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Ubuntu Linux vs. Mac OS X
An anonymous reader writes "An article on InformationWeek pits an Apple user against an Ubuntu Linux user (although he talks about other distros as well) as to which OS makes a better desktop operating system. As might be expected, the conclusion seems to be "different strokes for different folks," but it's interesting to see Microsoft cut (mostly) out of the equation."
Ubunutu is easy to install on a Mac.
Easier to read print version:t icle.jhtml?articleID=201002048
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableAr
crazy dynamite monkey
MS isn't out of the equation at all. The whole point of TFA is about switching AWAY from Vista.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Queue the flamewars in 3...2...1...
Seriously, religious wars aside, you pick the tool that will best meet your needs. That's largely going to be based on applications. Increasingly, there are good choices on both platforms here for a wide variety of different things. The one thing I will say -- if you're looking to do video editing, buy a Mac. 'cause the state of video editing on Linux right now still sucks. If you need Microsoft Office, buy a Mac.
For me, I do a lot of software development work and audio production. I could pick either platform, really, but lots of factors make me choose Linux over Mac OS X -- software freedom, hackability, and cost are my 3 biggest reasons. OS X is nice, don't get me wrong, it's just not for me.
My blog
the first part of the article states:
"If you're a Vista-wary Windows user who would rather switch than fight, should you move to a Linux distro or Apple's OS X?"
Why would they put MS into the equation?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
From the description I thought the Ubuntu user and the Mac user were going to fight to the death. Too bad.
Like Ubuntu versus Islam.
technical writing / development
Article bangs on the "mighty mouse" as not really being a 2 button mouse... ...while I am no fan of it, I recently hooked my Mom up with a new IMac and played with the mouse and the button on the side does right click and the knobby deal in the middle acts as a scroll wheel, at least it worked for me... ...and on my MacBookPro two fingers on the pad can accomplish same functions as a 2 button mouse...
AZspot
Take a look at the success of the iPod. The Slashdot community may not get the "lame iPod", but you can't argue with its success and market penetration. Nearly all my friends have one. I have one and I love it. Now how on earth are we possibly going to consider a switch to Ubuntu without having iTunes available?
Hey im new around here so wutzup. How about just have all three OSs?! I multi-boot with OSx86/WinXP Pro/Ubuntu/SUSE OSED, theres gotta be people out there like me that do this right? Why fight over which girl you want when you can just have them on speed dial and switch em when you need to?
I'm a skier, been skiing for over 7 years now and (if I dare say it) I'm pretty reasonable. I'm not an expert, but as long as it isn't icy moguls (or moguls for that matter) can handle most of the pistes ... and I enjoy it.
Now snowboarding looks cool. You can do things you can't do with skis, it certainly looks like fun and you can do some great tricks. So I gave it a go, several times. The problem was that here was I, standing at a resort with my snowboard on and looking at what I could do. The black down the mountain? Nope. The long red? Nope. The winding blue through the trees? Nope. The rubbish green which snakes past the lifts. Well, sort of as long as I didn't mind falling over a bit.
So here am I, completely unable to go off and explore the mountain because the tool I was using to do it, I couldn't use properly. I hadn't invested the time and the effort to learn and here was I, unable to get the best out of it.
So what should I do? Spend the next week (and only week of my holiday) falling about on a green run? Or slap back on my ski's and head off and explore the mountain, try all the runs, get to the summit and check out the blacks down the back - plus a little off piste?
I did what, I suspect, a lot of people did. I put my ski's back on. My weeks holiday in the snow is precious. I don't have the time and money to fly abroad to ski again multiple times a year so in the end I wussed out, picked what I knew was comfortable and that I could do and went with that.
I rationalise that my holiday was too short to be sitting face down on a green run when I could be taking full advantage of what the mountain had to offer. I did the training and the falling over 7 years ago when I was learning to ski - it's taken me years (literally) to get where I am now and, in one fell swooop, I don't want to go back again to that.
I think a lot of people consider Windows vs something else in the same way that I consider skiing vs snowboarding.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
See, those of us who enjoy using Apple products actually think of steps like that as a great leap BACKWARD. Sure, there are plenty of people who want to run an OS on whatever hardware they buy, from the latest-and-greatest to $150 crap. That's what Windows and Linux are for. Many people LIKE that Apple produces both the hardware and the software because it offers better integration. The more systems you have to support, the more stuff than can go wrong, pure and simple. Linux has come a long way with drivers, but last I heard it wasn't a piece of cake to install a wireless driver on a Linux-based laptop. (I'm sure someone will correct me, but be sure to include your definition of "piece of cake.")
When you do call up Apple support, they can't tell you to hang up and go call the maker of the box or Microsoft.
I realize that having clone-makers wouldn't dilute my choice to buy Apple hardware, but--and this has been said a gazillion times already--it won't happen because Apple values the user experience and subsequently wants to control it from top to bottom.
If what you really want is Apple's OS running on whatever box you want, maybe you're not clear as to the advanges of NOT being able to run it on whatever box you want.
Ubuntu, OS X, Vista, who gives a fuck, use what you want to use, stop wasting everyones time.
...only one leaves.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I use both Linux (Fedora Core: where Men are Men and modules are scared) as well as OSX (10.3.9 - yeah, I'm lazy - on a dual G5).
I originally got a Mac because that's where all the affordable non-Windows 3D/CG compositing software was at that time. POV-Ray I love (on occasion), GIMP I love, Blender, umm, I love in an S&M sort of way (which is why I eventually bought AC3D)... but there was no compositing thingy back then for less than ten zillion bucks, a'la Shake and Maya.
Anyrate - a few years on, and I use both quite happily together. I still use AC3D on Linux to do mesh, DAZ|Studio and Poser on the Mac, and NFS binds the two machines seamlessly.
I love using either one in spite of the diffs. I have a link to Terminal sitting on the OSX Dock, and once I got used to the 'not-quite-but-okay-yeah-it's-BSD' setup, it's been a breeze to script and poke around on with bash.
Truth be told, if I could run DAZ|Studio or Poser natively on Linux, I'd probably slowly but surely let the Mac fade and go full-on Linux (they sort of run under Crossover Office and Cedega, but the render times are murder). The reason why is cost-effectiveness. Yes Macs are actually fairly competitive hardware-wise, but I can more easily build a new box in stages (buy bigger CPU/mobo/RAM combo, then a bigger HDD, and who gives a crap about the case style as long as the P/S works...), instead of plonking down $2500 in one go. (I guess I could buy a Mac Mini and just mod the guts into a bigger case... Hrm. Never thought of that).
Anyway, for the foreseeable future, I'll prolly be using both, and I have no problems with that.
That said, I don't use Windows. I wanted a safer and more flexible OS a long time ago, moved everything to BSD and Linux, and haven't looked back since.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I have both ubuntu and a Mac on my desk at home. I use just one monitor. The are very much alike except for one big thing and that one big thing is huge. I can't run Photoshop or Apple's Final Cut, Aperture or even iTunes on my Linux system. The other thing is that Mac OS X will not run on my non-Apple hardware. So I use both.
At work I'm on Linux almost exclusivly with some things running on Solaris.
- We mustn't fight each other! Surely we should be united against the common enemy!
= The Judean People's Front?!
- No, no! The Romans!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
So how does this article say "different strokes for different folks"? It's clearly states that OSX is the winner for most people looking to switch away from Microsoft.
I switched from using Linux and Windows to OS X when the Intel Macs were released. I gotta say, it has been by far my must enjoyable computing experience.
... only to be different. Not to be better. I do not enjoy doing non-stop defrags, virus scans, etc. I out right refuse to work with Windows servers, no amount of money will change that.
... so, dunno yet) Linux has a lot to catch up on and so does Windows. The question is, who is going to catch up first. Without a doubt, I think Windows is dying and going down hill rapidly. I think OS X has a much stronger shot at being the new king.
I only really used Windows for a few games and certain jobs, I could never really stand using it. Besides all the common problems, it just never felt right to me. I didn't like the filesystem structure, or how MS was trying to be different
Now, on to the Linux world. I have been using Linux for a very long time now. I think its by far the best server platform (for me). However, Linux fails on the desktop part. Lets face it, having access to a billion different desktop managers is nice and all. However, there is gross incompatibilities with config files, for things like bookmarks, menu items, etc. Its hurting Linux more then anything.
Moving on to the day to day installation of applications, upgrades, installing new devices, etc. Linux is by far the worst, even MS is better in this area. I couldn't image someone compiling video drivers for their kids computer. Every single application has its own way of installing, and they all install differently and in different locations. OS X has by far the best method, either drag the icon from the disk image or run the *standard* installation application. Lets also face it, Linux doesn't have the creative applications that were mentioned in this article. Photoshop, Final Cut, iTunes, etc. (and no, Gimp is NOT a replacement for Photoshop) The fact that Linux is also a community effort is going to hinder its success on the desktop.
Now, on to OS X. By far a million times more stable then WIndows. Equally as stable as Linux. Shares some of the same benefits as Linux, such as tighter system security, no defraging, no spyware scans, no viruses scans, etc. Where OS X shines is that the GUI is really nice and simple. OS X does have a slight learning curve if you are coming from another OS. However, my grandmother had no trouble getting "on the internet and surfing" where she had never been able to do that with a Windows machine. People complain about that top menu bar, but over time you learn to love it. The dock is also a great way of having your most used applications with quick and easy access. I don't need a giant applications menu. Lets face it, we all have quite a few applications installed that we use once in a while. No need having it in a giant menu.
Yes, people also complain that OS X only works on Macs. (Sure, some hardware besides Mac works, don't know how well) Guess what, thats a good thing. I think this is the reason why its so stable. Apple knows what hardware it will be used on and how to use it properly.
All in all, OS X works perfect for me for a desktop and Linux for the server. (However, haven't played around with OS X server yet
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And I have to say that Ubuntu is pretty disappointing, even compared to other Linux distros.
File/print sharing is impossible to setup through the GUI (even though the GUI will let you tinker and give you the impression that samba is supposed to work). You have to edit smb.conf radically to get anywhere. Luckily I have a running Xandros Linux system that produces working samba configurations that I can copy to Ubuntu.
Once you basically get sharing working, the GUI still provides no convenient way to actually mount shares.
OS X has all this covered in the GUI, and quite elegantly too.
Security: Ubuntu is very poor in this area and I do not recommend it for any laptop user who is not an IT expert. They only recently got WPA working, and the rest of the OS lacks standard firewall, VPN and disk encryption configurations. In OS X, these capabilities are built-in controlled with the click of a few checkboxes.
As for other Linuxes, SuSE also covers the above essential features although samba is rather awkward (at least it is workable). Xandros covers these features in spades (especially samba). Unfortunately both distros are now in bed with Microsoft and I am helping a friend switch to Ubuntu as a result.
I'll only touch on the mishandling of widescreen monitors and getting different sound apps to coexist-- these are typical Linux maladies. The rotten sound architecture alone (where access implies an exclusive lock on the sound card unless special precautions are taken by the app programmers, the exact opposite of how audio should be handled on personal computers) pretty much makes Linux ultimately unsuitable for 70% of the desktop users out there.
The Ubuntu "just works" philosophy seems to operate on the assumption that ease of use is achieved by avoiding any features that might possibly cause problems or confusion. IMO the clean interface lulls people into a reverie that raises their tolerance for all of the frustration and CLI work they'll be lured into. Granted, a GUI ought to be clean, but also must be capable, and Ubuntu's does not achieve the latter.
I'm afraid you all have it completely wrong...
Windows is like a mid-size luxury SUV. Apple is like a Fox Terrier. And Ubuntu is like a Pomegranate. Except, not in the *same* analogy, of course.
Don't you get it now?
My bicyles
I'm a developer who works with a team of around 50, I've noticed a growing trend within the group that more and more of us are switching to Mac's for our personal computers . I made the switch about two years ago and the only thing that I have missed is the PC gaming (though I assume with the new Intel's that issue could be resolved). OS X has allowed me to customize my system to the extent that I choose and having the UNIX backbone allows me to continue to check out OS projects out there, I usually go through http://www.macports.org/ I still continue to have a separate box for Ubuntu, though I am planning on buying a new Mac Pro desktop in October with the release of Leopard at that point the Ubuntu box will go to the Wife so I can trash her P.O.S (HP Box, she bought it before we were married 'Because it had a pretty blue light'...which I hate). As far as those who "hate" Macs, I just think they haven't given it its fair shot because they might become Mac fans and then have to fork out the $2500...I know its expensive but its worth every penny.
To Vista from Unbuntu, I could not be happier.
Insert Signature here, or not.
I am blown away by the fact that the Mac OS X reviewer failed to mention SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner on the page about backups. They linked to a page that mentions it, but it should have been at the forefront in big, bold letters. This IMHO is one of the best features of Macs and Mac OS X, that any idiot can make a clone of their entire system onto any internal or external media. If that media is a FireWire hard drive, the clone will be bootable on any Mac with a FireWire port (and the same processor type, PowerPC and Intel can't boot from each other's drives without some hacks). This means that for any PowerPC Mac going back about 8 years to the first iMac with a FireWire port, you will be able to clone the system drive of any other PowerPC Mac onto a FireWire hard drive and boot from that drive on any other PowerPC Mac in that range. The same goes for Intel machines, although they can also boot from USB devices. (There are reports that some PowerPC models can also boot from USB drives since about Mac OS X 10.4.5 came out, but FireWire is a much better choice speedwise anyway.)
So if your hard drive dies, you have a bootable backup that works just as well as the internal drive (if you're using FireWire, USB is a little slow). If the computer dies and you have access to another Mac, you can boot from your backup drive and it will be just as if you were still using your own computer, barring any extreme differences in memory and processor speeds. With enough RAM available the processor speed makes very little difference under general usage like web browsing, email and office applications. When you get your computer fixed (or replace a failed hard drive) you can then clone your backup drive back onto the drive in the computer, reboot, and it's like nothing ever happened. Click a button, walk away for about an hour, and get back to work.
With a properly implemented cloning schedule you can recover any system, including a Mac OS X server, in about 5 minutes (as long as it takes to restart the computer, hold down the Option key, and choose to boot from the latest backup drive). I could teach a monkey to do it.
No resetting hidden magic identifiers.
No reinstalling a hundred different drivers for different motherboards, video cards, network cards, etc.
No, "I'm going to refuse to work at all because there is too much different hardware." (I tried to Ghost a Win2K system from one laptop to a virtually identical laptop once. The clone failed to function, ended up having to reset the registry and reinstall most of the pre-installed software.)
No, "This copy of your operating system needs to be reactivated because the hardware changed, you dirty pirate." The non-server version of Mac OS X doesn't even require a serial number, so of course there is no product activation crap to make your life more difficult. Even the server version can be freely cloned and moved to a different system. It requires a serial, but there is no product activation.
No shutting down the system and booting from some special magic CD just to do a clone. That's right, Mac OS X can be easily cloned LIVE, while it's running. It can be cloned automatically on a schedule, so the user doesn't have to even have to think about it.
The target media can be smaller than the source media, as long as there is enough room for the data. It's a smart clone, only the relevant data gets copied. That's all automatic too, the user never needs to go through any complicated preferences or command-line arguments. No need for defragmenting the drive or anything like that either.
In short, Mac OS X is the first operating system I have ever encountered where it is incredibly easy to make a complete USABLE system backup that doesn't require jumping through hoops for hours to restore the system. Any non-technical user can be told in one short paragraph how to keep their system backed up and how to recover from a typical hardware disaster in a matter of minutes. Observe:
"Here is your external backup drive. Her
I got exactly one result for this search: the parent comment.
That's simply not true - I use the right mouse button in all applications I use, and I notice almost no differences between my OSX, Ubuntu and Windows boxes.
Maybe you care to name a handful of applications which fall under your above mentioned category? Maybe I'm just getting you wrong or you haven't even used a Mac much.
(And about that middle mouse button - I have set it up with Exposé's "show all windows" feature, and that boosts my productivity with a lot of open windows *greatly*. Just middle-click to see all windows and left-click on the one you want to switch. I'm eagerly awaiting an Exposé clone for X11, it just ain't coming...)
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Who cares *which* crappy software is bricking the hardware? Would you care less if a virus/worm/trojan targeting OSX managed to kill your system?
The point is that if the hardware is lacking its own safeguards that's the hardware's fault. We didn't blame the software from Microsoft, Novell, Linux, or IBM for the Pentium F00F bug, we blamed Intel because it was a hardware problem.
My Toshiba laptop has a problem with overheating if there is too much dust collected around the CPU heat sink, but at 85 degrees C it shuts down rather than stays running to fry the CPU.
You unpack the Mac; plug the CPU into the wall socket;
Ok, unpacked ok. Got the CPU right here. Wall socket - doesn't look like it fits much, must be some weird adapter. I'll try anyway.
ARGH!!! It Burns!!!!!!
Damn Apple, I thought this was a real breakthrough - I'm going back to Windows 3.1.
... its quality.
There's nothing stopping anyone from installing and switching to Linux; the process couldn't possibly be cheaper or more simple. Yet few people try it out, and far fewer people (outside of first-year Comp Sci students) stick with it as their primary desktop. Why? Isn't it time to stop with the excuses and start looking at the software?
In the mid-to-late 90s, Linux desktop development could have started on one of two paths:
Of course, they (Gnome and KDE) went with the latter, the rationalization being that it would be easier for Windows users to switch to a familiar Windows-like desktop. (That it's much, much easier for developers to copy Win95 instead of designing something original is just a bonus, I guess.)
The downside to this approach is that the Linux Desktop, as a Windows clone, offers few compelling reasons for Windows users to switch. The best the Linux Desktop can achieve is "almost as good as Windows" which isn't much of a selling point for people looking to get away from Windows.
The bottom line is that the Linux Desktop has not been, and continues not to be a compelling alternative for Windows users, even for those who appreciate having a good bash shell close at hand.
And it's a shame. Most of the features that compelled me to try out OS X were right there in NEXTSTEP as far back as 1993. Yet both Gnome and KDE decided to model their GUIs off of Windows 95 instead. Because of that, the Linux Desktop is as disappointing to me now as it was in 1998.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
It's really that simple, folks. I defy anyone to show me a way to do any of this so easily with Windows or Linux.
Carbon Copy Cloner is a wrapper around a command to make a disk bootable, plus a recursive copy.
That's all cloning *any* single-partition UNIX system takes. Linux is a bit more complex because they don't support single-stage booting so you need to run *two* commands to make a disk bootable, not just one.
The only reason you need a GUI program on OSX is because getting that "recursive copy" bit right is way too complex and tricky compared with the same operation on any other UNIX.
And it's a MAJOR step back from doing the same thing on classic Mac OS... *that* was a matter of a single drag in Finder, because they built that "make the disk bootable" operation into Finder. And they *still* haven't been able to make Finder copy all the fiddly metadata they keep whacking onto the side of HFS like a tumor.
Having worked with the entire line of Dell laptops and MacBook/MacBook Pro, I would say they best comparison to a current 17" MBP in the Dell world would be an M90 or XPS. The Inspiron may have the same specs, but the build and screen quality just isn't there. There is a reason these Latitudes are so much cheaper and you get what you pay for!
If you go for 15", a Latitude D820 built to the same specs as an entry level MBP 15" comes to within single digit percentages of costing the same. (If you include Apple Care, which you should as Dell warranty as standard on these things is superior to Apple's, otherwise the Apple is cheaper.) Again, anything less than a Latitude does not compare to the MacBook Pro on anything other than specs on paper.
iTunes was a BIG part of why I bought a Mac... My wife (not at the time) got an iBook for her senior year of school. She was taking mostly music classes, and previously was spending hours in the music library listening to the CDs there for class. She got an iBook, and the wireless worked flawless, and she could go into the library, grab the CDs, pop them in the computer, and auto-magically they were on her laptop in a few minutes. I got her one of the first iPods (when the wheel spun) as a gift, and she loved it. During the commute to class on the subway, she did her listening. It made her a HUGE Mac fan.
At the time, my work involved SSH'ing into Linux servers and editing in emacs. When it was time to replace my dying Compaq Laptop, I bought a Powerbook, in large part because of iTunes. I listened to music all day, and I had always used WinAMP and directories to manage my music. EVERY jukebox program that I had used sucked donkey balls, and hated them. I LIKED iTunes, it was simple, it was clean, it was elegant. Since my work computer needed to be a laptop for remote access, needed to run an SSH program (at the time, SecureCRT), and play music, the Powerbook was a reasonable option.
I since then have slowly fell in love with all the neat things that I can do so easily on the Mac.
Sure, I could do them all on a PC, but managing my digital media is so simple, I actually do it. We take pictures of the kid, plug the camera in, and iPhoto loads up and imports the pictures. Pick the ones I like, make an Album, and hit Export, and the pictures upload to Shutterfly and Facebook (people made free plug-ins for iPhoto). Wanted to send my grandmother a book of her first visit with her first great grandchild? Dragged some pictures in, hit "buy book" and it showed up at her house a week or so later.
All these things are COMPLETELY doable on the PC. But on the Mac, it's so painless, it's fun.
So much free or inexpensive amazing software. OmniGraffle is NOT NEARLY as powerful as Visio, but it's SO MUCH FASTER to use, it's really pleasant. I downloaded a few stencils for things that I diagram constantly, and away we go. BBEdit is an awesome text editor, and the built-in SCP/SFTP access is much smoother than anything I used on Windows.
Don't get me wrong, the Linux desktops offer some amazing power user features... but the Mac's aren't bad either. Tiger added a lot of polish and cleaned up some things that were missing (WebDAV not supporting SSL or Kerberos, etc.), and each release gets better and better.
Do I pay a price premium? Absolutely, because when I buy my Mac I buy a more functional machine than I would on the Windows side... but guess what, all those Firewire ports that I wouldn't have on a Windows machine... plus the camcorder in and suck out the videos PAINLESSLY. iLike is just plain fun. I've done a LOT of things on my Mac that I wouldn't have thought possible. Recorded someone's voice with a pitch, and we decided to put a slideshow in front of them. Built the slides, timed the transitions to match, exported to Quicktime, copied over the audio, and re-exported... no muss or fuss... didn't need to outsource it to a video guy, just got it up and running. Decided that we didn't want it in Quicktime, wanted it in Flash, bought a quick Quicktime -> Flash Exporter, quickly re-exported the files and uploaded them to the server.
None of these tasks would be impossible to accomplish on Windows or Linux with the right software, but on the Mac, it was all really easy, and the computer never got in my way. I plug a USB device in, and it works almost instantaneously. My Windows machines seem to want to pop up bubbles to chat with me about how they found a USB device and are figuring it out. I don't really care, do you know what it is or not? I ignore my Mac, it's in the background, and I focus on the application/task. The Windows machine always wan