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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.'"
I dual boot Mac OS and Ubuntu now and I have to say I found it far easier to install than previous linux distributions I've tried. That being said, it took me hours of work just getting it up to what I would consider basic functionality.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
A Linux magazine comparing Linux to the Mac. Gee, I wonder what they're going to conclude....
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
The article is slashdotted, so I cannot comment with knowledge here. That said, I do hope the fact that OS\X is artificially tied to a particular hardware platform is considered when comparing. This artificial anchor makes OS\X a particularly risky OS to become dependent upon, married to the economic ambitions of a hardware business now dependent on near identical components as so-called 'PC's' (Asustek, Quanta make around 70% of the worlds portables, including Apple's). Similarly the need to go to websites to find, install and upgrade software is also a great disadvantage for Apple's platform: Fink/Macports have fairly measley offerings compared to most desktop Linux distributions and both still suffer from the kinds of dependency problems plaguing Linux users 10 years ago (at least that is my experience on Tiger). It's 2007: where's my one-click-system upgrade?
While I use OS\X fairly often, these two factors - along with the inflexible bolt-on windowing environment - rule out OS\X as a good general purpose operating system. OS\X is super if you believe you're dependent on proprietary software, but for those that no longer are it offers very little over a modern Linux OS these days.
So, being based on UNIX ideas, wouldn't that constitute as being based on UNIX?
:|
Absolutely not! Were you asleep for the whole SCO lawsuit thing?
"...and getting better all the time?" Just a little positive spin there. Most people don't describe an OS as getting better all the time but rather "crappy now...and nowhere to go but up"
You know, if we'd been buying Apples crap all this time instead of PCs, Linux never would have had a chance. Apple are much more ruthless about locking down their hardware and software than Microsoft ever were.
Windows has a monopoly on a software method of jury rigging a bunch of hardware from different manufacturers into something resembling a modern computer. Apple turns the computer into something more resembling a television.
Apple aren't better than Windows when it comes to freedom and monopoly. Far from it, MS has always been the lesser evil, that's why they succeeded in the marketplace. Apple is a bullet dodged that is currently ricocheting back.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I'm so sick and tired of these comparisons. I really don't care anymore, whether it's Linux vs OS X, Windows, Solaris, or whatever. It's so annoying and I won't even read TFA.
Once again, we come to the conclusion, that different operating systems do the same things differently! Wow! Yet another person wasted another few days trying out two OS's rather than getting any real work done. So cool!
I move a window to the edge of my screen and it snaps into place at the last second so that it's exactly at the edge of my window. I can keep any window I want on top of or behind other windows so that I can work with two windows at once without having to constantly Alt-Tab between them or make them ridiculously small. When I browse an audio CD, it displays the tracks in a series of folders that shows me what the files look like ripped and encoded in all of the audio codecs I have installed ready for me to drag and drop onto my hard drive. When I zoom in on a jpeg, my photoviewer applies an algorithm to blow it up without pixelating it. When I want a piece of software I just pick it out of a list and it's there... oh wait. I don't remember any of that from using a Mac.
Okay, "Just Works" just like on a Mac... hmm... I put my thumb drive or a data CD in and the mounted volume appears on my desktop? Media just plays for me right in my browser? My music organizing software recognizes my MP3 player and offers to load it for me? No wait, it didn't care what brand I used. I actually had a much easier time mapping to a printer shared from Windows than any of the dozen or so attempts I've heard of people making on a Mac, but I'm willing to assume they were all nincompoops or picked a printer that wouldn't have worked for me either and call it a push.
But seriously, I can't hardly think of a Linux user-unfriendliness headache that I haven't seen dramatically improve in the last two or three years, at least not one I care about. If you don't believe me, try installing the new Nvidia manufacturer drivers. It prompted me to kill my X server first, warned me that it didn't mean by dropping to single-user mode, found my kernel sources without any help, said something about them being a little off and creating a new kernel interface for me (again without any help on my part), then offered to update my xorg.conf file for me, which it did, beautifully. I swear the only reason that driver install didn't do everything it had to do without asking or informing me is that the average Linux user would have considered it rude. Maybe if (assuming you haven't) you used a Mac long enough to discover all its warts and you weren't trying administer 8 machines, use Win98 as a webserver, and get Linux to run CAD software on a shoestring budget, you wouldn't have Macs up on a pedestal.
Finally modding someone offtopic when they rant about what "Begging the Question" means: priceless.
The article presents Ubuntu and MacOS as equals, if even only recently.
The author, as such, appears to have slept through the last 30 years, in which the original Macintosh established the desktop metaphors Microsoft poorly reimplemented and Linux re-re-implemented many many times over.
Many commenters are also operating under this illusion; the statement that 'While the Mac may present a more unified visual appearance, that's the only benefit it has over Ubuntu' is unbalanced for quite a number of reasons - the design and construction of MacOS and Macintosh human interface guidelines shape aspects of the use of a Mac from the subtle to the impressive. By comparison, there are few if any human interface guidelines or cohesive metaphors between multiple pieces of free software that are not driven by the egotism of their authors. I won't even touch on the pandemic of duplicated effort caused by the free software community's inability to collaborate, and the fractured, partly functional selection of software that has emerged as a result.
When speaking of user interface quality it's important to be objective. Try not to state subjective experiences like snap-to-screen-edge or focus-follows-mouse being far more efficient when this clearly can only be true for you. While Linux software attempts to satisfy the whim of every computer geek who ever used it, Apple spends an incredible amount of time and energy making a single, unified interface that will work as best as possible for the entire range of users.
Ubuntu just as good? No. Free software just isn't there yet. If it were, Dell, HP and Acer would have dumped Microsoft quite some time ago in the home market. People want cheap and easy. Not necessarily good, just cheap and easy. Linux doesn't even qualify as that yet - the market has spoken as always.
The Mac is capable of empowering users (even seasoned Linux users) to do far more with much more efficiency, but one must accept the application of its metaphors rather than demanding that it work the way they want and complaining bitterly when it won't.
Troubling that slashdot always posts articles like this. Slashdotters are by far the worst enemies of good user interface design. :P
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
Letting you install Windows or any other OS with Boot Camp is a prime example of how locked down Apple's machines are.
...and that's all there is to it.
You're missing the years prior to open firmware when it was quite impossible to install another operating system without having Mac OS installed first.
My Bad. I suck and forgot to format that. There are supposed to be a few breaks in all the text. Here's a broken up version:
The terrasoft people may beg to differ with you.
And if you insist on being revisionist and ignoring all Linux distros for Mac, please be sure to logically consistent and stop using all utilities and programs they spawned, like yum.
Also why is a computer that is made with mix & match components something resembling a computer and a computer that is treated by the vendor somewhat like an appliance a TV? A more apt comparison is to say that Apple is a high end home theater integrator that custom makes it's own cables, while Microsoft is like the monster cable products, inc. Which is to say that the two corporations are largely different in what they do, even though they are in a similar arena.
As for freedom and monopoly, they are two different things. Apple isn't really monopolistic, yes there music store isn't completely open, but that haven't really pushed to get artists to only publish to iTunes to lock out non-ipods. In the appliance model itms content that is DRM'ed is like vacuum cleaner bags, you can buy ones that lock you in to one vendors vacuums, they don't have a monopoly as a supplier of bags for all vacuums, and you can use 3rd party bags with their vacuums. Further I would say that MOST people don't want to build everything they use for themselves, the want people to make it for them and have it just work. That's pretty much the way it is for all consumer goods. Sure hobbyists lose the many of the perks they gained when that category of product type first became a commodity item, but no one is making you be a hobbyist. However I do think it's pretty bogus to imply that a more consumer oriented treatment of the consumer computer market would be a bad thing. What you are putting forth is that good and evil are subjective relative to hobbies. Basically you are putting forth a world model were it is morally right for athletes to be above the law caused darned if that doesn't make our sports better.
To preemptively address one response to this comment. Consider this: Lot's of different companies make refrigerators, and lots of companies make food that requires refrigeration, but you don't often have to worry about whether you the food you buy is going to be compatible with your refrigerator, or when you take leftover out of your fridge to give to someone else you don't have to worry if they will be compatible with the other person's fridge. And all of this happened with out any sort of monopoly pulling the strings.
That's utterly absurd.
It boils down to this: "Apple turns the computer into something more resembling a television." That's exactly right, and framing it as a Bad Thing(tm) is not unexpected, but certainly ludicrous. Linux wouldn't have gotten off the ground on Apple machines, no. That would be contrary to the computer-as-an-appliance model.
Under no contorted version of reality would Apple ever be the sole vendor of computers. If everyone followed the Apple model, you can be absolutely certain that Linux would have a better hold on the marketplace. Getting the hardware and software from the same people (IBM, Apple, Amiga, SGI--the "dinosaurs") would have ensured that some cross-compatible development would go on; a common reference design for low-end competitors to cut costs, and customizable for each vendor.
Most computer resellers wouldn't have had the resources to develop an end-to-end solution on their own; the thought of using something free and not having to get in bed with another corporation would have clearly been desirable. Microsoft won because it got there first, not because it is or was the "lesser evil" (are you kidding me?!). Microsoft solved the problem of manufacturers having to do their own OS and support, making it cheap for them to enter the market. There was no such thing as Linux; there was no cheaper option, so they sucked it up and signed on with MS. It was the cheapest, easiest path.
If the other model had succeeded, you'd see all kinds of companies jumping at the chance to have a free OS that they could have tweaked to their desires, and be beholden to Microsoft for security, connectivity, or making their products functional. It's the detached expectations that created the 800-pound gorilla. If each company were expected to develop and sell a wholly working product like Apple does, the budget brands would be using Linux to do it, and there'd be no OS monopoly--just several different OSes that worked together.
Macs are for people who don't want to fuck with their machines all the time (Linux) or get fucked by their machines all the time (Windows).
Is that noted in the comparison?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hang on, you originally implied that with Linux, you didn't have to install third-party applications. So, it turns out you do have to manually install applications.
Where is this feature on a Mac? Well, www.versiontracker.com would be a start. And that helps you decide what to install. On Linux, how does a new user decide which package to use? A package manager in itself is not going to help much. Most Mac apps are extremely simple to install (usually drag-n-drop to applications folder) - so I don't see how that is any more difficult than installing using a package manager.
How does having a package manager equate to applications being "automatically installed", as you imply in your earlier post?
but they still don't do 100% of what every user wants to do with their computer.Tell me - what application bundle does do 100% of what every user wants to do with their computer? There are certainly plenty of things I want to do that I can't under Linux. Hell, there are tons of things that I want to do, that I can't do on any platform, because those applications simply haven't been developed yet.
Under Linux, it's much closer to "feature complete", as far as application availability.Utter horseshit. under Linux, you can't even get many types of app - for example, there are no Photoshop-class image editing apps, and no professional video editing apps. Frankly, your contention is ridiculous. Consistency of quality and usability is also much better with Mac apps. If a new user chose a Mac or Linux app at random, it's likely that the Mac app is of better quality and usability. Having a ton of average-to-poor apps available hardly compares to having many first-class apps available.
... and then they built the supercollider.
P.S:
The point of my posts was not to say that the Mac is superior in every way, or has all software covered. My point was that the way that the "finding and installing applications" argument was presented was too simplified, and out of touch with reality. It's not a task that something like a package manager can solve. It requires social solutions, like support networks, and reliable software review sites.
The other thing i disagree with is the idea of "the average user." I don't think such a person exists. If so, I've never met him. Most people have their own interests and tastes, and don't want to be constrained by what's "average." I think it's this attitude that stops many people from trying new things. I think some of these average users are pushed into that role, because of talk about "complex or specialized" software. What is special to one person, is normal to another. If you grew up playing a musical instrument (and having never used a computer) then music composition software might seem completely normal to you - but seem weird and specialist to somebody else. Likewise, Excel is considered "normal" software by many - but if somebody has never had any need for a spreadsheet, it wouldn't really make any sense to them.
I think the "average user" is a myth that should be abolished. It's insulting to both people and software. It's the kind of thing perpetuated by the corporate world, who want every employee to fit a mold, and for everybody to use the same thing.
... and then they built the supercollider.