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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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!

[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.

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.

[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.

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

[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

[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.

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: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.

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

[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! :)

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.

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: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.

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.

I switched off ubuntu

[hfastedge]

I ran linux at home for over 6 years. On desktops and laptops.

First, linux requires so much configuration on laptops. Neither debian nor ubuntu could support acpi (aka SLEEP) on my laptop. CD-ROM support was annoying as I switched from kernel 2.4-2.6. I had to recompile the kernel so many times and I could never get acpi to work (not even dell supported it, just some hacker in france that never replied to my email bug report). Other annoying things: getting vpn through a windows PPTP server will take you a long as time.

Linux is a great thing for a desktop though, the hardware is pretty standard and theres less things to worry about.

Linux is best for a server, and best for a beginning sysadmin to run at home to learn more about the operating system that is run at work.

And while I will probably buy a macbook for my next computer, I hope to have the resources to also get a windows vista to play around with.
I really like desktop machines that just work in most cases. I've been running windows xp on my dell laptop for a few months now, and while its not ideal, at least i get easy vpn access, the ability to turn off zeroconf to get my intel wifi card working,although i do miss being able to simply edit my crontab to give me a streaming radio alarm clock that goes off at different times during the week.

Re: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: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: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.

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 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: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.

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: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: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.

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.)

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:Switching from Ubuntu to OS X

[BenjyD]

I count maybe ten in this thread already, and you can add me to the list of happy Ubuntu to Mac OS X switchers. I still have several Ubuntu or Debian machines around, but 90% of my day-to-day work is done on Mac OS X, with Parallels for the rest. Working on a Mac is a much better experience than Ubuntu ever was.

Re: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).

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: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: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: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.)

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.

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: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.

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.