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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[projekt2]

The same place OS X is in the server room.

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?

[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?

[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?

[epee1221]

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

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?

[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?

[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?

[Jesus_666]

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

~/Desktop/linux-2.6.17.3.tar.bz2

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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!

[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!

[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!

[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!

[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.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[tpv]

Wake me up when RMS buys a Mac...

Don't you know, RMS invented the eMac

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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!

[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!

[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!

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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.

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 :)

canaries

[pyrrho]

so Ubuntu is expected to KILL them?!!?

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.)

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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: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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

[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...

[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...

[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 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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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?

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.)

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.)

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:I switched as well

[ksheff]

what hardware are you comparing where the Apple machine is 3x the price of an equivalent linux box?

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:FUD much?

[The Ham of Truth]

I didn't read the part where it said they were having sex.

Re:OS X "invalidates" Linux?

[krakelohm]

OK Boys... whip them out and lets settle this once and for all.

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.

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: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.

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: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

[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 ?

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.

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?

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: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).

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 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 ;-)

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.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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

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.

Re:Why it matters

[NemosomeN]

Most painters don't host bitter hatred for upper level executives of paintbrushes they are not fond of.

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: 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).

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.

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.

Sponsor.

[CCFreak2K]

This article was brought to you by the letter X, some cogs, a swirly thing and a penguin.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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"

[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. ;-)