Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon vs. Mac OS X Leopard

walterbyrd writes "Linux magazine has up a decent article comparing Gutsy Gibbon to Leopard. 'The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let's see how they stack up against each other.'"

Comments

Linux Mag?

[snl2587]

I don't think they would ever do it, but I'd like to see the same article in a Mac mag. I have a feeling they wouldn't be reviewed as equals, personal opinions aside.

Mac OS X still rules.

[Qbertino]

I'm a seasoned Linux user with nearly 10 years of experience. I still use it regularly and it's the OS on all my custom PCs. That said, I use OS X (Panther and now Tiger) on both my iBook G4 and my new Mac Mini. Setting up a mint system as a work enviroment takes half the time it does with Kubuntu 7. Hardware/Software integration being one of the reasons.
There are some other details. To be honest, I think one of the biggest problems I see is X. Not that X isn't cool with networking and 'runs on an old Irix box' and all that, but the weedyness of the X enviroment is starting to annoy me. Not only is modern style font management still a crampy thing to get running - the mere though of opening XF86Config to set modelines, gfx drivers and whatnot appears to me so bizare and strange, even though I'm still quite proficient in it.
Kubuntu7.04 still has serious trouble handling resolution switching and X allways intervenes with strange scrolling and zooming behaviour. Running a VNC server puts me right back to 2001, configuration wise. It's not only that, but X is symptomatic for some of the old stuff that Linux still carries around.

That said I do believe a well configured KDE + GTK2 combined with a well-designed theme and a well-balanced setup of stable OSS desktop gadgets can kick OS Xses ass up and down the street. It's just that you have to spend a week setting it up. Even for an expert like me that becomes tireing after all those years. Nevertheless, a regular PC laptop with a neat Kubuntu setup as my next piece of hardware isn't entirely rules out. Especially with a 17" MacBook Pro costing north of 2500 Euros.

Once KDE removes the last glitches, gets it's integrated koffice into fastlane and starts diving a bit deeper than kwin and fixing some of the X anachronisims closed source vendors are going to have a hard time selling their stuff. Slowly but shurely they're getting there. Until then - if Apple doesn't screw up - cheap macs like the iMac or the MacMini will still be the best bargain for solid enviroments built to get work done.

My 2 cents.

Re:My Macbook

[MightyYar]

Are you offering to come over and install it for me?

Re:Wireless support, huh?

[MightyYar]

which was just the cheapest card I could find, I did no research for compatability That's called "getting lucky".

I have a strong suspicion that the Atheros card came with a Windows driver, so I doubt that you were stuck without an internet connection for very long in XP.