 'so-called' famous mac nerds!

Re:Give me a break...

[Anonymous Coward]

But on the other hand, he'll be switching back to Gentoo from OS X 5-10% faster than everyone else...

Re:Give me a break...

[Monkelectric]

that was funny :) why the anon...

Re:Give me a break...

[savala]

I'll give you most points you made, but the fact that you have to do any reverse-engineering at all is a much bigger hurdle than you think. It's just wrong that it requires someone like jwz asking for the meaning of the flags field, and an anonymous benefactor (aka, almost certainly an Apple employee who knows he'd get in trouble if he revealed this information under his own name) to give a person full access to his own data.

It's much more likely for a proprietary and undocumented format like this to become unsupported. Without a good specification, all the subtle and inherent and assumed bugs that other bits and pieces start to rely on become one enormous hell to reverse-engineer. Just ask some of the WHATWG or Mozilla or Opera people who're currently trying to write specifications to make some IE-extensions like XMLHttpRequest or offsetParent work interoperably and completely sane for all edge-cases. (And those are the simple and relatively well understood extensions.)

But anyone, for you this personally isn't (recognized as?) a big enough issue (yet?) to switch to Linux. (To be honest, it isn't for me either.) But for some people, who many believe to be at the forefront of wherever it is we're going, it finally is a big enough issue, and I'm glad to see that more people are willing to consider their point of view. Awareness is half the battle won.

Re:Give me a break...

[savala]

Very well put.

Over the years, people's data has become much more important than it used to be. In the past, you wrote a few documents in Wordstar, and later one you sent the occasional email to the three other geeks you knew who had internet access. But nowadays, everyone is living and storing a very significant part of their lives on their computers, and their data includes such things as all the photos they take, all the emails they've exchanged with their girlfriends, all the music they listen to, and the only videos of their children's first steps they'll ever have. Owning your own data reliably - being able to take it with you from system to system freely and without hassle - is becoming much and much more important, and people are now starting to recognize this.

Re:Give me a break...

[tiedye]

I tried Ubuntu a year ago. It would not come up at all on an old Sony desktop
I tried, and some of the apps hung on the IBM A31p laptop I had at the time.

Gentoo was stable on both.

Re:Give me a break...

[SteeldrivingJon]

"1. I think they're overstating the openness problems on the Mac, and overstating the advantages of open source when it comes to data retention."

Yeah, their arguments pretty much boil down to "Apple got the peas in the mashed potatoes, now I won't eat any of it. I demand pure open-source mashed potatoes uncontaminated by peas."

Re:Give me a break...

[Xabraxas]

I do run a nightly backup but that's not always the easiest thing to do with a laptop when you're on the road. I also don't ever want to worry about not having access to my files a few years down the road because they are binary black boxes. I NEVER have to worry about that on an open platform.

Re:Give me a break...

[kalidasa]

His own *metadata*, you mean - the flags field represents things that aren't in the mbox file, like whether the message was read or was a draft, &c. It's a good point, but on the specifics of email data retention, we also have to keep our eye on practicality here: if you can reverse-engineer emlx, you get more information from it than you get from mbox. Getting the actual email (with headers) itself isn't a problem at all.

If you'll note, most of the data retention problems Pilgrim talks about are actually with metadata - song play counts and ratings, tags on pictures. For the actual music, iTunes can use MP3, which while not an open file format is at least a platform neutral defacto standard, for the actual pictures, iPhoto usually uses JPEG and PNG (the video issue is another problem entirely). I'm not quite sure how good open source software is on maintaining application-independent metadata of this type (I've been using OS X for a number of years now for everything with which I'd need to use this kind of metadata), but I'll concede that it's far more likely to do a better job.

When you're talking about reversing HTTP extensions, you're talking about interoperability today, not data retention tomorrow - and on that score, the argument goes with Windows at the moment - while there are interoperability arguments that Mac can win over Linux, and even a handful that Linux can win over Mac, there are none that either can win over Windows because Windows is the core of the monoculture; one simply has to ask whether perfect compability is worth the price. For me, and I'd guess for you, and for Pilgrim, O'Reilly, and Doctorow, it isn't. I like having the slightly higher interoperability OS X gives you over Ubuntu, but I'd give it up if Ubuntu came closer to meeting my needs.

That said, yes, DRM is a problem, and file migration is a huge problem. Switching to Linux *doesn't*, by itself, serve notice on the DRM issue, because those users will seem to the content providers to have dropped out of the market altogether, and so won't motivate them to do something about DRM. What you have to do is to work on competitors to DRM-laden content and see how successful they are. Unfortunately, one thing we've seen is that the bazaar doesn't do as good a job of creating and distributing creative content (music, visual art, literature, video) as the cathedral, despite all our hopes (mine too). Where many eyes make software production and Q&A faster (within limits, of course; we all know about the mythical man-month), many hands do not make very good artistic works - literature written by distributed means reads like a horse designed by a committee rides (i.e., a camel) - very bumpy and unsteady, and one can see similar effects in the more aesthetic aspects of software design, such as UI standards and aesthetics and fonts. Now, art created by individual artists and distributed by open source models should work fine in theory, but in practice we've seen that the level of triage that's necessary to direct promotion to those artists most likely to succeed is anathema to open source communities, and when the listener or reader or viewer is inundated with a million different artistic voices all muttering at the same low level - the bazaar model of content distribution - no one can get enough traction to break out and challenge the DRMified standard content providers and their artists. So the real answer to DRM isn't switching to Linux, but working hard to come up with an open-source distribution model that identifies the best content and frankly markets it well enough to challenge the content being sold by the traditional content providers, and so to challenge their distribution model.

Maybe Pilgrim's, and Doctorow's, and O'Reilly's choice is the best way to deal with proprietary file formats - if enough people switch. But for the switchers (to pure open source environments) to have an impact on the decisions of various service providers, we'll need a Linux (or other open source operating system, whether it be

Apple won't miss 'em

[bheer]

Apple must've been happy that lots of geeks/nerds/whatever switched to Apple and were singing its praises, but you must remember that the Mac was never a geek machine and did great and had terrific fan following -- in fact most geeks stayed away from the classic Mac because of the lack of a command line, stdin and stdout.

Lots of geeks discovered the joys of Apple hardware with OSX because, well, it was based off Darwin-- but make no mistake, Apple won't even miss these guys-- they have their own rabid contingent who won't switch no matter what. They want the computing analogue of the guys who buy BMWs.

Also, Mark Pilgrim is running Ubuntu on an Apple machine, so Apple is still getting his money. Cory Doctorcow OTOH has switched to a Lenovo (IIRC).

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Etyenne]

in fact most geeks stayed away from the classic Mac because of the lack of a command line, stdin and stdout.

Or was it because of the cost, buggyness and lack of development tools ?

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Yremogtnom]

"They want the computing analogue of the guys who buy BMWs." - Well, I recently (1.5 years ago) switch FROM Linux (mepis.org) TO Apple (mac mini), and I drive a truck! Perhaps I should pay a visit to my neighborhood Beamer Dealer.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

but you must remember that the Mac was never a geek machine

Right. Steve Jobs has said publishing was a niche market for the Mac, and the education market was where the future is.

Good thing for Apple geeks don't hang out in education!

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[tgd]

No but they're leading the pack, and Apple will miss the masses when they do the same. Only the masses will not be going to Linux, they'll be going back to Windows.

I know a LOT of people who have switched back, including myself. I'd run Linux for ten years as my desktop OS until I switched to OSX, and I've switched back. Why? Not the ease of use of Ubuntu, although its nice to run Linux and not have to worry about things working or not. I switched back because of the horrid quality of Apple hardware the last few years. I've wasted a large number of thousands of dollars on Apple hardware that died immediately out of warranty. (iBook, two iPods, two Mighty Mice, and my old 17" G4 iMac was flaky but still works most of the time).

Apple is riding a wave of popular hype, but popular trends can switch away from a company as fast as they can switch TO a company. And there's a LOT of people in the last year or two who will start learning about Apple hardware quality as their iPods die, or they talk to people like myself who will be happy to tell them how Apple has such a long history in the 2000's of having known common defects in their hardware and not supporting their owners. (My iBook is dead at 14 months from a failed logic board, a very common problem in all the post-Clamshell iBooks, but Apple has only chosen to support customers when threatened with class action lawsuits)

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[masklinn]

Also, Mark Pilgrim is running Ubuntu on an Apple machine, so Apple is still getting his money. Cory Doctorcow OTOH has switched to a Lenovo (IIRC).

Wrong, Mark Pilgrim uses a brand new Lenovo ThinkCentre M52

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Descalzo]

They want the computing analogue of the guys who buy BMWs.

No, it's Volkswagens. I'm about half joking. And it's not a bad thing.

Think about it, there's just something similar about the way VWs and Macs are both marketed, unlike anyone else.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[alphasubzero949]

I switched back because of the horrid quality of Apple hardware the last few years.

And with the build quality of the MacBook family, I won't be surprised if there will be more who jump ship because they cannot find a suitable replacement for their PowerPC machines.

Right now is the worst possible time to move to a Mac. First of all the MacBooks and MacBook Pros are plagued with many issues as nicely documented here. More importantly, Microsoft and Adobe still have not ported their software over along with numerous smaller third party vendors. How do you suppose customers will feel when they realize they bought software titles that aren't even native for their machines quite yet? Unless you use Apple's own consumer-oriented products, you are screwed for the time being.

Then of course are the issues with OS X itself. Too many to mention, but nicely summed up over at Rixstep.

I was actually hoping that the move to Intel was going to mean lower hardware prices now that under the hood there is no discernible difference in parts from bargain basement PCs. Instead, Apple continues to charge a premium for their hardware and even ask for an extra $150 for a color (e.g. MacBlack). I have owned and used Macs since 1997, but once my PowerBook breathes its last I will be migrating to a cheap PC running Ubuntu.

I'm currently dual booting OS X and Ubuntu and now find myself booted into the latter a lot more often.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I switched back because of the horrid quality of Apple hardware the last few years."

Indeed. I have a G3 iBook that died 3 months out of warranty, but this is not surprising given all the problems I had while it was still in warranty. I haven't had any problems with Ubuntu, but even if I had, the combined downtime from all the hardware problems with my iBook was over 2 months. The hoops I had to jump through as a result of that outweigh the issues I've had with hard distros like Slackware, let alone Ubuntu.

Even though OS X has its merits, it's pretty clear the hardware quality hasn't picked up much. Other vendors offer better quality, particularly in the business class machines, but even if that turned out not to be the case the superior support services from other vendors would still tip the scales by providing faster repairs.

I also find Apple's lineup lacking. For example, I've been shopping around for a new workstation. For less than the base PowerMac, I can get gigs of ECC memory, RAID, and better support services from another vendor. Even if I had a strong preference for OS X, I doubt I'd be willing to spend a couple grand to keep up like that.

There have also been issues with OS X itself. Some of these are specific to my line of work, like the consistent delay in getting updated Java versions. Others aren't, like poor quality control in software updates. Ubuntu's updates are well tested, but Apple has been known to cause major problems by forgetting to include important files, and you don't see forums filled with people reporting their experiences with a particular update because problems are rare.

Using a Mac for a few years has been enough to convince me that there's very little on the platform that I find beneficial. All in all, I consider myself thoroughly de-switched.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[eclectic4]

Let me guess, you put your iPod, containing an HD, in your cup holder in your car and wondered whey it "died" in 18 months.

Am I right? Did you not purchase the extended warranty not expecting to purchase a new iPod in a year?

And no, only the iBook G3 series has an extended repair program due to a problem with the logic board. (pssst, that means it's covered out of warranty)

Did you know that Apple will repair your out of warranty iBook (even if you decided to not purchase the extended warranty) for a flat rate of $280 if there is no physical damage to your laptop (that's pretty fuckin' sweet) even though the logic board costs over $700? Have you ever known a laptop to never have an MLB to go bad? Really!? Damn...

What are you not telling us? Did you really own an iBook or are you just here to bash Apple with false info to get modded up by cohorts who also are unaware of these services?

My guess is that you dropped your iBook down a flight of stairs and Apple quoted you an amount for repair that you didn't want to pay, rendering your machine inoperable, and now blame Apple. Nice.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[tgd]

Actually, jackass, if you want to know the specifics:

iBook had its memory on the logic board go back with a month left of the warranty. The Apple store "repaired" it, which turned out to be "took the 128 meg SODIMM out and put a 256 meg in" -- not replacing the bad logic board. It was several months before I noticed that. A month or two later, out of warranty, the system finally died entirely.

Apple will NOT repair it out of warranty for $280. They specifically quoted me $680 (or something right around that) for the repair. You're not the first person to mention that, but like everyone else, clearly you've never actually tried to get them to do that.

And yes, out of six or seven laptops, I've had one hardware failure other than the iBook's logic board -- a floppy drive on a Sager-Midern laptop ten years ago. That laptop was still running fine before I finally recycled it last year, I just had to pull the harddrive if I needed to install a new OS on it. That one died four or five years out of warranty. In fact, I've never had any serious hardware failure in any of my personal systems -- that includes MFM and RLL drives going back 20 years. I take extremely good care of all of it.

My most recent dead iPod actually had almost never been used. The first 40 gig one I bought had its hard drive die at 11 months -- and it was only used sporadically, mostly on plane trips. So while I appreciate your sarcasm, your assumptions are quite incorrect. Apple replaced that one with a new one with a defective dock connector. I, unfortunately, didn't get a chance to use it more than once or twice in the following few months, and discovered with less than five or ten hours of use, that one was dead. It works, if I can get it charged, but with a bad dock connector, thats not too useful. I could buy a new iPod for the flat rate repare cost they quoted for that...

The 1st generation (or maybe it was 2nd generation, I don't recall) one before that had the harddrive die just out of warranty, again only ever used on plane trips. That one probably had less than 100 hours of total use on it.

My first Mighty Mouse stopped tracking movement to the left. Weird, considering its optical. The guy in the store happily exchanged it under warranty after seeing it (he was surprised, too) Its replacement died three months later when the scroll-wheel stopped working. Unfortunately that was out of the 60 or 90 days a warranty replacement is covered for.

Yes, Apple had an extended logic board program for the G3 -- and insists to this day that the problem did not exist with the G4 ibooks. Do some google searching, you'll see how common it was on the G4. In fact, the going theory is that its a flaw in the case design allowing too much flex in the logic board that caused both the G3 and G4 failures.

I'm not here to get modded up for anything. Believe me, my karma is quite high enough I don't need to shill for some imaginary anti-Apple contingent on here.

Go put your arrogent fan-boi head back in the sand about Apple's very real quality problems, or at a minimum find some other thread to cast accusations around in.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Apple had an extended logic board program for the G3 -- and insists to this day that the problem did not exist with the G4 ibooks. Do some google searching, you'll see how common it was on the G4. In fact, the going theory is that its a flaw in the case design allowing too much flex in the logic board that caused both the G3 and G4 failures.

Not common at all, in fact. I've owned 3 of the ibook G4s, including the original, and never once was there a thing wrong with any of them. I suspect your usage patterns are not normal; you seem to expect the same out of a $1000 laptop that others would expect out of a $2000 model. Get real.

BTW, how was the dock connector on that ipod broken? Physically? If so, how did you get music on it?

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[linuxpng]

then count my usage patterns in there.
powerbook ti - bad logic board, paint issue
powerbook ti #2 - 3 bad harddrives
imac g4 - randomly shut off
powerbook al - 2 bad hard drives
powermac g5 - bad powersupply, randomly shut off, 2nd power supply + logic board

folks bought an imac g5
defective harddrive, keyboard and mouse in first 3 months.

and I started buying apple computers in 2k1, not very good quality control is a real issue. Their support centers also seem to have a difficult time *not* damaging computers on repair as well.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[sacrilicious]

Other vendors offer better quality

Would you have any recommendations on info sources where laptop shoppers like myself could acquaint themselves with the quality available from different intel laptop vendors? (Thanks for any help...)

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[cowscows]

Agreed. I've got an LC from 1991, a PowerMac 7500 from '96, and Rev C iMac from '99 that all still run just fine. I carried my G3 powerbook in my backpack for 4 years and generally beat the hell out of it, and it just recently gave up. My G5 powermac, on the other hand, has not aged as well. The optical drive stopped working literally the day after the warranty ran out, and the machine has decided not to turn on at all as of about a week ago(Most likely the power supply, haven't had much time to diagnostic it yet). It hasn't even been 18 months, and it's already crapped out. I even waited for the rev. B G5's to try and avoid some of the common glitches.

The Apple price premium was not such a big deal when I expected to get five years of use out of a machine. But spreading that extra cash out over just a year and a half makes the whole equation look way less appealing to me. It's too bad I find windows so damn annoying, or else I'd be able to leave Apple behind and not look back. Right now I can't figure out what I want to do.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[toddestan]

It's too bad I find windows so damn annoying, or else I'd be able to leave Apple behind and not look back. Right now I can't figure out what I want to do.

You could always switch to Ubuntu.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Mattintosh]

While we're on the topic of anecdotes (and how those prove beyond a doubt that what you're saying is true in all cases), I'd love to throw mine into the mix.

- Beige G3 tower, 300MHz, came with 64 MB of RAM (now has 448 MB), 4GB SCSI HDD (now has that and a 20GB IDE) and extra video card (removed and replaced with a Voodoo3). I received the system via UPS on August 14, 1998. It never gave me a problem outside of the occasional Unreal Tournament crash during reads to the SCSI card and the HD that was on that bus. It runs 10.2.8 and is still in perfect working condition, though a bit underpowered for any real use.

- Colorsync 17 CRT, a Sony product (has a Trinitron tube complete with bracing wires). Received via UPS on August 14, 1998. Died (not completely, but to blinky to the point of uselessness) sometime in 2001. Still powers on, but goes wonky within minutes. Usable as a head for a normally headless server, as long as it can connect to a fricking old-school Apple Display Connection (not the same as the all-in-one ADC power/USB/video plug. It's older and is really just VGA with a non-HD plug.). I keep it around because it's cheaper to store it than to pay for CRT disposal.

- Powerbook G3 (Bronze Keyboard), a.k.a. "1999" or "Lombard". Has been upgraded to 320MB RAM and 10GB HDD by myself. It was refurbished when I bought it, so it had passed QA twice. I received it in the early spring of 2000. Upgrades were done in 2001. There was a power adapter recall, but no further problems. The battery died in late 2005. It still works, though it relies on the replacement power adapters (the same yo-yo ones as the first iBooks). Got kinda hot if you sat it on a non-heat-conductive surface (worse than a MacBook Pro). Seemed to have a huge metal plate in the bottom of it as a heat-spreader.

- iPod, 4th generation (click wheel), 40GB. Purchased in July 2004. Has had a few HD corruption issues (mostly in FAT32 mode, and nothing a reformat couldn't fix), has a few scratches from being dropped (carpet, concrete, and tile). Still works beautifully and still holds a 10-hour charge.

- Mac Mini, 1.42GHz G4 "loaded" configuration. First generation. Purchased in April 2005. Serves as a HD-PVR (in concert with an EyeTV 500). Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.

- Mac Mini, 1.33GHz G4 (speed-bumped "1.25GHz") "cheap" configuration. First generation. Purchased October 7, 2005. Serves as a light-duty desktop and will soon be a PostgreSQL and Apache server for my home-use web-apps. Runs 24/7 in an air-conditioned environment. No problems.

- MacBook Pro, 15", 2.16GHz, 1GB RAM, 100GB HDD. Purchased June 2006 (about 4 weeks ago). Gets kinda hot, but not too hot to put on your lap, even running iTunes and Eclipse and 10 other smaller apps simultaneously. No physical defects apparent yet (other than the standard penchant every keyboard has for attracting a ring of solidified skin oils on the "e", "i", "o", "return", and "delete" keys - ugh). No overheating problems, especially after the firmware flash that was ready shortly after first boot. I've seen some WiFi connection weirdness, but only when at the far reaches of a hotspot. Apparently, the swelling battery problem requires a few months of fermentation. I'm hoping mine is a "rev B" or something and avoids this problem.

Now, I don't doubt you've had some issues with your Apple hardware, but I don't believe for a second that it's overly widespread (at least any more than any other manufacturer), or that there is a higher-than-normal percentage of bad Apples (har har). To point out the obvious, you've purchased several "first-generation" and "low-end" Apple products, which do have higher failure rates than the "revision" and "high-end" products. The iBook is low-end, the iPod is perpetually "first-generation" because they keep overhauling it (retarded product strategy, btw), and the Mighty Mouse is seriously first-gen (and won't be 2nd-gen for a long time). When they start including the Mighty Mouse with the pro-line "high-end" desktops, then it will have graduated to 2nd-generation.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[_iris]

14 months ago was May of 2005 and "a few years" ago was about 2003. Using Linux as your desktop OS since some time between 1993 and 1995? Doubt it.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[greatcelerystalk]

I also had a G3 iBook that died immediately out of warranty. It also died four times while it was in warranty; each time, the iBook required a logic board replacement.

Apple still wouldn't admit it was a widespread problem (it was).

After the machine went out of warranty, the display died because of the way the wiring for the LCD backlight was run through hinges with sharp edges. Every time a user opens and closes the lid of a G3 iBook, it abraids the wiring. Eventually, the LCD backlight will stop functioning because the connection is severed completely.

This was a late-model iBook, purchased approximately 5 months before the G4 iBook made its debut. I didn't want to end up disliking Apple, but trying to get $499 out of a customer to fix a design flaw is ridiculous. At the time, Apple had not yet begun the gratis replacement of G3 logic boards, so it would've cost me ~$689 for that plus $499 for the display. That adds up to $1200 or ~$110 more than I paid in the beginning.

When your lifestyle necessitates a portable computer that functions at least 95% of the time, and you know that Apple is fairly well known for producing lemons, Apple isn't an option. Comparing the iBook's track record with the very cheap Dell portable I purchased to replace it, I've only had to send it in for service twice; one of those times was because it flew from one end of a bus to the other when the bus was in an accident, and the other was because, after 2 years of 10-12 hours of constant use a day, the motherboard needed replacing. The Dell service and support hasn't been perfect, but the machine has only been out of my hands for a total of six days since I've owned it. If a PC manufacturer ever starts making eye-candy machines and installs Ubuntu by default, it could represent real competiton.

Given Apple's penchant for shipping shoddy first, and sometimes second, revision hardware, Apple may be more vulnerable than it realizes to bleeding a sizable portion of its userbase. This is contingent on Ubuntu being able to rival OS X and a PC-manufacturer producing pretty, solid, functional hardware.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[DLWormwood]

I was actually hoping that the move to Intel was going to mean lower hardware prices now that under the hood there is no discernible difference in parts from bargain basement PCs.

That was never actually a possibility. The typical G4 or G5 costs about half the typical cost of a Pentium 4 or Core. The PowerPC line of processors evolved into being "embedded" style processors instead of "general purpose" processors, which was part of the reason Apple jumped ship. There are more PowerPC processors installed in cars (and now, video game consoles) than were ever installed in Macs.

Besides, even now, Apple Intel system still use "unorthodox" hardware since they use EFI boot chips instead of BIOS, so they still require custom hardware development. (EFI won't be common on the PC side until Vista finally ships.)

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[badmammajamma]

lol...careful. Saying *anything* negative about Apple on /. can be hazardous to your karma. I'm a windows user and personally build my own PC's. I don't see why any geek would buy pre-built systems when you can build your own with better parts for the same or cheaper price but hey, that's /. for you. In any event, my PC's don't break. I confidently would put them up against any Apple product for a realibility test.

The other thing I don't get is how the rabid Apple fanbase on this site which ordinarily is extremely anti-DRM seems to not even notice that Apple is all about DRM, lock-in, and every other negative thing you can think of that comes with it. Un-fucking-believable. Personally, I hope Apple continues to succeed even more and kick Windows ass. I'm really looking forward to the day when all these idiots realise how much Jobs is ass fucking them with lock-in. The backlash will be something to remember. :)

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[artels]

Mark Pilgrim has switched to Lenovo as well. He was not impressed with Apple's current hardware offering, and as an IBM employee he got a Lenovo discount.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[dave1212]

Well, that sure sucks to be you.

My G4 tower has been running almost non-stop, full of hard drives and PCI cards since August of 2000. No hardware issues. Not one.

iPod's been fine for over 2 years, still has an 8 hour battery, and it's in great condition.

You need to learn how to take care of your stuff. Especially expensive stuff. (well, neither of your machines were expensive, they are both the consumer line anyway, perhaps Apple uses higher quality parts in their Pro machines)

So spout your horror stories and FUD, and I'll point out what you did wrong in your steps to resolve issues and share my friends and my own positive stories. Sound good?

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[tgd]

Yeah.

July 1993.

Back then you had to install it yourself, there were no "real" distributions. You booted off a kernel floppy into a minimal system, formatted the drive, and copied the GCC source off another disk.

A month later you had a full Linux system ready, and a smart person backed it up to tape.

It was my only desktop OS for ten years. The only non-Linux systems I had were a couple of Sun or Dec systems, and once in a while a Windows laptop from work.

I'd bet you can find a lot of people on here who started using Linux back then, when that was how you had to install it. I bet there's a lot of people on here who remember how damn cool it was when you could a couple days downloading the Slackware A disks, and save SO much time installing it.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Weedlekin]

I remember installing Slackware on a then current 80486 box some time in 1994. It was a salutary experience, and I was surprised to find that X had a driver for a my Weitek P9000 accelerator, which was quite a high-end item at that time (it worked well, too). I've had a love for Linux since that time, although nothing has ever equalled the buzz of installing that early Slackware distro, and ending up with something that looked and felt like a UNIX workstation which was mine to do whatever I wanted with.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[cowscows]

Sadly, I do a lot of graphics work, and Linux doesn't run the software I need.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[eclectic4]

Apple will NOT repair it out of warranty for $280. They specifically quoted me $680 (or something right around that) for the repair. You're not the first person to mention that, but like everyone else, clearly you've never actually tried to get them to do that.

You are simply wrong, and got modded up for it. Nice! Go to any Apple Store and ask someone how much an out of warranty repair is for an iBook, with no physical damage to it. It's $280. Has been for years. If they quoted you over $600 it was definitely because you had physical damage to machine, which is probably why your slot was not working, which was why as a nice workaround (to save you some money) they just put more RAM in the other slot. You sir, are the ignorant jackass, you should have thanked them. Instead, you spread false nonsense on /. just have another ignoramus mod you up. For shame.

BTW, it's $310 for an out of warranty PowerBook/MacBook Pro with no physical damage. Again, has been for years... you're either completely ignorant or are simply lying to spread FUD, either way you should definitely be modded down just for being completely wrong, if nothing else.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[mrxak]

What "pack" are they leading? Anybody that switches to linux because some other guy did, without any consideration of their own needs and situation, is an idiot. Why does it matter that these two guys switched anymore than some other two guys? Are people really so enamored with these two guys that they'd cast aside their own computing needs and cause actual loss of profits for Apple? If they are, then I'm frankly disappointed in the human race, at least the part of it using computers.

If Apple wants to address their concerns in future products, then so be it. Maybe such "prominent" former mac-users will cause Apple to do something good for their users.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Scudsucker]

lol...careful. Saying *anything* negative about Apple on /. can be hazardous to your karma.

Hardly. Any reported hardware problem with Apple hardware makes it onto the Slashdot front page within a matter of days. People complain about the Macbooks overheating ALL THE TIME. Dell can have far worse problems with their hardware, but it takes a laptop battery exploding and starting on fire before it's news here. You will still get modded down if you troll, however, which makes me think what's really going on is you guys miss the days when any factually challenged, Dvorak type quip would get you an automatic +5 Informative. Case in point:

The other thing I don't get is how the rabid Apple fanbase on this site which ordinarily is extremely anti-DRM seems to not even notice that Apple is all about DRM, lock-in, and every other negative thing you can think of that comes with it.

No, they aren't. The only place you'll find DRM is on the iTMS store, which nobody forces you to use. There is no product activation, and not even a serial number unless you are buying OS X Server.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[vought]

The Apple store "repaired" it, which turned out to be "took the 128 meg SODIMM out and put a 256 meg in" -- not replacing the bad logic board. It was several months before I noticed that. A month or two later, out of warranty, the system finally died entirely.

First off, did you test the logic board to find out that was the problem?

I think the "fault" here lies as much with you as Apple. Apple repaired and tested your machine and sent it back to you. You declined to immediately review what they did to your computer and had no problems during the 90-day after service parts and labor warranty (which supercedes the original product warranty) and you apparently didn't bother to ask them to appeal their decision when they told you how much it'd be to repair your machine.

So, how is this Apple's fault again? Having worked with the group that makes warranty exceptions, I can tell you right now that a kind word and a little persistence would have bagged you a free repair if you'd simply asked, especially if you had your first repair so close to the end of the original warranty. Apple does have some mercy - and like with any company, you won't get it from front line agents. You actually have to ask them to make an exception.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

- Beige G3 tower, 300MHz, came with 64 MB of RAM (now has 448 MB), 4GB SCSI HDD (now has that and a 20GB IDE) and extra video card (removed and replaced with a Voodoo3). I received the system via UPS on August 14, 1998. It never gave me a problem outside of the occasional Unreal Tournament crash during reads to the SCSI card and the HD that was on that bus. It runs 10.2.8
 
No offense, but you're a moron. Running OSX on a box with those specs tells us you know diddly-fuckall about computers. Stop commenting now please.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Mattintosh]

Heh. Well, for starters, you're a troll and an idiot. But I'll humor you nonetheless.

The beige G3 is quite slow, but not unusable with Mac OS X 10.2.8. The Voodoo3 had to be removed in order for it to boot without a kernel panic. And it no longer is able to run UT at all (since UT wasn't ported fully to OSX and OSX lacks Rage Pro drivers). It makes a good space heater, and an even better closet filler. OSX 10.2.8 is the last version that will run on systems without built-in USB, so tell Apple how they know "diddly-fuckall" about computers and spare me your ignorant rants.

Stop commenting now, please.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[dave1212]

and yes, the first rev of each iBook model had issues. Apple took care of them, even out of warranty.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[tgd]

And yet, it looks as good as the day I got it.

Find another thread to be wrong on. Buh-bye.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[DWIM]

While we're on the topic of anecdotes (and how those prove beyond a doubt that what you're saying is true in all cases), I'd love to throw mine into the mix.

Whew! Thank you! Apple's sterling reputation is restored!!

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

So you clearly believe that Apple is above blame and any fault lies with the user. I've dumped Apple hardware because whilst my macplus still works with only a HV stability problem in the monitor, every piece of apple hardware I've bought after 2000 has had a hardware failure just out of warranty. They still haven't fixed my Airport base station. The basic message is that Apple's quality control has gone down hill a long way, and I'm now quite content to use Ubuntu instead.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[badmammajamma]

"Hardly. Any reported hardware problem with Apple hardware makes it onto the Slashdot front page within a matter of days. People complain about the Macbooks overheating ALL THE TIME. Dell can have far worse problems with their hardware, but it takes a laptop battery exploding and starting on fire before it's news here. You will still get modded down if you troll, however, which makes me think what's really going on is you guys miss the days when any factually challenged, Dvorak type quip would get you an automatic +5 Informative."

Yep but you can't mod parent level posts so your point is invalid. Also, with PC hardware it's a different ball of wax entirely since there are thousands of possible combinations. Consequently, if Samsung builds a bum hard drive it effects everyone (not necessarily just Windows machines). There's no PC manufacturer to point fingers at. Consequently, your comparison is apples to oranges (no pun intended). There is also no inherent sense of quality except with very specific PC brands. Nobody gives a shit if an e-machines boxes regularly die after one year because they are cheap pieces of shit. Apple always tries to pitch the quality of their products so they have an obligation to deliver.

"No, they aren't. The only place you'll find DRM is on the iTMS store, which nobody forces you to use. There is no product activation, and not even a serial number unless you are buying OS X Server."

Lock-in can come in more than just DRM form. For example, Apple has no intention for you to run OSX on non-Apple hardware. If you want OSX, you better buy from them as far as they are concerned. Of course hackers will continuously try to get around this limitation but the point is still valid. I can assure you that people would be even more pissed about a totally Apple dominated world than they are about Microsoft dominated world because Jobs is even a bigger cock than Gates (hard to imagine, I know).

Thanks, but I'll take the flexibility I have right now. Enjoy your closed, Jobs run, world.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[eclectic4]

Um, dude *snicker*. I'm not wrong. This is simply Apple policy, has been for years. What part of this do you not understand? How can this be made more clear for you? You are convincing me that you are a liar more and more. Being a contractor and having used this service many times (I've serviced hundreds of Apple laptops) I am intimately aware of this program. You are making yourself look like a supreme jackass to all who are aware of this very simple policy that has been in place for years. You can do a simple google search to see this.

Are you mentally challanged or something? If you are, I apologize... But my bet is still on you simply being a liar. Nuff said.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[ArbitraryConstant]

It's true, this is one of the areas where Linux is lacking, but it's not a good time to be buying Apple for this either, since the universal binaries for a lot of that software aren't out yet, and the remaining PowerPC hardware is not priced very competitively and may well run into longer term support issues as 3rd parties and Apple drop support for PowerPC.

The one bright side is that other x86 vendors are so much cheaper for workstations comparable to the PowerMac that a machine purchased now doesn't have to be useful for as long to justify the expense; you're not stuck with it. Also, while it's debatable whether or not they're better quality (I tend to think they do for business class machines, but many disagree), they deffinitely have better support options to get you up and running sooner.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is, you obviously got lucky. However lots of other people did not.
I myself are one of the ppl affected by a faulty G3 iBook. The extensive warranty didn't cover it because I replaced the cd-drive with a cd-burner before I was aware of the problem.

Besides this issue there were several other things with Apple Hardware. You just need to take a look at the forums. In all those cases the usual tactic of Apple is 1.) not to react at all 2.) call it a user problem 3.) deny that a problem exists etc etc

Those are tactics I expcect from $cheapo_brand but not from Apple. Remember that the iBook extensive warranty program was only created because a lawsuit was near?

As I said there are numerous examples with Apple Hardware, just to name a few:

- You have a beige G3. The B&W G3 had issues with the IDE controller (data corruption). The KB article of Apple said basically: Buy a PCI-IDE card or let your drives run in PIO mode

- eMac: Numerous reports of various errors, especially dying monitors.

- PowerMac G4 sounds like a jet engine

- bad placed sensor in PowerMac G5 causing the harddrives to get quite hot

- some issues with freezes with the PowerMac G5 2,0 Ghz Single under OS X 10.4

- bad capacitators with the iMac G5

I never, really never experienced those problems with PC Hardware. And even if they would occur, say leaking capacitators. Just buy a new board for $50. With Apple you're either under warranty or else it's something like $500. Whereas I love Apple Software, Apple hardware sucks compared to PC hardware. Because you pay extra, but don't get better quality, most of the time even worse. And you can't replace it by yourself (cheap) you rely on apple.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Mattintosh]

you obviously got lucky

Yes. I got lucky 5 times in a row. Right.

I myself are one of the ppl affected by a faulty G3 iBook. The extensive warranty didn't cover it because I replaced the cd-drive with a cd-burner before I was aware of the problem.

And it's Apple's fault that you voided your warranty? And then something broke and they wouldn't fix it because you voided your warranty? Notice who voided your warranty. You.

You just need to take a look at the forums. In all those cases the usual tactic of Apple is 1.) not to react at all 2.) call it a user problem 3.) deny that a problem exists etc etc

Looking at the forums is just a way to gather more useless anecdotal whining. And to be honest, if there are only a few hundred forum posts about problems with a product where thousands or millions of units are shipped, I'm inclined to agree with Apple's stance of "you must be doing something wrong" without seeing and investigating further evidence.

Those are tactics I expcect from $cheapo_brand but not from Apple. Remember that the iBook extensive warranty program was only created because a lawsuit was near?

Apple is no different from any other company. Why wouldn't you expect those "tactics" from Apple? Apple is a publicly traded corporation and if you're not a shareholder, they don't owe you a damned thing more than what you agreed to pay them for. They are not your friend, your pal, or your buddy. They said "we have product-A for sale for X-amount of money and it does this function and we guarantee that if you don't break it, it's made well enough to do that function for at least a year. If you pay us extra, we'll make that guarantee extend to 3 years." You bought it. Then you tampered with the machine enough to void that guarantee. Other people found that there was an actual flaw and Apple was forced to abide by their prior agreement to fix things. The "lawsuit" that was "near" that you mention was probably just an angry customer venting their frustration before getting a response from Apple.

The B&W G3 had issues with the IDE controller

Yes, but I didn't have one of those. And if you read my original post, you surely saw my point at the end about "first-generation" products. The B&W G3's IDE issues only affected Revision A motherboards.

eMac: Numerous reports of various errors, especially dying monitors.

And numerous reports of recalls too. And if you read my original post, you surely saw my point at the end about "low-end" products. The eMac is decidedly low-end.

PowerMac G4 sounds like a jet engine

Install the fricking firmware update already. It's only been out for 4 years.

sensor in PowerMac G5 causing the harddrives to get quite hot

Yet another "first-generation" issue. This was fixed within 2 months of release.

issues with freezes with the PowerMac G5 2,0 Ghz Single under OS X 10.4

"Low-end" again. Sure, this is the PowerMac G5, but it's the cheap one with a single chip. IIRC, they scale everything down on those. Slower memory, crappier graphics card, etc. It's a cheapened facsimile of the high-end desktop.

bad capacitators with the iMac G5

Now we have the best (worst?) of both worlds. A "low-end" iMac crossed with a "first-generation" (and only-generation) iMac G5. (Revision B was the Core Duo model.)

I never, really never experienced those problems with PC Hardware.

Yes, you did. You just didn't pin them on anyone else, since you were the only one to blame when something went wrong. If you had bought a Dell and all this stuff went wrong, then Dell would be just as "evil" and would've "locked you in" just as much, even though they sell the same PC hardware as every other vendor and the same as what you can buy from your favorite parts supplier. With Apple (or Dell) you're under warranty. Period. Unless you're so stupid as to go and void the warranty before it

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[cowscows]

Yeah, it's just a weird situation. I've got a dell that's a couple years old that I'm using in the meantime, hopefully I can make do with it until a good option comes up.

It's just that windows pisses me off about a thousand times a day. Usually just little things, but they add up. My powermac doesn't have the little annoyances, it only breaks in big ways. What the hell.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

So your G3 laptop worked fine, except for the bad power supply, bad battery and searing heat. Your iPod worked fine, except the hard drive broke. Total fanboi.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Mattintosh]

Umm... the power supply was recalled, yes. And Apple replaced them free of charge (including shipping!). The other things were not defects.

- The battery died after 7 years of use.
- The "searing" heat was never hot enough to be painful. Worrisome, but never painful.
- The iPod hard drive did not break. It was corrupted, but such is life. A reformat is not the same as a replacement.

And yes, I am a fanboy. I'm just not an incompetent, blind, incoherent, illiterate fucking moron like you seem to be. Don't like the name-calling? Don't reply like an asshat after two days without being able to read and understand what you're replying to. Two days is enough for anyone that isn't a complete tool to grasp the meaning of some words.

Welcome to slashdot, Anonymous Coward.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it doesn't suck to be him, jackass - it sucks to be YOU. Put another way, YOU SUCK.

For all you know he DID take care of his stuff. For all we know you're under 14 physically and permanently warped mentally. Hey jerk-face, get this: even if Steve Jobs put out the world's classiest and most reliable hardware, potential customers would know they'd have to meet the likes you, you ass-hat, and that in itself would frighten them away.

Your parent or guardian needs to take drastic measures with you right now so you don't go burning down entire neighbourhoods.

Heck, if I knew were you lived, I'd call your local police station. And the Roto-Rooter man.

Re:Apple won't miss 'em

[anaesthetica]

How do you suppose customers will feel when they realize they bought software titles that aren't even native for their machines quite yet?

The same way they felt when they bought OS X machines that required running old programs in the Classic environment?

If my memory serves me, Apple turned out alright from that episode.

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

well in your case it sounds like an integrator did some work before the system with ubuntu got to you. you can get some integrator to setup an apple box for you as well..

Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Max Threshold]

I'm starting to see more talk about Ubuntu in non-Linux-related contexts... newbies asking how to do this or that. The message is reaching the masses: Windows is shitware, and Macs are too expensive. Why put up with any of that when you can get the best of all worlds for free?

I think Firefox might have had some effect in waking people up to Free Software.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Reality Master 101]

Why put up with any of that when you can get the best of all worlds for free?

The best world for my desktop is the one that runs any application I want, and you can argue that the best for that is Windows or a Mac, but it's certainly not any flavor of Linux.

Once again it must be said (and why is this so hard for Linux advocates to understand?): People use applications, not operating systems, and Linux absolutely sucks compared to Windows or even Macs when it comes to normal user applications by nearly any metric you name (choices, ease of use, ease of installation, consistency of operation, etc, etc, etc).

Call me when the major application houses (Adobe, as an example) port their product lines to Linux. Then we have something to talk about.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[rts008]

Good post. I also think Firefox had some small part to play in waking up the masses to the fact that there ARE alternatives to a Windoze only box.

If I currently had mod points, I would not have replied, instead I would have gave you +1 insightful.

Sorry I can't do better than this reply for now. :)

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[mad.frog]

Adobe (et al) will port their product lines to Linux when it becomes economically viable to do so.

If there is a clear market for (say) Photoshop on Linux -- and said market was likely to be profitable -- you'll see Adobe doing ports.

Flash Player is being ported to Linux, true, but it's not sold (for desktop use) in the first place... it's given away as a way to drive sales for Flash Authoring, Flex, Breeze, etc., so that's really a different scenario.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[kevlarman]

Once again it must be said (and why is this so hard for Linux advocates to understand?): People use applications, not operating systems, and Linux absolutely sucks compared to Windows or even Macs when it comes to normal user applications by nearly any metric you name (choices, ease of use, ease of installation, consistency of operation, etc, etc, etc).

i have to disagree with you here, i recently (as in days ago) installed ubuntu (dapper) and win2k on my computer, and ubuntu was much easier to install, and after it did install, i was pretty much done. When I installed windows, i had to go through the pain of trying to download video card drivers at 800x600 (or was it even that?) and 8-bit color. Synaptic makes it easy for most people to get the apps they need (the only thing lacking is i graphical editor for /etc/apt/sources.lst, but I think they are adding it in the next release). I do agree though that there are definitely applications that Linux needs before it is widely adopted, but people need to stop acting like it still takes a day of staring at the command line before you have a usable system.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Etyenne]

Synaptic makes it easy for most people to get the apps they need (the only thing lacking is i graphical editor for /etc/apt/sources.lst ....

In Synaptic : Settings menu, Repositories, click the Add button.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[rm69990]

I doubt it. I had my whole family and some friends using Firefox, and I suggested Linux, and they said "Does Firefox run on that?"

The masses don't go and browse through the Mozilla website and learn about the development methology of Open source software. They hit the front page, see a download link for what looks like an ordinary application, they quickly check for the price, are happy when it is freeware (in their mind at least), and they use it. I've even had someone ask me once if Firefox came bundled with Spyware.

So yeah, I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that the masses learn that there are alternatives to Windows by downloading Firefox, but my experiences are far from it. They couldn't tell the difference between it, Opera, Maxthon or (for some people) Internet Explorer if their life depended on it. They simply don't care enough to want to find out.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[killjoe]

Even when I use windows I use my favorite applications like firefox, thunderbird, eclipse, jedit, etc.

Oh and photoshop runs under wine. So if you have to run that piece of software you stole you can.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[alcmaeon]

"Why put up with any of that [shitware and expense] when you can get the best of all worlds for free?"

Well, I would agree with you that the best of all possible worlds for free beats expensive shitware, however, my experience with Linux [Ubuntu included] has been that there is a reason it is free, namely no one in his right mind would pay for such utter dung. Consequently, while I agree that the best of all possible worlds for free is, well, the best of all possible worlds; I assume you think Linux represents the best of all possible worlds and in that you are gravely mistaken.

Look on the bright side, though, you are destined to be happy your entire life because you are just so damn easy to please.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that the HTML tags on here don't work like they used to?

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Durandal64]

Really? Let me go out and ask the masses then. Hey you, hot girl! Have you switched to Ubuntu yet? What is Ubuntu? No it's not a small African nation in the middle of a civil war! DUH!! Hey where are you going?! You forgot your Knoppix LiveCD!!!!

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[thopkins]

Unfortunately not having Flash version 8 makes going to many websites an unpleasant process in linux.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! So you installed an OS that was less than six months old (latest Ubuntu) Vs an OS that is 5+ years old (Win2k) and then you trip because you have to install drivers for the 5+ year old OS? Fucking amazing. This is why Slashdot has no credibility in the real IT world.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[dhasenan]

Yes, but on my ten-year-old hardware, Linux autodetects and Windows still doesn't.

There are good reasons for this (licensing and such), but none that the end users actually sympathize with. It's the same with Ubuntu's non-support of proprietary media (mp3's etc).

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[kimvette]

For what it's worth most devices needed drivers installed manually on then-current devices even when Win2K was new, and the drivers that came bundled with the OS (submitted to Microsoft by third parties) often if not always lacked optimizations and features present in the driver package one could download separately from the component manufacturer.

Nice troll though. ;)

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[vux984]

For what it's worth most devices needed drivers installed manually on then-current devices even when Win2K was new...

Good point. But to be fair lets look at the situation with ubuntu 6 years ago, when windows 2000 was new, and see how well it fared with drivers back then... oh... wait... nevermind.

No matter which distro that did exist you choose, installing Linux 6 years ago wasn't a cakewalk. And Windows 2000 was actually pretty good for its time.

But if you are going to compare a new ubuntu install to Windows, its only fair to at least compare the install to Windows XP SP2. Anything less is dishonest.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Only up to Photoshop 7, currently. Not that the 7 is a bad app, but I know quite a lot of people who say they can't do without CS2. Even though most (not all) are wrong, CS2 is a huge leap from PS7.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[mdwh2]

i have to disagree with you here, i recently (as in days ago) installed ubuntu (dapper) and win2k on my computer, and ubuntu was much easier to install, and after it did install, i was pretty much done. When I installed windows, i had to go through the pain of trying to download video card drivers at 800x600 (or was it even that?) and 8-bit color.

If anecdotal evidence of six year old operating systems is the standard: when I tried installing Red Hat at that time, the supplied video drivers were broken for my graphics card (would only run in 320x200!) I also tried Suse which at least offered me staggeringly huge resolutions such as 800x600, but random pixels would flicker. This isn't "the OS supplied drivers are unoptimised or lacking features" but "the OS supplied drivers are fundamentally broken". Windows 2000 meanwhile, and even Windows 98, worked out of the box.

Of course, I realise that anecdotal evidence isn't necessarily typical of everyone's situation, and I'm willing to accept that things may have improved in six years.

(And as an aside, the only OS I've seen handle installing drivers on PCs quickly and without having to keep accessing the OS disc everytime you change a bit of hardware was BeOS.)

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[killjoe]

Waaaaaaahh. Mommy. Those evil linux coders will only let me run photoshop up to version 7 on their operating system. Make them stop!.

I love it when you guys are reduced to whining about versions of photoshop!.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[kevlarman]

if anecdotal evidence of six year old operating systems is the standard

I see your point (it was probably a little unfair of me to compare the latest ubuntu to win2k), but win2k is pretty much the latest version of windows that will run reasonably on less than 512MB RAM, so it sees a lot more use (relatively) than any specific old release of a particular distro. My point is that more and more Linux distros tend to "just work" on common hardware, and that if a few more key applications existed/worked better, then Linux would be just as desktop-friendly as windows.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[fm6]

Moderation -1000: Blasphemy!

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Darby]

The best world for my desktop is the one that runs any application I want, and you can argue that the best for that is Windows or a Mac, but it's certainly not any flavor of Linux.

Well, not really. "you", being me, can't argue that the best for "I", being you, is anything as I don't know your needs. I can argue that Linux is the best for me as there are applications that do everything I need a computer to do which are available. If your needs are specific to a given area, then it's entirely possible that you *need* Windows, or that you *need* MacOS. It's not an absolute for everybody by any stretch.
It's certainly not true that "it's certainly not any flavor of Linux." for everybody.

Once again it must be said (and why is this so hard for Linux advocates to understand?): People use applications, not operating systems, and Linux absolutely sucks compared to Windows or even Macs when it comes to normal user applications by nearly any metric you name (choices, ease of use, ease of installation, consistency of operation, etc, etc, etc).

Certainly for some metrics it's true, but it's not even true for all of the ones you named.
"choices": In general, you have more choices for an application for a given task in Linux than you do for any other OS (most times you have "Gapp" and "Kapp" and often plenty of others). Many people even argue that this is a bad thing. Distros like Ubuntu and the like actually work to limit the blatantly obvious choices in order to address that issue while providing mechanisms to make it easy for those who are aware of the options available to avail themselves of them.
Yes, there are cases where there is not an app available for Linux that will meet your needs, but for the vast majority of cases, this isn't true. Usually, when this is the case there is no choice at all regardless of platform.

"ease of use": This is tougher to address as a general issue. Mostly, if you're used to a platform, you're used to how the applications for that platform perform. It's certainly true that you could list off a number of applications for Windows or MacOS for which the "best" comparable Linux app is less mature. In many cases though, the comparable Linux app is far more configurable and thereby for a given user's needs far more easy to use. Additionally, odds are that it's far more scriptable under Linux, so far more useful at least for the power users.

"Installation": On the Linux side, this varies with distribution and again with your familiarity with your platform. For the large number of servers I manage using Gentoo, local rsync server + portage proxy (http-replicator) + cross-compiling distcc makes it a snap to install and *know* that everything is at the same versions. It's also fast as hell even with compiling when I have a few idle Opties available when done at the right time. For my home uses, it's as simple as reading about $NEAT_APP, alt-tab emerge $NEAT_APP, alt tab read on for a bit, run $NEAT_APP. For those without my inclinations (and spare hardware lying around), there are distros geared toward them (like Ubuntu) where the $NEAT_APP stuff above is replaced by clicky-clicky download and install $NEAT_APP and everything else it needs.
Heck, compare to an install on Windows of a (for the sake of equivalence) freely downloadable app. Find it, download it, then click through the installation screens. Both are easy, but the Windows one takes a few more clicks.

"Consistency of operation": This is much more difficult for me to address in any general sense. I assume you're talking about keyboard shortcuts and the like in GUI apps. In my experience, there are apps on every platform that fail to conform to "standards", while most do. Maybe you have a bunch of examples I'm not familiar with, maybe you were talking about something else entirely.

Call me when the major application houses (Adobe, as an example) port their product lines to Linux. Then we have something to talk about.

Well, I'll just say that the main reason you shouldn't sit by your phone holding your breath waiting for my call *isn't* that you didn't leave your phone number ;-)

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Tab is on Slashdot]

Yes, this is true. I myself am merely a "casual" linux user who only made the switch when Hoary was released (after a few months of playing around with live CDs) -- and my main reasons for switching were completely desktop-related. Since then, at least two of my friends are raving about Ubuntu and one is bringing his girlfriend over. Ubuntu has enabled the 1998-era PC in my family's living room to stay modern and beautiful. All of this was probably true before Ubuntu, but the real difference is the audience. None of us are anything close to the prototypical linux user. Not that desktop Linux doesn't have a long way to go, and in my personal opinion OS X is still lightyears ahead of everything else available, but the trend is definitely there.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately not having Flash version 8 makes going to many websites an unpleasant process in linux.

To be fair, having Flash 8 installed makes going to many websites an unpleasant experience as well!

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Lehk228]

same here, i have switched to almost exclusively OSS applications, right now i have firefox, GAIM and GIMP running on windows. from what i hear cedega does well running WoW so once i can get my laptop to not crap istelf installing linux i will be switching.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[santeri]

No matter which distro that did exist you choose, installing Linux 6 years ago wasn't a cakewalk.

On the contrary, it was. Already six years ago even OpenBSD install run circles around W2K in reliability and ease.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[juhaz]

I'm willing to accept that things may have improved in six years.

But they haven't, not for Windows. Because Microsoft hasn't shipped anything in the last five years.

Yes, Ubuntu has an advantage in being newer, but that's MS's problem, it's not the users fault that their last OS offering is from 2001.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[mdwh2]

But they haven't, not for Windows. Because Microsoft hasn't shipped anything in the last five years.

We said six, not five. He compared to a version of Windows released before the one released in 2001.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Max Threshold]

Obviously, you haven't tried any distro released in the past two years.

And yes, <p> is clearly broken now.

Re:Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Max Threshold]

For the vast majority of people, Linux can and will run any application they want or need. The exceptions are gamers and the small minority who need to run highly specialized, OS-specific applications. By any metric, Linux absolutely DOMINATES when it comes to quality and selection of "normal user applications"... including, for the past few years, installation and ease of use. Where have you been?

unlikely

[Triv]

Try telling the average computer user that .mp3's, aac's, or any other proprietary media format won't play out of the box and see how they react. Citing two ubernerds as a omen for a forthcoming shift by mac users to linux involves a certain disconnect from reality.

Re:unlikely

[IANAAC]

Installing EasyUbuntu fixes all of that easily.

Re:unlikely

[TheGavster]

I haven't had an issue playing anything other than proprietary MS or Apple formats under Linux since I switched a year ago. While there was a time at which sound under Linux was touchy, it's now a standard thing to have working automagically.

Re:unlikely

[Poppler]

Try telling the average computer user that .mp3's, aac's, or any other proprietary media format won't play out of the box and see how they react.

If installing Automatix or Easyubuntu is too hard for this hypothetical "average computer user", they're probably not going to be the one installing the OS.

Re:unlikely

[HavokDevNull]

Then explain to them why!!! We need to explain to people why this is and the ramifications of patent law. The more people educated about this the more chance something will be done about it! This goes far and beyond the normal OS flame war! Stop being part of the problem; think things through and help instead of spouting off flamebait.

Re:unlikely

[Macka]

I haven't had an issue playing anything other than proprietary MS or Apple formats under Linux since I switched a year ago

Which only happens to be 99% of the file formats that Joe Public is likely to run into. This is the reason why Linux on the consumer desktop will never get off the ground. It has to be a strong multi-media contender out of the box and come pre-installed with everything needed to run the most popular file formats. Its unacceptable that a new user can't play DVDs and has to work out they're missing stuff like libdvdcss and how to install it before they can get going. Until this kind of usability issue gets fixed, Linux will always be a niche player on the desktop.

Re:unlikely

[Tankko]

But they don't care!!! They just want to listen to their music, the how and why of it doesn't matter to them at all. That is something we NEED to understand if we're going to change anything, and for the most part this is lost on the geek world.

Most people like iPods because they work, no muss, no fuss. They just don't care about anything else. Maybe they will start to care 5 years from now when they buy another music player and it won't play any of the music they own, but until that smacks them in the face...they don't care and there is nothing you can do to change that.

Re:unlikely

[masklinn]

mp3s not playing out of the box?

What the hell's the distro you're using, Slackware 2.0?

Re:unlikely

[idonthack]

You can't play DVDs on a default Windows install either.
 
If we can get a large company like Dell to ship computers with Linux, everything you list missing will be pre-installed.

Re:unlikely

[Triv]

Ubuntu doesn't include decoders for proprietary media formats on principle, including MP3 and AAC. Playback's possible, sure, but not included out-of-the-box.

(so pbbbt).

Triv

Re:unlikely

[TheGavster]

I would say that 99% of all audio Joe Public is going to play is in MP3, which plays fine. The other players worthy of a pie slice, WMA and AAC, are playable once you get the DRM off of them. As for DVDs, under Windows you get an error message "Pay $30+ to the company of your choice to play DVDs". Under Linux, I opened Xine and clicked "Play DVD".

Re:unlikely

[Lord Kano]

Which only happens to be 99% of the file formats that Joe Public is likely to run into.

Puh-leeeze!

Regular people are going to encounter MP3 more than anything else. End of story.

When a tech-savvy friend has some cool music and the n00b wants a copy, it's going to be MP3. When someone discovers the wonders of P2P leeching, they're going to get MP3s.

My step-father knows what an MP3 player is. This is a man who knows almost nothing about computers and related technology, but he knows MP3. If a linux distro comes with KDE & XMMS and will play MP3s, the vast majority of computer users would never notice the difference.

LK

Re:unlikely

[vinohradska]

I guess you haven't heard of http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/ ? libdvdcss is just a few clicks away.

Re:unlikely

[Deadguy2322]

Considering their next player is probably going to be another iPod, it really doesn't matter.

Re:unlikely

[alphamugwump]

He speaks truth. It's kind of a shame that Ubuntu ships with the less-than functional GStreamer and Totem. Mplayer works a hell of a lot better and plays all the 'proprietary' codecs like wma, too. If they wanted, they could distribute Ubuntu with Real's Helix player, flash, and java. Instead, they cram it in multiverse and then make sure that multiverse isn't enabled by default.

Re:unlikely

[Petrushka]

Umm ... I'd guess Ubuntu.

Re:unlikely

[Macka]

You can't play DVDs on a default Windows install either

Amazing that we don't get this by default considering the outrageous price we have to pay for it. I didn't know that, and I just confirmed it by firing up Win XP Home in a Parallels VM on my MBP and tried to run a DVD. Guess I've been spoiled by Apple who ship OSX with a DVD player as part of the OS.

I'll stick by my original point though. If you want to gain traction against MS on the Desktop, then you need to be doing it one better than them, not matching their lameness feature for feature. If Apple can do it, then so should Ubuntu.

Re:unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

But why are people expected to know about those? Media is a huge part of computers today and for someone to download Ubuntu and never see anything about Automatix or EasyUbuntu when they download the iso is just asking for trouble. Asking people to jump through hoops to get basic functionality is silly.

Re:unlikely

[masklinn]

Dude, even Ubuntu has mpg123 and mpg321.

CLI players? sure, but the still flawlessly play mp3 files.

Re:unlikely

[Macka]

Joe Public is only going to encounter the MP3 format when they rip music off CD's they already own. For legal sources of music and video from the Internet, they are much more likely to run into WMA and AAC. And Joe Public is not going to know they need to strip off DRM (probably won't have heard of DRM) and certainly won't know how to go about it.

Under Linux, I opened Xine and clicked "Play DVD"

Oh come on! You know as well as I do that XINE won't play DVD's out of the box. I've got SuSE 10.1 installed on a VM and although it came with the xine libs installed there was no UI player. Even having installed that it still refuses to play DVD's informing me it doesn't have the appropriate plugin and siting "legal issues".

Re:unlikely

[Macka]

I've heard of it, but never tried it. I'll find out shortly though as I've just finished downloading the Ubuntu 6.06 DVD iso and I'm about to install it. Thanks for the link.

Re:unlikely

[vinohradska]

It is very handy. I can recommend it. Saves lots of time trying to hunt down those extras.

Re:unlikely

[Macka]

I installed it and it pulled down some good things. Didn't magically make Ubuntu play DVD's though using the default "movie player". I had to take a second bite at the cherry and install VLC and Xine.

I don't know if this is against the Ubuntu philosophy or not, but what I'd like to see is Ubuntu produce something similar to Easyubuntu, but not using the legally questionable source. Instead if they licensed all the technology they needed to give Ubuntu the same multi-media experience as you can get with windows and Mac OS X, bundled it into a downloadable toolset it would polish off Ubuntu just nicely. I appreciate that some of it might have to be close source and they would definitely have to charge for it to pay for the licensing fees etc. But at least it would give Joe Public a single place to go to get all they need. And it would be maintainable by Ubuntu, and most important of all it would be guaranteed legal. Easyubuntu would still exist for those people who wanted to continue as now.

Ubuntu 6.06 is definitely the slickest desktop I've seen on Linux yet. Though its hardware detection still wasn't as good as SuSE on my MacBook Pro. SuSE was the only one that allowed me to pick the correct resolution first time and run with no manual changes. And I've had to plagiarize its xorg.conf to get Ubuntu and Redhat to display correctly.

At the end of the day, I switched from Windows and Linux to OSX. I can't see me switching back in the near future unless linux distributions like Ubuntu get serious about providing the codex and multi-media software that people use on a day to day basis.

Re:unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are not included with the default install. They must be installed from the repositories.

Re:unlikely

[Fallingcow]

Windows has trouble playing divx and xvid movies out-of-the-box. Ogg and Flac, too. Apple quicktime, too.

PLUS I have to go download drivers or pop in a couple of driver CDs.

Ubuntu is EASIER to use as far as getting common media formats and all the drivers working. You can complain that some hardware doesn't HAVE drivers (wireless cards, mostly), but hardware that DOES work (almost everything) works easier.

Downloading a single GUI program and running it, checking the boxes (out of less than ten choices) for the things that you want to install (one for DVD playback, one for proprietary media formats, one for the official ATI or Nvidia drivers [one check box, you don't even have to know which one you have!], etc.) is easier than popping CDs in and out and visiting several websites to reach the same level in Windows.

Re:I switched as well

[roscivs]

I've actually seen far more developers switch from Linux to OS X than vice-versa. I think there are definitely switchers in both directions, but I'm not sure that there are more in one direction than the other, and I'd be doubtful that there are more switching away from OS X than those switching to. (Full disclosure: I run Linux on my desktop PC and OS X on my media center PC and haven't touched Windows in years.)

Their reason for switching

[Millenniumman]

Their reasons for switching are proprietary file formats and DRM. The main issue with proprietary file formats is the iTunes library file, which has an XML file that mirrors it. Apple uses some proprietary formats, but is that any worse than an open format no one has heard of that has no support or documentation. Apple supports most of the important file formats. No one has to deal with the DRM. In Linux, you can't use anything with it.

Re:Their reason for switching

[BitGeek]

which you got to admit is pretty asinine. You can use open source apps on OS X, and if you don't want DRM, don't buy itunes.

They make it sound like itunes won't play plain old MP3 files....or that when you rip your DVD itunes adds DRM.

This just some bloggers trying to get attention, and putting themselves out as "geeks" but they are not geeks, they are certainly not alpha geeks. Its pure FUD.

The really truely technically skilled have been using macintoshes for a long time, and will continue to do so.

I mean, seriously, Cory Doctow? He's not even technically literate, is he? He's just a media whore.

Re:Their reason for switching

[masklinn]

The main issue with proprietary file formats is the iTunes library file, which has an XML file that mirrors it.

Which is completely useless when the XML files silently gets corrupted before the main file gets corrupted

Re:Their reason for switching

[bky1701]

Clearly you have never used linux. I am now, and only one format (or more, file) doesn't play on it, of my hundreds of files. So as far as "can't use anything with it" is pure BS.

And for "open formats no one has heard of that have no support or documentation", example, please. We are not talking about tar.gz here, are we? Or ogg? If so, sounds like the problem is located somewhere other then inside the box....

Re:Their reason for switching

[Tribbin]

But is that any worse than an open format no one has heard of that has no support or documentation.

I think these (which?) are the exception. Most open standards are very well documentated and supported by a multitude of apps.

Re:Their reason for switching

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux: It Just Breaks (TM).

Re:Their reason for switching

[mrcolj]

>> We are not talking about tar.gz here, are we? Or ogg? Well, if he's talking about tar.gz or ogg he should apologize and restate that 99.999999999% of people have never heard of it and there is no documentation. :) I've used both, but am not about to throw out my ZIP and MP3 files... Seriously, last time I took a weekend to try to switch a leftover box to linux, I had two friends, both Linux junkies, over, and between them no one could get it working. It's a great platform, just not ready for the mainstream public yet.

Re:Their reason for switching

[Rosyna]

Which is completely useless when the XML files silently gets corrupted before the main file gets corrupted

Not something that happens in practice. The XML file is saved after the iTunes DB. So if the db is hosed, the XML file cannot be updated to a corrupted version. Seeing as my iTunes DB has died twice and I was able to restore successfully from the XML file twice.

Re:Their reason for switching

[Chris Burkhardt]

... but is that any worse than an open format no one has heard of that has no support or documentation...

If a format has no documentation, then in what way is it open?

Re:Their reason for switching

[Jeff DeMaagd]

That's a weird reason to switch. The iTunes library files only matter to iTunes for managing or indexing how iTunes handles the media. It's an iTunes-specific file, complaining about that is kind of like complaining that WinAMP plug-ins aren't compatible with other programs. All the audio tracks that iTunes supports, save the files purchased over iTMS, is readily accessible and playable by any other program program in existence, and those other programs have the opportunity to spider the music heirarchy just like any other program.

I will definitely admit to having some troubles and frustrations with OS X, but the fixes or workarounds are almost always easier than the fix for similar problems in Windows or Linux.

Re:Their reason for switching

[MeNeXT]

In Linux, you can't use anything with it.

This is the FUD I like the best. Just as an example the Linux distro mentioned, supports more file formats out of the box than a Windows XP OEM/Retail box. The cost to the user, to view ALL the formats you mentioned (and many more) can be maintained to nil on ubuntu while respecting the terms of the authors copyright with verry little hassel. The same cannot be said about Windows or the Mac. This is not intended to put down windows or mac. I own both. While you may find Apps that companies refuse to release under Linux it is hard to find an open or popular format that cannot be opened or maintained on Linux.

Don't reply to this by stating something stupid like " Well Linux doesn't run such and such app ". That is the developers fault, go see the developer and ask them why. If they have no interest of porting their app, look around and you will be surprised at what you find

Re:Their reason for switching

[a.d.trick]

That's not what he said at all. Cory Doctow's writeup was pretty sparse and lame, but you should really read Mark Pilgrim and Tim Bray's articles as they shed a whole lot of light on the issue. For Mark, the biggest thing was Mail.app changing everthing from mbox to it's own proprietary format. He then spent hours trying to recover a lifelong stach of email. There were many other problems along the same lines as well. Both Mark and Tim are definitly geeks, and I don't know what your definition of an alpha geek is, but they should be fairly close.

Re:Their reason for switching

[Millenniumman]

By "it", I meant DRM, specifically iTunes. People seem to be complaining that Apple will play it, even though they are under no pressure to use it themselves.

Re:Their reason for switching

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, Mail.app is a mail app, not an operating system. I'm sure there are proprietary or DRM supporting programs you could run on Linux as well. I don't see what it has to do with the underlying operating system.

Re:Their reason for switching

[lisaparratt]

Sounds more like their main reason for switching is cashing in on buzzwords.

Re:Their reason for switching

[Weedlekin]

Open standards and open formats are not the same. OpenDoc or XML are open standards, while the Mork file format used by many Mozilla projects is an open format that nobody else uses because it's both poorly documented and extremely badly designed in just about every imaginable way. Google for "Mork file format" (without the quotes), and you'll see that this is not a case of me having some sort of axe to grind -- indeed, what I've written is downright charitable compared with most other opinions out there.

Re:Their reason for switching

[Orochimaru]

The fact that your comment got modded +5 Informative while containing no element of truth in regards to Linux makes me wonder why I even bother with Slashdot.

Apple uses some proprietary formats, but is that any worse than an open format no one has heard of that has no support or documentation.

How the hell is a format open if it has no documentation?

In Linux, you can't use anything with it.

News to me. I must have imagined playing video and audio formats on my linux box.

I seriously don't care how many people use Linux, but it pisses me off when people talk shit about it.

Re:I switched as well

[uglyduckling]

you can get some integrator to setup an apple box for you as well..

Sure - the "integrator" is called Apple.

Back when I was your age...

[DesertWolf0132]

Actually I am only 27 but I feel old since my first two computers had chips developed near the time of my birth. I started out on an Apple IIe. Then went to an 8088. I used Winblows PC's until Mandrake 9, then moved to Slack 10 and now run FC5. Side by side with my Slack 10 box was an OS X eMac which I have to say I loved. Now all this Unbutu Linux talk intrigues me and I might slap a copy on my old beater box and play around with it.

Re:Back when I was your age...

[IANAAC]

I' ve never been a Mac user before, but...

I run Ubuntu (and Suse on another box) as my main machine. I have VMWare installed, just in case I need to run a Windows program, although that's very rare.

Well, clicking around various links one day, I came upon a torrent link of an OS X 10.4 image to run in VMWare. I thought "Cool! I can try out OS X and see what all the hype is about." Initially I couldn't get wireless networking to work, but I found a fix through one of Maxxuss' patches. I still can't get sound working, but for my purposes, that's OK.

So, I can poke around and play around with OS X now. Guess what? It's OK. But I still end up doing all my real productive stuff under Ubuntu.

I wonder if I had only known Windows and tried this, would have the same impression?

Apple has it coming

[T.Hobbes]

MacOS is becoming less refined with every release. The UI changes every time, behavior that was sensible and elegant from the Classic days is being forgotten (try this: open a Finder window, put another app's window over top of it, and then put a new finder window over the app's window. Switch back into the Finder. Close the top Finder window. What should happen? What does happen?*). Simple things, like making the list view (or icon view or column view) standard in all Finder windows is all but impossible. And Apple insists on putting marketing crap (eg iDisk) throughout the system. MacOS isn't what it used to be; I pine for the old days!

* What should happen is that the app's window comes into the foreground; what does happen is that the 2nd Finder window comes into the foreground

Re:Apple has it coming

[BasilBrush]

try this: open a Finder window, put another app's window over top of it, and then put a new finder window over the app's window. Switch back into the Finder. Close the top Finder window. What should happen?

You end up with a finder window in the foreground.

What does happen?

You end up with a finder window in the foreground.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Millenniumman]

put a new finder window over the app's window. Switch back into the Finder.

You have to switch back into the Finder to add a new Finder window. From reading further, I understand what you mean, but neither result is by definition better. What if your window is on top of two of two different applications that do not overlap? Which one do you switch to?

Re:Apple has it coming

[BitwizeGHC]

No, no, you don't get it.

The original Macintosh was the UI Bible, 1984 King Steve Version, the only version which can claim to be divinely inspired. All other UIs are apostate.

Re:Apple has it coming

[ZorbaTHut]

The difference is whether you consider each application to be its own layer, and not homogenous with other applications, or whether you consider each window to be its own layer, possibly interlacing different applications.

I personally prefer the window-layer approach, so I'd agree that this is not the desired behavior, but I don't know what the public in general would expect. In any case, don't expect to get a bunch of replies agreeing with you - as I write this you've already got one person disagreeing. What you have here isn't a Correct Semantics question. It's a Preferred Semantics question.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is also shipping all their Intel-based Macs crippled with Trusted Computing hardware DRM... essentially, a Big Brother chip.. As with all the companies sneakily trying to get this nastiness into their product lines, they desperately don't want to talk about it. Apple fans, naturally, don't want to either.

Make them.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Logic Bomb]

The Finder's well-known to be almost total crap. However, so is your example. It's not even possible! In OS X, you can't manually layer the windows of different applications because bringing any of an application's windows to the foreground will bring the entire application forward. (I think iChat behaves differently under some circumstances, but that appears to be bug.)

The third step of your example is to "put a new finder window over the app's window". In doing that, you've already switched back to the Finder, bringing all of its windows forward. If you close the top-most window, of course the second Finder window will be on top. That's how it works.

I can't imagine where you got the idea that it should work any differently.

Re:Apple has it coming

[flooey]

The difference is whether you consider each application to be its own layer, and not homogenous with other applications, or whether you consider each window to be its own layer, possibly interlacing different applications.

My personal annoyance with the OS X windowing system (as an OS X user) is that Apple can't appear to decide which is which. In Windows, if you click on the window of an application that uses MDI, every window associated with it pops to the front. In OS X, only the window you clicked on does. However, if you Command-Tab over to an application, every window pops forward, and as the grandparent mentioned, closing one window pops the next one forward, possibly through other windows. I don't particularly care if they decide that you're looking at a stack of windows or a stack of applications, but one way or the other, I'd like it to be consistant.

Re:Apple has it coming

[agent dero]

How in the hell was this modded up?

MacOS is becoming less refined with every release. The UI changes every time, behavior that was sensible and elegant from the Classic days is being forgotten

You're right, so switching to a GNOME-based distro, that's fine, if that's your cup of team. What about when you want to run a Qt based application? You've got two different looking widget sets competing and distorting the entire view of things. What about openGL (if you can get it running properly)?

Simple things, like making the list view (or icon view or column view) standard in all Finder windows is all but impossible

Again, you're right, because you can't change the Finder preferences (it's only Apple+, like in any other Mac app) or change the View options (Apple+J in finder) to apply to all windows.

Mac OS X isn't perfect, i've got about 10 open bugs at bugreport.apple.com, but you've absolutely lost your mind to think that things aren't amazingly better than they used to. I remember a time when simple Finder operations would lock up my System 7 machine. Stop spreading FUD, file bug reports; as much as I love bitching on Slashdot. Apple doesn't read slashdot, and they're the ones with the power to change things.

Re:Apple has it coming

[prockcore]

MacOS is becoming less refined with every release.

No kidding. Here's a simple example:

Click and hold on an icon in the dock. What happens? The Context-Sensitive menu opens.

Now click and hold on an icon on the desktop. What happens? NOTHING.

Re:Apple has it coming

[T.Hobbes]

I beg to differ! See http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~hannon/windowlayers.jpg. Finder on top of Quicktime on top of Finder.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Rogue Pat]

Taking the list view (or icon view or column view) standard in all Finder windows is all but impossible.

Regarding Column View: Preferences - General - check the box that says "open new windows in column view"?

Re:Apple has it coming

[T.Hobbes]

You're right, I forgot about that. My problem has always been that there is no equivilant setting for opening all windows in list view.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Dun Malg]

What should happen?

You end up with a finder window in the foreground.

Why should all finder windows be brought to the front when only one of them has been selected for focus? Given that such behavior has no utility value, I see no reason to classify it as anything but a new bug.

Re:Apple has it coming

[ioErr]

I don't think any of Apple's programmers use the list view. Seriously, bugs in the list view were introduced in Tiger that still haven't been fixed seven point releases later.

Re:Apple has it coming

[cmason]

Try this extension that claims to restore the "classic" window z-ordering behavior.

-c

Re:Apple has it coming

[Dun Malg]

What if your window is on top of two of two different applications that do not overlap? Which one do you switch to?

Overlapping windows have no direct relevance to window precedence. Overlap just illustrates how the precedence works. Window "order" is a stack, with the most recently selected windows on top. Each time you select a window, it is pulled from the stack and placed on top. Closing that window reveals the next most recently selected window. Overlap is irrelevant.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Billly Gates]

"MacOS isn't what it used to be; I pine for the old days!

I sure dont. Coming from someone who had to support them.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Logic Bomb]

My explanation was a bit off, but the logic holds true. The original complainer has it backwards: it's consistent with Mac behavior for all the windows to come forward. The weirdness is that the OS will let you layer windows between applications. I think it's a wise compromise: it makes drag-n-drop actions far easier by making it possible to visually arrange windows as you need them, but keeps the consistency of having a foreground application.

Regardless, I think it's an absurd example of how an OS is going downhill. Sometimes you have to just say "it works this way" in the name of functionality over absolute consistency.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Have Blue]

If you click an app's dock icon, all windows come forward. If you click a window, only that window comes forward (most of the time).

Re:Apple has it coming

[bennomatic]

yeah, but if you right-click (or control-click or two-finger trackpad-click), it's consistent. Personally, I think that now that they've got the two-finger thing for laptops, they should do away with the click/hold dock thingie.

But that's just my $0.02

Re:Apple has it coming

[ocelotbob]

What about when you want to run a Qt based application? You've got two different looking widget sets competing and distorting the entire view of things.

What if you want to run an X application on your Mac? Suddenly you've got two different widget sets fighting. Surely by your logic the world will end, non?

Re:Apple has it coming

[killjoe]

Finder is crap. I don't understand how a company that prides itself on "just works" and "easy to use" allows finder to continue being shipped with it's product.

I have a jillion complaints but this is the one annoying me today.

Open a folder, sort by date. Download a file with the same name as an existing file into that folder (overwriting the file). The file does not sort. Now hold the down arrow and let it start touching the files, as soon as it touches your file the file immediately shoots to the top of the list taking the cursor with it. If that's not CRAP I don't know what is.

And lets be honest here, the Mac is full of crap like that. It's just that people ignore it because they just paid four thousand dollars for a black laptop and they would be ashamed to admit it's less then perfect.

Look at it this way. Would you buy any mac without also buying the applecare? Of course not. Everybody who has had a mac laptop will tell you that it's been broken down at least once (mine had to be sent back four times before it ran out of warranty and had to be junked). They have lousy quality control. They are nice to deal with and will promptly fix your laptop within a couple of weeks but that doesn't make up for the fact it keep breaking in the first place.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Deadguy2322]

Okay, Stallmanite moron, explain how, exactly, in the real world today, the TPM chip in ANY way whatsoever "cripples" a machine? Can't site one single example, can you? Paranoid jack-off.

Re:Apple has it coming

[rm69990]

Have you ever thought that they simply don't care (like myself), and that by making them, you're not making them face the facts, but merely annoying them?

The way I look at it, I bought PPC Apple computers, I paid Apple for the hardware and software, and I liked the computers. Now Apple has switched to even faster Intel processors, so they have added the Trusted Computing chip in order to lock OS X into their systems, it's a tradeoff. I get the "big brother chip", but I get much faster computers. I read Slashdot, am fully aware of what Apple is doing, and tomorrow my new Intel Mini arrives from FedEx, because I simply don't care.

Re:Apple has it coming

[dasdrewid]

See, I disagree. I think the 2nd Finder window should come to the foreground, as I'm currently using the Finder. I've used Macs (and as much as possible, only Macs) since v7 and before, and frankly, I find the current setup for that more intuitive.

Yes, there are some other things that bug me. But that's mostly personal preference. Which is what your argument, if it were particularly thought through, should be. They don't allow enough personalization. Of course, the flip-side, is when you allow too much personalization, and you never get the chance to actually get to your software cause you get lost in the pointless crap.

I definitely *don't* pine for the old days.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

The trusted computing stuff isn't stopping anyone from running OS X on generic hardware. I have a copy of OS X that installs quite nicely in VMware. I believe its the lastest version too(atleast it the same version of OS X that my PPC Mini has, which is running whatever the latest version of Tiger is - 10.4.6 or something IIRC). Maybe they'll add something in Leopard, but my bet is that people will still crack it.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's people forced to use Windows every day that realize the Mac isn't perfect but that it's far, far better then shit filled alternative. Oh, I never get AppleCare when I buy a new Mac and yes I have a laptop.

Re:Apple has it coming

[wordsofwisedumb]

Actually it is possible but you have to open two Finder windows first and then use Exposé or click with the mouse to move one Finder window on top of the other application's window. When you close the foremost window the next Finder window is brought to the forefront. This behavior is only useful if you are trying to close all Finder windows. If you were simply done with that Finder window and wanted to do something with the other application window directly under the Finder window but above the bottom Finder window (probably the most common of the two tasks) then you have to switch applications.

This is horrible behavior that doesn't just happen in Finder but across OS X. The comment about view styles for all Finder windows is also very relevant, it is possibly the most frustrating part about Finder just above not providing relevant, easily accessible information about files. You are right, OS X Finder is CRAP and the alternatives which have all the features that Finder should have and more, do not integrate smoothly with the system.

The most useful upgrade that could possibly happen to OS X is a better version of Finder. Then they can improve Spotlight search. Only after that is done should they add all their other pretty features.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Fred_A]

I know one of the issues I have with the 10.4 UI is the mouse cursor not being consistent with what context it's in. Notably being stuck as a text selection bar.

Not a big deal all in all but irritating when such a fuss is made over the eye candy.

Re:Apple has it coming

[crazed gremlin]

doesn't it make sense that you stay inside finder?? You have two finder windows, you close one, and you get the second one. Makes perfect sense to me, though I can see why you would like it to be the other way.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

The third step of your example is to "put a new finder window over the app's window". In doing that, you've already switched back to the Finder, bringing all of its windows forward...

Dude, you're just wrong here. That isn't the way OS X behaves, at least not predictably -- which is to say it's a broken interface, has been since OS X was released, and Apple doesn't seem to give a crap to fix it. The OS X Finder is frustrating and inelegant for its inconsistencies and weird limitations; this one is just a single example.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Phroggy]

The Finder's well-known to be almost total crap. However, so is your example. It's not even possible! In OS X, you can't manually layer the windows of different applications because bringing any of an application's windows to the foreground will bring the entire application forward. (I think iChat behaves differently under some circumstances, but that appears to be bug.)

If you use Cmd-Tab to switch between applications, or you click the Dock icon, it brings all windows of that application to the front. If you click a window with the mouse, only that individual window comes to the front. This behavior is consistent(ly inconsistent) across all apps I know of, including iChat.

Note that clicking the Dock icon will have the additional effect of, well, whatever the app wants to do. In most apps, if there's already a document window open, clicking the Dock icon will only bring the app to the front. If no documents are open, it will open a new window (whatever Cmd-N would normally do). In Mail, clicking the Dock icon opens a new viewer window if there isn't one open already, regardless of whether there are any other windows (e.g. messages) open. In QuickTime Player, nothing happens.

Re:Apple has it coming

[admdrew]

Have you ever thought that they simply don't care (like myself), and that by making them, you're not making them face the facts, but merely annoying them?

That's a pretty conceited view, and one that doesn't seem to be uncommon among macphiles. *Should* you care about something like that? Should the average computer user care? I'd answer 'probably not' to both, but that hardly invalidates his point.

The school of thought he probably follows is one that believes DRMed technology like that chip is overall a bad thing for computing in general. Thankfully, you're not someone who will have any say in the future of technology; the attitude you carry would be terribly detrimental to any sort of progression.

Re:Apple has it coming

[MoneyT]

Because in this case you are operating in the Finder. Before you close the window (if I'm readin right) you have (from back to front) finder, app, finder. To add that last finder window you had to switch to the finder application. When that front window goes away, the Finder is still the active application, why shouldn't the next window back get focus and come to the front?

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

You bore me, little man.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you have that situation, closing the finder window on top brings forward the finder window on the bottom.

Re:Apple has it coming

[rm69990]

I just took issue with his "make them" statement, as it generally annoys me when people try to force their views on me, and I'm sure most other people feel that way. If I don't care and don't want to hear about it, don't talk to me about it. Make Steve Jobs, Make Bill Gates and make whomever runs Intel deal with it, but don't bug me about something I couldn't give two shits about. That's all I was saying to him.

Re:Apple has it coming

[bnenning]

Look at it this way. Would you buy any mac without also buying the applecare? Of course not.

Of course yes. Extended warranties are almost always a bad deal; the seller profits from them, therefore buyers on average lose.

Everybody who has had a mac laptop will tell you that it's been broken down at least once

No significant problems with my Wallstreet, two TiBooks, or MBP over the last 8 years. The worst was when a hard drive died in the first year, and was replaced under the standard warranty. (Another reason you don't need AppleCare; typically electronic stuff either dies quickly due to manufacturing defects, or after many years due to age. AppleCare only covers the second and third years when failures are less likely).

But we can agree regarding the crapulence of the Finder. Fortunately between Quicksilver and iTerm, I don't deal with it much.

Re:Apple has it coming

[killjoe]

"Of course yes. Extended warranties are almost always a bad deal; the seller profits from them, therefore buyers on average lose."

I would agree if the product was a TV, telephone, or even a computer made by anybody else except apple. Mac laptops break. Ever person I know who has one has had to send it back at least once. With such lousy quality you definately have to shell out for the warranty.

Furthermore if you don't have the warranty the replacement parts for the mainboard are more then a thousand dollars. If it breaks you just throw it away.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Eideewt]

Just think, the whole problem would be removed if windows were tiled instead of scattered about the desktop in a messy stack.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the guy is right. There's no way to set list view as the default view for folders... you can do all the Apple+,-ing and Apple+j-ing you want.

Re:Apple has it coming

[ClamIAm]

I think you mean King Jef.

Re:Apple has it coming

[admdrew]

If I don't care and don't want to hear about it, don't talk to me about it.

Ahh, willful ignorance. Must be frustrating for you when others negate your views with real logic, eh?

Re:Apple has it coming

[MoneyT]

Why should it not reveal the next most recently selected window in that application? Why should closing a window in the application that has focus give focus to a new application?

Re:Apple has it coming

[rm69990]

No, more along the lines of my computer is not my life, and I just want to use it to do things. It's a tradeoff, either use a Mac with the chip, or use something else without the chip. Frankly, I don't care enough to waste money and time switching to something else that I won't enjoy as much, and that chip isn't enough for me to not buy my new mini, as I enjoy using Macs. Sorry if that is too difficult for you to understand, but I can't think of any way to state it more simply so you are capable of understanding. It isn't a matter of logic or illogic, it is a matter of me simply not caring whether there is a TCP chip in my computer or not. If I was arguing that TCP was GOOD for privacy, then it could be viewed as an error in logic, but caring or not caring is a matter of priorities, not logic. It isn't illogical to not give a shit about something.

The issue may be important enough to you that you don't want to use or buy a Mac. Great, buy something else. Be my guest. But I don't want someone "making me" answer for my choice in computer, as the original poster implied, as that would annoy me, which is all I was trying to point out to the original poster. Sorry if that flew over your head.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should all finder windows be brought to the front when only one of them has been selected for focus? ... [S]uch behavior has no utility value ...

The only thing more pathetic than a PC user is a PC user trying to be a Mac user. We have a name for you people: switcheurs.

There's a good reason for your vexation at the Mac's user interface: You don't speak its language. Remember that the Mac was designed by artists, for artists, be they poets, musicians, or avant-garde mathematicians. A shiny new Mac can introduce your frathouse hovel to a modicum of good taste, but it can't make Mac users out of dweebs and squares like you.

So don't force what doesn't come naturally. You'll be much happier if you stick to an OS that matches your personality. And you'll be doing the rest of us a favor, too; you leave Macs to Mac users, and we'll leave beige to you.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm anonymous so you obviously don't know me, but I own a new macbook pro, and have had no real problems with it. I haven't paid for Applecare. And I actually find the quality of Apple's products to be pretty high compared to my experiences with many other manufacturers products.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Lord Flipper]

That's a pretty conceited view, and one that doesn't seem to be uncommon among macphiles. *Should* you care about something like that? Should the average computer user care? I'd answer 'probably not' to both, but that hardly invalidates his point.

The school of thought he probably follows is one that believes DRMed technology like that chip is overall a bad thing for computing in general. Thankfully, you're not someone who will have any say in the future of technology; the attitude you carry would be terribly detrimental to any sort of progression.

Oh I get it, you can see the guy's point that maybe he, like others, and even you, shouldn't 'care', but, because he said he didn't care, he has some imagined 'Mac' disease? Interesting.I hate to break this to you, bud, but 90% of the computer users of the world don't care about these issues any more than they care to take up automotive mechanics in order to drive back and forth to their fucking jobs, okay?

And what's more, the 'not caring/not knowing', overwhelming majority of people DO shape the tech world, more than you think. Why? Because they're the buyers, get it, and the companies give them what they want. It's not a pretty thought, sure.

And one more thing

detrimental to any sort of progression

WTF was that supposed to mean? Heheh, bad for I-VI-II-V jazz progressions, bad for anything anywhere evolving or moving on? If "progress" was the word you were after, maybe you'd make progress by keeping a lid on your half-baked theories, generalizations, and assumptions, and, instead, idling away a few hours in front of some of these things called "books"; specifically, dictionaries, and grade school grammar texts. It would be like advancing progress, one know-it-all at a time.

Re:Apple has it coming

[astrosmash]

Try this: open a Finder window, put another app's window over top of it, and then put a new finder window over the app's window. Switch back into the Finder. Close the top Finder window. What should happen? What does happen?

Wait a minute. You think that closing a window should automatically change the active application? That's nuts. What if you close an application's only window? Should the active application switch to the Finder? Of course not. You clearly don't understand how Macs are supposed to work, and have worked for the last 20 years.

Re:Apple has it coming

[MichaelSmith]

doesn't it make sense that you stay inside finder?

From the users POV the two finder windows are different things. The apparent fact that they are both managed by the same application is feature of the implementation which the user should not have to understand.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a two button mouse you useless monkey.

Re:Apple has it coming

[bani]

Want a nice example of crap ui design?

http://bani.anime.net.nyud.net:8090/tell_me_dear_a pple_which_window_has_focus.jpg

Which window has focus? Hint: It's not the one you think.

I love it when apple violates their own UI rules.

Re:Apple has it coming

[ndvaughan]

Hit F9.

Re:Apple has it coming

[admdrew]

Oh I get it, you can see the guy's point that maybe he, like others, and even you, shouldn't 'care', but, because he said he didn't care, he has some imagined 'Mac' disease?

90% of the computer users of the world don't care about these issues any more than they care to take up automotive mechanics in order to drive back and forth to their fucking jobs, okay?

I don't have a problem with the stated fact that most people care little for stuff like this. It's annoying, however, when those 90% of people, yourself and the parent included, feel that you're above that sort of knowledge. So you don't care (and don't wish to hear) about computer issues? That's awesome; I'm glad you have other interests. Just don't pretend you're a better person because you talk about something you don't fully understand.

And what's more, the 'not caring/not knowing', overwhelming majority of people DO shape the tech world, more than you think. Why? Because they're the buyers, get it, and the companies give them what they want. It's not a pretty thought, sure.

For years PC games have driven the consumer computer market. Sure, people have to buy those games, but gamers hardly make up a majority of computer users; they tend to associate more with the 10% you reference are interested in computer issues.

WTF was that supposed to mean? Heheh, bad for I-VI-II-V jazz progressions, bad for anything anywhere evolving or moving on? If "progress" was the word you were after...

Nothing worse than attempting an ill-attempted jab at someone else's writing and failing. Here's what progression means (the first definition; the one I used):
noun: 1. The process of progressing; progress.
It's a synonym for progress, and is a noun (I can't tell if you're implying it's an adjective or verb; in either case, you're wrong).

Re:Apple has it coming

[tf23]

IMHO, that is consistent.

If I cmd-tab to an app, I may not know what/which of it's windows I want. So it shows them all to me.

If I select a window, instead, I don't want all 30 to pop up in front of me. I've told it that I want a window, and which one I want. So give it to me.

Atleast, that's my understanding of the OSX 10.1-4 Finder window behavior.

Re:Apple has it coming

[tf23]

Yep, that irks me too. You explain to someone why they don't need a 2nd,3rd,4th... mouse button - "because if you click and hold, it will give you all the options relevant to what you're clicking on".

Well, some of the time. Most of the time. Guru's generally realize where it won't happen, or have multi-button mice, so it's no biggie. But newbies, this lack of contextual menus on a click-n-hold confuses the hell out of them.

Re:Apple has it coming

[jc42]

So where can I find documentation on this allegedly marvelous two-finger trackpad click thingy? I've seen a number of references to it, and done a bit of googling and poking around on apple.com, but I haven't yet found a coherent description of what it does or how to enable it (just that I have to somehow enable it). I've seen references to a mouse preference pane; the only one I know of is in the System Preferences, and nothing there seems at all relevant.

I have a Powerbook G4, with the latest updates installed just yesterday. (Which again required killing all my running apps and rebooting; grrr ... ;-)

My main gripe after using this PB for a few years is the difficulty of discovering how a lot of things work. Most replies seem to be of the "Don't worry your little head abut it; it Just Works" form, which isn't all that helpful if something Just Doesn't Work, or if you don't even have a clue that something is possible. I also follow a number of Mac-related newsgroups, which are useful, but I've also been impressed by how few questions actually get answered. When you're looking for practical answers, a "Don't worry, be happy" culture can be rather unsatisfying.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Lehk228]

what is wrong with differant widget sets? as long as they pull colors from your windowing system there is no big issue. i have GTK+ xul and win32 apps all at the same time and none feel out of place

Re:Apple has it coming

[bennomatic]

Well, I'll do the best that I can. In the system preferences, in the keyboard and mouse preference pane, there's a section called "Trackpad Gestures" in the middle. At the bottom of that section, there's a checkbox for "place two fingers on trackpad and click button for secondary click".

Once it's enabled, you just have two fingers on the trackpad when you click, and it works like a right mouse button.

Pretty cool, I think. It was enabled by default on my MacBook. If your PBG4 allows two-finger scrolling, it should work; however, if you have one that predates two-finger gestures, "just working" might mean that this feature isn't available, so it's not even visible on the preference pane.

Re:Apple has it coming

[jc42]

OK; it probably doesn't work on my PB. I don't see that choice at all, just things labelled "Clicking", "Dragging", and "Drag Lock (tap again to release), all under the title "Trackpad Gestures:". I don't really see what those are. Maybe I'll check one of them, and see if I can spot any changes in the way that clicking works.

I've seen mention of "trackpad gestures", but I have no idea what that could mean. You can't exactly pick up the trackpad and swing it around. So far, I've only seen vague mentions, but no pointers to documentation or even details of what it's all about. Discovering such things can be time consuming ...

Re:Apple has it coming

[CrkHead]

Again, you're right, because you can't change the Finder preferences (it's only Apple+, like in any other Mac app) or change the View options (Apple+J in finder) to apply to all windows.

OSX may be the most polished and easiest to use OS out there, I don't know. I was very excited when I read this bit, because I have tried applying view settings to all windows, but it seems that every time I open a directory it is not in list mode. This Apple+ does not seem to do anything in a finder window, File | Properties (Apple .) has a setting that appears as though it would allow me to get list or detail view, but does not happen in practice.

It boils down to what you are used to. I am perfectly comfortable on a command line or in KDE. I got a Mac Mini to see what it is like and insanely simple tasks (browsing to a directory in /mnt/nfs for example) appear completely impossible. I did get the O'Rielly book 'OSX for the Unix Geek' but I just don't have time to relearn everything.

It's not an OSX thing. At work I have to use Windows XP and I consistantly run into simple tasks that just don't seem possible in XP. However, someone with an Mac or Windows background would give me a vacant stare if I asked them to extract a tarball to /usr/local and compile it. Doesn't mean they are less intellegent than I am, just that they haven't taken the time to learn.

Re:Apple has it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

more along the lines of my computer is not my life

slashdot blasphemy bot has notified the mainframe.

your account (therefore your soul) will be dod wiped...

Re:Apple has it coming

[ManxStef]

Two-finger scrolling is a "new" feature, first added to the 4th or 5th gen of Powerbook G4's, as well as MacBooks and MacBook Pro's, if I remember correctly. So it does depend which Powerbook G4 you have, you may have one that predates this, probably under 1.6GHz. If so, and you still want two-finger scrolling, you can give this a go:
http://iscroll2.sourceforge.net/

Be aware that it's still in relatively early development; it may work fine but may not, and I'd suggest not trying it unless you're comfortable enough using "beta" driver software. Check your hardware is supported using the supplied script first, and read the documentation thoroughly for any caveats. If you do have any problems, such as kernel panics on boot-up, you should be able to bypass the driver by holding shift down during boot-up, then uninstall iScroll2 by running its uninstall procedure or the supplied uninstall script.

Alternatively, and without two-finger scrolling but with a wealth of other options, is Sidetrack:
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/

It's not compatible with the iScroll2, so don't try and install both at the same time, but is worth checking out if you want scrolling on the edges, tap-to-click, etc.

This story should be modded -1...

[Anonymous Coward]

This story should be modded -1 for WHO GIVES A FLYING SHIT and/or WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

In other news, this nerd switched from Levis to Bugle Boy jeans today, story about the demis of Levis at 10.

Ye 'ol canary smell.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.'"

Yup. Just look at how they "smelled" Y2K (or MS) before it was too late.

FUD much?

[Virak]

I love Ubuntu; in fact, I use it exclusively on my PC, and have for over a year now. And while it'd be nice to see Ubuntu take over the OS market, I don't think TWO FUCKING PEOPLE switching over from OS X means it's going to happen any time soon.

Re:FUD much?

[The Ham of Truth]

I didn't read the part where it said they were having sex.

Switching from Ubuntu to OS X

[nemexi]

I have been using Ubuntu for about a year and have now, after purchasing a MacBook, switched to OS X. And I'm quite happy with it so far. I guess Apple's customer base is changing at the moment -- as Macs become more popular with the my-ipod-needs-a-companion crowd, Apple might lose some of its earlier users. That said it _would_ be a smart move by Apple to listen to people like Mark Pilgrim and be more transparent with regard to file formats.

Re:Switching from Ubuntu to OS X

[orson_of_fort_worth]

Sounds like we just need to find one more Ubuntu to Mac OS X switcher and, since the switchers will cancel each other out, this article will cease to exist.

Re:Switching from Ubuntu to OS X

[BenjyD]

I count maybe ten in this thread already, and you can add me to the list of happy Ubuntu to Mac OS X switchers. I still have several Ubuntu or Debian machines around, but 90% of my day-to-day work is done on Mac OS X, with Parallels for the rest. Working on a Mac is a much better experience than Ubuntu ever was.

Re:Switching from Ubuntu to OS X

[CptNerd]

No, it'll be restored when the article is duplicated in a week...

Re:Switching from Ubuntu to OS X

[Tab is on Slashdot]

Seconding this.

Defend the flank? not from a pinprick

[DeadPrez]

I think Mac needs to be solely focused on 'switchers' (Windows to Mac) and getting major "Windows only" programs working under the most efficient and stable method running natively on Intel chipsets allows. Microsoft is tripping over themselves right now and Apple is positioned to capitalize if they move quickly and compete on price (and number of standard mouse buttons :)

WOW!

[BasilBrush]

Wow! 2 users switch from Mac to Linux. I bet Apple are shitting themselves.

Re:WOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dorkshit, 2 people is an increase over 0 from the month before. You know what kind of percent increase that is? Its a mutha-fuckin divide by zero infinite percent increase, that's what.

canaries

[pyrrho]

so Ubuntu is expected to KILL them?!!?

Re:canaries

[rolfc]

Ubuntu has already killed Apple, they are just twisting

Re:canaries

[flooey]

so Ubuntu is expected to KILL them?!!?

So you're saying the subject should have been "Ubuntu: OS X-killer?"

Lifelong nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already seen several comments saying that this is no big deal, obviously thinking that these people only 'recently' switched to Macs. But that isn't the case.
Mark Pilgrim has been a Mac user since 1983. Cory Doctorow since 1984. These people have lived and breathed Macs - and they're now giving up on them, and not just for a whim, but in very well-thought out and carefully explained reasons. You might not agree with them, but at the least do them to justice of reading and considering their thoughts and not dismissing them out of hand.
(And for example Tim Bray is another long-standing Mac using visionary who's recognized that open data is more important than all the very good reasons why staying with a Mac is the easier choice.)

Re:Lifelong nerds

[Carrot007]

Who cares pre OS-X macs suck donkey balls.

I switched to a OS-X mac because it reminds me of when computers were fun. (That's amiga os 3 for all you fools)

and what do I say now, Need more Macs!

Re:Lifelong nerds

[rm69990]

So? I used DOS from 1990-1993, switched to Windows 3.1, have used Windows 95, 98, 2000 and XP since, and have now switched to a Mac. Should Microsoft be shitting bricks right now? I think not. How does two people have nothing better to do with their time but to write about why they switched products make this any different? Of course they have valid reasons for doing so, as did I. Of course this is going to happen, Apple has been making computers since the 80's (or earlier?), and there are many people who have used them since the 80's. Anyone who thinks SOME people aren't going to switch eventually (or thinks some longtime Windows or Linux people aren't going to switch) is delusional. My mom has driven Toyota's all of her life, and just recently bought a GM. Does this mean Toyota is going down?

Just a slow news day is all.

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

This is news. If they come from Windows, that is expected as knowledge grows. But Mac to Linux?

The difference is, that several years ago, the top names were moving to OSX. Now you have top names looking, and switching, to Linux.

The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

I installed ubuntu on a PC a couple of months ago. It took me about a day to get the graphics system to work on the machine (X11 - text was fine). And by work, I mean "display at all." I never got the res out of it that I wanted. And once I had some graphics up, I tried to do anything else, and was misserable.

I cut my teeth on linux back in the .8 and .9 days; I stuck with NeXTSTEP. I revisited back in the late 90's; I stuck with OpenStep. I revisited it around 2000, when MacOS was very much in transition; I stuck with OpenStep and/on Windows. (though my servers were FreeBSD during the 90's and early oughts') And now I've taken a look in '06; I'm still going to stick with OSX (which is now my server).

It's not there yet. Everything I do on *nix other than OSX feels like pulling teeth. I'll continue to use this expensive OS ($600 machines and $100 OS upgrades every 2 years) for some time, I guess. And while I do, I'll continue to submit bugs and toss a line or 2 of code at various Open Source code/systems I use.

I have stuff to do, and I don't care to muss with the kernel and video drivers. If you don't have stuff to do, or you DO want to muss with kernels/vid drivers - go for some flavor if linux.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Xugumad]

Yes!

I think what Ubuntu has done is to improve the usability per currency unit of your choice. So, for people who were borderline on whether Macs were worth the extra for them, Ubuntu now makes more sense. Cool, great, etc.

However, personally, I don't have the time. We use Linux for servers at work (Debian, but we're planning on doing an Ubuntu install for testing, soon), because the fine grain control over the setup is worth time, and because for server apps it more or less works out of the box. For desktops however, we use OS X. When we want to do complex stuff, almost all the control of Linux is there. When we just want to get on with some work, we can, it's great.

I have an Ubuntu install at home. Last time I looked, it didn't play sound, and mplayer tended to work mostly depending on the phase of the moon. I could sit down and fix it... but I have better things to get on with, so I just use my Powerbook instead...

Anyway, yes, point was, if you have the time, or lack the money, or just are curious, go Ubuntu, it's a great distro... but I'll be over with my Mac, hope that's okay :)

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[delire]

You were obviously very unlucky. One thing nearly all Ubuntu newcomers do (and wisely so) is to boot the LiveCD first to find out if their hardware supports Ubuntu before installing it.

Part of Ubuntu's exponential success is due to so many new users being able to easily install and operate an Ubuntu system. These days it's only really enthusiasts and developers that compile software or recompile their kernel. The widescale success of Ubuntu is itself testimony to this (something accreditable to the fine Debian base simultaneously).

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[swillden]

I have stuff to do, and I don't care to muss with the kernel and video drivers. If you don't have stuff to do, or you DO want to muss with kernels/vid drivers - go for some flavor if linux.

Of if you have stuff to do, don't like to mess with kernel and video drivers and don't have kwerle's weird hardware, then go for some flavor of Linux.

I'm not calling you a liar, but, really, your experience is atypical these days.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not because you haven't been able to install Ubuntu that it's crap. My 16 year old son who is far from being a nerd has installed Ubuntu on his PC, then the nvidia driver and now he plays UT2004 full speed.

Ubuntu is the first large scale attempt to build a desktop Linux. I'm using it nearly as my main platform since the october 2004 release (first one) and improvments are remarkable.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[shellbeach]

You were obviously very unlucky. One thing nearly all Ubuntu newcomers do (and wisely so) is to boot the LiveCD first to find out if their hardware supports Ubuntu before installing it.

And in fact, with Dapper, this is now default: you now actually run the installer from the GNOME desktop on the live CD. You have to use a different iso image to go through the old install process. It's a good thing, too - it takes all the guesswork out of hardware compatibility.

And the best thing of all - how many distros let you surf the web while you're installing them? I was emailing friends as I installed the system: by far the most pleasant install I've ever done! :)

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[njh]

Nerds with time are exactly the share that ubuntu should chase - these are the people who will do new stuff and develop existing stuff. To be honest, Ubuntu has succeeded if only because it is getting the lions share of developer time now. (Many Debian developers have moved to Ubuntu, e.g.)

It is a common misconception that the most valuable thing a project can have is users. In fact it is developers with time, and if you are not capable/patient enough to get Ubuntu working (though your experience does not match anyone elses I know) then you are probably not a useful addition to the Ubuntu user base. In five years time, if Ubuntu does everything you want, and works out of the box for you, then you'll be a valuable addition to the user base, and we will welcome you.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[prockcore]

It took me about a day to get the graphics system to work on the machine (X11 - text was fine). And by work, I mean "display at all."

And yet OSX won't even install on that same hardware.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[couchslug]

What was the vidcard in question? Linux video support is good, not "universal". What I recommend is to download and burn a few live CDs to easily determine if your hardware is supported and which distro handles it best. Kanotix works well for this, as does Knoppix.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[rm69990]

"And the best thing of all - how many distros let you surf the web while you're installing them?"

SimplyMEPIS, Knoppix, Kanotix, to name a few. And they've done it for far longer than Ubuntu has done it....in-fact, I did a Knoppix install while browsing Slashdot before Ubuntu began to exist.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[rapidweather]

This won't cost you much time, take a look at my screenshots in the signature link below.

It's a Knoppix remaster, and "X" pops up quick, ready to go. I don't leave my machines on, I have to go places, so when I return I like to turn on the box, enter a quick "cheatcode", and very soon, my desktop is up and running.

Very secure, check out the Getting Started Guide.

It's not "installed", the OS runs from the CD, _but_ you can easily copy it to a spare hard drive partition with a cheatcode such as:

knoppix tohd=/dev/hdd7

Only takes a couple of minutes, then you do not run the OS from the CD anymore, except to "bootstrap" it, takes only seconds, then you run from the hard drive!

On the newer 7200 drives, it flys!

Firefox, Opera, Flock, Thunderbird, GIMP: all included.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

I'm not calling you a liar, but, really, your experience is atypical these days.

Thanks! :-)

Getting the graphics to work is just the first big hurdle. Then there's "everything else I want to do." While many things are easy, nothing is pleasant. My sister (who is sharp, but not a geek) can do just about anything she wants with a mac. Every once in a while I have to walk her through something, but it's 2-3 times a year. With Linux, I have to walk ME through doing all sorts of things that should just be easy.

In the vein of the graphics issue: I can change my resolution and bit depth on a mac in a few seconds. Neither could I find out how do to it (short of editing the X11 config file), nor could I find help on the system, or a reference online how to do it. Folks, that's just an example - don't tell me it's easy, and here's how; put the damn docs in the system and make it easy to find.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

Ubuntu is the first large scale attempt to build a desktop Linux. I'm using it nearly as my main platform since the october 2004 release (first one) and improvments are remarkable.

OK, now you're just talking crap. Redhat wasn't/isn't an attempt to build desktop linux?

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[JahToasted]

or the default ubuntu install CD...

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

It is a common misconception that the most valuable thing a project can have is users. In fact it is developers with time

The most valuable thing a commercial project can have is users. The most valuable thing an opensource project can have is a good leader. And by that I mean someone who knows what the software should do, and who knows how to listen to users telling her how it should do it, and then say no to developers who fail to do what the users want (that is also in scope/line with the project).

Most developers suck at coding.

Most developers that don't suck at coding suck at UI (I claim to fall into this camp).

The developer that is good at both is a rare find. But you really just need someone at the top who can direct decent coders to do the right thing - and that person does NOT need to be a coder.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

I've taken knoppix for a spin, and was actually more impressed with it than with Ubuntu. Very clean system that was designed to do one thing, and do it well - and it seems to be successful at doing so.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Trinn]

I'm just curious who you are referring to there, as a female OSS project leader is a rare (and wonderful) thing.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

I'm just curious who you are referring to there, as a female OSS project leader is a rare (and wonderful) thing.

Nobody in particular, just choosing that pronoun in the hopes that people would notice that suck a thing is possible.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Dirtside]

What I don't get is people who have some kind of obscure video driver problem with Linux, and then assume that everyone has the same problems and only people who are hardcore into fixing such problems have the time to use Linux. I mean, yeah, I know such things happened, it's happened to me with one or two distros on one or two machines over the years, but for the most part, I install a distro and it runs fine.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[dbcad7]

Slackware 1993
Debian 1994
I believe RedHat also 94
Mandrake co-development of Redhat around same time

These are the oldest and still kicking (redhat controversies aside)
Almost all other distros out there today are splinters from these. Ubuntu from Debian for example.

October 2004 first release of Ubuntu .. it's a babe in comparison

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Eideewt]

Can we all just cut the "it's not there yet" bullshit out? How about you recognize that "there" falls in many different places for different people. You're just (a) perpetuating the fallacy that all OSes are trying to move "there" (where "there" means suiting your personal preferences -- everyone else be damned), and (b) that everyone's needs are the same. You clearly need something akin to MacOS. I, however, don't. Linux fits me like a glove, and by my measure it's "there". Except I'm not so big headed as to assume that what suits me will suit you. Talking about whether Linux (or any OS) is "there" means nothing other than that you wish to make your OS choice seem like the only rational decision. It's *OK* that you don't prefer Linux, but you don't have to insinuate that those of us who do are any less adept at evaluating our options than you are.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Jastiv]

>>>The most valuable thing a commercial project can have is users. The most valuable thing an opensource project can have is a good leader. And by that I mean someone who knows what the software should do, and who knows how to listen to users telling her how it should do it, and then say no to developers who fail to do what the users want (that is also in scope/line with the project).

I kind of always thought the project needed a coder to direct it. If only because the only thing coders seem to respect is code. Otherwise, it seems like you are a waste of thier time. http://www.jastiv.com/ .

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[JavaIsGreat]

Oh that is news!!! I have two machines at home one is running Ubuntu as my primary desktop and another running FC5 as my dev enviornment(JBoss,PostgreSQL, SJSES8.0 and other stuff with gcvs also). Now my dear friend I have never faced any difficulty in either video card or sound card or any other stuff. to be frank I dont even remember my vidoe card details as BOTH distros were installed very easily and without any problems. On FC5 the application looks a bit wider and thicker however on Ubuntu the looks are killer. And yes I dont own a Mac as it is of no use to me, I am an enterprise architect :) By the way my wife who has a masters in biology is currently using Ubuntu, need I say more about user friendlyness.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

Can we all just cut the "it's not there yet" bullshit out?

Not really. My bigheadedness pretty much prevents that. Oh, and the market does have some say in the matter.

Someone please correct me! The fact that linux' marketshare on the desktop is vanishingly small - even though it is free! - implies pretty strongly that the market agrees with my big head. So as soon as people start to migrate from windows and macos (in number) to linux, we'll have a pretty good indicator that "it's there."

In the meantime, please prepend "IMNSHO" to everything everybody writes - including me.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

... my dev enviornment(JBoss,PostgreSQL, SJSES8.0 and other stuff with gcvs also)... And yes I dont own a Mac as it is of no use to me, I am an enterprise architect...

JBoss: included since 10.2
http://developer.apple.com/internet/java/enterpris ejava.html

PostgreSQL on the Mac: easy
http://developer.apple.com/internet/opensource/pos tgres.html

SJSE: looks like it's not there, yet, but it will be
http://forum.sun.com/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=960 29&messageID=329768#329768
I use Eclipse...

gcvs: I'm guessing you mean some CVS client - there are plenty (MacCVS springs to mind)

By the way my wife who has a masters in biology is currently using Ubuntu...

Oh yeah? Well my wife has a masters in nursing, and she uses a mac. So there! Neener Neener.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[swillden]

While many things are easy, nothing is pleasant.

Nothing? Perhaps we have different definitions of pleasant, but I find *many* things to be pleasant on Linux and annoying on the Mac. I don't blame OS X, though, I blame the fact that I don't know it as well as I know Linux.

My sister (who is sharp, but not a geek) can do just about anything she wants with a mac.

And my wife, who is also sharp and also not a geek, requires my help at least once a week to figure out how to do something on her Mac. That's down from daily, and I expect it will continue dropping as she gets further acquainted with her iBook.

put the damn docs in the system and make it easy to find.

With Kubuntu (or any decent KDE distro): By default there's a life preserver icon on the taskbar, with tooltip "Help". Click that. Type "graphics resolution" into the search bar. You get the documentation for kcontrol, which has a graphical interface for changing the resolution.

I don't use GNOME, so I can't speak to that environment, but I'm sure it's as easy.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Eivind Eklund]

You say your servers "was FreeBSD" - what are they now?

Eivind, doing user research.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Anonymous Coward]

It took you a day to get it working?

So, waht you are saying you lost your brain somewhere or you are retarded?

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Darby]

In the vein of the graphics issue: I can change my resolution and bit depth on a mac in a few seconds. Neither could I find out how do to it (short of editing the X11 config file), nor could I find help on the system, or a reference online how to do it.

CTRL-ALT-+ (or - it just scrolls through the other way)

Faster and arguably easier.

As to how you would find that out.....hmmmmm.... not sure actually it's been a long time ;-)

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Darby]

OK, now you're just talking crap. Redhat wasn't/isn't an attempt to build desktop linux?

No, Redhat is not and has never been in any way shape or form an attempt to build a desktop Linux. They have publically stated this on several occasions. They are after the server market, have always been after the server market and by most accounts are doing a good job of it. They've certainly added features that can help a desktop user, but that has never been their focus.

This doesn't mean that Ubuntu was the first as Mandrake, Lindows and others come to mind. It also doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of people who happily use Redhat (Fedora etc.) as their desktop.
But it does mean that Redhat has never tried to position themselves as a desktop OS.
Look at the "official" numbers for Linux servers. Redhat dominates that market compared to any other distribution. While there may be a number of reasons for their success, one of the primary ones is that is where they have consistently been focused.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[JavaIsGreat]

Hey that sounds great. However one more thing I need to know "Is It FREE". Also can we run Data Center of a REAL organization on Macs? I know we can do it on Solaris.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[JavaIsGreat]

FC5 or RHEL4 can also be used in a data center :) And if I can run it on Macs then how do I do vertical scaling of my system? What about Fault Tolerance and Availability, what are commercial network management applications like Unicenter or Tivoli available for enterprise deployment of Macs. Are there any reliable management softwares there for Macs that guarntee me 24*7 operations with easy to use backups and restoration of whole deployment? May be I am wrong but Macs are not meant for enterprise scenario. Correct me whereever I wrong.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

You say your servers "was FreeBSD" - what are they now?

"I'm still going to stick with OSX (which is now my server)."

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

Hey that sounds great. However one more thing I need to know "Is It FREE".

I'm not sure what you mean by FREE. If you mean Open Source, then probably not (though
http://www.opendarwin.org/ , etc). If you mean $0, then almost certainly not (though there are plenty of ports of open source software, and unported stuff generally ports trivially if you're willing to run X11)

Also can we run Data Center of a REAL organization on Macs? I know we can do it on Solaris.

I guess it depends what you need to do, but without knowing your specific needs, I'd guess so. (See also my other post to your other questions)

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

...And if I can run it on Macs then how do I do vertical scaling of my system? What about Fault Tolerance and Availability

http://www.apple.com/xserve/
http://www.apple.com/xserve/raid/
I would wait for the intel versions to be released unless you're in a hurry.

what are commercial network management applications like Unicenter or Tivoli available for enterprise deployment of Macs.

I've never heard of either.
Unicenter: Just don't know.
Tivoli: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/ 14384

Are there any reliable management softwares there for Macs that guarntee me 24*7 operations with easy to use backups and restoration of whole deployment? May be I am wrong but Macs are not meant for enterprise scenario. Correct me whereever I wrong.

http://images.apple.com/server/pdfs/High_Availabil ity_Admin_v10.4.pdf

OS X is unix in the same way that linux is unix. Neither of them is unix, but they do the same thing. This conversation started talking about the desktop (which I feel isn't ready in Ubuntu land, but I should check out kubuntu). XServes are "good enough" for any medium sized business, and good enough for most large businesses. But they're probably not enough for fortune 500 - at least not alone. I think that Apple still runs Oracle on some of SUNs big iron - but most (maybe all) of the webservers are probably xserves by now. As you know, OSX primary target is the home user, but there is unix under there - and it is up to most of the big tasks; just not some of the huge ones, I think.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[ratboy666]

What I would have done:

Replaced the video card. With anything recent. VESA graphics is standard, and works. Now, if you have a "wide-screen" format monitor, it may not be smooth (and you are stuck with Vendor specific stuff, sorry for you). But, 640x480 on up to 1280x1024 (and beyond) is fine. Now, if you want OpenGL, get yourself an nVidia card (5200fx is typical $30 these days).

And, for Crom's sake, test it with the Live CD.

Now, I am going to call you a Troll: here's why --

(1) did you try installing OS X on that hardware? How did that work out?

(2) Did you install Windows on that box? Get anything other than VESA modes? If you got VESA modes (graphics), Ubuntu would have picked them up. So, your hardware isn't VESA compliant. (before you shoved in a driver, of course). And, if its an old video card, did you manage to find Windows XP drivers? Or are you back at Windows 9x?

Why didn't you report on that? Inquiring minds really want to know.

Ratboy

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

(1) did you try installing OS X on that hardware? How did that work out?

Don't be inane.

(2) Did you install Windows on that box? Get anything other than VESA modes?... And, if its an old video card, did you manage to find Windows XP drivers? Or are you back at Windows 9x?

Win2K on it for years.

Why didn't you report on that? Inquiring minds really want to know.

OK, you missed the point. Install was harder than it should have been - but mostly the system remained a pain to use even after I had the video working. THAT is the important part. If it's just messing with a couple of drivers, I can do that once and be done. It's everything after that which makes it not ready.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Eideewt]

You don't understand me, do you? I'm not bothered by your opinions; I'm bothered that you think "there" is some sort of concrete place that we're all trying to reach.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

You don't understand me, do you?

I can be slow.

I'm not bothered by your opinions; I'm bothered that you think "there" is some sort of concrete place that we're all trying to reach.

Ah, then it seems I've just not made the terms clear. "There" is the place where joe user can pick up a disty and feel comfortable and happy with it. It is defined by the ever shifting market. We will know that a disty has reached "there" when lots and lots of people start using it. In the meantime, all we can do is predict "thereness". Any number of linux disty's have claimed to be there, not quite there, or past there.

In my not so humble opinion, Ubuntu Linux isn't there, yet.

Frankly, I think knoppix is closer to there for it's target than ubuntu is - at least from my last knoppix and my last ubuntu installs.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[ratboy666]

Ok, so the video is not the question. The "system remained a pain to use even after I had the video working".

Now, we are down to something that can be discussed. Was it that everything is just different? Or specific functionality that you missed?

To give examples I don't really care for OS X except for the transparent terminals which I really REALLY want. Not enough to make me switch to it, but I do envy that feature. On the other hand, I use NIS for signon on my home network; Linux, Solaris, OS X can all handle it. But Windows? No way. Same with NFS -- but Samba can help out with that (although there are commercial NFS client implementations for Windows). Solaris? I really REALLY like DTRACE, and wish it were available for more platforms.

These are all specific functionality issues with one OS or another.

The usability aspects (things that are just different): I find that generally a GUI is a GUI. That aside, I am fond of the GNOME desktop. Minimal, yet supports most of the candy (twm is almost unusable by most users). Windows XP is ok for me, once I jam it into "Classic" mode. But, on this point, your mileage will definitely vary.

Any functionality issues? Or, is it a question of just "knowing" where stuff is?

Ratboy

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

Now, we are down to something that can be discussed. Was it that everything is just different? Or specific functionality that you missed?

It's been a while, so I'm not going to remember everything...

Different I can generally handle. Missing is another story. The example of switching video resolution and depth is something that I simply could not find at all, and that's bad. I really didn't give the system much time to grow on me, but nor did I really expect it to do much. I did not like the window manager (no, I don't remember which it was). I did not like the file manager. Both of those can be replaced, sure, but I wasn't going to use the system for long enough for it to be worthwhile to me.

Ah, yes - I had 2 drives and 2 ethernet cards. It seems to me the cards came up fine and configured fine. The 2nd drive came up, but it was very hard for me to format and mount it. Eventually I had to do it on the commandline and edit /etc/fstab by hand. That's lame.

I want to say there was some issue with the sound - not that it didn't work, but that I couldn't get it to play nice. I'm afraid I don't recall. I also think I tried to do some user management and threw up my hands. Again, I'm not at all sure.

In general what I miss about OSX when I'm another *nix is the Services menu that every standard app has - and the unified look/feel/functionality. The fact that all the hardware works out of the box is really nice, but there's nothing linux can do about that - they just have to fight the uphill battle.

The things I would like to see in OSX are mount_sftp, better support for VPN (tun & tap drivers by Apple, or better support for them), and a full, recent gtk port so we'd get some of the groovy gtk apps native (not X11). I have some peeves about some of the apps that Apple ships (Mail, iPhoto, iTunes), but not enough for me to bother swapping them for something else (though until recently I did not use iPhoto).

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Fallingcow]

It's also in the system dropdown at the top of the screen in Gnome.

Not exactly hidden.

Maybe he has a really new Nvidia or ATI card that's not supported by the open-source drivers, so it had him stuck on 800x600 with the VESA drivers or something. Solution: go download EasyUbuntu, run it, check the box for "official ATI or Nvidia drivers" (you don't even have to know which one you have) and let it do its thing. Certainly no harder than doing the same thing on Windows, and a single search on the Ubuntu support forums would lead one to that program within a minute. Never have to worry about it again, and it'll stay current even over kernel updates without any further work.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[JavaIsGreat]

This is the very very rational reply I got in recent months. Be on my friends list :)

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Eideewt]

If you mean that Linux isn't in a place where joe user can pick up a disty and feel comfortable and happy with it, then why not say that? Why cap it off with the old "it's just not there yet"? Was the previous statement not strong enough, so you decided to add something more absolute?

Anyway, I don't feel like arguing about this any more. I think we've both made ourselves clear.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Eivind Eklund]

You say your servers "was FreeBSD" - what are they now?

"I'm still going to stick with OSX (which is now my server)."

Sorry, though I tried to see if I could find it in the post, I obviously didn't read it carefully enough. Happy to see you over on one of our derivaties, though. A lot of our best developers are now employed by Apple, anyway, and changes are shared back and forth (Apple are really good at syncing in the FreeBSD changes, so you get the best of both worlds.)

Eivind, who just wish Apple would actually DELIVER the box he ordered so he could test out OSX in practice...

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

Sorry, though I tried to see if I could find it in the post, I obviously didn't read it carefully enough. Happy to see you over on one of our derivaties, though. A lot of our best developers are now employed by Apple, anyway, and changes are shared back and forth (Apple are really good at syncing in the FreeBSD changes, so you get the best of both worlds.)

Yeah, I'm kinda proud of Apple for trying to be a good OSS citizen. Most of the time.

Eivind, who just wish Apple would actually DELIVER the box he ordered so he could test out OSX in practice...

I'll tell ya why I dropped FreeBSD:

• Apple seems pretty committed to major updates every 2 years or so, and that's plenty enough for me. FreeBSD seems to have picked up the pace (too fast).
  
• Apple does automagic updates out of the box that work. I actually submitted a bug about FreeBSD's update system - that it was not automagic enough.
  
• Apple ships Java out of the box. FreeBSD said they would back in the pre-4.5 days, and still has not. I know you can build it in, but I like it to be there already - I have enough to wrangle just to make the box suit me.
  

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[ratboy666]

kwerle:

Ok, with that in mind, I am going to make a Linux distribution suggestion for you. And, I will try to justify it.

Fedora FC5

and, drum roll, for the justifications:

You know your way around "classic" unix configuration. So, you don't need super seatbelts. Seems that GUI configuration would be nice for you. When installing, you want to be able to define additional partitions (pre-existing) and easily incorporate into the system. You want an easy way to set screen res/depth, via menu. You want a platform that nVideo/ATI etc. will support with binary drivers. And you like the GNOME stuff, and want something that "maximizes" GNOME. You are able to read a few "readmes" to be able to modify the online repositories to get you mp3, dvd and other "non-free" pieces. You do want a pleasent out-of-the-box experience; it has to feel like a reasonable workstation. Fit and finish is important.

I do believe that FC5 would be a very good fit for you. Don't go any earlier, later (FC6) isn't stable enough. The reason for not going earlier is that (AFAIK) FC5 is the first that will automagically mount USB and other removable media (stick it in, it shows up on the desktop, right-click unmount when done). System/Preferences/Screen Resolution (and lots of other tweakable stuff). Network browsing works (in a Microsoft environment, with mostly XP). Setup files follow old-school Redhat locations (variation on SystemV theme), instead of something wonky-ass.

Some problems (fit&finish): if you plug in an mp3 player, usb1.1, and copy a lot of data to it (easy enough), and then unmount, the OS may pop up an error box saying it couldn't be unmounted -- because it was timing the unmount, which was flushing data to the device, and the unmount GUI "timed out". Similar, there is no positive acknowledge that such a device can now be safely removed. This is probably my biggest "annoyance" with FC5.

Equally, STAY AWAY FROM UBUNTU. It may be the most "popular" (in some sense), but it is not meant for you -- you have too much "on the ball". It may well be hard to figure out how to change hardware settings (eg. screen resolution) in Ubuntu, because the target audience just won't do it (it should hopefully be preset to the most "usable" mode). In a similar vein, hard drives and partitions can be confusing, so Ubuntu will try to be as safe and usable as possible. I *like* Ubuntu, but it is targetted for my parents, wife, and kids (all who don't care or know about such details).

Ratboy.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[Eivind Eklund]

From the view as a user, I agree that the updates are too frequent, especially as there has been no compelling reason for most users to upgrade from the 4.x branch, and we're now at 6.x. From the view of development, we *have* to do it that way. There are so many changes that it's impossible to merge and track across branches over the longer timeframe.

As for automagic updates: I've tried to do my part to make this work better, see e.g. etcmerge, and the options system for ports (so options are kept across updates automagically). I would like to do more, I've not been active for a while, though.

WRT Java, this has been closely tied with the licensing issues of Sun. A couple of months ago, Sun added a new licensing option, so I think this may change. I'm not sure, though - Java on FreeBSD has been such a pain that I've mostly avoided Java.

Eivind.

Re:The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle]

I have never installed fedora. Next time I'm installing some flavor of linux, I'll give it a spin.

Thanks for the tip.

WARNING! GNAA PR0N-LINK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not click unless... well, you know...

Re:WARNING! GNAA PR0N-LINK!

[j_sp_r]

it was only slightly irritating, clicking enter and pressing ctrl-W stopped it quite fast

Going the other direction

[thephotoman]

Recently, I've made the opposite migration (from Ubuntu to Mac OS X). Now, while I love Ubuntu, and continue to use it on my desktop, I must say that Mac OS X has a lot going for it. There's nothing really wrong with the platform inherently. However, given the particular people in question, Ubuntu seems better suited for their needs than OS X does. Furthermore, with the latest release, things are quite easy to use on most hardware sold for Windows. Of course, the reason I removed Ubuntu from my MacBook is because I'm familiar with GRUB, which doesn't work on EFI. Perhaps I'll dual-boot the MacBook again when they've had time to work out that particular issue. I'd like to have an Ubuntu environment on here that isn't emulated over Parallels, too.

So honestly, between Ubuntu and OS X, to me, it's an even trade, based on what one needs. If you're doing heavy programming, Ubuntu is the place to be. However, if you're looking for a simple user-oriented Unix-like system, Mac OS X is just fine.

Re:Going the other direction

[Mistah Blue]

Parallels is not an emulator. It is virtualization software.

Another similar story at O'Reilly

[linuxbaby]

Another interesting point of view of this is at this article:
Switching Back to Desktop Linux, by chromatic, the technical editor of the O'Reilly Network.

Some people will likely say "But you have to spend so much time tweaking Linux to get it the way you want!" To that I respond that I don't even have the option of tweaking Mac OS X to work the way I want. /blockquote.

Re:Another similar story at O'Reilly

[LocoMan]

I don't think that would affect mac at all. It's natural that more "geeky" people tend to flock towards linux because it is a very geek friendly enviroment to be, where tweaking and hacking at it isn't not only not discouraged, but required. Mac on the other hand are more focused on the "take it out of the box, plug it in and it works" kind of people... and can't say I blame them, since they make a huge percentage of the computer users.. :)

Count me in.

[greenguy]

As a long-time Macophile, I played with Linux for years and was never completely happy with it until recently (read: until I installed Ubuntu). I've always had a Mac around as a back-up, but for the last several months, I find myself using it less and less, and getting frustrated with it more and more. The final straw was when I couldn't get the FreeNX client to work on it so I could use Linux on my nice, big flatscreen iMac. Now the only thing standing between me and putting Ubuntu on the iMac is a lack of free time.

On an off-topic note, it appears to be my Mac background that makes me like Gnome. KDE feels too much like Windows. Cue flames!

Re:Count me in.

[Anonymous Coward]

On an off-topic note, it appears to be my Mac background that makes me like Gnome. KDE feels too much like Windows. Cue flames!

I disagree. KDE always reminded me more of Mac OS than anything else. I prefer Gnome in any event.

Doctrow Switched?

[tb3]

Apple must be doing something right!

Seriously, that guy's as much of a techie as my great aunt Maude. He wouldn't know tech if it bit him in the face. See Open Cola for example.

Re:Doctrow Switched?

[Eideewt]

Not really related except that the words tech and Doctorow appear, but I wince every time I hear Doctorow describe something technical in one of his stories. It's a mix of straighforward descriptions and excruciating detail that falls flat. I like his writing otherwise, but he just can't seem to write about technical things in a readable fashion.

Re:I switched as well

[Phisbut]

I am one of these switchers as well. I am a gamer and developer, and had been a long term Apple user.

What kind of gamer are you that your needs are satisfied on Ubuntu? I recently switched to Ubuntu (Dapper), and yesterday installed vmware-player with a WinXP virtual machine, and then installed 2 games (first is PopCap's Dynomite and the second is Civ4), and although both of them installed, neither would actually play. Maybe I'm missing something, but Ubuntu looks to me as underwhelming as any other distro when it comes to gaming (although overwhelming on everything else).

What's the best way to get games to play on Ubuntu? I still need to dual-boot with Windows because of games, and I would really, really like to get rid of that.

pish posh, 2 == representative sample?

[hedley]

I just bought a MBP core duo. The new parallels sw is a VMclone and makes it easy to run other OS's. So, you get the stability of OS X and put MrBill in a sandbox. Also you can run your beloved Ubuntu if the need is there.

But wait... I must be missing something and better sell it, run for the hills and buy something else!

Hedley

I switched the other way

[Adnans]

Not really, since I'm still using Ubuntu on other laptop (and in Parallelson OSX for testing) and will always be using it as the main server deployment platform. There's simply nothing better than apt + Ubuntu! I was just in the market for a new laptop and the Macbook Pro has been nothing but phenomenal. The Xorg guys should catch up to the Quartz graphics in a couple of months and hopefully GNOME/etc will start incorporating the new GL based capabilities creatively and productively.. cuz the OSX desktop experience is the one to beat!!

-adnans

Somehow, I don't think Apple shold be trembling...

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I tried I still had to deal with the command line to get my goddam wireless network card to work. You can take care of some simple things in Gnome or KDE (knoppix uses KDE, right?) but chances are you'll still be fucking around in the shell prompt bullshit. I know distros like Ubuntu are all ultra-easy to install but as long as I still need to use the command line to take care of the critical components of the OS I will avoid linux like the plague. I don't memorize commands, I don't sit around and fucking memorize the goddam options and I know that GREP is candy but I don't give a shit. It's 2006. Fuck command line interfaces. I don't need mega control over my OS. I load it up, I watch porn, I shut it off.

Even fanboys eventually get tired

[Anonymous Coward]

Overpriced hardware (Apple) is just as bad as overpriced software (Microsoft).

One the other had, you can't loose running Free software on Industry Standard (i.e., cheap) hardware. Makes perfect sense, unless you want to make Steve Jobs another $850M.

Since when?

[NineNine]

Since when have nerds been a "canary in a coal mine" for any kind of technology? Nerds that I know have been into : laserdisk, betamax, etc. Nerds have been into Linux for a long time, and it still hasn't taken off. I'd say that what nerds choose in terms of consuming is generally the exact opposite of what the general public does.

Re:Since when?

[poena.dare]

...first it was Mark Pilgrim and now Cory Doctorow. Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.

Well, this is good to know. If I see Mark Pilgrim or Cory Doctorow drop dead then I'll know it was Linux that killed them.

Re:Since when?

[_Sprocket_]

Since when have nerds been a "canary in a coal mine" for any kind of technology? Nerds that I know have been into : laserdisk, betamax, etc. Nerds have been into Linux for a long time, and it still hasn't taken off. I'd say that what nerds choose in terms of consuming is generally the exact opposite of what the general public does.

Photography. The automobile. Telephones. Radio. Hi-fidelity stereo. Television. Microcomputers. Networked computing. The Internet. This stuff doesn't just spring out of the ground to become normal parts of mainstream culture. There's always early adopters - usually nerds to some degree or another. And very often these guys are toying with budding technology well before anyone has found a useful purpose for it.

Yes, not every example of early-adopter focus ends up the "winning" technology in any given market. But that's the nature of the technology business. That doesn't mean the dominent tech wasn't in some nerd's basement, garage, work shed, or closet first. It usually was... and well before any main-stream bystander would make heads or tails over why the nerd in question would bother.

Along those lines... yes, nerds have been playing with Linux for a while now. Linux is becoming more and more commonplace whether you want to admit it or not. But don't expect it to just suddenly pop up out of the ground and be mainstream. Technology markets just don't work that way. It just appears that way to the mainstream consumer who doesn't get wind of new technology until well after it has been packaged for mass consumption and sprung on its audience in a marketing blitz.

Re:Since when?

[JohnBeaulieu]

How can you claim that what nerds choose in terms of consuming is generally the exact opposite of what the general public does? Hello! You are using a computer aren't you? Most of us can probably remember a time when a home computer system was for nerds and the internet wasn't something regarded for public consumption.

Re:Since when?

[rshangle]

Lead yourself into the future!

Re:Since when?

[jc42]

Since when have nerds been a "canary in a coal mine" for any kind of technology? Nerds that I know have been into : laserdisk, betamax, etc. ... I'd say that what nerds choose in terms of consuming is generally the exact opposite of what the general public does.

Yup. In reality, as many people have observed, since at least the mid-1960s there have been two distinct computer markets, the "tech" and the "non-tech" markets. These have rarely had any connection. Different things are successful in each market, and success in one has little to do with success in the other.

The tech market has always bought based on quality (and functionality for specific tasks). The non-tech market doesn't do this for the simple reason that it can't, so it buys the most heavily-advertised products. That is, they buy IBM and Microsoft, because those companies have ad budgets greater than the total of the ad budgets of all their competitors combined. Techies ridicule this, because people are buying crap, but such ridicule is only effective with people who have a way of distinguishing crap from non-crap, i.e., other techies.

And, yes, "techie" has pretty low entry qualifications. One is that if you have the slightest clue what an "operating system" is, you're a techie. This is why linux is pretty much invisible to non-techies. It's an operating system, and they don't buy operating systems; they buy computers. They can no more decide on an operating system when they buy a computer than they can decide on a transmission or differential when they buy a car. You have to know what something is before you can base purchase decisions on it.

Re:I switched as well

[Frenchman113]

Some games (most) work on WINE, but if they don't work in virtual windows, I don't see any choice besides dual-booting.

Re:Ubuntu? sounds like a loser..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're either the worst troll ever or you're a total fucking idiot.

The market apple could gain: the clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

27 installs of Kubuntu in the past 12 months, the ovewhelming majority of them senior citizens.
Only 4 new boxes, the rest where computers that were less than 4 years and had problems with one onboard graphics card.
Im not Linux genius but my sample size is bigger that yours, so I win.

reverse switcher

[nostriluu]

I just switched from Linux to MacOS. So it's actually only +1 switch to Linux.

Actually I've been running Linux for over a decade and will be triple booting windows/macos/linux. The lack of a core package manager in MacOS, Apple's poor cousin attitude about open source, and my familiarity with Linux are going to prevent more than casual use of OS X. And I have to tell you I'm struck by how complicated OS X is, with the bizarre keystrokes to get everyday things done.

What I find funny in all this is people switching from MacOS to Gnome. Sorry, Gnome is as frustratingly bad as Windows or MacOS in dumbing things down. Any OS that hides the terminal (shell), which a lot of people use, in "utilities" is pretty much the same. I'd have a lot more understanding for these people if they'd switched to a closer to the metal window manager.

Re:reverse switcher

[wootest]

Sure, lots of people use shells, but by a wide margin more people will open, say, iWeb on OS X or Windows Movie Maker on XP before they ever open "Terminal" or "Command Prompt". "Hiding" it in Utilities doesn't do a thing - if you need it, it's there. And contrary to your belief, lots of people legitimately never *need* to use a shell for anything. Sticking tools where people who need them will find them and people who don't need them can blissfully ignore them isn't a good ground to dismiss an OS as "frustratingly bad" in this aspect, unless it's your conviction that every OS should assume that their primary user writes shell scripts or at least is a heavy shell user, something that with the advent of Ubuntu and other more "friendly" alternatives is increasingly hard to claim of even Linux distros anymore.

As an OS X user, I'm finding your claim about bizarre keystrokes to get everyday things done, well, bizarre. Is this about the Command key? Is it about the Home/End keys moving the viewport and not the text cursor? Is it about selections being extended instead of shortened in some cases? Here, we're on the same page, but keystrokes sounds like "shortcut keys" - list five of your bizarre shortcut keys and then we'll talk.

I can't complain about the way you feel shortchanged expecting a bundled OS X command line package manager (because package managers do exist - DarwinPorts and Fink) and more open-source software (Rosetta, the PPC-to-x86 translator, is currently holding back the kernel source release for x86; meanwhile such blockbuster hits as TextEdit (sample code), Chess (GPLed) and the Safari rendering engine WebKit (supposedly to facilitate integration with KDE but probably a smart recruiting move) are already open-source beyond Darwin). I have high hopes for the next revision of OS X. Apple has some genuinely smart *NIX-heads on board who really do get it, even if a small bit of Not-Invented-Here syndrome still lingers in the organization, and 10.4 is so much better than 10.2 (the first version I really tried) in all aspects that it's hard to believe Microsoft was toiling away at Vista in the same time span.

Re:reverse switcher

[nostriluu]

Re: Hiding the terminal; I don't think its really a utility in the first place as many people use it in a general purpose way, just like they'd use a file manager. So maybe it's just a failing to find the right category to store it under. Then again, I tend to take the view that people shouldn't be so afraid of the shell, and it's the best tool for some jobs.

Bizarre keystrokes, how about making a screen cap of the current window? Shift, command, 4? Add to that the confusing behavior around fn, option, and command using the cursor keys, when the average windows Laptop has pageup/pagedown, home and end keys, and that's five. ;) These are keys that ordinary people use, and it's much more complicated than a Windows keyboard.

In fact I respect Apple for making more consistent use of their meta key, but it's just comical that the company that refuses to put more than one button on their mouse has so many interesting combinations.

As for the open source thing, I think there's a hint of oops, we're just a little bit different than everyone else. I am using Fink, but it's not nearly the breadth of packages I'd see under Debian, partially because of no real X integration (what is that, twm?), and the splitting between Mac Ports, fink, and the dmg formats, along with others I've heard about, really means its a mess compared to the system-wide management you get with a Debian system.

The Mac feels like the Amiga in its twilight years, they couldn't decide if it was a professional system or a consumer system, and it suffered and died. Regardless of what people say about Vista, it's probably going to be decent enough that people won't bother switching, and with the momentum of open source, where setup on a notebook is nearly perfect, it's going to be hard for Apple to find their niche. (if it has anything to do with Front Row, I know I'm trying the wrong OS).

Then again, they've been here before. :) I do hope Apple goes much more open source as a strategy.

Anyway, it's fun to tour. Thanks for writing back.

Re:reverse switcher

[wootest]

Well, you're right about the Shift+Command+4 thing. One thing that really lingers about Apple's NIH years is the alternative keyboard layouts (no Print Screen, for one). Far from all Windows laptops have separate pgup/pgdn/home/end keys, but you're right that they *should* have. The zing about ctrl+click being less obvious than right-click is well-deserved, and I've propagated in favor of at least a two-button trackpad *option* on the laptops. I have a new MacBook which has "two fingers on trackpad + click means right-click", which is still not obvious but is opt-in and far more convenient.

I'm not denying that the shell is the right tool for some jobs, or that "mere mortals" can get stuff done in it too, but it's far from obvious unless you really do know your shit how to even get started, and I don't think anyone would win anything by making the shell more mainstream just so they could leave it outside of the Utilities folder (which I agree is a wrong label, now that you mention it).

The funny thing about the package management is that one of either FInk or DarwinPorts is supposed to work in a Debian-ish manner, and one in a BSD-ish manner (I forget which, and I'm not a wizard here). You're totally right that it sucks how most projects are available on one or the other and many projects are only available in ordinary downloads, however. It's a mess for one reason: there are several systems and Apple hasn't blessed one of them - I'm thinking that once they do, you'll have it a lot easier.

It's not the first time I've heard the Amiga comparison and it's not going to be the last. I can't claim to know a whole lot about Amigas either, but I do know that the whole market is more stable overall now and that Apple has stayed in the top 10 computer companies (by volume) for longer than Amiga's "twilight years" ever lasted, so they're not in any danger. If everything goes to shit it'll still take at least five years to break down the company unless there's an Enron-style crash. The other side of this coin is that Mac OS X 10.5 could cook your breakfast and gas up your car and still attract no potential switchers. A stable market is also often a stagnant market, for better and worse. (Also, if you ask me, Apple caters well to both consumers and professionals in one go, simply by producing different products. This is reason alone why they won't go down in flames that easy. Their business model works and they rake in profits. )

Most users aren't ideological

[Logic Bomb]

Both of these guys switched because they decided that open file formats are their top priority. Neither switched for any of the things most users care about. (It's also worth noting that most of the file formats Apple uses are industry-standard, like PNG, vCard, and PDF. It's a handful of things like the iPhoto library database and iCal's weird calendar files that seem to bug these guys.) Yes, the opinions of the techno-elite are important and Apple should take their concerns to heart. But this has nothing to do with Apple's pursuit of the larger computing market. Unless these guys start recommending Ubuntu (or some other Linux) over Apple to non-techies, it doesn't hurt Apple's sales.

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[TomHandy]

Yeah, and I have to say, I don't really get that. I like and use OS X, but don't really care for iPhoto or iCal, and don't use them. I'm not sure why I would be inclined to switch from OS X just because of how iPhoto or iCal operate. Frankly, even if something happened with iTunes (an app I do use) that bugged me, I'd probably just find an alternative mp3 player/library manager, rather than switch platforms.

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[Anonymous Coward]

iCal uses the same file format that Evolution and SunBird uses. How is that a weird format ?

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[prockcore]

Frankly, even if something happened with iTunes (an app I do use) that bugged me, I'd probably just find an alternative mp3 player/library manager, rather than switch platforms.

If you'd read Mark's followup you'd find that what really pissed him off was that Apple decided to "upgrade" *all* of his email from mbox to a proprietary format when he upgraded to Tiger. Without telling him. Apple literally took all of his mail hostage. They did it to you too if you use Mail.app.

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[TomHandy]

I see. I don't know, I keep all of my mail on my server and sync with IMAP. Whatever format Apple keeps it in Mail.app doesn't really matter to me (clearly it matters to this Mark guy though). If it did though, I'm not sure how it would be taken hostage (unless I guess if I used it for local mail storage or something). Anyway though, more power to him if he wants to switch his whole OS because of changes in an application bundles with it (as opposed to switching to using Thunderbird or whatever). I'm just saying I probably wouldn't change OS's based on changes in bundles apps, but that's just me.

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[ClamIAm]

And yet, every day millions of computer users wonder "why can't I copy this song i bought?".

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[Gentlewhisper]

I see. I don't know, I keep all of my mail on my server and sync with IMAP. Whatever format Apple keeps it in Mail.app doesn't really matter to me (clearly it matters to this Mark guy though). If it did though, I'm not sure how it would be taken hostage (unless I guess if I used it for local mail storage or something). Anyway though, more power to him if he wants to switch his whole OS because of changes in an application bundles with it (as opposed to switching to using Thunderbird or whatever). I'm just saying I probably wouldn't change OS's based on changes in bundles apps, but that's just me.

Does your mail server happen to have gigs of storage just for your mails? Because that is what you are going to need if you are to rely on your IMAP server as a long term mail store.

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[TomHandy]

Yes, it does. I have different mail accounts in different places (one at work, one through .mac, one through a hosting plan I have, etc.) and they all have gigs of storage for mail, so it hasn't been an issue.

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[Scudsucker]

And yet, every day millions of computer users wonder "why can't I copy this song i bought?".

Not with the iTMS they don't, so how does that fit into a comparison between Ubuntu and Apple?

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[ClamIAm]

If you miss the point of my post entirely, I don't think I can help you understand it.

Re:Most users aren't ideological

[Scudsucker]

If you miss the point of my post entirely, I don't think I can help you understand it.

Sorry, next time we'll try to read your mind more clearly when you make a one-sentance reply that doesn't make any sense.

Re:I switched as well

[hector_uk]

no video acceleration with VM ware or any virtual boxen. commercial game oriented ports of WINE are your only option. as for the original topic OS X pretty much invalidates linux, i'd rather have the sexy hardware/UI/softwre support any day compared to saveing 10-20% on a dell and running ubuntu on it, sure it's an ok distro i use it for my live cd of choice but why you would dump OS X for it i have no idea unless you have some analy retentive vendetta against the finder/mac UI.

I switched off ubuntu

[hfastedge]

I ran linux at home for over 6 years. On desktops and laptops.

First, linux requires so much configuration on laptops. Neither debian nor ubuntu could support acpi (aka SLEEP) on my laptop. CD-ROM support was annoying as I switched from kernel 2.4-2.6. I had to recompile the kernel so many times and I could never get acpi to work (not even dell supported it, just some hacker in france that never replied to my email bug report). Other annoying things: getting vpn through a windows PPTP server will take you a long as time.

Linux is a great thing for a desktop though, the hardware is pretty standard and theres less things to worry about.

Linux is best for a server, and best for a beginning sysadmin to run at home to learn more about the operating system that is run at work.

And while I will probably buy a macbook for my next computer, I hope to have the resources to also get a windows vista to play around with.
I really like desktop machines that just work in most cases. I've been running windows xp on my dell laptop for a few months now, and while its not ideal, at least i get easy vpn access, the ability to turn off zeroconf to get my intel wifi card working,although i do miss being able to simply edit my crontab to give me a streaming radio alarm clock that goes off at different times during the week.

Re:I switched off ubuntu

[Dixie_Flatline]

Depending on what you're serving, a Mac does the job well too. A recent power cock-up on my part killed my primary harddrive on my FreeBSD mailserver. I went out and bought the base level Mac mini, a $20 Postfix configuration tool, and downloaded a VNC server. Now I have the mini hooked up to the TV and serving my email. I can drag and drop files across the network to it, I can watch my movies and DVDs on it, and I can serve the few pictures and light-use webpages that I occasionally need. It has an external firewire drive hooked up to it so I can actually back-up and store things on it, and it takes up almost no space and draws basically zero power compared to most of the machines I've used as servers.

Servers can be lightweight, usable boxes too. This machine is orders of magnitude more powerful than what I've historically used to serve files and web pages and mail, just as about secure, and fills more uses than any of those other machines did with less time wasted. I've decided that my time is worth more than certain bits of ideology or even the money that I spent on the box in comparison to a free Linux job built out of spare parts and my constant swearing.

I've read the article of one of those new switchers, and all of his arguments are complete non-starters. Apple doesn't force you to use DRM (you can rip your own CDs and play them in iTunes; nobody forces you to buy the music off the store), their 'closed and proprietary' file formats aren't any more recoverable in the case of a weird error than an open format is and require no more and no less backing up, and the library files can be exported to straight XML anyway.

There are lots of reasons to switch to Linux, but I don't think he wrote about a single good one.

Re:I switched off ubuntu

[Billly Gates]

Have you tried the latest Ubuntu ?

I didn't like Linux for years and used FreeBSD because of the percieved alpha quality Linux was heading to.

Ubuntu is hte only distro that is not a pain in the ass and just works! PS I have an intel centrino chipset notebook and Ubuntu started right up and everything was supported with no manual configuration. Including the intel wifi.

I think Badger is the name of the new version that came out last month. You may want to try the livecd to see if it works on your laptop.

Re:I switched off ubuntu

[miro f]

wait a minute... you switched from ubuntu... but you were complaining about how hard it was switching from kernel 2.4-2.6? having to recompile your kernel? Obviously this was your relationship with another distro.

sure if you have issues with other distros then switch, but you didn't say anything about what was bugging you with Ubuntu. I'm running it now, on a laptop, and everything is working perfectly, I haven't had to compile anything. I tried other distros and Ubuntu was where I ended up. I don't take my bad experiences with them to Ubuntu, so that's why I've found it to be easy to use and adequate for all my needs (yes, including multimedia)

Re:I switched off ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

ubuntu never shipped a 2.4 kernel. apparently you found four other people as dim as yourself to mod this up.

Re:I switched off ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a thinkpad instead. On my thinkpad z60m, Kubuntu supports everything: sleep, resume, opengl (at the same time), watching dvd's (although the dvd-drive is the new, improved type where libdvdcss cannot read dvd's with the wrong region code), wireless (out of the box, didn't have to do anything), network, bluetooth, usb, wacom tablet, sounds... Everything worked out of the box. The only thing I haven't tried are the infrared port, fingerprint reader and the funny looking slot front-right.

And the Kubuntu install from the life cd meant that I could read my mail while installing.

Boudewijn

Re:I switched off ubuntu

[Fallingcow]

Ubuntu supports sleep practically everywhere now, and, as noted in another post in reply to this guy, has never shipped with a 2.4 kernel. This is a troll that somehow got modded up.

Re:I switched off ubuntu

[Dr. Photo]

"I think Badger is the name of the new version that came out last month. You may want to try the livecd to see if it works on your laptop."

Breezy Badger is the old one. You want Dapper Drake ("Dapper").

Mac still has its advantages

[a_greer2005]

Comercial tools like Adobe CS, MS Office (OOo is good, but PHBs want the real thing if you use it for work) iTunes and iPod officially supported...Ubuntu is great but it isnt going to get a lot of total conversions, it will be co-used if at all by Mac users...

A Matter of Time

[simpl3x]

Isn't it really a matter of time before companies such as Adobe recognize that creating a distribution or partnering, and developing a single application port is more cost effective than a Mac and Windows app? I'm a Mac user and a designer, and have to say that the state of the Mac isn't all that great. Linux is ultimately going to move up scale.

The other aspect of this discussion is tools. Increasingly, they are web based. Aren't we really witnessing the beginning of the end for the all-purpose OS? Most of what I do is not related to an OS. I use tools and communicate. How this is accomplished matters little.

Also, most application interfaces suck beyond comprehension. Adobe's various interfaces don't sync between applications. Others, such as Maya, are so radically different from the underlying OS that it is essentially like running a different OS. So why not create one?

not without media production apps

[GoatPigSheep]

Untill Ubuntu has good media production apps for music and video it won't tak over Apple's core market of creative professionals. The open-source apps have come a long way but they are still not competition for most sound and video suites (and apple owns two of the best, final cut and logic audio).

However for everything else, ubuntu is serious competition.

First I'll try Ubuntu on my MBP

[foniksonik]

I'll try it in Parallels first, which I paid $30 for just to be able to do this exact thing....

Then after finding out that I'm not missing anything (does Ubuntu have thousands of Games I'm not aware of, hundreds of Pro quality apps, tens of document formats unique to it???)... I'll turn off Parallels and go back to using my Mac w/ OS X.

Now OTOH if I was a poor developer who really needed a good development system w/ a free OS on relatively cheap hardware, well I'd probably be all up in Ubuntu's @SS looking for heaven or some x86 compatible version of it.

As it is, I already make a ton of money and can afford a sweet MBP w/ 30in. HD display to dock it with for doing real work... with added bonus of mobility to Diedrich's free Wi-Fi to get Iced Coffee for a good /. reading fest on a 'working-from-home' day like today.

Re:First I'll try Ubuntu on my MBP

[Ash-Fox]

does Ubuntu have thousands of Games I'm not aware of

Yes.

hundreds of Pro quality apps

Yes.

tens of document formats unique to it???

Nope, doesn't have lockin formats.

Why switch?

[Xymor]

I fail to see how ubuntu is revolutionary in the desktop linux area. I mean, there are several good distributions, remarkably the latest SuSe, but also Mandriva and Fedora, that are well suited for desktop users. I mean I've installed mandriva in several new machines in my job and 90% of users, the ones that click in the blue E to "use the internet", the yellow flash to listen to music, the 2 green dummies to access MSN and the paper with an "W" to use the word processor can't tell the difference.(My mon included) Of cource, as long as those icons are familiar, in usual places and there's solitaire under Programs > Games.

Re:I switched as well

[bunions]

hey hi how you doin'?

I switched from Linux to OSX (for the desktop boxes) around 10.1. I don't really know why you'd put up with the warts of Linux as a desktop machine when OSX exists.

Re:Ubuntu? sounds like a loser..

[rolfc]

A loser, he is a loser ;)

In related news....

[ericdano]

In related news, a number of Slashdot readers have recently switched to DIGG.

Really, how is this news? I know it's a slow news day, but really.......Couldn't we talk about that asteroid that came really close to the Earth instead?

Re:Somehow, I don't think Apple shold be trembling

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu has a nice gui for setting up your wireless nic. Very simple to use.

Re:I switched as well

[bunions]

But Ubuntu seems to have changed all of this.

I wouldn't say Ubuntu is really what changed this. If your last linux laptop experience was anything like mine, this part:

Ubuntu (and the laptop) came fully working

Is really where the change is.

I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

So Ubuntu 6 got all the great buzz, so I grabbed a copy and installed it on a spare Windows box I had.

Gee, I think, this looks pretty good. Finally some attention to nice graphic detail. A good installer. Software install that includes "blessed" prebuilt exes.

But then the rough edges showed up again.

First... this is an nForce2 machine with built-in video, and the default config refused to let me select a screen-res larger than 1024x768. I know, the nerds out there are saying "just edit your x config file", right? OK, but here's the thing:

(1) that's an INEXCUSABLY STUPID AND LAZY way to design operating system software
(2) it's too easy to screw up your x config file and break x (and by "too easy" I mean "remotely possible")

Second... I discovered that the oh-so-lovely disk partitioner has the added feature that on some systems (including mine) it borks the MBR of the resized Windows partition in such a way that Windows will refuse to boot. Even after uninstalling Ubuntu. And even after applying various fixes via UBCD and friends. (Right now this system is sitting disconnected under my desk because I refuse to reinstall Ubuntu, but reinstalling Windows is a horrible half-day affair on its own...)

Look, I know I'm gonna get flamed and burn karma for this, but the whole point is that for a system that I want to use mainly for surfing the web and playing games, it has to Just Work.

Not "mostly work with some crap I have to hand edit", it has to be freakin' bulletproof against a stupid user who neither knows nor cares that "sudo gedit foo" is required for some otherwise-seemingly-trivial configuration options.

No, this is not an apology for Windows, whose install and configuration is a nightmare of its own, but when you're the underdog, you can't just play catch-up, and you can't make boneheaded mistakes like those listed above.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

> I want to use mainly for surfing the web and playing games, it has to Just Work.

Come on dude, you must know linux is not for playing games. It is a real operating system for those who wish to get real work done. Those of you who install linux and whine because it wont play games, are just plain stupid. You know full well it is not a gaming system. Please, stick to windows, and game away.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[wild_berry]

I'm sorry that Ubuntu borked you MBR. I don't believe that there is a graphical GRUB menu editor that allows you to easily change the line 'root (hdx,y)' to 'rootnoverify (hdx,y)' -- which I figure you must have been recommended to try already -- to make sure that GRUB lets Windows do its thing.

Your graphics situation may require the installation of nVidia's own graphics driver to loosen up the available resolutions. The alternative would involved using "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" to enable higher resolution modes via the configure-at-installation part of Xorg.

But if you're going to forego Ubuntu, don't forget that Windows can be resuscitated with a Win98 boot disk and the "fdisk /mbr" command at its DOS prompt, and the boot disk image can be used to start up the computer from a CD if you've no floppy. If you're keen on keeping your Windows partition after that, you could usse GParted from the Ubuntu Desktop CD (boot it to Ubuntu, select GParted from System -> Administration -> Gnome Partition Editor) to delete your Ubuntu partitions and resize the NTFS or FAT32 partition that Windows uses.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

Wow, thanks for a genuinely useful response... it's rare to get one like this on Slashdot these days. Consider yourself added to my friends list :-)

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Billly Gates]

IF your refering the latest Ubuntu release you can configure the resoution in the gnome menu under administration. It just worked for me withotu issues with the latest one on my cheap wintel notebook.

Also if you hate sudu just sudo pssword and you now have a root account.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[brianf711]

I think the point of Nerds serving as a canary is not that Ubuntu is here yet, but that it is starting to be easy enough to use (and yet flexible and highly customizable) that the time spent tweaking it (for a Nerd) versus other problems inherent with a Mac or Windows or whatever is approaching the break even point. As Ubuntu becomes more user friendly, less expert users may also find their break even point is crossed. I think that is the idea of the importance behind these long-time Mac supporters changing to Ubuntu. Granted 2 people do not make or break Apple. However, if they can be considered as a small group of formerly loyal Mac users, it is possible they are signaling an approaching point, perhaps driven by an effort to make linux accessible by the linux community, where linux may be a viable alternative to Mac for a fraction of the price, as well as have the added bonus of a high degree of control over the OS by the end user (where desired).

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[vga_init]

First... this is an nForce2 machine with built-in video, and the default config refused to let me select a screen-res larger than 1024x768. I know, the nerds out there are saying "just edit your x config file", right?/p>

Ubuntu tries to autoconfig everything. Sometimes this doesn't work out, but you don't have to go hacking your configs just yet. If you want to specify your own configuration, just run sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg. This will go through and give you easy configuration options.

Also, since you've got an nVidia chipset, you might want the nvidia packages for accelerated X. Ubuntu has them, but if you don't want to mess around, easyubuntu makes this process entirely automated.

Second... I discovered that the oh-so-lovely disk partitioner has the added feature that on some systems (including mine) it borks the MBR of the resized Windows partition in such a way that Windows will refuse to boot. Even after uninstalling Ubuntu.

To be frank, you asked for it. Resizing Windows partitions is a black art, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong with this endeavor, especially since the file system does not officially support this feature. Even if you did partition everything from scratch, Windows doesn't alawys play nice. Also, individual partitions do not have their own MBR; there is one MBR on the disk, which is where Ubuntu will install grub. You will need to configure grub to boot windows if you have a dual boot configuration, or you can optionally reinstall grub on the first sector of your boot partition and have Windows overwite the MBR. If you have NT/2000/XP, you can then set up the NT loader to boot other systems, but this is a major pain.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a real operating system for those who wish to get real work done
 
So tell me... What "real work" have you done on your system that can't be done on any other system? This isn't 1984 with a Commodore 64. Aside from needing specific shrinkwrap apps I can't think of any reason any OS can't be used for nearly any function. granted, there are niches where some systems do out perform others but unless you're into some real heavy duty shit I have high doubts you're running any process that can't be handled just fine by most off of the shelf PCs running any number of OSs.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude...

Editing your x config file was inexcusably stupid and lazy back in 1997. The fact that you still have to do this with any Linux distribution today appears to be evidence that Linux isn't every going to make it to the mainstream.

So why waste your time?

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Frightening]

"it borks the MBR of the resized Windows partition in such a way that Windows will refuse to boot."

This is a feature, not a BUG. It's for your own good.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

Wow, your humor slays me.

Hee hee.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

If you want to specify your own configuration, just run sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg.

And with that testimony, I rest my case.

Seriously, if it's necessary... even sometimes... it should be exposed in the UI.

What you have described is NOT what I would call a discoverable user interface.

(Thanks for the tip, though!)

To be frank, you asked for it. Resizing Windows partitions is a black art

Um, given the limitations you described, shouldn't the partition resizer attempt to detect a Windows install on the partition, and give a big black warning if it looks likes you're trying to do this dangerous operation? I mean, clearly Ubuntu *wants* to support this kinda of thing -- if not, why go to the considerable effort of making a (mostly-kinda-sorta) functional partitioner in the first place?

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[vga_init]

And with that testimony, I rest my case. Seriously, if it's necessary... even sometimes... it should be exposed in the UI.

I guess from a design standpoint you would find it unacceptable, and I think you have the right idea, but all I'm trying to say is that I think you're overstating your case and making things out to be a lot more difficult than what is practical. I agree that using a text editor to do coded config files is way too much for MOST users, and I think that dpkg offers are good compromise.

Um, given the limitations you described, shouldn't the partition resizer attempt to detect a Windows install on the partition, and give a big black warning if it looks likes you're trying to do this dangerous operation? I mean, clearly Ubuntu *wants* to support this kinda of thing -- if not, why go to the considerable effort of making a (mostly-kinda-sorta) functional partitioner in the first place?

Actually, I think you're absolutely right. When it comes to resizing partitions, I don't think it's very stable for an installer to support that (we know the file systems don't support this, and by comparison the partitioning tools in Microsoft systems have never offered this feature), and it'd probably be best if they did not offer the functionality unless with very clear and specific warnings that state that the feature is "experimental" and may corrupt your data.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[podRZA]

angry nerd alert

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[slyborg]

And this (indeed informative) response is why OS X still wins, no matter how many Doctorows want to flog up some cheap publicity. Linux has a hammerlock on the l33t nerd user, no question, but as long as anybody with a real job to finish has to read something like this to get a computer to do what they want it to do - something like say OS X, where I go Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Displays -> (click on resolution I want) in about 5 seconds - will be preferable.

And as an aside, it's beyond ironic that a recommended fix for a Linux b0rkage is to dig out an ancient Win98 boot disk to save the day. I mean, how lame is THAT?

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[dlockamy]

Actually the winxp/2k install disk's recovery mode will rewrite the mbr as well.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[chromatic]

...this (indeed informative) response is why OS X still wins...

Perhaps you meant "why a preinstalled and preconfigured OS installation still wins". Otherwise, it's an invalid comparison.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[value_added]

I know, the nerds out there are saying "just edit your x config file", right? OK, but here's the thing:

(1) that's an INEXCUSABLY STUPID AND LAZY way to design operating system software
(2) it's too easy to screw up your x config file and break x (and by "too easy" I mean "remotely possible")

So, tell me if I have this right: you're insisting on using an OS that's designed around the concept of a terminal, a shell and text configuration files, and you adamantly refusing to use a terminal, a shell, or edit a text file?

I'd suggest you'd be happier using Windows. It doesn't have any of those features you object to so strongly.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

No, I'm attempting to use an OS that promotes itself as one that "Just Works" (their words, not mine):

Ubuntu offers you a complete Linux-based operating system, including all the major applications you need to play and work. With a strong focus on a desktop that Just Works, Ubuntu is a great choice for home or the office. The base system and all included software is free, and support is available from the community or by professional support providers.

( http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop )

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Cola Junkee]

FYI, the post-Win98 command is "fixmbr" from the recovery console.

Also, if you don't have a recovery console available (since some laptop manufacturers don't provide this), you can use the "System Rescue" Linux distro. and boot into FreeDOS. Once there, the fdisk /mbr thing works as well (but check it with fdisk /? first, to make sure I got the format right).

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Eideewt]

"Seriously, if it's necessary... even sometimes... it should be exposed in the UI."

I disagree heartily. My view is that if it's necessary multiple times a day, then it should be exposed in the UI. If it's something you do once a day, it should be easy to reach but not in your face. If you want it once a week, it should be even more out of the way. Everything else should be invisible, including (especially!) configuration options. Either you can read the manual once, get everything set up, then go about your business, or you can have a cluttered, broken interface that makes everything you might ever want to do findable -- with the unfortunate side effect of obscuring everything you really want to do. Discoverability is a crappy substitute for good documentation.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

Well, I guess you're entitled to your point of view.

In this context, I consider documentation to be a crappy substitute for discoverability.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Patoski]

Second... I discovered that the oh-so-lovely disk partitioner has the added feature that on some systems (including mine) it borks the MBR of the resized Windows partition in such a way that Windows will refuse to boot. Even after uninstalling Ubuntu. And even after applying various fixes via UBCD and friends. (Right now this system is sitting disconnected under my desk because I refuse to reinstall Ubuntu, but reinstalling Windows is a horrible half-day affair on its own...)

That sucks about your MBR. :(

No need to reinstall windows or go through anything involving boot disks to fix the MBR. So just boot from your XP cd, go into repair mode / recovery console, use the command prompt console (that's close to what it is called, but perhaps not exactly the right name). Then just use the fixmbr command and presto, your MBR is fixed and windows will boot (although it will likely wipe out your Linux boot loader GRUB).

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/w indows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx? mfr=true

First... this is an nForce2 machine with built-in video, and the default config refused to let me select a screen-res larger than 1024x768.

As someone else mentioned, you have to download and install a driver from nVidia to get nice video and 3d acceleration. At least while you're downloading and installing your divers you have serviceable video, which is a bit better than Windows I guess. :) Unfortunately, the video card manufacturers (nVidia / ATI) are pretty adament about not providing specs on their cards so people can write drivers for Linux (or any other OS). So we have to resort to downloading drivers from nVidia. It pretty much sucks, but not much can be done at the moment. Perhaps when Linux becomes more popular, Linux will have more clout and perhaps be able to get some traction on this issue (ok, I can dream :).

I would advise you to use a LiveCD when checking out new Linux distros. Sure, it is a bit slower, but you can kick the tires first, before reconfiguring your box.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Eideewt]

Why would you want to try to figure something out on your own if you could just look it up? Discoverability is nice if you just want to jump in and go at it, but it's probably not in anyone's best interest to do so. Good documentation not only tells you exactly what to do, but also alerts you to potential pitfalls. Everything depends on the documentation actually being good, of course.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

Thanks for the advice. I actually did try the fixmbr route you describe, but for obscure reasons it didn't work (I don't have the link anymore but found forums of people on other Linux variants having similarly difficult-to-recover-from MBR problems...)

I actually did try the LiveCD, but when I learned it did the partition thing, I figured, hey, go for it! As mentioned elsewhere, I just wish they had a big red warning disclaimer about potential problems...

Re: the drivers, yeah, I understand it's a chicken and egg problem, but nevertheless, the problem still exists... :-/

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

Let me quote Mr. Spolsky here:

When you design user interfaces, it's a good idea to keep two principles in mind:

      1. Users don't have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn't read it.
      2. In fact, users can't read anything, and if they could, they wouldn't want to.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0 000000062.html

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that, I had to use Fedora Core 4 to get a proper Xorg config to support dual displays (3200x1200 desktop) and now after ugrade to the latest (dapper) my gigabit Marvel ethernet adapters stopped working ... (I admit that this is a kernel issue) so I'm using the older kernel to get some work done but due the upgrade the sound card is not working any more (AC97).

So no, I couldn't recommend to switching to Ubuntu.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[meowmee]

I had the same problem with not getting higher resolution, stuck at 640x480 with an Intel built-in video. Wasted a-lot of time trying to figure out the problem... in the end, it was the BIOS. Once upgraded it worked fine.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Eideewt]

Yeah, but doesn't that mean we should by trying to fix the broken users, and not perfectly good systems? Looking stuff up is a savvy person's first angle of attack whether they're trying to make sense of configuration options or they're trying to figure out what their car's tire pressure should be.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog]

(1) In my experience, users are unfixable.
(2) If the users consider the system to be broken, then it's not "perfectly good" to them.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Fallingcow]

You have hit upon the heart of the problem.

The fact is, Ubuntu plays nicer with second (or third, or fourth, etc.) OSs on the same machine than ANY version of Windows does. Yet for some reason, people consider it broken if it screws up Windows after an installation. Try installing Windows after Linux (or FreeBSD, or practically anything else), and watch as Windows helpfully breaks your MBR and renders every other OS on the machine un-bootable without a boot disk.

This guy resized a partition and it broke the MBR. OK, A) Windows doesn't even HAVE a partition resizing program that comes with it, and if it did, I'm sure that it'd only support Windows partitions, not, say, ext3 or Reiser; and B) I've had commercial Windows resizers break my Windows installation before! It's a resizing problem, not a Linux-specific problem. He's lucky that the MBR was the only thing broken, since it takes maybe 2 minutes to fix that.

I could go on about his other complaints, but it'd all come down to the same point: Ubuntu is not only easier to install as a first (only) OS than Windows is, but it's also easier to install as a second OS. After a fresh install of Windows, this poster would have found it necessary to get official Nvidia drivers (SAME as with Ubuntu, whee), a bunch of extra media codecs (like with Ubuntu, though the list of ones that you need for each OS does differ), etc. And this stuff can be done in both of them without resorting to the command line AT ALL.

You're dead on. If people spent as much time installing Windows as a second OS (or even as a solo OS!) as they do Windows, they'd have way more complaints about the Windows installation process than they do the Linux one.

The OS that you don't have to install is always the easier one to install :)

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Fallingcow]

The great part of all of this is that you never even need to edit your X config manually to get the official Nvidia drivers working. A quick search with relevant terms on the Ubuntu forums will lead you to EasyUbuntu (click to download it), which is a graphical program for installing things that the Ubuntu team can't legally include (official graphics card drivers, DVD support, non-free codecs, etc). Just unzip it, click on the executable inside the folder that results, and follow along with the prompts. It does everything for you. Basically the same thing that you'd have had to do to get your video working properly in a fresh installation of Windows.

Also, resizing Windows partitions is a terrifying prospect no matter what. Even the commercial resizing programs (that run under Windows!) are notorious for breaking things. You are VERY lucky that the partition's boot record was all that got broken. Maybe there should be some kind of scary-looking warning message before Ubuntu lets the user try something like that.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[Eideewt]

(1) Probably. But they all die eventually, don't they? Now is the time to raise the next generation right! Really, it's not just computer users who don't want to look things up; it's everyone. Getting them all to wise up is a big job, but you've got to dream.
(2) Not to them it's not, but they can be wrong. I'm not one for messing up a clean interface to appease those too lazy to do a little reading. Users will adapt if the only way to get things done is to look up how to do them. User friendly it's not, but I'm not such a friendly guy.

I've noticed that extremely casual users and experts are the ones most likely to try to find out how to do it, whether by reading or asking an expert. Casual users are too scared that they'll mess it up because it's unfamiliar, and experts are too scared that they'll mess it up because they know they will. Eventually you get tired of trying to fix your system and actually go find out how to do it right. It's the ones who know just enough to be dangerous that just want to go at it. Not that some neophytes and experts don't do the same. This is just what I often see.

The crux of it is this: a discoverable interface is great for the first ten minutes, but wears you down when every configuration option on the system (for example) is staring you in the face when all you want to do is start a web browser. They're cluttered with once-in-a-blue-moon things. Worst of all, even if Aubrey de Grey extends your lifespan to a thousand years, these little annoyances will never, ever go away. More efficiently obtuse interfaces are absolute hell until you get the hang of them, but once you do, the effort required to use them drops asymptotically to zero.

You can climb the hill once, or you can climb hundreds of little hills every day. Highly discoverable interfaces aren't in anyone's best interest. I'm not in favor of hiding things just for the hell of it (watch those lusers sqirm!), but if something isn't a daily action, no one should have to stare at it every day. It's too much for my poor little brain to process.

Re:I tried to switch, but...

[C_Kode]

First... this is an nForce2 machine with built-in video, and the default config refused to let me select a screen-res larger than 1024x768. I know, the nerds out there are saying "just edit your x config file", right? OK, but here's the thing:

(1) that's an INEXCUSABLY STUPID AND LAZY way to design operating system software
(2) it's too easy to screw up your x config file and break x (and by "too easy" I mean "remotely possible")

(1) Backup your config before editing it.
(2) Install OSX on that same hardware and lets see it Just Work . OSX just works because your limited to Apple hardware limiting how many drivers must be built.

Kanotix

[Anonymous Coward]

Knoppix? Try Kanotix!
It's the best Debian rip-off out there.

Re:Kanotix

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait?
WTF?

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

how about instead of discussing gaming on Ubuntu, we just bust the owner or employee of linux certified trying to lie to us about his identity to get some traffic?

"whois wineverygame.com" and grep for chander kant. now google for "chander kant" and linuxcertified.

gamer and developer my ass. probably never even used a mac, ubuntu, or even linux before

Re:I switched as well

[moo083]

As for support, I highly disagree. Whenever I have a problem, instead of calling, I can just drive over to an Apple Store and get free tech support in person regardless of the computer's warranty (as long as no hardware is problematic, then it depends on the warranty of course). You can't say that about any other machine on the market. I think that makes it much better than the Ubuntu setup because with message boards, you just have people guessing at your issues since they have no access to your machine, whereas in the case of a Mac, you can have someone actually look at it (and I'll add that almost all the "geniuses" actually do know what they are talking about, which I find impressive).

Re:I switched as well

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

But in any case, the initial cost of acquisition is not the most important thing (although it is important - and as I said Ubuntu laptop was less expensive for me as compared to equivalent OS-X based machine), the more important thing is ongoing support and availability of applications.

Not to be snarky, but it sounds like WinXP would be ideal for you based on your priorities.

Doesn't make sense to me...

[Qwavel]

Linux and Mac are, in many ways, complete opposites. I'm surprised that people would switch between them.

The Linux desktop (Ubuntu in this case) is free. It is flexible and is appealling technically and politically, but is quite rough and not ready for the average consumer. It is particularly strong in corporate, third world, and limited use, environments.

OS X is the opposite. It is high margin, high sytle, and slick. It is perfect for the brand-concious, reasonably wealthy, consumer who wants everything to work together easily.

Re:Doesn't make sense to me...

[nine-times]

Well, except they have one thing in common: they don't suck. Of the three major operating systems, if you're on Mac and you want to switch to another operating system that doesn't suck, you only have one option.

Besides, the Gnome designers are clearly fans of the old Mac OS.

Re:Doesn't make sense to me...

[mwbauers]

You wrote..

" OS X is the opposite. It is high margin, high sytle, and slick. It is perfect for the brand-concious, reasonably wealthy, consumer who wants everything to work together easily."

It's also perfect for this simple working man that wants the system to allow him to create without periodically needing to salvage the OS like I must do with Windows.

I've worked with a great many OS's since 1980. My best trouble-free years were with the Amiga-OS. I find that Mac-OS is the closest I've come to that sort of reliable, well-engineered, and trouble-free OS.

I ain't rich, nor well to do............ But entry level Mac's have made me quite well tooled-up.

Best to ya,
Bauers

Re:Doesn't make sense to me...

[Joe The Dragon]

but linux runs on more hardware apple locks out hardware that is not there own.

Re:Doesn't make sense to me...

[mjwx]

Translations
"brand-concious" Vain
"reasonably wealthy" More money than sense
"everything to work together easily" Writer has never tried to network a mac with a domain
"high sytle" Easily Impressed by outward appearance
"slick. " Ooh look at the shiny things
. Whist Linux is not quiet ready for the average computer user, it is a hell of a lot closer than OSX. Linux includes domain support, windows support (WINE, Cedega, Crossover Office) and has a lot more applications.

Ubuntu, umm, maybe not

[Com2Kid]

Did not detect my video card OR my monitor, set my monitor's refresh rate to 800x600@60hz.

OUCH.

Aside from that, I am fairly impressed, things work rather well. But, umm, for end user stuff?

Well I have my grandmother using it, after I set it up and locked it down. It doesn't seem to have the same sort of set it and forget it auto-update feature that SuSE does though, which is one feature I really like in software, the ability to shove it on someone's machine and not have to worry much about applying security updates.

Oh, also it is running Gnome. Now while I am fine with Gnome, I know 5 other linux users, 1 of whom uses Gnome, the other of whom find Gnome to be fugly. Gnome does have its bits of general retardation *COUGH*filechooser*COUGH* but then again, what Linux desktop environment doesn't...

Re:Ubuntu, umm, maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.kubuntu.org/

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because what nerds endorse are always a true indicator of how well a product will do.

Let's face it, until more major applications are ported to run on Linux (Creative Suite, Office, etc.), people won't switch just because nerds tell them they should. Apps like GIMP, OpenOffice, etc. certainly help, but neither is a true replacement for the apps they are supposed to replace. Joe Blow Digital Camera user won't use GIMP if a) he's never heard of it, b) can't find books at his local bookstore telling him how he can implement a workflow for his digital images, and c) is not familiar with it. There is still enough of a difference between the UIs of the various applications that most users won't care to switch, no matter what they're currently using (Windows, Linux, Mac...). And most pros would likely continue to use what they're using now just out of familiarity (the same is likely true of most users). Why do you think so many people still use Windows despite its long list of issues?

Call this a troll if you want, but I fail to understand how two nerds (even prominent ones that nobody outside of the OSS crowd has ever heard of) switching from Mac to Linux is supposed to make Apple worried that the rest of the Mac user base will soon follow suit. I think they have more to worry about with Mac users switching (back) to Windows than to any flavour of Linux.

Canaries and coal mines

[mattsucks]

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.

Witness the overwhelming popularity of BeOS these days.

Re:Canaries and coal mines

[neccoant]

Hey, I have a BeBox at home and it smokes. Just wait for Office to come out for it, then it'll take off. It's right around the corner, with the way the monopoly trial is going.

Ubuntu? could become a major enterprise distro

[Secrity]

I am not sure what your problem is with well funded offshore corporations. The founder of Ubuntu is quite wealthy and experienced with both Linux and with internet businesses. Canonical Limited is owned by Mark Shuttleworth, who was the founder of Thawte (which was purchased by VeriSign). Shuttleworth was also the first citizen of an African country to be in space (Russian Soyuz TM-34 mission). Shuttleworth was a Debian developer in the 1990s and in 2004 he funded the development of Ubuntu.

There are indications that Canonical Limited is positioning Ubuntu to compete with Red Hat in the enterprise Linux arena. This could be interesting because the Canonical Limited site states "[Ubuntu] will always be free of charge; Canonical will never charge licence fees for Ubuntu or any component thereof.", the Ubuntu site says a similar thing.

Re:Ubuntu? could become a major enterprise distro

[BadassJesus]

It's obvious that there is some individual with the brains behind that operation. Undermining legit businesses may lead to major capital gains, as we have seen with the Skype case. LOL, if they file IPO this will cause another major stir up in the investor arena, considering they will have to "value" this startup and if you look at capitalization of RHAT and others.. well they are "in the money" and the cost ? Nothing, nothing, big zero for guys like Shuttleworth. Typical submarine co., well, congratulations if you part of this op.

Re:Ubuntu? could become a major enterprise distro

[Secrity]

I do not know what Shuttelworth's plans, intentions, or motivaiosns are; except for what is on the Conical and Ubuntu web sites, and they state that Ubuntu will never be charged for. There are no indications that Shuttleworth is planning to commercalise Ubuntu, however, there are indications that Ubuntu is striving to become a viable enterrprise Linux. Enterprise level Linux does not have to mean a commercialized version of Linux . Even if Ubuntu were to become the basis for a commercialised enterprise level Linux, (perhaps like Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux) I don't see how this would be a dishonest thing, it would simply be another competitor for Red Hat.

Re:I switched as well

[jalefkowit]

What's the best way to get games to play on Ubuntu?

Probably your best bet is to subscribe to Transgaming's Cedega service, which, while not perfect, is the only solution out there for playing Windows games on Linux with any kind of decent performance that I've heard of.

I switched ... crying poor

[fujiman]

I bought my wife an iBook when her Windows machine died, and I was blown away by how well OSX performed. I was also blown away by how little I missed the only thing I kept a PC around for, namely games.

So I would have liked a new Power mac (or even a mini), but the well was dry. So I grabbed Debian and never looked back. The only real difference now is the Gamecube has been promoted to full-time gaming platform.

Personally, I don't think Apple has anything to worry about -- my wife could no more manage an Ubuntu installation than she could her old windows machine. Apple is very proprietary, true, but their stuff works and it looks nice. I just wish they'd get rid of the yearly OSX tax.

Wow, two whole people?

[Zorque]

I used to drink Pepsi but buy store brands because it's cheaper! Maybe Pepsi Co. should start being worried!

I'd like to know...

[m874t232]

Mac zealots are going to ridicule this, but I'd like to know what they think OS X has that Ubuntu doesn't. As far as I can tell, Ubuntu's UI is faster, its Spotlight-equivalent is faster, it looks at least as nice as OS X, and it comes with tons of nice software preinstalled and for free.

Re:I'd like to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...QuarkXPress, Adobe Creative Suite 2 and BBEdit.

Sometimes the OS alone, no matter how refined or the "better-than-brand-X" factor, is not enough of an argument to make people switch.

Re:I'd like to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except UI is pretty freaking ugly,Thanks in part to the goofy icons and ugly theme

Re:I'd like to know...

[bazorg]

in my case, 2 things only:

• internet sharing made easy
• automated PPTP confguration

The computer where I've been experimenting is a Powermac G4@400mhz. Ubuntu is faster, all hardware is automagically detected, but beyond that there's stuff that just needs tweaking or packages that only exist for i386 machines.

On that same G4, when using OS X Panther, sharing the internet connectiong from one NIC to the other using OS X is done with 2 or 3 clicks in the appropriate switches on the control panel. Accessing a PPTP VPN is set up quite easily as well. There's jsut too many things hat had to be left out of Ubuntu because of political decisions.

Re:I'd like to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Except UI is pretty freaking ugly,Thanks in part to the goofy icons and ugly theme"

Yeah, I agree, OS X is pretty ugly compared to Ubuntu. I think there are some third party apps that allow you to override its default themes.

A sparrow does not make the spring (whatever...)

[Anonymous Coward]

(The title is a direct translation of the french expression "une hirondelle ne fait pas le printemps", though I have a gut feeling there is a better equivalent in english.)

Apple should be scared of Ubuntu, SuSE & co? Yeah, right.

Linux and/or the BSDs still cannot replace the commercial OSes like MacOS or Window$, despite getting closer and closer to being truly usable by mere mortals. There are still issues at the OS/DE level (printing, multimedia, etc.), and there are still gaping holes at the app level.

It does not matter how cheap the platform is, if it cannot do what the user wants it to, it is useless to him/her. For example, there are still video and audio processing window$ apps that have no Free equivalents. Furthermore, despite all the advances made with OOo, KOffice and such, there are still no Free word processors that can slurp in my curriculum vitae and not die (it is currently an MS/Word 97 document that makes heavy use of tables for formatting).

Oh, maybe if you are a uber-geek you can get the software to do more or less what you want it to do, but I am now at the age where I don't have the patience for it. I just want stuff to work, now. Despite futzing with *nix & VMS since the '80s, I still can't get some programmes to work right... We are no longer in the '80s, general standards have evolved. Even over-the-hill nerds like me just want stuff to work *right now* and not have to spend half a day to get printing to work.

My point? If I want to geek out, that what the free Unices are for. To get things done right away, I'll use a Mac (or an M$ box).

Eventually, Free Software will let me do what I want it to do. But not right now. So Apple does not have to fear the Free Software camp for now.

I wish you weren't an AC...

[mad.frog]

... you'd now be on my Friends list.

(Actually, my Ubuntu test recognized my no-name wireless card out of the box... very impressive. When it recognizes my video and audio out of the box too... with up to date drivers... then we'll talk.)

O Noes!

[shotgunsaint]

Honestly, my opinions on Apple have changed recently. I switched from being a Mac hater to a diehard whilst in college studying graphic design and audio production. IMO, OSX is still the best OS for out and out productivity, and is and will remain the professional standard for audio production. This, however doesn't excuse their sorry, sorry testing of their own hardware. I bought an Intel mini just over 3 months ago, and just took it in to Apple for repairs for the THIRD TIME. Yesterday morning, it just wouldn't boot. I understand that sometimes a machine just slips through the cracks, but it's harder to forgive them after reading about all the drama with the macbook/ macbook pro line. If Apple is really concerned about people switching to Ubuntu, they need to look at two factors: 1) Unless they're totally brainwashed, which some Mac geeks definitely are, people won't stand for paying premium prices for sub-standard machines. I have a revision 2 imac that STILL WORKS after almost a decade, but my intel mini that's less than 4 months old has needed three repairs thus far. 2) Apple is in a position to draw in new users with their lower end to middle lines, namely, the mini, macbook, and imac... and yet they seem to be dropping the ball on hardware. If I didn't know that making music on my current machine was so very nice, I'd have sold the damned thing on eBay and spent the money building a Linux machine too, and running Windows sound apps via WINE. The average computer user would NEVER stand for some BS like this.

Switching ...

[canwaf]

I've switched from Ubuntu to Apple. I look back every so often and think to myself, "Well, I'm glad I don't have to do /that/ anymore." Ubuntu is a great distro, and if you don't have the money to invest in the "Apple Experience", it is probably the best you can put on a PC. I will be installing Ubuntu on a webhost sometime soon, and I know I will be impressed. Although, when it comes to complete production desktops Apple they may monopolize your desktop on OS X but at least things always "just work."
I haven't given up on Open Source, though. I could leave Gaim behind, so I found Adium. Inkscape and Gimp were already waiting for me. I couldn't have been happer when I switched.

Re:I switched as well

[tftp]

A LinuxCertified LC2440N laptop is sold for $1199. Either they gave you 50% discount, or you paid the most for the least.

Dell will sell you a similar notebook (an Inspiron, for example) for $600. Or you can give Dell your $1200 and happily own a Dell XPS, with dual core CPU and everything else. If you don't want Windows, you can always blow it away and install your Linux of choice, not that it costs any.

It is very hard now, impossible probably, for small notebook vendors to compete on price with the big companies. Dell just gives them away, and Compaq is right there too, with $450 price tag on Presario V2000 and V5000 series, and Lenovo trails them all at $600.

How is this news ?

[stud9920]

In 2000, Mandrake was already "ready for the desktop user". Except for the drivers. And the ten different installs of equally useless kodometer + godometer + lodometer + xodometer. And the lack of a useable media player (hint to developers: having to go to /usr/tmp/mnt/whatever to just play an mp3 sucks). And no off-the-box jvm. And no games except tuxracer (off course, no accel off-the-box for a generic nvidia adapter). I could go on forever.

I just love linux as a web server, as a scripting environment, but it's just too unpolished and heavyweight for desktop use.

while i respect doctorow

[thelost]

his reasons for changing have everything to do with his stance on DRM/Copyrights and little to do with Mac os x vs 'nix so using him as a figurehead for the Geek who said No! is a bit misleading.

Re:while i respect doctorow

[51mon]

"DRM flight" (or perhaps we should label it the "freedom drain") is even better news, because that applies to Microsoft Vista as well.

Matt who did this Ubuntu on PPC thing earlier in the year http://mattl.co.uk/blog/2006/01/26/switcher-tales/ has just switched to Debian Etch, and says he thinks it is even better than Ubuntu. But hey they are both free, he has a choice, although it did take him some effort to get all his weird Apple formatted music to play. I suspect on that score he switched "just in time".

A Good Thing

[JulesLt]

While I'd dispute some of Pilgrim's reasons, I think a few OS X defectors to Linux is going to be a good thing. Their expectations will help improve Linux, and competition from Linux will help drive Apple forward.

What's evident to me is that over the years a lot of people have used Macs, not because they preferred MacOS, but simply because it was the politically correct choice - it was Not Microsoft, it was 'the alternative', it was the cooler option. I am reminded of a lot of friends of mine who were into old Sixties garage music for years, but as soon as it became widely popular, got into other things. It is just part of who they are.
As well as being the canary in the mineshaft, you can also see these people as weathervanes - they get out just as things start to get too popular for their liking - and of course fairly often turn against the things they loved (Nirvana after Sub-Pop - you've got to be kidding).

On a personal level I stayed off Mac's through the 80s and 90s precisely because they were the sort of closed restrictive platform these guys have suddenly identified them to be. It wasn't until OS X that I started to change my mind.

Oh noes, twiddling settings, installing apps!

[DynamoJoe]

I loved iPhoto until my iPhoto database got corrupted one day
...
I loved iTunes until my iTunes database got corrupted, too.

These two things have never happened to me, and I've been using X since before it went live (exclusively fulltime since 10.1). I'm not sure that he's not the problem and not the mac itself.

[as I] drooled over the beautiful, beautiful hardware, all I could think was how much work it would take to twiddle with the default settings, install third-party software, and hide all the commercial tie-ins so I could pretend I was in control of my own computer.

a) you will NEVER have complete control over your computer. Get used to it. Having the source != knowing, comprehending, and understanding all of it.
b) you are ALWAYS going to twiddle settings, install non-included apps, etc. If you're not doing that, what are you doing with a computer anyway?
c) who are you, again?

Re:Oh noes, twiddling settings, installing apps!

[WatertonMan]

The other problem is that open source software can end up with corrupted data as well. And most open source formats are either undocumented or amazingly poorly documented. Even having the documentation is no guarantee you can easily recover your data. The thing to do is to have a good backup strategy.

Arguments for Linux on the basis of being able to recompile your software to fix bugs or access formats always come up against the fact that actually doing this is tremendously hard. Yet advocates bring it forth as if it were a selling point because of some hypothetical situation.

Don't get me wrong. Use Linux if you hate Windows or OSX. And I can sympathize with those who don't like iTunes or iPhoto. But don't pretend it's for much beyond aesthetics. Heavens, there are things about OSX I hate. But I hate using Gnome more and find the software I use works better on OSX than Linux or Windows (outside of Visual Studio which I still find the best development environment)

Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Ubuntu is going to destroy Apple Computers! It's going to take down the great Mac. Beleive it!

Uh... wake up dreamers.

Apple is a solid computer with a long list of great applications. Dont expect Ubuntu to take out Apple when it cant even take out windows.

Its all about the apps...

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[rufus t firefly]

Ubuntu is going to destroy Apple Computers! It's going to take down the great Mac. Beleive it!

Uh... wake up dreamers. Apple is a solid computer with a long list of great applications. Dont expect Ubuntu to take out Apple when it cant even take out windows.

This doesn't really follow. You're basically saying that Ubuntu should be able to "take on" Apple only if it can defeat Microsoft? Microsoft still has the majority OS share, and Apple is still a niche market.

I personally use Ubuntu (Dapper right now). I haven't had any problems with any of the four laptops and four or five PCs that I have set this OS up under, with the exception of a well known bug in the Xorg synaptics touchpad driver. It seems as though any time any discussion regarding Linux (in this case Ubuntu in particular) and its ability to perform on the desktop, people either say "it didn't work in an isolated incident, so it must be junk" or the old "Linux is fine in the server room, but leave the desktop to the real OSes" meme. I haven't had to use OS X or Windows anything in a number of years, and don't miss a thing. For every example of bad UI design, bad configuration and bad application concept that comes up for Linux apps, several are also present in Windows and Mac applications, but for some reason Linux apps are lambasted for every problem, no matter how small ...

Apple is the "Madonna" of computing. It keeps reinventing itself every time that people think its dead. Of course, they aren't really making the majority of their money from software anymore, people think they are making more money from those cute little iDoohickeys now. I never much cared for the Macintosh line of computers ; they seem more toys than anything, but that's just one person's opinion.

(This is, by the way, not to detract from putting idiots who keep telling everyone how much Linux or Ubuntu or whatever is going to pwn every other OS in their place. That is the kind of thing that gives OSS advocates a bad name.)

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

"This doesn't really follow. You're basically saying that Ubuntu should be able to "take on" Apple only if it can defeat Microsoft? Microsoft still has the majority OS share, and Apple is still a niche market."

I realized when i posted the message that this wouldnt make sense... :) What i meant to say was in the windows applications. If it hasnt made a dent in moving people over based on comparison to the application offerings available on windows, why would apple users move. Of course windows pc being a much bigger market than apple, but the applications are more plentiful on windows... and linux hasnt done a great job of convincing even a few to port.

I have all the interest in the world in linux... but until it gets the apps... i cant do much with it.

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[Anonymous Coward]

they seem more toys than anything, but that's just one person's opinion.

And a pig shit stupid one at that. The zero intellect Mac=toy meme died out years ago, fuckhead.

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[rufus t firefly]

I honestly believe that the applications and/or the variety of applications has less to do with the migration of Windows users to Linux than basic human nature.

People just don't like change, and Linux (Ubuntu, etc) just isn't Windows. In many ways it is far superior in terms of work flow and/or functionality, but it isn't the same, and those changes frighten people enough to want to stay with what they know. Why do you think Mr Gates & co spend all that time and money getting people in college to buy "academically priced" versions of their software?

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[Anonymous Coward]

And a pig shit stupid one at that. The zero intellect Mac=toy meme died out years ago, fuckhead.

If you can't have a adult discussion without being rude, go back to playing with your toys.

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[mahju]

Exactly.

In fact Micheal Dell said that if he was in charge of Ubuntu, he'd give up, sell the assest and give the money back to the shareholders

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[GauteL]

" I never much cared for the Macintosh line of computers ; they seem more toys than anything, but that's just one person's opinion."

Yes it is clearly just your opinion.

Apple actually includes a vectorised implementation of LaPACK with every Mac sold, even the Mac Mini. Say what you want about LaPACK, but a toy it is not.

Re:Oh yeah they're fleeing Mac now!

[mahju]

it seems that recently that the replys to my posts have dropped off completely ... is this a change in the /. viewing of stories or do I just suck?

o'rly?

[microdoted.com]

i use ubuntu for my dev box. i prefer redhat on my servers. on my workstations though... i still use a mac and probably will unless some universe altering event takes place. the main reason: third party. i cant install photoshop in its native environment. i cant install indesign or illustrator. i cant install after effects or final cut. etc etc etc. while linux is great... and i hope to one day see it flourish.. until vendors start catering to the platform, it will -n e v e r- become the a serious contender. and please spare me the 'wine' arguments. yes.. wine is getting better, but its not 100%, and the majority of programs will not work 100%. this is where apple succeeds right now... as the familiarity of programs is there. linux has plenty of alternatives... but unfortunately, those alternatives are sparse, and unknown to the avg consumer, as well as simply NOT being the industry standards. i no longer use fedora redhat as i just got tired of it. tired of hunting for hardware that is supported... tired of trying to find ways around my goals as i didnt have the standards my coworkers needed and used.. and tired of having to write my own wireless drivers and the like. it just wasnt worth it anymore when i could get a mac an be done with it. yes.. i still have to hunt for apple specific hardware when needed... but if its made for a mac... it works. how many made for linux decals to you see plastered on retail boxes? better yet... how many companies actually cater to the platform? in comparison to windows: its embarrassing. so two people switched to *nix... great. does it mean anything more than just that? no. let the flaming begin.

Re:I switched as well

[Descalzo]

The specs and images look EXACTLY like my ASUS Z71V. I had problems with some of the stuff, though, like I could not get the sound to work until I flashed the BIOS, and then it wouldn't even complete bootup. Not even after a reinstall. Tell me, what version do you have installed?

I am running Suse 10.1, and it works great, but I would like to go back to Ubuntu if I can get it to work.

Have been using a Linux-OS as a desktop since 1993

[Anonymous Coward]

- i have to laugh at all these machinations, 'blogs' (wtf is this X-gen term anyway?), and all about Linux-based OSs, Mac OS X, etc...

- i would have bought into a NeXT cube, but the black-suited, smarmy Yupsters were obnoxious and turned me off...

- instead, i went into BSD 4.1, then X, and then Linux, kernel 1.2.13 with XFree and a fvwm2 desktop...

- and have never looked back...

(this is being written via Firefox 1.5.0.4)

- i stepped off the proprietary software treadmill 13 years ago!

mod up

[blonde rser]

this should be modded way up. The grand-parent appears to be pure advertising.

Re:I switched as well

[Groucho]

That's built on a barebones Asus Z71V. Damn fine laptop. I'm typing on one as we speak.

OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[Ender Ryan]

Heh, that's a bold statement. From my POV, Linux invalidates the expense of a Mac, and far exceeds OS X in versatility.

Re:OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[hector_uk]

for me it's work done per $ and i'm way faster with OS X, everything you can do with linux you can do as well if not better with OS X

Re:OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[non-poster]

No, I probably can't do it as well if not better with OS X. I've used OS X for a total of about 15 minutes in my life. I've been using Linux for 8 years.

I'd say my work done per $ is much higher with Linux. And, everything I need to do, I can do with Linux.

Re:OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[krakelohm]

OK Boys... whip them out and lets settle this once and for all.

Re:OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[G Morgan]

What about installing it on an UltraSparc or an AMD_64. Mac's have their advantages but to say they do everything as good as Linux is more than a bit off.

Re:OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[hector_uk]

i have OS X running on my AMD64 pc perfectly fine thank you very much, though i still have solaris on my sparcstation. i'm replaceing the pc with a conroe pc or an intel based mac desktop whichever is cheaper.

Re:OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[G Morgan]

So you can do whatever you want with OSX by circumventing the law then. Can you run different WM's or DE's on OSX yet, what if you had a low powered machine that needs something along the lines of Fluxbox, you aren't going to be running OSX on there.

Ubuntu's Good, But Not Good Enough

[WombatControl]

I use both a Mac and Ubuntu. I have an iBook G4 (soon to be a MacBook) and an iMac Core Duo. My home server is an Athlon system running Ubuntu, and it also serves as a development workstation. I've a decently useful application under Linux, and I work with Linux daily. I've got feet in both worlds.

Ubuntu is hands down the best Linux distro I've ever used. It's definitely moving in the right direction. It has a great packaging system, it's got much more polish than other distros, and it can even be loaded with some decent eye candy. Of all the Linux distros I've used, it's the best by quite a distance.

That being said, Linux just isn't ready for the desktop. It's closer than before, but there are a lot of things necessary to make it work. Apple has a reputation for having things Just Work. Linux has a reptutation for having things work once you've futzed around with the config files, recompiled your kernel, read a few HOWTOs and smashed your head against the wall. Is it getting better? Absolutely. Is it there yet, no?

APT is a wonderful piece of technology. It's great for updating your system, but installing third-party software doesn't always go so smoothly. OS X's app bundles are much easier for the average Joe or Jane to understand. Again, NeXTSTEP had this years ago, but Linux doesn't have this.

XGL is nice. It's still not as nice as Apple's GUI. A lot of what differentiates Apple from the rest is the sense of polish. Technologies like XGL and Cairo rendering provide the right infrastructure - but there isn't a distro that puts them all together in an attractive and polished way.

Open file formats? There's nothing preventing you from backing up your music to plain old MP3, and your photos are still JPEGS. There's also nothing preventing someone from using non-Apple software. The only DRM you have to use with Apple is the DRM that protects the OS, and that's nowhere near as harmful as Microsoft's WGA malware.

Apple is skyrocketing now because they have the right mix of hardware and software to create a well-polished and functional user experience. The Ubuntu team is doing a great job of moving Ubuntu in the right direction, and each new release makes progress.

What's important to note is that competition makes everyone stronger. Ubuntu is trying to play catch-up with OS X. Apple is using some great open-source technologies. Apple probably isn't worried about a handful of geeks, but if it inspires Apple to be more open and Ubuntu to be more polished we all win.

(As a side note I currently develop for Ubuntu by running it under Parallels on OS X - it it's really quite responsive. The reason why I'm investing so much in Apple hardware is because I can run Windows, Ubuntu, Solaris, or damn near any x86 OS on the same hardware with relative ease. Virtualization is a killer app for Apple right now, and Parallels was worth every cent.)

Re:Ubuntu's Good, But Not Good Enough

[C_Kode]

One reason everything just works is because with Apple you are stuck with a vanilla OS. (thats why it works because there are no variations between installs and hardware) While this is a major plus when dealing with those who don't like under the hood it's also limiting to those who do like under the hood. That isn't a great arguement for the majority because the majority like things to just work . That is a bonus of open source. You can change what you don't like.

The great thing about Ubuntu (and I currently don't have a single box running it) is that they are attempting to re-create that which open source. That is a far more powerful tool than OSX. It's not their yet, but then all OSs have their short comings. (including OSX)

As noted before. Most OSX apps have the same feel. True, as most OSX apps are produced in part by Apple and must follow Apples guidelines. Follow the development of KDE and you will see similar guidelines in how applications included in KDE are created and will have the same feel.

You want something not to just work in OSX. Install it on a plain white box build from random parts from some web supplier. Oh thats right; you can't. (or at least not supposed too!)

Apple has a myraid of great offerings, but with those great offerings it also comes with limitations.

As a mod 5 post earlier put it. OS X is bridging the gap between Windows and Unixville for the non-techie user. The open source technology is growing at an incrediable rate. (XGL/AIGXL, wireless, productivity apps) Ubuntu forcing the issue on the desktop and RedHat forces the issue on the server. Microsoft has already noticed the server. Apple and Microsoft will be forced to take notice on the desktop. Maybe not this year, but within four year I suspect that all vendors will begin offering Linux Desktops.

Ubuntu *saved* me from switching to OSX from XP..

[cowmix]

I was just about to go to OSX but I tried Ubuntu Dapper.. and I was hooked.

Nuff said.

*yawn*

[Moofie]

I used Macs before they were good for geek cred, so I'm not too worried.

Ubuntu? Yeah, cool. If that's what works for you, knock yourself out. This is relevant to me, why?

I switched the other way too

[skurk]

...so that makes up for the other two guys that went from Mac to Linux. We're back to normal, don't panic.

Anyway, I bought my Mac MIni about 18 months ago. A 1.25GHz G4, upgraded it to 1G RAM and added a 160G external hdd. It has crashed 4 times since I bought it (yes I keep count of it). Three times caused by X11, and one time because I accidentally unplugged a mounted USB device during R/W.

I love how the Mac just *works*. Real-life examples:
- I took my 20.1" Benq monitor from my PC and plugged it into my Mac, and when I switched on the monitor my Mini had already configured the monitor with the best resolution and refresh rate. No Start->Settings->Desktop, no drivers, no XF86Config.
- I used to play the piano, so I bought a M-Audio Keystation 49e, a USB-based MIDI keyboard. Plugged it in, and it worked. No drivers, just crank up GarageBand and start jamming.
- I bought a USB joystick so I could play N64 games using an emulator. Plugged it in, wham, instant gameplay. No calibration, no depmod, no lsusb. The joystick was even "Designed for Windows XP".
- Even my W800i phone was plug and play. Slam it in the USB port and copy MP3's or download the latest photos.

Maybe I've been lucky, I don't know. I certainly hope I don't sound as a whiny Mac fanboy, though. I love Linux, I used it constantly from 1996 to 2005 (I even worked as a Linux admin from 1997 to 2001). Hell, I'm not anti-Mickeysoft-boy either, as my day job is developing stuff in C#.Net on Microsoft Windows.

I just love how my Mac took all the fuzz away so I can focus on doing what I want to do.

canary in the coal mine?

[steak]

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.

maybe, but they need to realize that nerds are also very fickle and as soon as the taint of popularity falls on a product the nerds will start leaving it for the next psuedo underground product that is essentially the same thing only not popular.

Re:canary in the coal mine?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. Nerds (like you, me and us) like to think that we are the canaries in the coal mine, but realistically they/we seem to have no idea about what's going on in the real world. Linux on the desktop has bee up and coming for almost a decade. Funny how it's made almost no real progress. Two nerds (even important ones) moving to another OS has NO IMPACT on anything other than a bunch of people who read slashdot.

This has nothing to do with what's going on in the real world. Sorry.

give ME a break too

[Ender Ryan]

That doesn't mean I am willing to unlearn everything I've got invested

Considering OS 9 and earlier are completely deprecated, and OS X is only a few years old, just how fucking much of an investment can that possibly be?

That's not meant to detract from your perfectly valid comment, though. This story is not a story. Cory Doctorow? That name sounds familiar, but wtf is that? And I've never even heard the other name.

I'm sure everyone at Apple is terrified... TERRIFIED!!

Re:give ME a break too

[jeblucas]

I've been using OSX since 2001; so that's 5 years. Also, there's a TON of shortcuts and UI elements that Apple killed themselves to maintain--things like Command-Shift-3 for screen caps, the menu apps, etc. There wasn't anything I lost in the transition from Classic Mac OS aside from Crystal Crazy, and sad though I am, I persevere. I'm loving OSX, I had distaste for rebooting my Mac between "Game" and "Work" extension sets, so the switch has been great. Now because alphanerds have come and gone I have to pay attention? Bleh.

Re:I switched as well

[ksheff]

what hardware are you comparing where the Apple machine is 3x the price of an equivalent linux box?

Re:I switched as well

[macemoneta]

Probably the best way to play games on Linux is to play Linux games, or cross platform games (those that have binaries for Linux as well as Windows or OSX). There are many hundreds of great native games for Linux, as long as you are not fanatical about specific titles. I've also successfully gotten many Windows-only games to play surprisingly well using WINE (especially the more recent builds).

If you are fanatical about your game play, then why are you trying to play games on a PC instead of a stand-alone console?

The situation is very much like listening to music from non-label artists. A specific artist may be signed with a label that makes downloading DRM-free MP3s unauthorized, but similar independent artists in the same genre are usually happy to offer MP3s of their work.

Re:I switched as well

[aymanh]

VMware doesn't support 3D hardware acceleration, what you need is Wine or Cedega, I don't know about the other game, but Civ4 is running perfectly fine on my Linux machine under Cedega, check this guide for details.

Before you try to run a game under Wine or Cedega, I suggest you check their respective databases at appdb.winehq.org and transgaming.org/gamesdb.

old skool and new skool mac users

[Pliep]

Both of these guys were long time Mac users. They were old skool.

In the year 2001, Mac OS X came out and a set of new skool users gathered around it. A large amount of users could easily adjust to Mac OS X and automatically became new skool users and forgot about Apple and Mac OS in the old days. But a certain amount of people just could not grow along. These are the sort of whiners that still run Mac OS9 today because they don't like the Dock.

I have found that new skool users stick by Mac OS X and would not even consider another OS. Old skool users OTOH keep complaining that Apple and Mac OS is going down the drain with "only iPods", "DRM", and "they should start making computers again". And of course other "claims" that are more based on nostalgia than proper reasoning.

I'm happy to let those old skool whiners go. And Apple is too.

I like it a lot

[Realistic_Dragon]

Enough so that, while I still have Gentoo on my desktops, I run it on my powerbook.

It hasn't, however, hurt Apple - as I fully intend to by a MacBook Pro as my next laptop. Sure it'll still run Linux but Apple will be the one getting the money.

This whole story is a troll.

[vinohradska]

I'm on Ubuntu too, but so what?

Just sold my MacBook Pro today!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a Linux user (Redhat/Fedora) exclusively since 99, that tried to switch to Mac and failed. Finally sold MacBook Pro after three months just today.

The problems with Mac:

1. The hardware is beautiful, but the lack of dock sucks. Heat problems and noise are not helping either.

2. The superb OS reliability is a myth. It is fairly okay, but not nearly as solid as it is made out to be. I made it unusable (not intentionally) more than once in short time.

3. The software availability is behind even Linux. The quality of third party software is often very low. Everything, even basic stuff costs money and does not always work.

Having killed 2 nights to copy a DVD (and failed) and several nights to get WMV to play in Firefox (and failed) I said heck with it, I'll just do it on Linux.

4. MacBook is essentially closer to a handheld device: whatever is there works great, if you want something extra, it is going to resist and generally suck.

5. I want my software to be open and to behave during the install. A lot of packages do install in $HOME, but a lot want a root install. And there is no package manager in the OS: you can install a package, but you can not remove it using standard means. A mess.

6. The text-based UNIX tools do not work quite the way I need: no decent raster fonts, no X11 style cut'n'pase, no multiple desktops (expose helps, but...). This is not a showstopper by itself, but a big minus for me. I write code in vim 10 hours a day, I want it nice and comfy.

7. I need a minivan, not a luxury coupe. Especially with the engine compartment welded shut. Especially if it is not running that great to begin with.

Bottom line: I could to give up my OS being free and become dependant on a single vendor if it would be a big improvement, but Mac OS X was not. I can see why a regular user may like a Mac, but it just was not for me. Also, none of the issues alone would have made me drop mac OS X, but all together they just outwight the benefits.

Re:Oh no

[Anonymous Coward]

Scott Adams?

really depends what they are doing with it ...

[mergy]

I use os x and have for many years, but always been a linux guy. I use centos and rhel on business servers and centos on my personal servers. I really love os x for a client os, but for a server os, it is a pain in the ass with all the case-sensitive and really non-standard stuff (for my linux liking anyway).

I tried ubuntu last time around when I was ripping out fedora and before I went to centos and was really unimpressed. I am checking-out unbuntu server and will see how it goes. With Crossover coming to OS X, I think the switchers will have to rethink some options again...

Is this just pure advertising

[blonde rser]

As an earlier anonymous coward mentioned, if you do a whois on wineverygame.com you find that Chandler Kant is the administrative contact. At the same time LinuxCertified has a major employee named Chandler Kant (see http://linux.about.com/b/a/062983.htm for one reference). It is quite unfortunate when a dealer of linux systems will lie on a forum like slashdot about his identity in order to sell systems.

Re:Is this just pure advertising

[notmybush]

Mod up please. It's pretty lame when someone has to resort to lying to prospective customers to sell a product.

Let me see if I understand all of this...

[Anonymous Coward]

So uppity yuppie BMW-driving faggots are now becoming the kind of fags who'll take it up the ass from some smelly junkie at the adult bookstore and listen to Elton John?
 
Still the same queers to me.

Isn't the ability to switch great?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think it's great that people have the ability and choice to switch their operating system, be it from Linux to OSX or vice-versa.

This quality of choice of options didn't exist a few years ago.

Re:I switched as well

[Lord Kano]

I jumped the Apple ship formally about 6 years ago. It had been informal since about a year before.

I just got tired of all of the excuse making. I could take my money and pick out all of the components that I want and build a PC for less than I'd spend on a comparable Mac. I could upgrade all of the parts that I wanted to on the PC that I built because ATX is what everyone uses, to upgrade my Mac I'd be limited in what I could choose short of replacing the entire machine.

I understand that Apple feels like they'd disappear if their customers had too much choice and that the cloners were murdering them. Power Computing was releasing faster machines at a lower price than Apple. Daystar had a lock on high end performance. Umax had the low end all sown up. Apple did what Apple had to do to survive, I get that. My choice was about what best met my computing and financial needs and not about what was best for Apple's bottom line.

LK

Well i missed the dead canary in the coal mine.

[davro]

Who are they ! If they where canarys in a coal mine i would free them from there cages.

Most of the mac users i have met are far from nerds/geeks and would be just a usefull
staring though a keliderscope while munching on some mushrooms.

Canary in a coalmine.

[Lac]

Strange analogy. The canary dies and the whole point is that others will do anything not to follow its lead.

Re:Canary in a coalmine.

[davro]

Free all canarys from cages.
or
Free all victims from macs

Re:Canary in a coalmine.

[onosendai]

It's a perfectly cromulent analogy

A Canary was used in a coalmine to give advanced warning of the buildup of Carbon Dioxide, as birds are more sensitive to changes in the air quality than humans are. The analogy says that Doctrow and Pilgrim are the canaries, and the rising CO2 level is the relative 'open-ness' of OS X vs Linux, and that if Apple doesn't take note of the 'rising CO2' they're ignoring the advanced warning.

Re:Canary in a coalmine.

[Lac]

I know. And the way canaries pointed out that the air is becoming toxic was by dying. Which brings me back to my point. Feel free not to find the analogy funny, but I do, sort of, have a point.

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with Cedega and WINE you'll end up with more game choices than a Mac IMHO. I've gone back and forth in this court to, in the end you have more software and configuration choices with Linux (again, my humble opinion).

The real question is whether Cedega is doing the Linux community any favors by giving windows game developers an "easy out" when it comes to the decision of porting to Linux.

Lose some nerds, gain some nerds

[SilentJ_PDX]

Macs have won over the Ruby crowd (who are definitely nerds):

http://flickr.com/photos/mintchaos/sets/7215759417 6520552/

Re:A sparrow does not make the spring (whatever...

[Anonymous Coward]

To reply to my own post: something came to me after I hit "submit". I.e., the platform does not matter (well, almost. You still can't replace mainframes in many applications, for example), it's the tools, the apps, that count.

An OS is not *the* solution to your problems, you don't get things done with an OS/hw platform alone. You need the apps to get things done, wether it's Oracle, DB/2, WordPerfect, etc. etc. etc. For some problems, needing to build a web server, you can find a complete solution with Free Software. But for other, daily problems, Free Software ain't there yet, both at the OS level and at the app level.

That is why, like I said, Apple still has nothing to fear from the likes of Ubuntu, SuSE et al.

I'd *love* to see a fully-functional platform built on Free Software that would let me do what I want to do. But it's not there yet, even though FOSS is getting closer every year. Some day, maybe, but not right now.

Re:I switched as well

[alphamugwump]

BTW, you don't actually have to subscribe. You can get Cedega from cvs for free (as in beer).

Re:I switched as well

[alcmaeon]

"I am a gamer and developer, and had been a long term Apple user."

How did you get modified to a 4 when you clearly have no ability to pick a computer that fits your needs?

Jason Kottke?

[larry bagina]

You might remember him as the author of this troll:

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.

Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Now he says 2 people switched from Mac to Linux? And it's newsworthy? Fuck, almost every /. Apple story has half a dozen people that make the same claim.

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

How come the guy who registered your website (www.wineverygame.com - Chander Kant, according to whois) has the same name as the founder of the company that you're saying has such great deals?

Maybe you should clarify this before LinuxCertified loses any credibility.

Re:I switched as well

[Chandon Seldon]

The Z71V was a bit twitchy with some older releases of Ubuntu, but mine works great with Dapper.

Yah

[blackpaw]

And theres this horde of windows users switching to linux as well

The yuppies are coming

[BlueStraggler]

What's really happening is that Mac "nerds" are becoming versed enough in Unixisms because of OS X that they can take a walk on the wild side with Linux and not get completely freaked out. They have just enough street smarts to take a walk through the OS inner city with the tough nerds, and not get shot or beat up. And they've discovered that, hey, wow there's a lot of cool shit happening on the mean streets of Linuxville.

But what they don't know is that downtown Linuxville hasn't been a rough a place for a few years now. It still clings to its tough reputation, but it's all college kids and coffee bars now. The place is gentrifying, and has a bit of that yuppie stench to it these days. It's not yet all Wonderbread and Wal-mart, like Windowsland, up the highway, but the Windowsland folks are moving in, and it's starting to get that feel.

The old-timers who gave Linux the frightening reputation that it carries, have long since settled down, had kids, and moved out to the leafy lanes and plush lawns of Mactown, to get away from the plastic Windowsland people. As a result, the Mactown folks have realized those Linux guys aren't so scary after all, beards and sandles notwithstanding. Maybe, some of the Mactown folks think, we could get a condo in Linuxville, and try some of that inner city living. Just on weekends for a start.

So they get a luxury condo in Linuxville, right on Ubuntu Street, which was built by a big-name property developer who saw that all the starving artists were living in the area, building cool lofts and studios from the abandoned tenements and factories of old Unixville. So he bottled up that artsy mojo and built a condo development with new appliances, and hardwood floors, and put in a Starbucks on the ground floor, and marketed it heavily to Mactown and Windowsland people looking for a change. Come to Linuxville! Not as scary as you think! But every bit as edgy! Now with taskbars! Sometimes you get contemptuous looks from the mean looking men who still hang out on Slackware Road, but it's best not to go down there if you can help it. If you can avoid them (and ignore the snotty punks on Gentoo Avenue), then it's all terrifically edgy and artsy, and just so-o-o-o nerdy cool in that certain je-ne-sais-quoi kind of way. It feels like they're right on the cutting edge, where the culture is created, where everything happens, just like they read in Wired Magazine in 1996.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[Night Goat]

Classic! I think you nailed it.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[dupper]

Awesome post. In the spirit of an updated Neal Stephenson's classic (and outdated) OS treatise In the Beginning was the Command Line.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[ruyon]

Yeah, things have sorted out and settled quite nicely, especially around Ubuntu st., but I still ocasionally replied, when I ask for direction in Linuxvill, that "RTFMap, n00b". But the maps are often usually criptic, which only Linixvill old timer can decyper. I'm not stupid, but not knowledgable enough to become a landed immigrant in Linuxville. So I'm still living in MacTown, paying small sum of taxes every now and then.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[Anonymous Coward]

But whatever you do, stay out of the BSD district after dark.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the two nerds mentioned are old-school *nix hands. One of 'em helped invent XML, and plugs Solaris aplenty. The other's written a very good "universal" feed parser that does a pretty good job with all sorts of cruddy feeds, along with a nice free book about Python and another about web accessibility. They don't fit the profile you describe. If you read their reasons, they're dropping OSX because the basic usability gap between it and Ubuntu isn't wide enough (to them) to justify Apple's lack of support for preserving their data.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they're only switching because of DRMs o.o

Re:The yuppies are coming

[SpaghettiPattern]

versed enough in Unixisms ... the mean streets of Linuxville ... downtown Linuxville ... plush lawns of Mactown ... plastic Windowsland ... Ubuntu Street ... Slackware Road ... snotty punks on Gentoo Avenue ... je-ne-sais-quoi
Oh puh-lease!!!

Re:The yuppies are coming

[Anonymous Coward]

"The place is gentrifying, and has a bit of that yuppie stench to it these days. It's not yet all Wonderbread and Wal-mart, like Windowsland, up the highway, but the Windowsland folks are moving in, and it's starting to get that feel."

So our argument is that "Young urban professionals can't use Linux because they're stinky, and shop at Wal-mart?.

I am glad old, non-professional, rural, bitter people like yourself make these insightful comments. Why does Slashdot not have a '+10, genius' in the drop down box?

Re:The yuppies are coming

[CircleFusion]

@BlueStraggler, That was easily one of the most creative and insightful posts that I've ever read on Slashdot. Thank you for that. What a wonderfully appropriate parallel to the common city class system of segregation and stereotyping.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[i_should_be_working]

There ought to be another category in the /. hall of fame where posts like these are saved.

Re:The yuppies are coming

[ClayDowling]

Linuxtown, that sad raggedy old neighborhood? Anybody got any style at all, any pretensions to being a bad mf(1), done left that dullsville a long time ago. Dudes live down on FreeBSD street treat them Linux boys real nice(1), right before they chown(2) their files and make off with their fortune(6). Walk down on OpenBSD avenue they stick a fork(2) in you, cause their firewall make you go pf(4). kill(2) you soon as look(1) at you, they think you don't belong there.

Kotke's right

[jmichaelg]

When die-hard Mac fanatics decide that Apple has over-DRM'd the OS and leave, it should be a wakeup call to Cupertino.

  Unfortunately, there's only one guy at Cupertino who matters and that's Jobs. If he doesn't see why they're pissed off, he won't see it when 2 become 200,000.

Apple isn't alone here. Sony is just now getting a taste of consumers saying bleh to the company's products. Sony - makers of some of the coolest tech is facing hard times simply because they've forgotten that customer convenience matters more than making sure no one violates copyright. Sic transit gloria.

Re:I switched as well

[linguae]

1. Huh? The price of Apple hardware is now at par with the price of other PCs. Now, Apple doesn't give out $300 mail in rebates like Dell does, nor does Apple sell cheap Celeron and Sempron boxes in the $200-500 range. So, yes, the entry level Mac Mini is triple the price of a $200 Celeron box, but upgrade the stats to something comparable to the Mac Mini, and the prices wouldn't differ by much.
2. I don't know what you mean by vendor lock-in. There is a lot of software choice available for Macs. Now, if you mean you want to install Mac OS X on your dual dual-core Opteron box, then I understand what you mean....
3. Apple isn't going to sue you, unless you do something like I mentioned above....
4. Huh? In my experience, the BSDs have performed quite well compared to Linux boxes, and BSD hardware support is very good in my experience (I never had a device not work under BSD). Now, if you're talking about OS X's performance, then blame the Mach kernel, not BSD. (It is a commonly accepted fact that Mach is slower than a traditional monolithic kernel such as BSD and Linux)

Come on, give me better reasons to choose Linux over OS X.

I've been reading this on Slashdot since pre-2000

[SocietyoftheFist]

Funny how Linux on the desktop has been stagnant or declined since I've been reading that. It is taking over the UNIX workstation market, it isn't making a dent in the installed base of Mac and Windows desktop machines.

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Try run a MAC machine with X turned off
2. Can't customize kernel no more

Re:I switched as well

[aichpvee]

Why would I want to settle for the OSX UI that is clunky and gets in my way more often than not? If I wanted that I could just run gnome.

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Please see this for how to enable 3d acceleration in vmware on ubuntu, it's only for vmware 5 though. It might be worth looking through the vmware forums for how to do this with the free player:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-84 344.html

Re:I switched as well

[HiThere]

Interesting. I have access to both a Mac and a Linux box. I use Linux as my desktop. Occasionally I'll move over to the Mac for games.

OTOH, my wife, who is a musician and agraphic artist, prefers the Mac. I'd try to convert her, but the Linux music composition programs don't work on my machine. Possibly I don't have a working midi card, I've never been sure, so that might be the reason, but without that I can't even try to convert her.

However, whenever I am forced to help her on the Mac I end up swearing at the OS. Yes, you *CAN* do nearly anything, with enough effort. But you can say the same thing about assembler. (Well, that's a bit of an extravagant comparison. The Mac OS isn't THAT bad, but I sure don't like it. I prefer Gnome (and I'm a KDE fan).

Actually, I've long thought that the Mac made some serious mistakes in the transition from OS9 to OSX, but that may just be because I was a solid Mac user up until System 7.5, when my job switched me to MSWind95. Still, they COULD have retained the resource forks (just have an invisible directory for each application [named, say .application]...you'ld need to adapt the cp program so that it moved the resources when it moved the application, but that wouldn't be difficult).

Re:I switched as well

[Fred_A]

When I meet Unix users in numbers (mostly at the LinuxBierWanderung where there is a semi-random sampling of roughly 80 people from a bit all over but mostly Europe), what I see is that people who bring Apple laptops (there are a dozen) do so because they don't want to spend time fighting with the arcane hardware of a poorly documented x86 machine. And MacOS is "Unixy" enough for a secondary machine (the main desktops are still some sort of Unix, mostly Linux, with some BSD and a few Solaris thrown in for variety).

When I talked to all of the Apple users, while they all found their Macs to be "adequate", none were especially fond of them, none seemed to have ever considered getting a desktop Mac. The laptops were stopgap measures until Linux was solid enough on that class of machines (which means, proper suspend/sleep, WiFi support, etc., without spending ages poking at the damn thing). Basically they wanted to have the same thing on laptops as they had on their desktops. A solid, no fuss system they understood.

That's what I wanted too. That's why I too got an iBook. I could have gotten a fairly crappy noname Linux machine (that is, with Linux pre-installed) for about twice the price. In the end I went with the safe option. Like the others. Like them I'm not too fond of the Apple system. Like them whenever I use it I really miss the comfort of a proper Linux desktop. Like being able to browse the network easily in KDE, like having properly integrated virtual desktops, network shares that actually make sense to me, being able to move windows to the front and back with the mouse...

I know all this can probably be done with Mac OS (it could probably be done in GEM with enough time) but it's trivial in KDE, even in Gnome. To me MacOS just feels like a polished Windows sitting on top of a BSD toolset. In the end it's just simpler to cut the middleman and get a vanilla Unix box without the extra crud but with the real goodies.

Of course by sticking with Unix you miss on some of the good stuff the Apple guys came up with. Notably the application installation package trick which is simple and elegant, and some Mac apps that are quite nifty (I know I'll miss CopyWrite when I drop MacOS). This does not really matter, most of us will gladly trade more freedom for a little roughness at the edges. In my case, the main freedom is the freedom to keep my own data. Mark Pilgrim, the guy mentionned in the article above switched for the same reason (among others probably, but it seems that this is what tipped him over).

Disclaimer : Note that all of "us" that I mentionned above are long time computer geeks past the "tinkering stage" (some of us are actually past middle aged) and set in our ways. So the above is in no way representative of the general geek population and is absolutely not representative at all of random computer users. FWIW I also keep a Windows partition for games.

Re:I switched as well

[Fred_A]

Whenever I have a problem, instead of calling, I can just drive over to an Apple Store and get free tech support in person regardless of the computer's warranty

Disclaimer : Offer only valid in the US.

I was thinking of switching from Suse to OS X...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dapper Drake changed that :)

What's so great about Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's so special about Ubuntu? How is it different then every other Linux distro that has been hailed as the second coming? I'm not being sarcastic. I really don't know.

Re:What's so great about Ubuntu?

[DrJimbo]

ac asked:

What's so special about Ubuntu? How is it different then every other Linux distro ...

It does a much better job of working right out of the box and is so simple and easy that even a computer novice can install it and run it.

I don't think there is anything magical about Ubuntu or that it is vastly better than all the others. I think it is more a case of being the right distro at the right time. Linux distros had been evolving in this direction for a long time.

I helped a neighbor of mine install Ubuntu on an older laptop last week. The biggest problem we had was that I burned the wrong cd. I first tried their "desktop" cd which they said was the one most people will want. But it boots into X and has a graphical installer and it ground to a halt on the laptop due to memory issues. I then gave him a copy of the "alternate" cd which has the old fashioned text mode installer and my neighbor was able to install it himself.

Even the wireless card was properly detected and configured.

Re:What's so great about Ubuntu?

[Crayon Kid]

I don't think there is anything magical about Ubuntu or that it is vastly better than all the others. I think it is more a case of being the right distro at the right time. Linux distros had been evolving in this direction for a long time.

Yes, but it's still a matter of making the extra effort. The exact same bits and pieces of GNU and FOSS software are out there, available for anyone who gives a damn. And yet distributions like Ubuntu and SuSE manage to come out above in terms of user experience. It comes down to putting the pieces together just right.

I don't think people realise how extremely versatile Linux and the accompanying software can be. That old joke "does it run Linux" is actually half serious. You can make almost anything out of it. Someone was bound to smell the coffee and use it to put together a kickass desktop.

Incidentally, I think this is the best advantage Linux has and why it can afford to fight mano a mano with anything the big corporations throw at it: it can adapt, evolve and become anything. All it takes is people willing to make the effort.

Re:What's so great about Ubuntu?

[Ruby Wednesday]

There's also the point that it's basically Debian for the masses. Debian is brilliant (I ran it for years), but I'd never have recommended it to my parents. A year or so ago, I built them a PC out of the upgrade leftovers I had lying around and installed Kubuntu, and they love it. My dad is even getting some admin knowledge from watching me and asking questions etc., where he's always treated computers as a 'black box' entity in the past.

Re:What's so great about Ubuntu?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, for every example, there are counterexamples.

I installed Ubuntu 5 for my father a couple of weeks ago. Worked great out of the box, and then after a day or two his sound stopped working. No reason, no bogus boot messages, just no sound (errors when apps try to make noise). Since he's a non-technical person whose primary use for the computer is to listen to music, record music, and surf the 'net for information and music, this is kind of a big deal for him. I will eventually be able to look at it for him, but I was really hoping it wouldn't be necessary with that distro after all of the good press I'd heard. This is not exotic hardware, either; a new Asus board running a Sempron processor with ALi chipsets for most things, using the intel8x0 sound driver.

As with any distro, YMMV.

Re:What's so great about Ubuntu?

[guywcole]

Wireless you say? But not on a regular mac- Apple hasn't released the spec's for the airport so Ubuntu is only useful if you want to drag a wire around. When someone writes an Airport driver for Ubuntu, linux will be viable for most mac users. Until then, it's useful only for niche and amusement applications (unless you invest in a 3rd-party wireless card).

Re:I switched as well

[Fred_A]

What's the best way to get games to play on Ubuntu? I still need to dual-boot with Windows because of games, and I would really, really like to get rid of that.

Why ?

Why should there be one tool that does everything ?

Do you actually need your box to do something else while you play a game ? Does it matter that you have to wait 90 seconds for the machine to shutdown and reboot ?

I've used Linux or some sort of Unix as my main system for more than 10 years and I've always kept a small Windows partition exclusively for games. To me it's exactly as if I'd bought a console. Yet I don't see people asking all the time "I can't stand having to start my Xbox/Playstation/whatever to play a game, how can I do it in Ubuntu/Mandrake/Debian..."

Do you really need to make your life more complicated ?

And still no WPA support, right?

[Mr2001]

I haven't had any luck at all getting Ubuntu (or Knoppix) to work with my wireless network. What, am I supposed to just turn off security (i.e. switch to WEP) to get online with Linux?

Re:And still no WPA support, right?

[sholden]

My Ubuntu laptop is connected using WPA just fine.

Re:And still no WPA support, right?

[jc42]

hat, am I supposed to just turn off security (i.e. switch to WEP) to get online with Linux?

Heh. As part of getting a Mac Powerbook (now two; my wife loves hers and hates her old Windows box ;-), I got an Airport. It works pretty well with the Macs, aside from the occasional 15-20 minute periods where one or the other will see no signal and nothing seems to diagnose the problem. But that's not my topic.

My topic is that we've occasionally had visitors with wireless Windows and/or linux laptops. The only way we've found to make the Airport available to them is to turn off its security. I've asked on a couple of fora, and got lots of RTFM-type answers, but we've never been able to make it work. One visitor managed to connect a Palm device that had wifi, by finding some long hex string in the Mac airport config stuff and laboriously copying it to a mysterious place in the Palm gadget. I didn't learn enough from that to replicate it with other equipment, so other than that one-time demo of possibility, the way to make non-Apple stuff talk to an Airport seems to be to open it up by turning off its security. Then it Just Works, as they say.

Now I expect to see a few replies telling me what an idiot I am, and how easy it is, but not imparting enough information that an idiot like me can actually make it work.

I've also worked on a project where I collected info about various wireless "solutions", and one of the results was to rule out Apple's networking. The primary reason was the utter lack of cooperation from their support people when they learned that I have a mixed-vendor home system. They would only deal with Apple equipment, and even went so far as to demand that I shut down my linux gateway and plug the Airport into the internet modem, or they couldn't help me. Reporting such things to my bosses quickly eliminated Apple as a contender. (Maybe the CS guys would have been more cooperative if I'd been calling from work. But we wanted to know the general quality of their support, and we felt it was better to test them on a small system first. They flunked that test badly. If they can't solve problems in a small setup with a handful of machines, how can you trust them with a bigger corporate network? ;-)

Re:And still no WPA support, right?

[twaltari]

Sounds familiar. I have a Linksys WiFi card based on a Broadcomm chipset. The latest Ubuntu, Dapper Drake, comes bundled with the new bcm43xx native Linux driver. However, that driver will only become functional after it has beeen fed with a copy of the card's firmware (either download it from somewhere on the Internet or extract from Windows partition using fwcutter tool). Ubuntu can not distribute the firmware without Broadcomm's permission and thus WiFi with Broadcomm based cards does not work out of the box. After setting up the firmware, I've been successfully using WPA-PSK.

http://ubuntu.cafuego.net/dists/dapper-cafuego/bcm 43xx/

Re:I switched as well

[mwbauers]

You might like to go my route...........

I'm getting a mid-range IntelMac tower and expect to run Mac-OS, Windows 2000, and some linux on it as well.

I'm planning to move all of my Windows stuff over to the new machine as well as my still in use Mac stuff.

Heck, I'm waiting to hear that the now-Linux-loaded Amiga will make the transistion to the IntelMac as well.

I'll have a dozen or so Windows games available as well as both flavors of Sms and Sims2 Mac/Windows. I might be a hard core gamer. But I'm looking forward to having the creation software from both Mac and Windows on the one system.

That and some sweet working high-end graphics and pic to 3d machinable objects software that spreads across both platforms.

best to ya,
Mike Bauers

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

How about saving about half by building it yourself?

Re:Two users! -- There's a dumb move...

[Stemp]

You just miss something. Freedom, OpenSource and open format !! And you're right, some people aren't good at analyzing a situation.

Re:I switched as well

[flacco]

aren't you an owner of linuxcertified.com?

thanks. this reprehensible underhanded covert marketing really makes the linux community look GREAT.

do yourself and everyone a favor: explain this and/or admit and apologize.

Re:I switched as well

[jalefkowit]

Yeah, but the last time I looked at it (which was admittedly a while ago), Cedega-CVS was hedged around with warnings about it being generally behind Cedega-for-pay in terms of performance and game support. YMMV, of course.

Maybe Cory's books aren't selling too well...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...and he can't afford a new MacBook???

Re:Maybe Cory's books aren't selling too well...

[ScrewYouTroll]

Screw you, troll. He's making a living how he sees fit, and if he's buying a new laptop I assure you his head's above the water. You expose the elitist educated upper class snobbery of the mac set for what it really is.

Re:I switched as well

[mwbauers]

I forgot a word...........

" I might -NOT- be a hard core gamer. But I'm looking forward to having the creation software from both Mac and Windows on the one system. "

The closest I got running Linux was several years of Amiga operation. At least I'm not afraid of running linux because of my '80's computing experiences. The only thing that keeps me away from Linux are the comments I've seen about compiling the OS to run on a system.

At any rate, I'm looking forward to a multi-OS system that allows me to use any computer tool I wish, regardless of it's preferred OS. It's like a return to my old Amiga with it's Windows and Mac emulations.

It seems that is finally quite well perfected with the new IntelMacs. The mutliple boot Linux systems are there as well. I just like to have the full range of Mac software in the mix as well.

This seems to be what I tried to have with the Amiga, back then..........

Bauers

I will bet...

[93 Escort Wagon]

... that these guys will have switched back within 2 years.

Ubuntu is certainly a nice distro, but its big (or at least noisy) following seems to largely come from cannibalizing the previous Linux du jour, Gentoo, rather than other OSes. Linux nerds, in other words. In the wider world, most people don't move to another OS just because it's new; it has to do at least some things better. Ubuntu certainly might qualify if you're just looking at another Linux distro (although I don't personally see a lot that actually distinguishes it from, say, Fedora) - but OS X is in a whole different league.

I doubt Jobs is losing any sleep over this, and there's no reason he needs to even think much about it.

BTW remember when Gentoo was the Golden Child? Remember having discussions about what distro is best for newbies, and there'd always be a bunch of people that would - Lord knows why - advocate Gentoo?

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, people are asses. Who the fuck modded you down for trolling? And Offtopic? This is specifically THE topic.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Read what others are saying: it looks like he's the same chap who works for LC. So he's probably spamming for LC.

Yuppies and Apples....

[Savage-Rabbit]

OS X is the opposite. It is high margin, high sytle, and slick. It is perfect for the brand-concious, reasonably wealthy, consumer who wants everything to work together easily.

I agree with you that Linux and OS.X are in many ways opposited but who says OS.X is just for brand consious yuppies? I develop for Linux alot and yet I use OS.X on my workstation because my nerdy need for problem solving is fully satisfied by the development problems I encounter with the software I develop on various Unix/Linux and even, occasionally, Windows 2003 server systems. I simply don't need the added trouble of getting Linux to work properly on my laptop with the degree of smoothness that I demand from a workstation. I despise Windows for workstation use due in no small part to the abundance of malware and the work it takes to keep it off the system but also because the Windows UI simply annoys the hell out of me for many different reasons. I use OS.X for my day to day work mainly because it is the only *NIX that truly works and does so nearly completely flawlessly as a desktop system, straight out of the box. If there was a Linux variant that worked as smoothly as OS.X does on hardware as compact and well designed as that made by Apple and that had a full featured and properly integrated graphical desktop environment that didn't look like a poor imitation of Windows I'd certainly conisder it. So far I haven't found anything that can hold a candle to OS.X in every way, there is always something that doesn't quite work. One thing is for sure, whether you use Linux or OS.X for your workstation OS it is always amusing to see the look of utter despair that appears on the face of a Microsoft trained corporate support monkey when confronted with an OS that hasn't got Microsoft's product logos plasterd all over it. They are so relieved when they find out (after regurgitating the ususal speech about how they only support Windows) that all you want them to do is assign an IP number, set up E-mail access and a VPN account.

Re:Yuppies and Apples....

[don.g]

I bought an iBook G4 800 a few years ago on that basis: I didn't want to spend too much time stuffing around making it work.

Unfortunately, I discovered that I was wrong: I did want to spend time stuffing around occasionally. Linux supported this. OS X was, despite the Unix interior, not as malleable as I'd hoped. While everything that was supposed to work out of the box did, when you left the beaten track you were on your own. IP over DNS? Needs drivers that haven't been ported to OS X? Scanning with old scanner that worked under Linux? No OS X drivers, and the Mac port of SANE wouldn't work. No ability to fake a scrollmouse with the touchpad without using thirdparty apps. No ability to use the external display as a desktop extension without firmware hacks.

The only thing that I unequivocally liked about OS X was Panther's mail client, especially its support for offline IMAP and searching. But Tiger broke that.

So I bought a PC laptop late last year, being careful not to end up saddled with any hardware that required proprietary drivers. And it's great. After getting it working initially, I haven't had to do any stuffing around, and when I want to deviate from the beaten track and route some of my packets via carrier pigeon, I can!

Re:I switched as well

[vga_init]

I'm going to be nit-picky here and refute your argument on the grounds that you unfairly claim that Ubuntu is a poor distro for gaming when the game examples you cite are for another platform. It's true that there are many more commercial games for Windows than there are for linux, so a gamer would indeed rather run Windows, but let's say you're a carpenter and that you want to hammer in nails but the tool you've selected is a saw. Then you go on to say that the saw is a poor tool compared to the hammer. And, following my example, maybe most of the work you need to do involves hammering rather than sawing.

Before saying that linux/ubuntu is a bad system for games, why don't you actually try some linux games first? I wager that there are more of them than you think.

Windows + Ubuntu + VMWare

[SteveTheRed]

I run Ubuntu on VMWare on top of XP (I play with several other OSs that way, too) . For me, it is the best of both worlds. Why should anyone care? Apple should care if there are any others like me. I was this (thumb and finger 1 mm apart) close to getting a mac, but why would I pay $2K+ when I can get almost all of what I want for $1K? Apple make some sweet products, but not that sweet.

Re:Windows + Ubuntu + VMWare

[TomHandy]

Why do so many people continue to believe that Apple doesn't make any computers cheaper than $2000, even though that hasn't really been true for a very long time (hell, even in the bad days in the 90's they still made Macs that were in the $1000 price range or cheaper).

The tagging system

[Millenniumman]

It shows the effectiveness of the tagging system when an article about two people switching to linux is tagged "fud" and "notfud".

Re:The tagging system

[siwelwerd]

Actually, that's very useful information as it tells you there's no consensus on it.

Re:The tagging system

[hereschenes]

IMHO, the best thing about the tagging system is that you can turn it off!

Re:The tagging system

[Anonymous Coward]

But there is a consensus!

Re:I switched as well

[Millenniumman]

There are Apple stores in other countries.

Asserting my geek creds here and now...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running 'Duke Nukem Forever' in a Forth shell running on top of a Ken Olsen-signed copy of the One True Enterprise-Class PC Operating System, OpenVMS. Which is running on a Tadpole Sparc laptop whose guts I installed into an old Amiga I used to use as a fishbowl.

Re:I switched as well

[Millenniumman]

Yes, you *CAN* do nearly anything, with enough effort. But you can say the same thing about assembler.

Strangely, I feel the same way about Windows and Linux. And I find both GNOME and KDE to be unintuitive and hard to use. What, specifically, do you find hard to do in OS X?

meanwhile...

[barutanseijin]

I'm waiting for my brother to finish copying his files from his ibook to his new mac. Once he's finished, I'm putting Slackintosh on in it. I like things a bit more nimble than what OS X gives me, especially with a G3.

As for Gentoo, the flakiness of Gentoo ebuilds makes me treat my Gentoo machine like a Slackware box. I figure I might as well go with the real deal.

Re:meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck with that. On the Mac it takes well over 20 minutes to copy a 17 meg file from one hard drive to another. Twenty minutes. :)

Re:meanwhile...

[Jesus_666]

As for Gentoo, the flakiness of Gentoo ebuilds makes me treat my Gentoo machine like a Slackware box.

Broken right out of the box? ;)

Can't they make up their mind?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as I am planning to ditch Ubuntu and buy a Mac to look as cool as the RubyOnRails guys!

Please, cool guys make up your mind on which is the coolest OS so that us mere mortals can follow.

Re:I switched as well

[gullevek]

1) Why do you want to run a MAC machine wthout the GUI? Its a desktop Computer.
2) Why the hell do you want to customize your kernel? Perhaps you are still young and think its cool. But at some point you don't give a rats ass about customizing kernel and you just want to browse your pr0n!

Not so funny at all.

[twitter]

Funny how Linux on the desktop has been stagnant or declined since I've been reading that. It is taking over the UNIX workstation market, it isn't making a dent in the installed base of Mac and Windows desktop machines.

Got a link for that nonsense? I don't think so. You are about as likely to meet a person who has not heard of Linux as you are to prove that stagnant. Everyone now knows about Linux and many more people are trying it out. The flood is coming.

Re:Not so funny at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

The flood is coming.

Master Chief? Is that you?

Seriously though, don't be ridiculous. You and your pals have been saying that since 1996. It's really getting tiresome after so many years. Instead of just letting it happen when it happens, constant annoying posturing like this simply drives people to think you're a kook. Or worse, start calling it "Linux Nuk'em Forever" or something like that.

Re:Not so funny at all.

[SocietyoftheFist]

I don't need a link. I collect webanalytics for 30 domains, it runs 95% Windows 4% Mac 1% other of which Linux/UNIX are a part of. I can go to any hotel lobby, coffee shop, any public place with free wifi and I will find PC's running Windows or Macs but I don't see any KDE/GNOME/Insert Window manager running on any screens. Any time I go out with a laptop running Linux, I'm the only one I see running it. I've been hearing about the flood since 2000, wake me when it comes.

Gimme a break!

[Hitchcock_Blonde]

Ubuntu is nowhere near as polished as OS X and has nowhere near the quality of applications available. I call BS!

Re:Gimme a break!

[Ash-Fox]

Ubuntu is nowhere near as polished as OS X and has nowhere near the quality of applications available. I call BS!

OS X is nowhere near as polished as Ubuntu and has nowhere near the quality of applications available. I call BS!

Why must it be one or the other? Why not both?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I am missing the big deal here. Why not use a MacBook Pro and use Ubuntu within Parallels on a Mac, and have the best of both worlds? Or do as I did, and have a dual-boot PowerBook G4 that runs OS X 10.4 and Ubuntu? That is, until I decided that Ubuntu was a wasted 10 GB partition and wiped it, and went back to solely using 10.4. But when I get my MacBook Pro, for the small price of Parallels I can use any Linux within 10.4 just fine.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why not both? (Note: this line of reasoning does not work very well with girlfriends or wives, but it makes perfect sense for cmoputer operating systems.)

E.L. Doctorow

[slyborg]

Switching would be BIG trouble. Not worried yet.

Wait to see if they die ?

[Joebert]

but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.

So, we should wait & see if theese two die off before doing anything about this ?

Why it matters

[Anonymous Coward]

People get excited about good tools because design matters. People *care* about craftsmanship, integrity, simplicity, and elegant design.

Most good painters don't use just any old brand of paints and brushes. Most good musicians don't play on second-rate hand-me-down instruments. Why should digital folks use third-rate software?

Re:Why it matters

[NemosomeN]

Most painters don't host bitter hatred for upper level executives of paintbrushes they are not fond of.

Re:Why it matters

[Anonymous Coward]

Most paint isn't incompatible with their chosen brushes, that's why.

Re:Why it matters

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, you usually don't see these same people having orgasms over a well built PC, or a well designed non-Apple music player. Even the IBM Thinkpad crowd, where there are (were?) quite a few loyal fans, aren't nearly as bad as the Apple fanatics.

Why God?

[Omniscientist]

Why can't there be a Retarded or Slightly Confused mod? I have mod points but they are no good here!

Re:Why God?

[karearea]

Yes, those mod points are no good here because you made a comment here ;-)

Re:Why God?

[Kjella]

Why can't there be a Retarded or Slightly Confused mod? I have mod points but they are no good here!

Just pick the right direction (+1,-1) and don't worry too much about the rest. When I paste facts I get modded "Insightful", when I come with an opinion piece I get modded "Informative" and never mind "Interesting", which appears almost randomly. Plus of course some other oddball mods. -1, Overrated is usually the best when you know this should be modded down but you know the metamods won't understand. It's something of a cheap shot since it can't be metamodded, so use it sparingly though.

Re:Why God?

[linvir]

He's not retarded or slightly confused. He's just some nutter who pretends to know what he's talking about while making glaring errors.
Troll likelihood level: medium

ID?

[pingveno]

Calling two nerds switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu a "canary in the coal mine" reminds me of what the (un)intelligent design people say. The ID people draw up a list of a few hundred scientists who "dissent from Darwinism." So, of course, the scientific community is suddenly going to discover how wrong they were about ID and it will become a hypothesis not ridiculed by all but a miniscule percent of biologists.

The ID movement's lists are bullshit, as demonstrated by Project Steve. Project Steve keeps of a list of (credible) biologists who support the teaching of evolution (about 750 right now). The one restriction for the biologists: they must be named Steve/Stephanie/Stephen. Until I see more than a few nerds switching from Mac to Linux, I'll believe the predictions of mass migration as much as I believe the ID people.

Nope...

[eclectic4]

I guarantee that 98% of the computer using market that would benefit from owning a Mac (my mom, my dad, my grandma, my brothers, my friends... none of whom are tech "geeks") could care less about Ubuntu or who Doctorow or Pilgrim are.

Worried? No, I don't think Apple is worried. In fact, they may see this, take note and grow from it. But worrying about this would be highly unlikely. That suggestion is quite absurd in fact.

Know your market for god's sake.

Used both, trading time for money

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used (and use) both Linux and Mac OSX (and run FreeBSD 6.1 on my server at home).

Macs give you integration, hardware just works and has generally good resale value on e-Bay. My Linux laptop took me three successive weekends to get the WiFi up and running, Macs don't take that time. But if you are on a budget Linux looks damn good.

You can get most of the core functionality of Mac Apps through Open Source, but it won't be polished, you'll page through newsgroups looking for help (or on forums) and spend a lot of time configuring your system. For some people this time/money tradeoff works. For others it doesnt'.

Right now I'm looking seriously at the cheapo laptops for $400, with Linux I can put a lightweight Window manager and spend a few weekends getting WiFi to work, have a very nice machine that does most of what my Work MacBook Pro does for a fraction of the price. Of course other things are not as nice.

An alternative to Fink of course is Darwin Ports; if you've used BSD Ports they work the same way. You can run stuff like GIMP if you just need light Photoshop style stuff (like I did just 20 minutes ago) and it works out fine. Another Mac plus is the ability to run MS Office, crucial if you're exchanging Excel spreadsheets with Macros built-in. Open Office is not there yet.

I think some people will choose time, others money, and there's nothing wrong with either choice really.

Re:I switched as well

[HiThere]

O, going up or back in a folder hierarchy is one blatant thing. Yes, I *know* you can do it. I can always figure out how to do it, though I need to think about it. My wife gets totally lost.

There's so many small infelicitudes that it's hard to particularize then...when I'm not swearing at one of them, that is. (I'll grant you, they are all SMALL infelicitudes.)

Here's another: to change the name of a file you click on it, select get info from the menu, and they change the name. (You may need to changs some permissions...and I suppose that's reasonable..can close at hand, given that you are already in the appropriate menu.) If I try to rename the file by clicking on the name I almost invariably end up opening the file instead of renaming it...which introduces such a delay in the process that I NEVER try to do it that way. My wife just doesn't rename files.

Until...

[weez75]

No offense to Cory, Mark, Tim, or anyone else who switches but these guys are crusaders. Cory particularly bashes anything mainstream--rejects it because others have embraced it.

Here's why Ubuntu and any other Linux distribution is inferior to my OSX install:

• Lack of cohesive or consistent user interface conventions: ever notice every Linux app looks and behaves differently? Not all OSX apps are perfect, but largely they are more consistent than Linux. Not only that, but I rarely have to install any additional libraries to make something work.
• Lack of easy installation packages: yeah I hear the arguments coming. Still, I shouldn't have to search far and wide for compatible packages with all the required libraries or packages for my distribution. Better yet, I shouldn't have to compile anything!
• I can still run *NIX apps I feel like playing around with. I wanted to try Ruby on Rails...so I did. Does that mean I want to compile my own Office app or tinker around trying to get a music player to work like I expect? Hell no! Experiments are one thing. Office apps are another.

Now Cory can moan all he wants about DRM and his precious EFF but iTunes works well for me. I don't mind paying $10 for an album I would otherwise pay $15 at a store to purchase. I don't mind being restricted to sharing it among 5 friends or only playing it on an iPod. I didn't by universal rights to the music. I bought it for reasonable personal use. I understood that when I bought it. I didn't buy it and expect my computer to work differently than anyone else's computer.

Contrary to popular belief, the personal decisions these pundits make really may not matter one ounce to most of us.

Re:Until...

[be-fan]

Have you used a recent Ubuntu? Your comments are quite outmoded.

1) Ubuntu's GNOME desktop is extremely cohesive in both look and behavior. OS X probably still has an edge in integration, but because of Apple's constant theme-changing, GNOME probably has an edge in visual consistency. Of course, both suffer when running non-native apps, but I can't say Matlab on OS X looks any less hideous than Matlab in GNOME.

2) You're not supposed to install packages. You're supposed to use the repository. Just like OS X's installation method is different from Windows's, Ubuntu's is different from both.

3) Ubuntu comes with binary packages of pretty much everything. I haven't had to compile anything in Ubuntu that I haven't also had to compile in OS X (namely, research projects like LLVM or my own code).

I'm typing this from a Macbook, btw. I use both OS X and Ubuntu all the time, and while I still prefer OS X for some reasons (better Lisp compilers, better composited desktop), the two are definitely in the same league.

Re:Until...

[drgnvale]

I use both OS X and Ubuntu all the time, and while I still prefer OS X for some reasons (better Lisp compilers, better composited desktop), the two are definitely in the same league.

Wait wait wait. OS X has better lisp compilers? Since when? What lisps are available on OS X that don't work better under linux?

Re:Until...

[be-fan]

MCL and OpenMCL are great compilers (the latter of which is only recently available on Linux/amd64), and both have better Cocoa integration than the alternatives have GTK+ integration. Moreover, OS X has excellent GUI Emacs implementations (Aqua Emacs and Emacs.app), while there is no Emacs for GNOME that looks and feels like a native app (including native shortcut keys and anti-aliasing support).

Re:Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, in Dapper I still needed to compile and install my printer driver(Konica m2300w) the old fashioned way ... Doesn't bother me, but if it was Joe Sixpack's machine, I would be getting a phonecall ...

Re:Until...

[be-fan]

That printer isn't supported on non-Windows platforms. Checking for hardware support before buying is just the side-effect of using a minority platform. I buy only supported hardware for both my Linux machines and my Macs, and haven't had to compile a driver in years.

Entertainingly enough, the driver for the M2300W isn't provided by the manufacturer for OS X either. You have to use the third-party CUPS driver, the same one you had to compile for Linux.

Re:I switched as well

[Eideewt]

Dual booting is the complicated option. All that rebooting wears me down, and I don't want to mess around with extra partitions. Plus, while I don't usually attempt to multitask while gaming, sometimes my computer is doing something that I don't want to interrupt (maybe downloading) when I get the urge to play a game. No problem if it's a Linux game, but if it's Windows only there's a bit of a conflict.

re: this isn't a lightly-made switch

[King_TJ]

I disagree. Despite all the hype, switching platforms is hardly more difficult than buying a new computer running the same platform. New, out of the box, most machines come pre-loaded with some flavor of Windows - which you may or may not choose to keep on there and use. If you don't, then you're looking at a "from scratch" format and install of your OS of choice, and all the hunting for prerequisite drivers that goes with it. If you do keep it, you probably have to reboot many times as you uninstall a plethora of garbage you don't want that they threw in with the new machine. (Scratch the Norton Personal Firewall, the 30-day McAfee anti-virus trial, the "enhancements" to the media player, etc. etc.)

If you, say, switch from PC to Mac, or Mac to Linux, you're looking at pretty much the same hassles you get with a new machine. You have to reinstall all the apps you want to use on it, restore your backed-up data files of significance, etc.

If you're a self-proclaimed "nerd", I'm assuming the "learning curve" shouldn't be much of an issue? (Or do you really think guys like Mark, Tim and Cory need a while to "get the hang of" Ubuntu?)

MOST people have already concluded that Linux distros don't meet their needs, as illustrated by the fact that so many people rely on Windows every day, while many others paid quite a bit for a Mac running OS X. A few prominent people in tech. circles announcing they're tired of their previous platform of choice is no canary in a coal mine. It's more of a dull thud in the mine, ignored by all the other miners making similar but louder sounds with their pick-axes as they work.

This isn't meant to be a "troll" against Linux.... but rather, a cold, hard look at the facts. Linux enjoys great success when it's used as a mail, file, print or web server. It also enjoys success as the basis for embedded devices, from routers to PVRs. It never has been a significant player in the workstation space, and I dare say it may never be - as long as it's built "by geeks, for geeks". Geeks don't tend to add "fluff" to code just for the sake of saving a user some time reading the instructions. Geeks only consider a GUI an "afterthought project" when it relates to configuring a system-level application or service. (How many rock-solid reliable GUIs in X have you seen for point and click easy configuration of *all* the possible optiions for an Apache web server, for example? And that's a high-profile app in the Linux world that's used by many folks who use Linux for practically nothing else!)

Umm... aren't canaries the first to die??

[Dzimas]

"Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this."

It can be hard to tell the difference between a lemming and a canary in the dark. Not that it really matters -- both will perish.

In many ways, IT is a global make-work project. We spend millions of hours re-re-recreating the wheel and building incredibly complex "vehicles" to perform previously unimagined tasks. It's rare that someone stops and asks questions like, "Does Slashdot make the world a better place?" or "would we be better off without iPods?"

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

O, going up or back in a folder hierarchy is one blatant thing.

What? The Finder is the biggest piece of trash on OS X, but even this is incredibly easy. View -> Customize Toolbar... -> drag Path pulldown to the toolbar. Woo, hard.

I can always figure out how to do it, though I need to think about it.

Why? Once you do it one time, it's permanent. How did you mess that one up?

If I try to rename the file by clicking on the name I almost invariably end up opening the file instead of renaming it...which introduces such a delay in the process that I NEVER try to do it that way.

Again, Finder sucks ass. They'd better scrap that piece of shit for 10.5 and start completely over. It's long overdue.

Here's a tip: instead of trying to do the click twice thing (where you inevitably double-click by accident), just click and hit return. Easy peasy.

Every system has its quirks and idiosyncrasies, and I guarantee you that if you take a user from Windows or Mac and put them on any popular Linux/BSD/etc desktop, the majority will have far more trouble than going the other way.

It's interesting that most people are very inflexible in how they learn to use a computer. They learn a set method and it gets drilled into their brain through simple repetition. Throw a tiny curveball at them, and they're completely, hopelessly lost. Those few of us who understand things better and are able to adapt easily have a much easier time switching environments. We have a solid understanding of the concepts behind UI design, so a different implementation just looks cosmetically different, with no real change to us. To a casual user, it's completely foreign. And even we who understand tend to get set in our ways, such that we get frustrated at a new system that doesn't behave the way we like it to.

Re:I switched as well

[Grey Ninja]

Civ4 reportedly works fine in Cedega. I personally dual boot, and use Windows for Civ 4, as I was never personally satisfied with Cedega, preferring Wine 90% of the time... But Dynomite has a Platinum rating with Wine, which means that it should work perfectly out of the box.

Count me in...

[cakefart]

Back in the late 80's and Early 90's, I ran a 300+ member strong Mac User group at a well known computer research institution... I'm a fan, but I'm not a fool. As much as I like the MacBook and OS X, my Dell Inspiron 8000 w/Dapper is just as functional, if not more so, for my needs. I can't justify shelling out $1300 for something marginally better, even if that means I have to replace the drive on my laptop in the next year for ~ US$60.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Count me in. (my version)

[bblgun]

Ok, I guess I can share my experiences here...

First, hello. I'm a Mac (user), since.. well, always... I've been checking out Ubuntu in the past few months. I first tried to install it on a friend's PC box, but unfortunately he uses dial-up and it was complicated for us linux noobs to get the drivers working.

I still got to use the system and thought it was very interesting and "friendly" in many aspects. I also learned quite some stuff about Linux which will be useful later (and actually has been useful for a couple issues I had with my TiBook).

Now, I'm into certain projects which have made me check out edubuntu so I downloaded the Live CD. Tried it on my TiBook. I had just bought a few days ago a PCMCIA Wifi card (airport card reception is very bad on these if you didn't know) and was impressed that the distro recognized the card right away. However, I was not able to configure it to connect to my network (I still don't know much about using the OS so that may have to do with it).

On the OS X side, I installed the drivers and I could get connected to my network without hassles.

So, Ubuntu brings good software for most basic uses (not all, but I guess you can install that easily, don't know yet), except when it comes to getting online thru something that isn't ethernet. I'm sure it's possible; it's just not as easy as I feel it should be (for me and at least one of my friends).

I will however, try installing this on a beige G3 (still don't know if it will work), because hacking OS X into it isn't that great either. And I think Ubuntu will only get better with time anyways!

My main mac (mini) will still use OS X.

Re:I switched as well

[Millenniumman]

1. You can just click on the path button in the toolbar.

2.Click once, pause, click, rename. Ta da. Or click press return.

Definitely a canary in a coalmine...

[edunbar93]

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.

Yeah, you bet! I mean, look at that mass exodus of people who are switching to Linux from Windows, 15 years after the first Windows nerds switched!

Re:I switched as well

[SanityInAnarchy]

Of course by sticking with Unix you miss on some of the good stuff the Apple guys came up with. Notably the application installation package trick which is simple and elegant,

I won't be missing it.

First off, while it's a great idea to have a standard archiving format (dmg), it's a terrible idea to have no support for compressing that (without third-party software like StuffIt), and it's an even worse idea to make end-users have to go through that format.

Why? Well, believe it or not, I think Windows usually has Mac beat on installation.

Here ten reasons I hate installing software on OS X:

1. The program is a standard .app folder, which means it has to come in some sort of wrapping, such as dmg. User opens the dmg file and sees their app, opens it, and sticks it on the dock. The app is never really "installed", but takes much longer to start up and run, and takes up a bit more space, than if the user had copied it to the Applications folder like they were supposed to.
2. Having 50-100 downloaded images loop-mounted all the time can't be good for your computer or your boot time. It's worse if you're a smart user and dragged the program to your Applications folder, but never bothered to eject and throw away the image. You now have two copies of the program for no real reason.
3. When you decide to uninstall an Application, you drag it to the trash, thus leaving all the cruft in your home directory completely untouched. This also means that you can no longer do the trick of uninstalling and then reinstalling an application in order to completely wipe out the settings, which can be useful if the settings are so badly screwed up that you can't change them from within the application anymore.
4. As far as I know, dmg has no internal compression, which means you often see apps packaged as .dmg.gz or .dmg.bz2, or even .zip or .tar.gz/bz2. Every one of these formats leaves behind traces that you must pick up, often more than a downloaded .exe on Windows. Take the .dmg.gz -- you have to eject, then delete the dmg and the gz file.
5. An Application package isn't really an installer anyway. If you need things installed somewhere else, or if you need a script run on install, you either have to do it every startup (making sure you haven't "installed" already), or you have to make an installer. Mac Packages are nice (.mpkg), but it has all the same drawbacks (dmg, gz, etc), and now there's...
6. No uninstall. There's a nice program called Yank to help you uninstall, but that requires two things:
   • A "yank" file created during installation, although you can get these from others for programs you installed before Yank
   • Money. You're telling me I paid over $2500 for this laptop and OS, and now such a basic feature as an uninstall is for-pay third-party software??? Out-of-the-box my ass, Windows wins this one.

   If you want to manually uninstall a program, there's usually an install log created somewhere, but I'm either really stupid about my Mac, or I've never been able to find that uninstall.

7. Which means that yet again, even moreso, "uninstalling" by dragging to the trash may leave the bulk of your program still there. It's like my dad "deleting" Solitaire to keep him from playing it by deleting the shortcut on his desktop.
8. Not everything uses even the .mpkg format. I still have to deal with all the packaging wierdness of CPAN and other open source tools, but even if I use something like apt, I have Linux-style weirdness in addition to, not instead of, the .dmg/.mpkg/.app wierdness.
9. No dependencies. This is a big one. This means every dmg I download is either pretty large (they usually aren't gzipped), or I have to download ten or twenty other dmg's just to make it work. Often, that means I don't end up dow

I'd love to switch, but

[bennyp]

I've got all this multimedia stuff going on.. proprietary drivers for my soundcard. and unfortunately, I don't have RMS's programming talent, nor his political smarts.
by the way, my captcha was 'travesty', which is quite fitting.

Re:Why must it be one or the other? Why not both?

[Pink Tinkletini]

Some people just plain don't get along with OS X. Not everybody cares about aesthetics (not just looks, mind you) or elegance the same way Apple does. Some people just work better textually. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

AWESOME ARTICLE!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its great to ruffle Apple fanbois panties - cause its so damn easy!

I'm switching to MacOSX

[Nicolay77]

And I regard their posts informative at least.

Their email is borked. I won't use Mac email software, as I don't use Windows email software. Opera mail client wins hands down.

Their texts were borked when updating formats. Well, that happened to me when opening Wordperfect 5.1 docs in MS Word. I still believe that there are several msword features coded but never shown in their GUI as several features of WP51 were living happily in MSWord, but only if the docs where created with WP51 and the features used there. And now there is OO.org with its own lot of misfeatures.

Since long ago all my writings are in text format. In LaTeX if I need some formating. No upgrade or conversions needed.

And I still use Winamp for all my listening needs.

I do thanks their informative post (don't use propietary formats). I will not.

I can use Opera, LaTeX and all the good graphical mac apps and all the command line unix apps I would ever need. In the same desktop, not like I do now with gentoo inside a virtual machine.

I'm switching to a Mac.

Rosetta a joke?

[SuperKendall]

Think of what rosetta is doing - it's translating code for an entirely different processor almost on the fly, making things work almost seamlessly that a normal computer user would have no expectations of. How many Alpha Windows executables could you just move over to Intel Windows?

Photoshop is kind of slow on a new mac, but not unusable slow. And on an Intel mini I bought for some time my HDTV decoding software was running under rosetta with only a little slowdown at the very highest resolutions.

I find it pretty amazing that rosetta works as well as it does, while being as unnoticeable as it is. At least take a moment to appreciate what a smooth transition it allows for most users who never ever have to know what "emulator" even means.

Which came first, the Article or the Switch?

[thoughtlover]

OK, sure, these are 0.0004% of the installed base.. Big whoop, but they are in the headlines and some people only read the headlines. Also, just the fringe-element mentioning this can start to fan flames of some longtime Mac-users to contemplate making the 'switch' --yeah, pun intended. I do believe the flames are starting to fan, here...

On a more somber note, I have become dissatisfied with Apple, as a whole. The discontinuation of Darwin GPL, their aggression against free speech, the strange specter of a company looking like a fledgling Microsoft, all over again, with media capitalization on their minds (iTunes Store, Disney), possible stock fraud, and iPod sweatshops (I own a sweaty Nano!!! :( are turning my apple bitter. Jobs seemed to be about listening to the user experience when he was younger and idealistic, but I guess a multinational corporation doesn't or can't do that anymore.

A friend of mine in the film industry was at a meeting sponsored by Avid. After the presntaton, a spokesman told him the reason Apple increases system requirements for Final Cut Pro with every version was to encourage new hardware purchases. Understandable, if a company makes 60% of it's bottom-line on hardware (pre-iPod era). Knowing basic economics and some sociology, I knew this is suicidal as a business model. Many people who want to make films have a limited budget with high-price hardware. If a person can get better performance from one app that costs the same as another (same features, etc.) then most likely, I'll buy the performer. But if both companies are going to meet each others hardware requirements, I may be forced to get a new computer and pirate the software. It's that simple.

In a nutshell, if people can get increased performance and OSS is meeting their production needs, like Blender, then I'd even think of running Linux.

Obviously, none of your computers...

[jpardey]

have any sort of sense of humour installed. C'mon, I was making a joke. That's why I saved the "punch line" for the end. I know, it might not have been at all humorus to you, but it was meant as such. Why are you taking it so hard anyway? I should have known not to comment on Macs.

Re:Obviously, none of your computers...

[Pink Tinkletini]

FWIW, I'm a "Mac nerd," have been since '84, and I laffed.

Re:Obviously, none of your computers...

[NemosomeN]

I love my Mac, I have a Mac Mini, and it suits me well. They are nice little machines. Actually, the shift to *nix was what got me. I knew if I had probs, I could fix them the old-fashioned way. Not always an option, but usually. (I even caught myself asking myself "What the hell did I expect?" after doing a 'man stepmania')

Re:Obviously, none of your computers...

[Anonymous Coward]

laughed, idiot

Re:Obviously, none of your computers...

[Pink Tinkletini]

Spell different, square.

Re:Obviously, none of your computers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus wept.

Ahh, the experience of an AC

[SuperKendall]

In my experience XP is a very stable OS. Reports of 'constantly have to reboot' from my users has always come down to hardware... or an incompetent user wanting to assign blame to someone other than themselves.

How nice to hear from an AC who probably uses XP as a Half Life workstation.

I use both XP and OS X daily, and I'm talking about heavy use. I install things and run a lot of different programs. I've never had an OS X laptop for the many years I've owned it crash; I restart only for system updates.

Last week I tried to fix a slightly munged FAT32 partition on an XP computer. After a number of hours of waiting for the XP repair tools to fix the directory structure I game up and pulled the plug on the drive (hey, the directory structure was already hosed) bam - same old blue screen I was so used to with NT. Granted it happens much less often than with NT, but there are still "irregularities" that arise more often on XP that requires a system restart - not necessarily a blue screen but reboots are required from time to time (say every few weeks).

As a sidenote the OS X Disk Utility program was able to fix the hosed FAT32 directory structure in under a minute.

Re:Ahh, the experience of an AC

[laffer1]

FAT32 is not a good file system. Use NTFS if you want some stability. It is a journalized file system (well mostly) just as Mac OS 10.4, 10.3 and even 10.2.8 (if you enable it) have. You're running on an NT kernel, use it right.

If you install and uninstall software all the time you will have problems. The registry doesn't scale well because there's crap left over. Also, who knows what source you're getting the software from. I do not get viruses simply because I do not install untrusted software on my system and i don't open emails from people i don't know. I also use thunderbird so they don't auto execute or some crap. I do have antivirus software, but its not active most of the time. I use my windows box for .NET development and gaming primarily. Its under load often. I didn't buy a cheap 300 dollar system and expect perfection though. I have a dell precision workstation with a dual xeon 2ghz (precision 650). Its as reliable as my wife's powermac. I'm still running on the original motherboard unlike her mac. (well logic board on that end)

Double-click delay is mis-set

[Kadin2048]

Regarding changing the names of files, it sounds like you need to adjust your double-click rate.

Perhaps your wife has never changed it, because she doesn't rename files. But OS X has an adjustable delay for determining the difference between "click, click" (two single clicks) and "doubleclick."

As a general rule, inexperienced users need this set slowly, while more experienced users want it set shorter. This is because new users seem to hesitate between their clicks, while more experienced users do the double-click as a single motion (once it's ingrained into muscle memory, I guess).

If you find yourself double clicking on icons and not having them open, then the click delay is set too fast (you are clicking too slowly for the machine to recognize it -- thus the delay must be increased).

If you are doing things that should be interpreted as two distinct clicks (say, clicking on the file to highlight it, and then clicking again on its name to rename) and are opening the file by mistake, then the delay is set too long, and you need to shorten it.

I think it's changed through System Preferences: Mouse.

Re:Double-click delay is mis-set

[HiThere]

We both use the same Mac, and it's HER computer, so I don't mess with things like the double-click speed.

Probably if I used it frequently enough, I'd get used to those "tricks". I don't want to, however. With the original Mac, I wanted to get used to it's OS. With Linux, I wanted to get used to it's OS. Since I wanted to, learning the details wasn't annoying. The Mac OSX had never given me a reason to want to use it, so it's quirks are annoying, and I try to avoid it.

In a way it's like my attitude towards Gnome. I'm certain that if I devoted time and effort to the task, I could learn to use it, but I don't want to. When they disabled the menu editor, I lost interest, and without a decent menu editor I see no reason to regain interest. I keep it installed as an emergency backup for when an upgrade breaks KDE, and use it occasionally to test that it's working. But I can't customize the menu as I desire, so I don't like using it. (Actually, that't the MAJOR gripe I have against Gnome, but to me it IS a major gripe. I tend to use applications that they don't have in their menu, and I tend to not use ones they do have, so I REALLY want to reorganize the thing. KDE starts out better adjusted to my tastes, and is easy to customize. [N.B.: Gnome used to be the one that was easy to customize, and when it was, I tended to prefer Gnome, except that KDE could automatically decompress files, and at that point Gnome couldn't...so it was a tossup. I used to essentially flip a coin to decide which window manager to use today...though actually it depended on whether I was planning on extracting a bunch of files {not all at the same time, for that the command line is easier}]).

So, yes, it's partially dependant on what you are used to. But not entirely. I found the old Mac convention of flower-uparrow to be easier to remember for "how to go up in the path", and I don't know why they ever discarded it.

OT: Wow!

[SaDan]

A post on Slashdot that was better written than any of the editorials I've ever seen come through the front page. Bravo, good sir/madam!

And to be slightly on topic, I'm surprised that more people don't realize the influence of well recognized Mac users and the consequences of their very public "switch" away from Mac computers. Consumers are generally sheep, after all...

---

http://www.burningserver.com/, for all your blank web page needs!

Not Quite Switched Yet

[BigCheese]

I switched from Windows to Debian Sid many years ago. It worked OK even though Sid had problems. Then I got my wife a PowerBook. Since I needed to support her (and I like toys) I got myself a Mac Mini. The Mini has been a great, if slow, for web, email and learning about the Mac.
Later I got a crappy laptop (Compaq Presario 2100) and tried Debian on it. That was like stabbing myself in the eye with a fork so I switched it to Ubuntu Warty and it worked great.

For a while I mostly left the Linux box idle except for some games (NWN, Guild Wars, UT2004). After a while Sid finally did something to tick me off after Sarge was released and I installed Breezy and it was a whole lot better. I'm finding myself using the Ubuntu box about as much as the Mac. So I haven't really switched back. I just use them both.

It may change again when I get a Intel Mac. The performance of the mini gets annoying after a while. I'll still keep the Ubuntu box around because some things are just easier under Linux. Especially web work and programming.

I always thought it was 50:50 Nerds:Hipsters

[FatSean]

But what do I know? Every Mac user I've ever met has been a profoundly un-technical artiste who has yet to find a market, or a nerd who likes unique hardware and software.

An Alternative View of Apple & OSS

[DECS]

recent stories from http://www.roughlydrafted.com/

1. BSD & GPL: Different Sources for Different Horses
2. The Revolution Will be Open Sourced!
3. Apple & Open Source... Strange Buffaloes?
4. The 'Mac OS X Closed by Pirates' Myth

Re:An Alternative View of Apple & OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Stop fucking spamming. Please. Every time anyone mentions any aspect of the Mac on any website, I see you spamming the comments with links to your hate-blog.
2. Your blog isn't even readable without a copy-and-paste, at least the Apple & Open Source one. Hint: Remove the big fucking headline overlaid over the text. It's stupid. I don't know if I saw it and you didn't because I had the text size increased in Firefox but, hey, that says it all by itself.
3. Quit it with the insults. The fact people disagree with you isn't because they're "open source zealots" who "miss the point", it's because you're an asshole, you write like an asshole, and people respond to that. If you had valid points to make, you could make them reasonably and comprehensively, you certainly don't need to begin every article with a barrage of insults against those you disagree with.

Being Eeyore

[Tony]

Uhm....

There was no competition for computers, unless you count analog computers. So geeks had a 1/1 chance of choosing the right choice.

I've noticed pretty much the same thing. Geeks choose the right technology. The general public chooses the best-marketted technology. In many cases, those are not equivelent.

I believe Linux (or some other Free OS) will become the de-facto standard. It'll be years, though. MS has a lot of money to burn, and a lot of money coming in. Yes, we've already seen the world change for them (WRT income, shares, market share, etc), but it'll *still* be a long time before MS is truly no longer the leader.

Years, I tell you.

So, we were right with computers. Duh. There was nothing else. We were right with the internet. I mean, it was the Internet, or whatever dial-up island you chose, whether AOL or... well, I don't remember their names. But there were a slew of them. Of *course* the Internet was going to win. The others were just islands. The Internet was everything. So it wasn't much of a choice.

Geeks don't have the best record for specific products. We just know where things are going in general.

Re:Being Eeyore

[_Sprocket_]

There was no competition for computers, unless you count analog computers. So geeks had a 1/1 chance of choosing the right choice.

I've noticed pretty much the same thing. Geeks choose the right technology. The general public chooses the best-marketted technology. In many cases, those are not equivelent. ...

So, we were right with computers. Duh. There was nothing else. We were right with the internet. I mean, it was the Internet, or whatever dial-up island you chose, whether AOL or... well, I don't remember their names. But there were a slew of them. Of *course* the Internet was going to win. The others were just islands. The Internet was everything. So it wasn't much of a choice.

Geeks don't have the best record for specific products. We just know where things are going in general.

You discount some rather amazing technologies that were obsessions for geeks decades before the general public even heard of it, much less realized that they needed it in their households. These were technologies where geeks and nerds saw great potential and the general public would simply scratch their heads. Now its all part of pop culture. It wouldn't be that way if early adopters hadn't pursued and worked with the tech... figuring out what any of it is good for.

The specifics of where any technology market is headed is anyone's guess. Geeks pick champions and losers. So does the general public. And so does business. It's odd that anyone would claim that geeks never pick winners... specifically or in general. If you're trying to devine future trends in technology, watching early adopters is hardly a strange notion... even if it is just one indication at best.

Who???? Never heard of them.

[MacColossus]

I've been a Mac user since 1997. I still don't understand the significance of this. I have never heard of these two people, and I subscribe to several "Mac Nerd" list serves like macenterprise.org and afp548.com. It's not like Josh Wisenbaker, Schoun Regan, or some other significant user has left the platform. I know people that have switched from Linux to Mac, Windows to Mac, Mac to Windows, Mac to Linux. I think it's great. Learn other operating systems so you can make a informed decision. The only way to truly learn a OS is to immerse yourself in it and make it your primary OS for a period of time. I've done the same thing with Windows and Suse. I've always come back to the Mac, some may not. Windows is thee ultimate gamers OS, Linux is the ultimate server OS, but I feel OS X is currently the best productivity client OS. My two cents.

Caught a break

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the more significant points was the desire not to reward Apple and in essence finance further developement of proprietary, closed source and DRM encumbered software as found inexorably attached to Apples proprietary hardware. That and Apple itself found the corporate equivalent of a deaf mute.

The hardware is pretty, the software polished and smooth but your selling your soul to get it and all is not trouble free. For these two people it became more than they were willing to bear so they made a trade to an operating system while lacking some of the polish allows them to regain control over their machines and their data. The hardware happens to be commonly available and devoid of any Apple Tax.

This is about having choice and voting with your dollars. They don't like the direction Apple has taken. An even greater number doesn't like the path that Microsoft has taken either. Those who are bothered enough to do something about it, and have the means and ability may well choose what is for them, the better alternative.

That these two guys were dyed in the wool Mac types is the most troubling aspect to the fan boys and the evangalists. For them to attempt to downplay, discredit or ridicule these two is really just living in denial. This same scene plays out on the Microsoft side as well as both of these companies are all about lock in. Some people don't want to be locked in. Simple as that.

I'm old school and I sure as hell don't want to be locked in either. Truth be told, getting locked in is for the rubes as long a choice exists. Microsoft versus Apple is not much of a choice it turns out.

As I sit here and type this I realize that half the applications I actually use are OSS. Firefox, Thunderbird, Putty etc. I can easily use Koffice or Open Office instead of MS product for what I do. Most of the programs I take for granted have their equivalents in any modern OS. Not an issue. It is possible I will miss a particular application or how a specific feature of the desktop works and so on, but interestingly enough when I go software shopping I prefer OSS. I don't instantly feel OSS is out to screw me like either Apple or MS products do. Switching to a Linux based OS fulltime would not be difficult. Peace of mind is worth something, and to me not feeding either of these bitches is worth even more.

And to a few of these posters ... I'll take freedom and choice over mindless religous fanaticism any day of the week. Some people just don't like being owned. Myself included.

Re:Caught a break

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear! Seen straight to the heart of the matter.

I can only add to the above that I wish you'd not posted as AC, so I could add you to my friends list and make certain not to miss any further posts by you.

Re:Caught a break

[DeadPrez]

I agree, you are most philosophically wise and moral. Meanwhile, other people with other values come to other conclusions.

I'll take freedom and choice over mindless religous fanaticism any day of the week.

Careful with that type of argument as it can easily be thrown back at your otherwise 'intense' motivations. Unfortunately, the market is generally not often affected by diminutive moral belief. But continue to vote with your dollars, but I suggest you address the more predominent reasons why OSS is not grabbing a huge chunk of the install base.

You know they're just sitting around...

[Anonymous Coward]

...using photoshop all day, day in and day out on their computer.

One of my friends who always brings that up, doesn't have it on his computer and couldn't use it to do dick when I launched it on mine. It reminds me of the way Mac users used to always bring up how good the music making software was compared to the PCs(this was like 12 years ago), despite the fact that none of them I knew personally made music.

Say anything to defend the faith.

Re: this isn't a lightly-made switch

[tm2b]

If you, say, switch from PC to Mac, or Mac to Linux, you're looking at pretty much the same hassles you get with a new machine. You have to reinstall all the apps you want to use on it, restore your backed-up data files of significance, etc.

Actually, not. Not when you get with a new Mac, at least.

As part of the Mac initial bootup, you link the new Mac to the old Mac with a firewire cable. It automatically transfers all the user accounts and anything new in /Applications, /Library and wherever else. It takes a few hours to synch, but it's pretty damned complete (as long as your Apps are all well behaved and installed where there're supposed to be, in /Applications).

I've done this 3 times at this point. The only time I had to do anything else, it was because I had placed games in a directory I had created, /Games, instead of /Applications. I now put them in /Applications/Games and there's no problem.

For me it really was a painless upgrade process. (Here's where /.ers jump in and talk about their varying mileage with non-conforming installations - in /opt, /usr/local, etc).

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Try run a MAC machine with X turned off

1. No problem, login as ">console" (also, it's Mac not MAC and the GUI isn't called X).

If I Buy A Bagel - Which Toaster?

[cannuck]

a) If I buy a bagel - I can toast it in any toaster - sliced or a wide slot model (most are).

b) If I buy gasoline - I can put it in any gas tank - any car with a gas tank.

c) If I bought/buy a VHS tape - which I did for 20 plus years - it worked in any VHS player.

d) If I but butter - I can put it on any bread.

c) When I but a AM/FM/SW radio - it plays all the radio stations.

But... BUT when I buy an Apple product :

I have to use "Apple's butter".

I have to use "Apple's bagels".

I have to use only "Apple's tapes"

I have to listen to "Apples radio/playlist" Can't wait to get Ubuntu running on the $500 dual core 4.1 Ghz (see Toms Hardware).

Re:If I Buy A Bagel - Which Toaster?

[presearch]

So you point is that when you buy Apple hardware you can run anything other than Apple software so you can wait to buy some Apple hardware and run non-Apple software?

Re:If I Buy A Bagel - Which Toaster?

[cannuck]

No....as thousands have pointed out here - Apple/Jobs et al - are nasty control freaks billionaires. What's worse of course - Apple/Jobs et al - have learnt: that if you make something look "cool" and/or look cute, a large number of consumers will want to be "in" that is, want to be "clones" - will put up with Apple/Jobs et al bullshit.

What I am pointing out is - nowhere else do billion dollar multinational corporations play this kind of bullshit game. The Mac OSX (nee FreeBSD 5.0) (A bagel from Louie's Bagel Bakery) can now run on Intel (be toasted in any toaster). But Apple and Intel have conspired - so that the Mac OS X (bagel/nee FreeBSD 5.0) that I have bought (repeatedly) will not run on any Intel (on any toaster) - but only on a Mac Toaster (Apple Computer).

I will be checking out to see if the above nonsense is legal in Canada. That is, I buy a toaster and the toaster can ONLY toast bread from ACME BREAD COMPANY. Doesn't sound legal to me!

Oh no, NOT CARS!!!!

[powermacx]

A couple of geeks, who cares, but CARS? CARS is switching to CURS!?!?

Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Re:I switched as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother getting a 'Linux certified' laptop? There are plenty of bigger brand name laptops that can run linux pretty flawlessly. One example, SAGER. All the hardware works fine on it for linux, in fact, I'm using one right now. The price is far comparable to any Dell or HP machine, even cheaper without Windows, and hardware wise is pretty spectacular. The company itself supports linux, both Sager and Clevo. Just look a little deeper than typing in 'linux certified notebook' in google and you'll find far more brand name notebook companies that support linux than you realize (even big named companies).

I can relate

[Mr. Samuel]

I was a lifelong PC user until I switched to Macs around 4 years ago. In that time, I have personally experienced hardware quality issues with an iBook G3, iMac G5, and PowerBook G4. The PowerBook is the most recent and worst of the lot, with hardware problems of multiple kinds. On top of that, they charged a premium price for very outdated hardware (1.67Ghz G4). Now, I've recently constructed my own PC running Windows XP; I'll probably dual-boot Ubuntu on it at some point.

My Mac loving was well known among my social circle, and I even helped some people switch to Macs. But I don't plan on doing Apple any favors in the near future.

Re:I switched as well

[BandwidthHog]

Command-arrow moves around the filesystem. Up moves up, down moves down (into a directory or opens a file/app). If youre in list view with the little triangles on the left, command-left expands them and command-right collapses them. And as other posters have mentioned, selecting a file then hitting Enter lets you rename them. Or you can click-wait-click just like in Windows. And as also mentioned by other posters, command-clicking the directory name in the titlebar pops up a handy menu that lets you back out to any arbitrary point in the tree.

Also, command-1, command-2, and command-3 switch between the Finder’s various view modes.

I switched too

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched from OS X to Linux(debian),have never looked back.I still use os x though for photoshop,thats about it.

Where is the bug report?

[ZeekWatson]

Where is the bug report?

Confirmed

[bredk]

... Netcraft confirms it!

This switcher's #1 annoyance: NO MAXIMIZE BUTTON.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is ONE thing about OSX that makes me want to punch iSteve iJobs in the throat:

* Give me a god-damn maximize button. The current one is a "make the window a random size that we determined at compile time and has no reflection on the actual contents of the window that you're looking at now" button. In many cases (especially with the finder), it actually makes the window smaller. I can't stress enough how abysmally terrible the lack of a maximize feature is.

I can live without a taskbar and learn to use the dock. I can live with the random disk thrashing in the background for no apparent reason. I can even also learn to work around the abysmally incoherent keyboard shortcuts. But the lack of a maximize button is eternally grating.

The problem is that a maximize feature is something that Apple Mactards, after being trained by iSteve iJobs to loathe all ideas that are Not Of The Apple, and sitting in front of the biggest and most expensive 30" monitors in the world - have never wanted to maximize a window. They cannot possibly fathom why you'd want to have a window take up the entire screen. That's their mentality when it comes to a great many problems with OSX (well, *I* don't have a problem with it, therefore it isn't a problem) - and I can see why it's made people move on to Linux (although, obviously, for reasons more significant than no maximize button).

Back in the real world, we don't have the time

[Nice2Cats]

I'm one of those people who switched from Linux to OS X for the desktop (the server of the house still happily runs Gentoo). The main reason is time: Whatever geek problems OS X might have, for everyday tasks, the thing just works. When I close the lid of my iBook, it goes to sleep, when I lift the lid, it wakes up. Sound simple, but (at the time at least), Linux couldn't do that. I have kids and a real-world job and a bunch of other things that want my time, and fooling around with computers just to make the simple things in life work is not an option anymore. USB was a pain in the ass with Linux, Firewire was a pain in the ass with Linux, and don't get me started with editing video for the grandparents. Linux simply does not have software that compares to iMovie and iDVD.

So yeah, maybe some ubergeeks I've never heard of switched. Whoopie. Back in the real world, the rest of us are pretty happy not having to screw around with configuration files for every little thing, because it leaves us more time to play with our children.

Isn't Mark an IBM employee ? Switching to Linux?

[hritcu]

I still get an IBM employee discount, which amounted to several hundred dollars.

Re:I switched as well

[enrevanche]

Vendor lockin means once you invest in Apple time and data in Apple applications you cannot easily move to another platform, i.e. you are stuck buying from Apple. Most Apple applications have proprietary data formats. If your very careful and only use non-Apple applications that are available on other platforms and chaning to a different OS is not difficult for you, you can sortof avoid lockin. I just checked an equivalent Dell to Apples entry level laptop, $699 vs. $1099. 60% more is not on par at all.

Mac nerds, not geeks who Switched

[wjv]

It may be intereting to note that these two Switchers are long-time (pre-OS X) Mac users, and were not part of the more recent and largely unremarked-upon migration of Unix geeks to OS X.

We were using Macs before they were invented

[ClosedSource]

Hey if these guys were using Macs as early as a year before they were first available, that is impressive. How do they like Apple's 2007 products?

Sponsor.

[CCFreak2K]

This article was brought to you by the letter X, some cogs, a swirly thing and a penguin.

POSIX on Mac OS

[Jaxoreth]

you must remember that the Mac was never a geek machine and did great and had terrific fan following -- in fact most geeks stayed away from the classic Mac because of the lack of a command line, stdin and stdout.

But there's always one who instead of avoiding Mac OS, writes a POSIX layer for it.

Re:This switcher's #1 annoyance: NO MAXIMIZE BUTTO

[blackdragon7777]

You clearly don't have a monitor larger than 19". I *hate* Windows for having a maximize button instead of a zoom button. I don't want firefox taking up the entirety of my 20" widescreen monitor when the content is designed to fit in a width of 768 pixels. Maximizing most windows to 1680 or more pixels wide is an INCREDIBLE waste of screen realestate. The zoom button is used to combat this and to have a button that will automatically resize a window to be the most efficient size for you. Also it is not determined at compile time. Load up many different sites in Safari and use the zoom button on them. You will find that the zoomed size will differ between different sites.

[ot] gratitude

[wild_berry]

Thanks for the info.

Re:I switched as well

[Fred_A]

Well, ok, there are some in the US, Canada (1), Japan (6) and the UK(6).

Wouldn't call Knoppix a distro

[Steeltoe]

SimplyMEPIS, Knoppix, Kanotix, to name a few. And they've done it for far longer than Ubuntu has done it....in-fact, I did a Knoppix install while browsing Slashdot before Ubuntu began to exist.

These are not what I would term "distros". Forget decent support, upgrades and the huge libraries of available applications. I remember installing Knoppix some years back, and then trying to upgrade via Debian while battling many Knoppix-specific bugs and non-standard ways of doing things. Finally, 2 years back I clean-slated and went the Ubuntu-way. Haven't looked back, and it's good to hear good news about Ubuntu now.

Don't get me wrong, the Knoppix system worked great, but I felt left out in the dark after installing it to HD. No source for the kernel was to be found anywhere, packages got outdated and removed while I strived to upgrade from Debian repositories, small forums/FAQs concerning HD-install, etc.

Making a painless and auto-detecting install sounds great. Even better is if the auto-detecting can be installed too, so cloning becomes even easier (X usually craps out). I clone alot to save time.

Well, duh: Pilgrim works for IBM now

[Nice2Cats]

Maybe it would have been nice for the OP to have pointed out, like Daring Fireball does, that Mark Pilgrim now works for a company called IBM. Last time I looked, they didn't make Macs. Now, why am I not surprised anymore that he switched to a ThinkCentre [sic]? He even says in the article that he gets an IBM discount. What's the guy to do, run Windows on the thing?

I'm told that Coke frowns on their employees publicly drinking Pepsi, too. Or try showing up to work at GM with a Honda.

Re:Well, duh: Pilgrim works for IBM now

[Displaced Cajun]

Or try showing up to work at GM with a Honda.

At eh GM plant in Arlington, Tx, if you have anything other than a GM, you cannot park on the company lot. You must part outside of the lot and walk in.

Under The Bridge

[wild_berry]

And as an aside, it's beyond ironic that a recommended fix for a Linux b0rkage is to dig out an ancient Win98 boot disk to save the day. I mean, how lame is THAT?

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I said that the Win98 disk restores the MBR so that Windows alone boots. It's not a fix for 'Linux b0rkage' but a way to get rid of Linux from the system: it destroy GRUB and makes the computer only start Windows. Other replies to my post tell me that more-recent versions of Windows have the same capability in their System Restore functions, but the point was to help mad.frog retrieve a usable computer without having to spend hours reinstalling Windows.

Re:I switched as well

[Tei]

Try Nexuiz (Quake3 Arena feel) and Tremulous (TeamFortress feel, with more RTS and FPS added :D)

Let me know when....

[AgNO3]

Ubuntu runs Final Cut and Photoshop. Its great that I can run Maya and Shake unsupported on Ubuntu but uh I still need access to AE, Illustrator, Quicktime, my kona 3. I have Kubuntu on my PC but i am booted into XP most of the time. None of my color grading tools run linux. Hmmm Seems like most of Apples market can't even switch to Linux. Windows we could switch too. (shivers) Did you all see the announcement that the commercial version of WINE will run in OS X 10.5????
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/06/30/crossover/ index.php

Publicity Stunt or Just Sour Grapes?

[Absentminded-Artist]

So Cory's latest purchase is a Lenovo with Ubuntu instead of a MacBook Pro because he doesn't like iTMS DRM? And Mark's upset at Apple because he doesn't backup his iPhoto or iTunes databases and somehow open source software is going to be impervious to that? It's a free country, so they can do what they want, but I wonder if this is a tempest in a teapot - not a sign of impending doom. Corrupted data is common on all platforms and if one doesn't like iTMS DRM, don't buy music there. Rip CDs instead.

I guess these final straws are non-events for me. And I'm skeptical of their public switching. Seems more like a publicity stunt to me.

The Difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Pilgrim is a Mac developer.

Cory Doctorow is a Mac user.

Nobody should care what Cory Doctorow thinks.

Reason for switching doesn't make sense

[LKM]

I've been thinking about Pilgrim's reason for switching, and for the love of God I can't figure it out. Basically, his argument is that he wants to get away from proprietary formats. I understand that. I want that too. And I have it for most formats. I'm using OpenOffice, my mail is stored in mbox files, my images are PNGs, my music is AAC (not exactly open, but a standard).

And I'm using a Mac.

There's a problem, though: if I make a movie, it's locked in iMovie's format. If I burn a DVD, it's locked in iDVD's format. If I make music, it's in Garage Band's proprietary format. If I buy music, it's DRM'd. What to do? Switch to Ubuntu?

Guess what, I do have an Ubuntu box in my living room. Problem is: There's no iMovie for Ubuntu. There's no iDVD for Ubuntu. There's no Garage Band for Ubuntu. You can't buy music from major labels on Ubuntu unless you use questionable russian sites. Sure, I could switch to Ubuntu. That would get rid of the remaining proprietary formats. It would do that because it would get rid of my ability to make movies, DVDs and sound.

Yes, there are appliations which run on Ubuntu which allow you to do that stuff. No, you can't compare them to Apple's stuff. I know it because I've tried. Pilgrim himself says the same.

Re:Reason for switching doesn't make sense

[screeble]

Your comments make me wonder if you've ever used Garageband for more than five minutes. Format conversion is easy!

All you have to do is save a full bitrate AAC into iTunes. Then, you change your encoder setting to AIFF, WAV, MP3 or AAC and then right-click the file and convert to whatever format you desire. As long as you're going from lossless to lossless codecs you can choose any number of open source tools to do secondary conversions to whatever oddball file format you wish.

DRM'ed music is only so until you burn it and re-rip the file. To me, this is only an issue if you plan on circumventing licenses. (Want to get the song on another Mac? Pssst... OurTunes or iPod hidden directory digital hole.)

I can't really comment on iDVD as I've never had occasion to use the program but I'm sure there are similar ways to get around proprietary formats.

Wow. I'm impressed. I'll switch, too.

[w4rl5ck]

No, wait. I'm using MacOS X and Gentoo Linux (different jobs, different tools to handle them!) - and I'd not change that as of now.

I don't see anything with MacOS X which hurts me. Nothing, really. So why change?

Gentoo is giving me the creeps right now - compiling for two days, because I did not update *anything* since about... 2004 - but it's still the best Linux flavor for bleeding edge low level develompent, IMHO.

Let them be lucky with Ubuntu, I feel perfectly save with MacOS X right now.

Main reason: drag&drop installation of programs. And Drag&Drop REMOVAL of the same applications. There might be configuration artifacts in the system, but the executable is organized in one "file", and I really LIKE that.

Don't think Ubuntu has anything alike.

I wish I had mod points right now!

[Builder]

I love your response... It is exactly what the Linux community as a whole need to learn to do to further their aims. You've been polite, helpful and not railed on about anything being the user's fault for not working out how to fix it. Lovely!

how many of u would buy mom or grandma a ubuntu pc

[Anonymous Coward]

none of u who are sane. osx is just plain superior for most people. linux is a chore for anyone who isn't into learning a whole bunch of stuff just to run an os:P

[ot] I wish I had mod points right now!

[wild_berry]

You're kind. Thanks. [blush]. Excuse the buzzwords, but I'm sure that the collaborative nature of Free Software/Open Source means that each person should use their knowledge to benefit others. Trying to be helpful like that has parallels with writing good, clean and free code...

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that cunt Doctorow does, do the opposite.

It is a good thing for non nerd OS X users

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if they switch to Ubuntu, they can stop making nerd propaganda to Apple and software companies.

For example there are GUI wrappers coded in Applescript for Unix commands which care about maintenance of your OS X system. People while they know 100+ keyboard shortcuts of Adobe apps or AVID, doesn't want to SPARE TIME to Terminal. Yes, they aren't stupid, they just don't have time or they don't see meaning of typing a command on terminal vs clicking it on a GUI wrapper.

If you look those programs feedback, there will be always people saying they are lame, stupid and people using them are lazy. No, they don't have too much time in their hands messing with same sudo command over and over.

So, they go to Ubuntu, we stay using Onyx, Yasu, Cocktail and mess with those 15 h264 quicktime snippets we must put on that commercial site instead?

Peace for all :)

Seriously, OS X loses if it becomes "geek only" OS and at last Apple decides to be a iPod and music company only. We would see a slashdot story saying "Apple gave up OS X, becomes iTools for Windows company" along with couple of "I knew this was coming" nerd RIPs and they move on...

What would we have in hand? Only commercial Mach/Unix based alternative to Windows: Dead.

Re:Why must it be one or the other? Why not both?

[squiggleslash]

Because often the issue is Mac OS X. In Pilgrim's case, the increasing closed-ness of the platform and his belated realization that closed platforms have repeatedly harmed his work during the 20-25 years he's been an Apple user are the issues here.

I, personally, have made the same decision, switching back to GNU/Linux from Mac OS X a few months ago. Mac OS X has a great GUI, but there's virtually nothing else (compared to GNU or the *BSDs) to commend it for. GNU/Linux has major problems, but I'm never going to have an issue that requires money to be spent and data to be lost to fix.

Hey asshole, it's called "helping". And you're not

[Kristoffer Lunden]

Hey asshole - yes you. I am a Linux user - exclusively so since several years in fact (first Gentoo then Ubuntu), and before that I've been using it in parallell for more years. Thanks to that, I am in a good position to help clarifying what it would mean to make the switch.

As I work with lots of graphics artists in my daily job, I know exactly what almost all of those would say if I told them before the switch that yes, they can run Photoshop... only to reveal later that I meant Photoshop 7. To these people - even those who actually does not need anything more - this is a big deal. So, better be up front about it than taking your fanboy road of name calling and insults when out of arguments.

Now, my way my stop someone from switching today. Your way will stop someone from switching forever.

You nuts?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've wasted a large number of thousands of dollars on Apple hardware that died immediately out of warranty. (iBook, two iPods, two Mighty Mice, and my old 17" G4 iMac was flaky but still works most of the time).

As long as people like you refuse to refuse to buy equipment from such companies they will continue to sell shoddy equipment and deny support. Six bad experiences and you still apple your life?

No where near the same class

[Oz0ne]

Ubuntu is one of the more cohesive and polished linux desktop distributions, but it's no where near the league of OS X, or even windows XP. People switch to linux because it serves a specific task they need, or for the novelty. It's still lightyears behind on useability. I've been using Linux since 1994, and it's come a long way, but it hasn't really closed the gap any since the mid to late 90's, it's just been keeping pace since then with still a huge gap between.

Re:No where near the same class

[Ash-Fox]

Ubuntu is one of the more cohesive and polished linux desktop distributions, but it's no where near the league of OS X, or even windows XP.

OS X needs a lot more polishing than most Linux distros. Heck, just to view hidden files you have to type in a secret command, kill finder and restart it. I hate having to look for GUI settings which are often stored in XML files (no graphical settings utility todo most of the settings -- this is why I prefer KDE) that you have to edit by hand (or use a 3rd party application which is usually not upto date).

Most of those settings requiring logging in and out, others requiring you to restart all together. People tell me Macs are great for movie editing. Here is my expirence, it is very difficult to get iMovie to use a modern 'standard' format such as MPEG2. To even install codecs to get the proper support you need to reboot the Mac each time. I have never had todo this under Windows or Linux (I use Kino and Cinelerra).

People switch to linux because it serves a specific task they need, or for the novelty.

It's far more usable than Windows and MacOSX for me. I can't stand not being able to simply change a simple setting on MacOSX without having to figure out some strange configuration format and then having to reboot. I dislike how finder will lock up when it's accessing a filesystem (be it a network one) that contains two file of the same name but different case. Apple have had YEARS to fix this.

Then there is Windows, which lacks simple features such as keeping a specific Window ontop of others. It's file manager (explorer), in my expirence is horrible to use, using it for browsing your network is a big no-no, unless you want to freeze up your entire desktop. The start menu being inoperable when it's scanning the local network for.. whatever it is. The activation in windows is a big turn off for me, it's increased the problems for me when I use a non-cracked copy (I always have a legitimate license). Setting up a machine to run nicely under a limited user, while being able to access things like the control panel items without having to login and out takes a lot of time. Even so, I've expirenced a WMF exploit while browsing a folder that elevated it's privillages to the system level and spread malware all over. These kind of things should not happen at all.

I've been using Linux since 1994, and it's come a long way, but it hasn't really closed the gap any since the mid to late 90's, it's just been keeping pace since then with still a huge gap between.

I wouldn't say that, the DEs have improved considerably, the hardware support is now becomming insanely good -- I don't even expirence the issue of needing a kernel module each time I plugin a new device. As Mac users like to say, it just works. Cameras, mp3 players, scanners -- they all work, while the same hardware *requires* that you install the drivers under Windows before use (and some of those, don't work at all on the Mac). Wine has come a long way too, Wine is now at a stage where you can try almost any program, and game, and there is a good chance it *will* work. This really closes the gap for those people who want to migrate from windows.

I've used Linux for years (mostly for running a webserver, free mailserver etc), but only in the last year have I ever used it as my primary desktop OS.

Re:No where near the same class

[squiggleslash]

I love OS X, but at the same time, having switched to Debian recently, I can't say I'm missing any major functionality or seeing anything that isn't user friendly. And if it's "not much worse than OS X", I'm amazed you even consider XP comparable to Ubuntu, let alone better. The default install of XP on my Thinkpad doesn't even allow access to your file system without either resorting to the command line or right clicking various obscure areas to get your "My Computer" icon to appear. Windows Explorer didn't even appear in the Start menu.

Leaving the specifics of a pre-install aside (and before arguing all the complaints about Windows lie in bad pre-installs, remember that installing it on a bare PC leaves you in just as much driver hell these days, if not more, than most GNU/Linux distros) Windows is diabolically awful these days. People put up with it because it's what they're used to, not because it's inherently more user friendly than the competition. I have absolutely no problem, assuming the software is available, with the notion of giving my computer-phobic mother a pre-configured modern GNOME based system. It's clean. It's user friendly. It's relatively secure (albeit in large part because of the marketshare, but yeah, Windows needs its userland cleaned up, I'm hoping that'll happen with Vista), and it has substantial software support. And there are fewer legal issues. What's not to like? How is XP in any way more cohesive, polished, or just plain better?

Re:I switched as well

[Millenniumman]

You're just looking at the US website (Which also happens to be the worldwide website), there are Apple stores in Europe, South Africa, and probably other countries. Go to the bottom of Apple.com and go to the country you live in.

WPA works for me

[denjin]

It just worked out of the box for me. WPA-PSK with AES off some cheapo linksys 802.11g bridge.

Now, I find all the rough edges annoying in Linux, but at least it all works so far in my experience. :) There were some WPA issues earlier, but the gnome-network-manager stuff fixed them for me (they are default now, right?).

Just for the record.

[jotaeleemeese]

My first Linux production desktop was set up in 1995 (Slackware).

I had email, web browser, newsgroups reader, document processing was very simple so it suited my needs. I saved my employer a good amount of money on a time we were cash strapped.

Re:Why must it be one or the other? Why not both?

[sporkmonger]

Eh, that's not -entirely- true. OS X does have a few things going for it beyond the aesthetics, most of which are directly related to the design of Cocoa. Ever notice that, with a few exceptions, almost all text areas in OS X can be spell-checked? I am so going to miss that feature when I make the switch to Linux.

Of course, that said, you pay for that kind of convenience by having to write code in Objective-C. IMHO, Objective-C requires an amazing amount of kool-aid to be palatable. YMMV.

My mother is 67.

[jotaeleemeese]

She is running Ubuntu.

She was computer illiterate 3 years ago.

New meaning!

[Anonymous Coward]

You just gave a new meaning to "forking"!
I laugh at you people who claim forking is bad.

Re:I switched as well

[NMerriam]

Most Apple applications have proprietary data formats

Factally correct, but misleading. While several Apple apps maintain their configuration data in a specific optimized binary format, they support exporting the data in XML and other open, easily readable formats. There is no "vendor lock-in", assuming you don't buy anything with DRM. The idea that iLife apps somehow lock up user data (or configurations, like playlists or user ratings) is pure FUD, easily disproven with even a cursory use of Google.

heck, if you wanted to, you could easily write or download an Applescript or perl script to back up most of the configuration data to the files themselves as metadata, by using the abilities built into the application and 100% blessed Apple themselves.

Re:I switched as well

[analog_line]

The best way to get games to run on Ubuntu is to either buy a TV card and plug a console into it, lower your expectations a bit, or do a bit of digging.

You're probably going to hear a lot of people wax on about Cedega here, but I'm not one of them. I've tried Cedega several times (and transgaming still spams me with their "news" every so often) but every time I have it's been money down the drain. The games I'd want to play are either so old or sold so few copies that it is impossible for them to ever garner enough votes to get any critical bugs fixed, and even if there aren't critical bugs, the annoyances are generally legion.

The best solution I've found to gaming is to just use my consoles for 90% of it. I admit, I'm a bit of a gamer, so I have all the current gen consoles, a Dreamcast, and an assorted pile of other stuff including a SNES with no power adapter (if someone has one they're willing to get rid of let me know!) There's a lot more quality just letting the computer alone and turning to the conveniently placed TV. One of these days I'll invest in a decent TV card and just move the whole operation to the computer and clean up a bit, but for right now, I don't need Windows, or Ubuntu, or MacOS for 90% of the gaming I do.

Other than that, if you go looking, there are a fair number of ports for Windows games done by the developers (or people working closely with the developers). Neverwinter Nights is the most popular one, I would imagine, followed by id Software's entire game library (as long as you have the resource files from the original discs). I believe Quake 4 has had its Linux version released by now. icculus.org is a source for some other ports, and also a way to explore a bit more in that area. Also Tux Games is a good place to find games packaged for Linux. I've never bought there, so I don't know if you get a normal installer or a seperate disc with the binaries, etc, but there are some interesting old games in there now that I'm actually interested in getting again. You're going to pay more, but it all goes to support more games being released for Linux.

Lowering your gaming expectations can also be helpful too. I've gotten an awful lot out of Angband, NetHack, etc, over the years, and all those run quite well under Ubuntu, as well as just about anything other OS with a display.

GES - Gentoo Emerge Syndrome

[Anonymous Coward]

When you emerge your life away with devorce and diminished IQ etc. you can comw to be resentful. I know if I spent all the day whacking off over my emerging, I'd be pretty sick soon and make up for it by using the most user friendly system - arguably a MAC...

You should learn to use the "clit"

[AHumbleOpinion]

"No mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard like is found on the Thinkpads or the Toshiba Tecra line."

Oooh, I would never trust a computer with a clit.

Someday, when you get some experience with one, you will learn to love it. Learning to operate it truly is the best way to move things in the direction you want. Good luck and have fun.

Re:You should learn to use the "clit"

[bursch-X]

Well, you know I have learned that there are things beyond clits that are way more fun to tinker with...

Re:You should learn to use the "clit"

[AHumbleOpinion]

Well, you know I have learned that there are things beyond clits that are way more fun to tinker with...

I apologize, I did not consider folks with alternative orientations. ;-)

Re:You should learn to use the "clit"

[bursch-X]

I actually was talking about vaginas, maybe you've heard about them before...

Re:You should learn to use the "clit"

[AHumbleOpinion]

I actually was talking about vaginas, maybe you've heard about them before...

Recall "Learning to operate it truly is the best way to move things in the direction you want" from an ealier post? I guess your head never made the connection. ;)

Some experiences

[glas_gow]

At present I'm running a dual boot powerpc mac with Ubuntu, and, of course, OS X. While I was excited at first, I soon became a little wary of the powerpc versions (and I've found this using powerpc debian also), because I was getting some weird results with software I use regularly. For instance, using Snort, same versions, same config file, with Ubuntu as I was using in OS X, would not trigger alerts on certain events. I tested this using pcap files with know alerts. I'm not sure if its something specific to the debian powerpc derivatives or whether its in the powerpc kernel tree or what. So I'm back using OS X for most things. Because, while Linux has a greater range of tools available for it than OS X, I simply cannot trust them to be working adequately on the linux distros for powerpc architecture.

Use case

[SuperKendall]

FAT32 is not a good file system. Use NTFS if you want some stability. It is a journalized file system (well mostly) just as Mac OS 10.4, 10.3 and even 10.2.8 (if you enable it) have. You're running on an NT kernel, use it right.

I know NTFS is the better choice under Windows, but I need a filesystem readable and writable both under XP and OS X. Unfortunatley, FAT 32 is pretty much the best option as far as removable storage is concerned...

If you install and uninstall software all the time you will have problems. The registry doesn't scale well because there's crap left over. Also, who knows what source you're getting the software from.

If I don't install and uninstall software all the time I will lose my job, as it's part of that - I consider keeping my job more important than keeping my registry minty-fresh. It's not fair to say "just don't do that" when what you are doing is no nessecary... it's like a doctor reccomending to elimate all liquid intake when a patient says it hurts to swallow. For a lot of people this is just not practical advice.

I already know just how horked the registry gets during a lot of installs/deinstalls, which is why I dislike the registry so very much.

I do not get viruses simply because I do not install untrusted software on my system and i don't open emails from people i don't know.

Did I say I get viruses? No I did not, on either XP or OS X. However the mechanisms in place around XP to ensure that remains so are more cumbersome in terms of system resources used than anything on OS X.

I'm not downloading and installing Gator and retaed things like that chap that wen't on a spyware binge. I'm installing evaluation software of various sorts for work.

I didn't buy a cheap 300 dollar system and expect perfection though. I have a dell precision workstation with a dual xeon 2ghz (precision 650). Its as reliable as my wife's powermac. I'm still running on the original motherboard unlike her mac. (well logic board on that end)

If you want anecdotal evidence I've had a mac laptop for five years now with all original componets - and my mothers work compuer is an even older Powermac 450 that is still going strong and running OS X at a good clip.

Statistically, Apple computers hold up better than other makers computers.

It's the software stupid.

[aristotle-dude]

Nerds are canaries? Please. The nerd demographic has much different needs than the rest of the user base. Ignoring that this story is FUD and an advert for a linux VAR, the average user cares about what precompiled software is available. They also care about cross platform interoperability and having native software running on their machine. The average user is not interested in ensuring they have all of the required dependencies on their system. Does linux have anything like the concept of .app packages? Is installling and uninstalling as easy as drag and drop? Are the directories organized logically? No, No and No.

Face it, linux is not ready for non-geeks. We keep on hearing about how "this year", linux will be ready for the desktop year after year but the real problem is not a technical one. The problem is the attitudes of the developers of linux and how they do not give a damn about the potential needs of others with regard to ease of use and functionality. There is too much scratching of their own itch going on.

These guys just don't get "it".

[Jerk City Troll]

Yes, they have some good reasons for not wanting to use the Mac, such as what they perceive to be lock-in. Then they blame data corruption for who knows what reason on Apple and parade this as a reason to leave the platform. (Nevermind they have certainly experienced data loss on every platform they've ever used.) Whatever.

But you go into their details on how they can get the same functionality from Ubuntu, and we are witness to a firehose of complexity. Add this repository, run that shell command, and use this set of a half-dozen disparate tools to get a task accomplished. I suppose casual users who aren't hackers are expected to do all this just to watch a movie or back up some files? Ubuntu “works out of the box” with all this additional effort, and the one guy still goes on to write:

I stood in the Apple store last weekend and drooled over the beautiful, beautiful hardware, all I could think was how much work it would take to twiddle with the default settings, install third-party software

Is this guy serious? At this point all I can really write is that this guy is a self-contradicting, whiney little bitch. These guys are the archetypical tactless nincompoops who wander into computer stores and harasses sales people with irrelevant questions that they could not possibly have any reasonable response to and harp endlessly on details that they, as end users, ultimately should never care about. I got over that stage when I was 16 and these days and my concern has become getting things accomplished and not spending untold hours fiddling with inane details (servers excluded).

Re:Two users! try Ubuntu!

[Anonymous Coward]

Try it! You'll like it!! Really! This is the one and only operating linux system that can install on the original ext-2 filesystem that can absorb a sudden power failure and come back, come back quickly, and with no ill effects time after time after time. That is saying a lot. Caldera/SCO's (lot)lizard installer can quickly install linux, but the very first time the power fails for any reason or it 'somehow' shuts down 'abnormally' its to the operating system and ALL your data---and that is with any SCO system (why'dja think that they'd rather sue their customers than continue to sell a system that never works). Red Hat systems built on ext-2 will come back, but take forever to come up do the endless bad inodes it finds on a power failed system. The Hat is better than SCO in that the Hat usually never comes up with 'kernel panic' like SCO consistantly does. Mandrake installs will fail in ext-2 systems on a power failure, and in releases before version 8 they were down for the count, but they had a french twist to it. You had available a set of 'magic keys' that you could use to rescue yourself, but only a stone expert could effectively use them. For most of us, these keys only meant that you wasted a day playing with yourself and getting the repeated irrrepressable irresistable urge to boot the thing next time with real boots before getting down to the business of re-installing your 'operating system' and holding a short funeral for your data. SuSE had the best system. It could ALWAYS boot an 'unbootable' installation that was somehow unreachable from LILO or Grub by using the boot feature of the system CD. If you did not plan, however, your data could still be lost. Ubuntu, the Warty Warthog version, never failed on a power failure. And that is really saying something.
And you windows addicts, windows has a long and inglorious history of failures. I know! I used to be a wing-nut and nobody knows that system like I do. Never took the 'A+' test or became a micro$$$certifiableNUTjeneer but have had every windy package since 2.1! They ALL crash! Only for different reasons. PC magazine used to run a column called "abort - retry - fail". You can find all kinds of windows war stories. One nutcase took a .357 to his 'pooter out of frustration with windows. Windows 3.1 would not load about 30 percent of the time. That was good cuz win3.0 bombed over half the time on loading. Win 95 would fail an installation if you changed even a joystick!
They all fail to this day if an application crashes hard enough, even XP the notorious spy. No linux system ever came to me programmed to allow outsiders...no not only allow but INVITE outsiders.. to remotely control your system.

Re:I switched as well

[delire]

Come on, give me better reasons to choose Linux over OS X.

I must be bored. Here goes:

No systemwide package management. It's 2006 and I still can't install software on OSX without having to go to websites, download big *.dmg's producing duplicate libs all over the place because OSX doesn't put sane dynamic linking to practice. Yes, Fink is broken and terrible.

No system-wide upgrades at the click of a button (or via commandline).

It's 2006 and OSX doesn't have virtual desktops out-of-the-box (Desktop Manager which I used instead is rubbish, barely configurable and shareware).

OSX is slower on the same hardware.

OSX has a default terrible bash implementation.

OSX costs per upgrade.

I can't take OSX 'with me' should I need to move across architectures, from machine to machine; Linux allows me to work in a familiar environment across many different computers.

OSX is now proprietary down to the kernel. Should I shockhorror want to fiddle with a kernel optomisation or compile a new kernel module, I'm stuck with Apple's reccommended homogenous configuration. The scientific and film industries will be turning off OSX in droves as we speak due to this.

OSX has an inflexible, click-heavy window management paradigm.

The Finder. Why are my program windows so lost that they need to be 'found'?

Re:I switched as well

[Phisbut]

Why ?
Why should there be one tool that does everything ?
Do you actually need your box to do something else while you play a game ? Does it matter that you have to wait 90 seconds for the machine to shutdown and reboot ?

Dual-booting is not only about having to wait for the machine to reboot. Having a full install of WinXP whose sole purpose is to play games means that quite a big chunk of my hard drive needs to be dedicated to the OS. Plus, everytime I reboot, I lost my bragging rights about uptime ;-)

And as mentionned in another reply, rebooting sometimes interrupts a long download or such.

Re:I switched as well

[Phisbut]

I'm going to be nit-picky here and refute your argument on the grounds that you unfairly claim that Ubuntu is a poor distro for gaming when the game examples you cite are for another platform.
[...]
Before saying that linux/ubuntu is a bad system for games, why don't you actually try some linux games first?

I did not *claim* Ubuntu was a bad system for games, I just said that my attempts so far were unconclusive, and I was actually seeking advice. I know some commercial games are only available on Windows, and it does suck that the publishers don't want to support Linux. I won't keep me from wanting to play those games, and to try to do so on Linux if possible.

but let's say you're a carpenter and that you want to hammer in nails but the tool you've selected is a saw. Then you go on to say that the saw is a poor tool compared to the hammer.

I was replying to someone who said he was a gamer and he switched to Ubuntu. So I figured that gamering is easier now on Ubuntu than it was in the past, and I was inquiring about his experience. Using your analogy, he said "I hammered some nails with a saw", and I replied "What kind of saw? So far, my saw has failed to hammer a nail".

You must be joking...

[spykemail]

Why exactly is TWO people switching operating systems a news story? I'm sorely tempted to write a "10 people switch from Windows and 5 people switch from Linux to Mac OS X" article. It happens every day.

Re:I switched as well

[LincolnQ]

I agree that the Mac application install process is problematic, but I really like the .app system, and I think I can explain some of the drawbacks that you listed above:

1. The program is a standard .app folder, which means it has to come in some sort of wrapping, such as dmg. User opens the dmg file and sees their app, opens it, and sticks it on the dock. The app is never really "installed", but takes much longer to start up and run, and takes up a bit more space, than if the user had copied it to the Applications folder like they were supposed to.
2. Having 50-100 downloaded images loop-mounted all the time can't be good for your computer or your boot time. It's worse if you're a smart user and dragged the program to your Applications folder, but never bothered to eject and throw away the image. You now have two copies of the program for no real reason.

Well, for most people, the .dmg ends up on the desktop. I think most users who download applications learn some variation of the process -- you download an app, run it from the .dmg, and see if you like it. If you like it, then you drag it out of the dmg into the applications folder, and eject/throw away the dmg. The drawback is that Apple never really tells you that this is the way to do it -- you just sorta learn it, I guess.

3. When you decide to uninstall an Application, you drag it to the trash, thus leaving all the cruft in your home directory completely untouched. This also means that you can no longer do the trick of uninstalling and then reinstalling an application in order to completely wipe out the settings, which can be useful if the settings are so badly screwed up that you can't change them from within the application anymore.


This was one thing that took me a while to learn when I started using Macs: deleting the prefs file. Almost always, the app will store its state in a file in ~/Library/Preferences, and you can move away the file for your app and see it start up again just like new. For some reason, I get the feeling that old-time Mac users are used to this process in some shape or form. I don't know where you're supposed to hear about it, though... I eventually picked it up reading macosxhints.com.


4. As far as I know, dmg has no internal compression, which means you often see apps packaged as .dmg.gz or .dmg.bz2, or even .zip or .tar.gz/bz2. Every one of these formats leaves behind traces that you must pick up, often more than a downloaded .exe on Windows. Take the .dmg.gz -- you have to eject, then delete the dmg and the gz file.


This one boggles my mind because I know that dmgs DO have internal compression, and yet I see this all the time as well. Maybe the compression is just not very good, or something. Actually, I think it might be optional, now that I think about it... good question.


5. An Application package isn't really an installer anyway. If you need things installed somewhere else, or if you need a script run on install, you either have to do it every startup (making sure you haven't "installed" already), or you have to make an installer.


I think Apple encourages this style of application development -- having a "first-run" code path for your app. That way you can easily move .app files around, between machines, or get rid of your home directory, change users, etc., and everything will still work. The app is not encouraged to store global state -- only state for a particular user.

Mac Packages are nice (.mpkg), but it has all the same drawbacks (dmg, gz, etc), and now there's...
6. No uninstall.


The thing that bugs me is that developers who port apps from Windows-land tend to use them because that's what they're used to, even when they have a stupid app that doesn't need anything installed anywhere special. The

Bring back the trackball!

[Civil_Disobedient]

No mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard like is found on the Thinkpads or the Toshiba Tecra line.

While I'd rather have a mouse-clit than a trackpad any day of the month, any month of the year, what I'd really like to see is a hardware manufacturer bring back the trackball. I hate the faked "acceleration" on the eraser-like pointers and I detest the lack of general ergonomics.

A trackball can be easily cleaned, it's response is quick and absolute, it doesn't take up nearly as much space as the trackpad, and you don't have to worry about all the potential trackpad accidents*. I could never understand why they did away with it.

* Biggest trackpad gripe: typing a bunch of text, then accidentally swiping your palm--which because of the hardware designer's idiocy naturally rests directly on the trackpad--which causes a bunch of text to be selected. Of course, you're in a typing frenzy, and it happens so quickly that you continue typing, overwriting all of that (unhelpfully) selected text. Oh sure, there's always UNDO. That's a perfectly cromulent solution.

Re:Bring back the trackball!

[bjohnson]

"Biggest trackpad gripe: typing a bunch of text, then accidentally swiping your palm--which because of the hardware designer's idiocy naturally rests directly on the trackpad--which causes a bunch of text to be selected. Of course, you're in a typing frenzy, and it happens so quickly that you continue typing, overwriting all of that (unhelpfully) selected text."

Or just click on 'Ignore trackpad input while typing' in the OS X trackpad preferences. Honestly. I'm pretty sure my 1994-era Powerbook 540 has that choice...

Re:Bring back the trackball!

[Civil_Disobedient]

Or just click on 'Ignore trackpad input while typing' in the OS X trackpad preferences. Honestly. I'm pretty sure my 1994-era Powerbook 540 has that choice...

Ah, the Mac. Yeah, I was actually talking about the other 90% of laptops out there. And I honestly doubt you were using OSX in 1994. Honestly.

Re:I switched as well

[Descalzo]

You were right. I installed Dapper last night, and it was like a happy dream. Long, but happy.

Re:OT: Wow!

[savala]

Thanks. :)

I think it's safe to say that your average consumer doesn't have any idea who these people are. But your average techie probably does, and they (we) are the ones who'll be set thinking because of it, and even if it doesn't convince us, we in turn will probably help turn the theme of open data into enough of an issue to finally be picked up by the media and consumers.

Software gems

[whalewatcher]

'm following this with interest as I'm also changing to Ubuntu now that XP's going belly-up periodically (it probably can't stand the fact that I've turned off the automatic updates and it demands them back, or else)

The Boing-boing entry refers to an essential software list on which I particularly loved the recommendation for the web browser:

'Mozilla Thunderbird. It's just like Evolution, except it's intelligently designed.'

Re:Ubuntu *saved* me from switching to OSX from XP

[aristotle-dude]

It is that good? Really? So Dapper magically provides you with all of the software that you want and fixes all of the UI consistency issues that plague most linux distros? Amazing, truly amazing.

Maybe you like to stare at your desktop or tweak settings all day but some people like to use software that is easy to use to get stuff done. The beauty of OS X is that it comes with tools like Interface builder that let you whip up a webkit browser or a to do list app in a matter of minutes without any coding. If you have an idea and a couple of hours to spend, you can create useful app yourself without writing a line of code. Does linux have anything like that?

When I chose OS X, I was attracted by the software available on it (both commercial and free) from Apple and third-parties. While OS X may not expose a lot of functionality to the user in the finder, anyone with some programming knowledge is free to either extend or replace the finder with something better. Take http://filerun.info/ for example. That looks like a promising replacement for the finder that offers a great deal more functionality for power users. Another alternative is a product called Pathfinder. The tools to create that type of software is available free with OS X and the documentation is also free through the developer site.

Re:I switched as well

[Fred_A]

and I don't want to mess around with extra partitions.

Frankly if this is the kind of stuff holding you back, Linux is probably not your OS of choice. No offence meant but this is dealt with tranparently with pretty much every distro except mayby LFS...

Every Apple story is.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you honestly beleive that there are no Apple employees posting to this forum proclaiming how they love Apple and OS X or that many of the stories that appear on Slashdot are actually paid-for advertisements? You are extremely naive.

Re:Mac nerds? Not UNIX

[aristotle-dude]

OS X is descended from NeXTStep which was a unix-like OS with POSIX compatibility, a unix type shell and unix commmand line tools and a Mach kernel. However, it is not UNIX.

The main file system structure for OS X, with the exception of /etc is different for other *nix OSes. The /Library, /System, and /Applications folders are in no way related to the directory structure of other unixes or unix-like OSes. Even the /Users/ folder is not a direct analogue to the /usr/ or /home/ folder on other unix OSes. It is not even necessary to install the BSD subsystem in order to have a functional OS X installation and the only reason you would need to install it is to make use of free software that uses it or for the developer tools. Software written to only use the Cocoa or Carbon libraries does not require the BSD layer in order to function.

Having said all that, OS X does offer the standard *nix directory structures such as /etc, /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin and so on but it is not recommended that third party software install files into those directories but rather that it be placed in other directories.

Re:I switched as well

[Eideewt]

It's not holding me back. :) I've done the dual-boot thing on multiple systems, and I still have Windows lingering on this laptop. I occasionally reboot to play a game. That's how I know I don't enjoy it. I don't like having read only partitions (ntfs) sitting on my drive, since they require me to have yet another partition, this time FAT, to use as a staging area. Either that or use a Windows ext3 driver of questionable quality. Even though I can use my FAT partition to move files to Windows, what if I've forgotten something? Now I get to reboot, copy it to the FAT partition, reboot, move it to where I need it, and finally make use of it. This state of affairs is in no way preferable to playing games under Linux, which is what I believe the other choice was.

It's not that it's hard to set partitions up, but it's a pain to use them when your OSes can't both read and write to all of them.

Re:Hey asshole, it's called "helping". And you're

[killjoe]

Why don't you go crying to the OSS developers and see if they can make wine work for any release of photopshop. If that doesn't work then you can piss on them on slashdot like all other photoshop trolls do.

"Now, my way my stop someone from switching today. Your way will stop someone from switching forever."

Who cares. I don't. Last thing I want is a bunch of people who stole photoshop to start using linux and start complaining that the finder is missing or that IE looks weird.

you're right

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, applications matter a great deal. Unfortunately, OS X ships with almost nothing, and a lot of UNIX applications don't run on it at all, or don't run well.

None of the applications you mention matter to me. But a lot of the applications that ship with Ubuntu do, and they aren't well supported on OS X. So, as far as I'm concerned, applications are another reason to prefer Ubuntu.

Hey, I decided against a Mac because of...

[PotatoHead]

these switches.

I've been running IRIX and an older release of Mandrake for quite a while now. Took me quite a while to work all the bugs out of the Mandrake system. Once I got it right, I didn't mess with it.

Fast forward to today. Decided to build a new machine and migrate onto it. I'm at 90 percent in only a few days with Ubuntu. That's huge honestly.

Anyhoo, I still want a Mac, but not quite as bad as I thought I did. Really I wanted a Linux machine that was easier to get up and going. I'm one of the geeks, who can do this stuff, but chooses to spend his time elsewhere.

The Tim Bray punchline

[SteeldrivingJon]

The Tim Bray punchline is that whatever he switches to, it most likely won't be his employer's OS.

issues with the reasoning.

[aquowf]

now, according to some, i am just a stupid kid. so take this post with a grain of salt. i started out with dos. as time progressed, i bought myself windows 3.1, and eventually journeyed to 98 and xp. then i became tired of my computer's instability (i am not saying that all windows machines are unstable, just the one that i built) and installed suse linux to dual boot with xp. that was pretty cool for a while, but eventually i became tired of non-commercial software (I didnt have the spare time to get half of those free programs to work) and that whole driver issue. So, i bought an apple notebook. Now, i use all three operating systems. I may spend the majority of my time on an apple, but i boot up in windows or linux for the occasional progam that i need, or to fulfill the desire for a geek moment. my point: an operating system is an operating system. nothing more. you run programs on it. most operating systems may behave very similar, but there are always subtle differences and nuances. people will choose their operating system based on their desires and needs, not because of a passing fad. i have switched operating systems because of what i want in a computer, not because of what my next-door neighbor is doing with his computer. this may seem obvious, but it cannot be understated. apple has lost two customers. most people will not switch to ubuntu because they saw two guys do it, mac os X is the operating system which they use (for things that other operating systems often cannot do) and have grown accustomed too.

Re:Mac nerds? Not UNIX

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Having said all that, OS X does offer the standard *nix directory structures such as /etc, /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin and so on but it is not recommended that third party software install files into those directories but rather that it be placed in other directories."

Other directories such as /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/etc, etc.

Looks like Unix to me.

Under the hood

[Argos Avatar]

My switching to apple has paid off immensely. I wasn't forced to open the OS's hood everytime i wanted to go downtown. Unexpectedly, a month ago i changed jobs, and went to the Fraunhofer institute (the inventers of mp3) and found my new double processor pentium with a linux installed. As i had been out of the circuit for a while, i had expected all sorts of annoyances or having to edit property lists, configuring modules, having driver problems and the like, along with not having my sweet eye candy of expose.
The linux was in fact ubuntu.
I am selling my mac.

I guess this says it all

[Lars T.]

Welcome To Crazy Ubuntu Rumors Site!

Summing up

[mangu]

I think your explanation of Mark Pilgrim's reasons can be resumed like this:

"I used Apple in the past, because it seemed to me it was the best alternative to Microsoft. Now that Linux, through Ubuntu, is finally Ready For The Desktop, I decided to switch."

Re:Summing up

[Weedlekin]

If that was what Mark intended to write, then why didn't he do so instead of trying to make out that he was forced into the position by Apple's behaviour, when said behaviour isn't any worse (and in some ways is better) than was the case when he was still telling everyone they were the bee's knees? I don't see this article as an advocacy piece for Linux from a Mac user who has switched because Ubuntu is as good as or better than OS X -- instead, it reads like a missive from a jilted lover who is justifying an affair with an uglier one by listing all the things that were wrong with the the other.

NB: I am not for one moment asserting the Ubuntu (or any other distro) is in any way inferior to MacOS X. My point is merely that Mark's article (to me) reads like _he_ doesn't think Ubuntu is as good as OS X, and is only using it because, after publicly burning his bridges with Apple, the only other realistic alternative would be Windows, which has all the same things he's been criticising Apple for, plus a whole slew of other issues.

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are these guys anyway?

Re:Hey asshole, it's called "helping". And you're

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a loser.

Re:Mac nerds? Not UNIX

[aristotle-dude]

It is unix if you install the BSD subsystem but as I said before, the BSD subsystem is not a required component and not everyone will choose to install it unless they run software that requires it (mostly unix ports with or without a GUI). Applications written to only use Cocoa or Carbon will not balk at it not being installed.

Re:Ubuntu *saved* me from switching to OSX from XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't use Ubuntu but yes, I do magically have access to all of the software that I want thanks to APT. I use Gnome and the only UI consistency issue that I have is with K3B since it's the only KDE app that I use. Your complaint is like someone saying they wouldn't use a Mac since some software doesn't have the Aqua look and feel. I'm OK with a variation with one piece of software that I use.

iLife is what Apple is all about, not hacks.

[bandmassa]

I would say iLife and iPod are the Mac's reason to be, not nerds. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it doesn't matter that some people are switching to another OS (and Ubuntu looked like a fun thing to play with when I had a toy with it last year), but what is there on any Linux like Garage Band, iMovie and iDVD. Yeh, there are more powerful apps, but none so easy for those functions. (My expertise being mostly Garage Band, Logic and Audacity, but also some iMovie and Final Cut.) Frankly, if anybody thinks they'd rather use Audacity over Garage Band likes to do things the extremely hard way for the sake of it. Can't see this causing a mass exodus to Ubuntu.

Re:I switched as well

[SilentChris]

It really doesn't compare... at all.

The only way to properly run Windows games (unfortunately) is to dualboot. That's why I installed Bootcamp on my Mac. Parallels is nice, but you'll never get full fps on something like that.

Not a bug with tagging itself

[WilliamSChips]

Instead of "notfud" people should be using "!fud" which cancels out a "fud" tag. Perhaps "notfud" should be linked to "!fud"

Re:Mac nerds? Not UNIX

[ClosedSource]

My point was that it doesn't make much sense for nerdy UNIX types to switch to OS X if they didn't have any use for the orginal Mac OS. The less UNIX-like OS X is, the stronger my case.

So I doubt the claim that the Mac's demographics has changed all that much.

Apple's Situation

[treak007]

Most people do not want to spend a lot of money on a notebook or desktop, especially if they could be buying a much better notebook or desktop for the same amount of money. Apple notebooks and desktops are very expensive, mostly because if you want to run OS X, you have to buy the hardware from Apple, therefore no competition = monopoly = they can charge whatever they want. This high price discourages new people to switch to OS X (would you pay 2k for a notebook with an os you have never tried before??) and also makes current mac users give in to the temptations of Linux in the fact that its very similar, free, and will run on even some of the cheapest notebooks. In fact, I have seen KDE setups that looked almost identical if not the same as OS X.

If Apple doesn't want to lose more people, they should try more competitive pricing or at least make some incentive to bring the Mac users back to Apple.

Runs != stable

[bigtrike]

Many apps run under wine. Very few last long. How many minutes between crashes for Photoshop?

Re:Count me in. (my version)

[Fallingcow]

Ubuntu will only get better with time anyways!

This is the amazing part.

Ubuntu's on, what, its third major release? Since Hoary (the one before the most-recent), it's been the best distro that I've ever used. My past experience has been primarily with Mandrake, Debian, and Gentoo (in that order, chronologically), and I've at least tried ALL of the other major distros, including the recent, much-touted releases of SuSE.

Ubuntu went from nothing to being miles ahead of everything else within a year or so. Dapper has managed to make even more improvements. In a few months, it's slated to have a mostly-stable working hardware accelerated desktop (it can already to it, but it's not exactly stable, and it sometimes looks a little bit off, but it IS damned impressive-looking most of the time).

I know that it built off of the work of the Debian devs, but it's still an impressive feat. Mandrake/Mandriva built off of RedHat's work, and they've been doing it for years, yet Ubuntu has rocketed ahead of them in a much shorter time. Incredible.

Re:I switched as well

[Fred_A]

That's why I had this simple solution of treating Windows as a Playstation, then you don't really have to worry about forgetting something in your Playstation since there's nothing worthwile there anyway :)

OTOH I understand better not wanting to waste space on a laptop where disks are smaller and it's not easy to add one, I hadn't considered one could be used to play games on...

Useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ladies and gents, here is the reason the mainstream will never adopt linux. Amazing. Simply amazing.

I can't believe no one mentioned Omnigroup yet

[Nutrimentia]

I'd consider switching if OmniOutliner, OmniGraffle, and OmniWeb were available on Linux. But they aren't, so I won't.

You're completely missing the whole point

[LKM]

I'm afraid that you're completely missing the whole point of the argument. Yes, you can export all those things to standard formats. But the source files aren't standard. If you export your Garage Band music to AAC, you're destroying your ability to edit the file. Your tracks are gone, it's become a single-track stereo audio file. If you convert an iTunes store file to unprotected AAC and remove it from iTunes, you're also removing all of iTunes' custom metadata; if you export from iMovie to MPG (or whatever), you're again losing your tracks, your titles, your ability to make changes to your movie, and so on.

That's the argument here.

These are proprietary formats, and you can only use (as in read, edit, store) them as long as you keep using Apple's tools.

Nerds Switching from Apple to Ubuntu? Nope

[papason]

I just moved from Kubuntu to OSX, not looking back either. Much better.

Re:I switched as well

[Eideewt]

Usually it's more that I forget something Windows-only on the Linux partition and don't have it when I need it. It's not really a space issue for me, since I have a 100GB drive which is ample for my needs, but I'm sensitive to clutter. When it's in my computer anyway.

I like the idea of Windows as a Playstation though. Er, Xbox, I guess. I'd be very interested if Microsoft decided to introduce a version of Windows intended solely for playing games. No interface but a menu listing your games, and maybe a file manager. If I've got to have a seperate OS for games, it might as well be pared down so it only does that (minimal interfaces are somewhat a fetish of mine). I don't suppose there's much of a market though. It would never make it to general purpose computers running Windows, and most of the comparatively tiny *nix and Mac users wouldn't want it anyway.

re: old Mac to new Mac

[King_TJ]

Yeah, I'm aware of the Mac's ability to migrate your info over from an older Mac to the new one. That's a pretty cool feature, too. Apple didn't always include that with OS X though. I forget exactly when it was rolled in with new systems, but I know I had the very last model of the G4 tower (dual processor 1.42Ghz mirrored drive-door version) and OS X on it had no such feature. I'm almost certain my original G5 dual proc. 2.0Ghz tower didn't include it either.

iMac G5 nitpick

[miller701]

bad capacitators with the iMac G5 Now we have the best (worst?) of both worlds. A "low-end" iMac crossed with a "first-generation" (and only-generation) iMac G5. (Revision B was the Core Duo model.)

Actually, there were two revs of G5 iMac the original thicker, more user servicable one and the second rev that was thinner, harder to get into and had a built-in iSight. Core Duo are Rev C because the G5 iSight had 512 MB soldered on, Core Duo went back to 2 DIMM slots and of course, the Intel switch.

iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

"I didn't by universal rights to the music. I bought it for reasonable personal use. I understood that when I bought it."

You've been suckered, hook line and sinker. This is *exactly* the reaction that the RIAA wants.

What has happened, without you understanding, is that you've given up the rights that you *already had* for *less* rights that include you *not owning* the music. That means you didn't "buy it", you only bought access to it, so long as iTunes approves. Go back and read your copy of the 1976 Bern copyright convention as approved by the U.S. Congress. You just sold *all* of those rights for a $5 discount, think it was worth it?

Re:I switched as well

[WinEveryGame]

I go on a break and come back to find all of this - being classified as a troll, my slashdot Karma downgraded...Argh..

Well, there was no need to do all this detective work. My affliation with this vendor is very clearly listed on the "About Us" page of my website. They provide my hosting and domain service. Which is also the reason why they showed up in the whois query (I have asked them to change this, since obviously whois information is the authoritative source for associations and interpretations here....).

Since I had nothing to gain with the posting, I didn't clutter my comment with all of my interactions with the vendor.

As far as your comment on my experience with various operating systems, that is a cheapshot and I don't think is worthy of a response.

Re:I switched as well

[WinEveryGame]

Please see my other posting on this topic.

Re:Is this just pure advertising [NOT]

[WinEveryGame]

It would have been good if you had taken a step beyond reading the posting of the anonymous coward. It is telling that he/she chose to go out of their way to provide selective information which lead to all this interpretation. (anyway you can read my response to that posting).

What is perhaps unfortunate is that some folks decided a smear tactic to cut out the message, instead of providing their opinion openly.

Re:I switched as well

[WinEveryGame]

If you feel so strongly about this, why not take an extra step beyond what couple of anonymous cowards wrote.. perhaps an email to me for an explanation..(please see my response to the first posting which started all of this.)

I didn't want to be part of a religious battle, and it looks like I became part of one. No community wins, if this is the way to muffle others' comments.

Re:I switched as well

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well, for most people, the .dmg ends up on the desktop. I think most users who download applications learn some variation of the process -- you download an app, run it from the .dmg, and see if you like it. If you like it, then you drag it out of the dmg into the applications folder, and eject/throw away the dmg. The drawback is that Apple never really tells you that this is the way to do it -- you just sorta learn it, I guess.

Then there's the problem of no uninstall again. Throwing away the DMG/mount isn't enough, it still leaves the stuff in your homedir.

This was one thing that took me a while to learn when I started using Macs: deleting the prefs file. Almost always, the app will store its state in a file in ~/Library/Preferences, and you can move away the file for your app and see it start up again just like new. For some reason, I get the feeling that old-time Mac users are used to this process in some shape or form.

Maybe. I doubt it. But really, think about the equivalent process on Windows -- delete the Program Files, delete from your Profile dir, delete from the Registry, and hopefully you've got everything, but probably not.

I just don't trust it. Fortunately, there's only one app I'll have to uninstall soon...

I think Apple encourages this style of application development -- having a "first-run" code path for your app. That way you can easily move .app files around, between machines, or get rid of your home directory, change users, etc., and everything will still work. The app is not encouraged to store global state -- only state for a particular user.

And that is exactly the problem -- no global state. And, of course, that's assuming you really do have everything in the .app, which isn't always the case. I'm not sure where Tunnelblick goes, but it uses ~/Library/openvpn, and it has to be setting something somewhere to have it open its menu on login...

I remember installing a similar program once, and had to follow a fairly complex process to get it off. Think of the old Quake3 joke. To install on Windows, just double-click, to install on Linux, do a ton of archaic commandline stuff? Well, to install on Mac, just double-click, but to uninstall, you'll have to do a ton of archaic commandline stuff.

Besides, isn't moving the .app file around between machines a bad idea? And if you change users, it should still be able to pull in some global state, even if most of it is local.

The thing that bugs me is that developers who port apps from Windows-land tend to use them because that's what they're used to, even when they have a stupid app that doesn't need anything installed anywhere special. Then, as you mention, there's no uninstaller, and I want to get rid of it -- is just removing the .app actually uninstalling the thing?

Exactly. Why the hell does Yahoo Messenger need an mpkg?

Mpkgs, I think, are only intended for system-level stuff (installing libraries, kernel extensions, etc.), and not for applications at all.

And that's why. Installing libraries, as they are defined on Windows and Linux, should be part of the install anyway. It just seems stupid to statically link everything, but I guess it's better than the alternative -- OS X dll hell has got to be the worst, which would be why no one uses dlls (or a .so) on OS X.

I mean, really, why couldn't they have just done the Ubuntu thing and made a wrapper for apt? They could even have the wrapper behave exactly like "drag app to Applications to install, drag from Applications to Trash to uninstall".

It was stupid of Apple to leave out uninstallation, and I'm amazed they haven't added it yet. I'm assuming it's in development because it's ridiculous that it's not there.

Mac geeks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real geeks build their own version of Darwin from source ... at least we did

Re:Mac nerds? Not UNIX

[Pope]

IIRC, that changed in 10.4; the "BSD Subsystem" isn't an option anymore, it's a mandatory install.

Canary

[chord.wav]

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.
You mean like a fuse? The first to die?

Re:Is this just pure advertising [NOT]

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, the past tense of "lead" is led. Look it up. Lead (pronounced "led") is a metal.

But What About...

[frye]

What about the concerns that Lenovo will not support Linux, and that
China may be bugging Lenovo PCs ( although this may be paranoid )

"Lenovo To Shun Linux"
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/ 04/0415221

"US Government Fears China Bugs Lenovo PCs"
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/22/04 36250

Re:Is this just pure advertising [NOT]

[blonde rser]

I am sorry if you feel hard done by by the comments and moderation but I think if you calmly consider the chain of events you'll come to the conclusion all of these actions were reasonable and predictable. First you wrote a comment that read like an advertisement (at least to me). The term "it really felt like an upgrade" is just one of those market speech phrases that sticks with you. However at that point I (nor anyone else that I noticed) accused you of anything. But it was enough to raise suspicion. Then when I read the ac comment that just seemed too weird so I checked for myself. Sure enough, the Administrative Contact was a Chandler Kant (a pretty unique name). So now I have a suspicion and this weird fact that seems to support it.

So what is this "step beyond" that you are are referring to? You commented in another message that you would like to have been emailed. Well the reality is you posted to a public forum. The most reasonably place to respond to such a message is in that same public forum. I wasn't just responding to you but commenting on your comment to the other readers of the article. If I had sent an email and waited for a reply my comment would no longer have been topical or read. And where's the fun in posting an unread comment (reading and posting is all about the fun remember... no one lives and dies by their karma).

Also I'm not sure how the information presented is selective. He (or I) could have checked the "about us" of the website in question but really that would have just led to more information, not less, linking you with LinuxCertified.

Let's assume for the moment that I am somehow obligated to do the "right thing" when it comes to responding to your message (I'm not after all. I'm just some dude wasting some time by taking part in a conversation on slashdot). What is worse, accidently falsely accusing someone of spamming for their company, or not commenting at all to the first comment moderated at 5 which is more than likely spam (I say more than likely because I sincerely believe that the vast majority of the time that you see a glowing review of a company from someone who can be linked to that company - even if that link is just having their website hosted by tha company - that you are looking at spam).

I'm also not sure what these "smear tactics" you refer to are. Are you referring to all the people who modded your comments down? Isn't this response a little predictable? I'm not saying this response was necessarily right or any of that wisdom of crowds crap. I'm just saying that when a whole bunch of people do something, whether you agree with them or not, it is usually not a surprise that they are doing it. Like how it was never that hard to guess the top answer on the Family Feud. Couldn't you figure out that once it got posted that you had some sort of association with LC that people were going to mod you down. It seems kind of silly to complain about something that you could have predicted was coming and probably could have prevented.

Feel free to respond to me at

steven <dot> noble <at> gmail <dot> com

. It makes more sense to me to post any responses on /. but if you prefer email I am fine with that.

ps It still seems likely to me that you work for LC (or at least you are close friends with someone who works for them)

Ubuntu, redhat and other experiences; my view ..

[freaker_TuC]

In 15 years I've been playing with quite some operating systems; DOS, OS/2 (active betatester), GEM, Windows 1.0 till xp-hell and definitely a few unices. My main selection 10yrs has always been Slackware. In Europe it was not such an easy way to get a hold on any unix; sure not when being in the age where 2400 baud modems where getting "a hot thing to have". I've been early fidonet and bbs activist and I also remember in the early 90's a lot of things happened, OSF/1 was released which was based on Mach and BSD. I guess it would be one of the pioneering effords around the open-source revolution? .. I've been through a lot of textwork; elvis, pico and nano sessions and every session has been till now a bliss text-based. I've programmed a lot text-based and also for the graphics/sound cards like the (real) Soundblaster, Gravis Ultrasound and other cards.

Windows came with its "emulated MacOS"; they both had their own folder and file system, which is still one of the easiest/genuine user interfaces available. You've got your maps and you've got your files; which more is there to tell. The rest is a few menus which will bring you to your result. Although the Windows OS's became more bloated; more options where added; some where good and some where to the demise of a lot of its computer users. I stopped programming Turbo Pascal and Assembler when Windows 3.0 came out.

Everything became very graphically and user intuitive; to my personal believe OS/2 was far ahead with its user interface against its Windows counterparts; if they only continued believing in their own product.. Still, the unices did not follow the graphical market (with exceptions of Silicon Graphics and some others which where really optimized for the use of graphics) and they where happy on the server/telecom market as they where already proven reliable, (fast) and optimisable for their use.

The desktop market was always a battle, a battle which is based on eye candy (and user-lockins). Windows had the most bells and whistles; eye and ear candy, macOS started only at version 10 to be "graphically enhanced"; because; the eye wanted something more than the boring file look. There was of'course development near 1984 for the X11 server-client architecture giving the same as the "desktop experience" but still ...

everything I had on Unix, X11, Metro/X, Gnome, ... is nothing compared to the os X or Windows desktop experience. Take any manager and you got to fiddle with configuration files setting your resolution higher than 1024x768. Why? Why is it so easy on os X or Windows to change the screen resolution when you got to edit configuration files to get the same result on a unix? The same for network settings, try setting up your own videoplayer in 1-2-3; which will not happen unless -you got the experience of its underlying system; the unix-

My father is a long time computer user, my mother is too the last few years; still; My father will not touch any unix because he failed getting to the result which they desired to have; even with help; the maintenance of the unix, to get a different result can be higher; which is just a point-and-click away in a few other commercial counterparts like Windows and os X.

It's still a far way to go to reach the desktop markt; where the l(azy) user has to plug in the machine, turn on the power button, work, change its settings to a teletubbies colored desktop with bells and whistles coming from the back 2 speakers, with the crunchy fast process of installing and "deinstalling" software (which is in no way without hassle in Windows; which os X has solved quite neatly with its container system). No unix desktop has given me that thrill of easy maintenance. I've tried a lot of desktop (enhancer)s and Ubuntu is sure not a count

Keep digital data digital.

[argent]

Your comments make me wonder if you've ever used Garageband for more than five minutes. Format conversion is easy!

Not if you want to save non-audio tracks it isn't.

I ended up deciding that the cheapest solution for getting Garageband data out for my daughter was to upgrade her G3 iMac to a Mac mini... and leave it in Garage band. She was due for an upgrade anyway.

Re:I switched as well

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Reposting censored post:

1. 3x the price for hardware
2. vendor lock-in
3. vendor lawsuits
4. Linux is faster and has better hardware support than BSD based UNIX systems

Warning: Mail 2.x does NOT use mbox format ! ! !

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting away from proprietary formats is the single most important thing in computing! The ability to make movies, DVDs, and sound, is cool. But it's an iAbility. At least with these apps, it's hobby!

For my work, I need email. I need to organize it. I need to archive it. I need to search and read it in a few years. What I DON'T need is bloddy mail.app change the format of my 3000+ email archive without asking me ! ! ! !

When I was younger and stupider, it took me days to convert the first few hundred emails from Pine to Pegasus. Now, a few years ago, it took me even longer to convert the rest of them from Pegasus back to mbox. I'm not that stupid to go back to closed format again, thank you very much! As people are getting older, their data is also getting older. Older and more heterogenous. So getting away from proprietary formats is the only solution.

From a prosumer's point of view, Apple is heading in a dangerously wrong direction here. It's all about iThis and iThat and whow!, but they seem to forget the few people who actually work with these things! Proprietary mailbox format just because they couldn't get spotlight not to puke when searching an mbox directory? Fuck that!