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Ask Slashdot: Mac To Linux Return Flow?
jasnw writes "I'm one of apparently many people who moved to OS X from Linux in the early/mid 2000s for their desktop system, keeping Linux boxes around for the heavy lifting and server work. I may also be part of a large segment of that group now considering a return because of all the iOS-ification of OS X, despite the fact that the Linux desktop still falls short in the 'it just works' area. I'm angry enough at Apple, and wary enough of Linux, that I might just go to using Windows 7 for the desktop (not Win8, however). What is the feeling/experience of other 'traitors' who run OS X for the desktop and Linux for everything else?"
I actually feel like KDE and Gnome were the traitors, not me. If Windows 9 is anything like Windows 8 I'm going to have a huge problem.
Use your brain, chose an OS, learn to use it.
Stick Men
This thread will be good. I expect well-reasoned and rational comments from all sides, naturally.
*Munches popcorn and waits*
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
There is a livecd of each and every desktop available for linux. Try them, choose one, get things done.
Your trollcraft is strong, you named every OS, praising it whilst simultaneously deriding it. I give you 32 troll points for what will likely be highly polarized responses and self-sustaining conjecture and disagreement.
Linux is a great kernel. Linux has never had a good or stable GUI environment. Ever.
OS X and iOS QA has gone to shit. They're toys from China that break a lot now.
Windows 8 is a LSD trip. Windows 7 is the new Windows XP. However the Microsoft people will say Windows "next version" will be super better!!!! (since about Windows 3.11) like a broken record.
What's wrong with paper again?
You already have FreeBSD safe hardware. Linux is great, but FreeBSD would be easier for a Mac user. Personally, I would suggest Debian if you want Linux.
I went linux -> mac in about 2004, and mac -> linux in 2009. Basically got sick of the extra hassle required to get stuff that runs out of the box on linux running on mac. eg a mysql/php/apache stack that actually matched all the linux servers I administered; qgis, grass gis, inkscape, scribus,.. And by 2009 linux-on-the-desktop was a lot more 'just works' than it was in 2004. In short, the extra time I spend getting my mint linux setup working as I want from fresh install to doing work is much shorter than the amount of time spent doing the same on osx. But that's just me - my particular software needs are dictated by the kind of academic work I do, and what you do with your computers may make your experience different.
I just cannot figure out what this "question" is all about? You *apparently* *might* be part of a *possibly* large group of OS X people who *might* want to go using Windows?
Well, I just might not feel like answering this. My experience is that this type of questions are apparently suggestive, and only meant to be so.
--------
* Sigh *
You can have my Mac when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. :-)
I'm not going back. I'm exactly as you describe - my desktop runs OS X and my mobile devices run iOS, but my servers run Debian.
Neither of which is going to change. Specifically, you would have to shoot me before I use Windows as my work environment. I'm happy that I can run a very similar environment on my OS X and Debian machines, which makes development just so much easier. I boot Win7 once a decade or so when I want to play a windows-only game, though mostly I pick games available for OS X (Guild Wars 2, League of Legends, yeah!). Every time I have to use windows for anything other than launching the game I want to play, I cringe. It's just so... words fail me. I don't understand why it's not considered a violation of human rights.
You wanted emotions, there you got em. OS X is the best desktop I know. Debian Linux is the best server operating system I know. Windows is the best reason to shoot someone.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Disclaimer: This is a very speculative long shot ....
But it used to be that differences between platforms in terms of end user control were a matter of degree. Now with commercial operating systems moving rapidly away from that, with more closed systems, restricted app stores, secure boot, locked devices, disregard for privacy, etc., Linux has a much larger opportunity to distinguish itself on that feature (as well as the security that goes with it).
Don't wait for users to tell you they need it; that will be too late. Though privacy and control aren't so 'cool' now, I find it hard to believe that suddenly human beings will have permanently stopped caring about them. The pendulum could swing back, and if that happens you want Linux firmly associated with end user control and privacy in people's minds.
Plus, Linux could educate them simply by presenting an alternative. Few end users understand the value of end user control and openness.
What you do with the tools is more important that the tools themselves.
You gave us no real idea what you got going on with your computer aside from some comment made about "heavy lifting and server work." If you can use any of the platforms just decide on one. I have a boot camped rMBP that I use and I'm more than happy with it. I'm not exactly sure what the iOSification of OSX is suppose to mean but it sounds like you're making a mountain out of a molehill.
BTW: My personal experience is that people who claim that they need a machine for "heavy lifting" just don't know how to make a reasonable computer do what they need it to do. Unless you're talking storage and if you're really using a full functioning computer for storage then you're just lost right out of the gate.
First of all, I don't see a problem with iOS. Nor the incremental changes in OS X which give both a similar look or feel.
Adding an applications list with "folders" via expose is hardly iOS-ification.
Have I missed anything?
You're leaving the Mac platform because you don't like the direction that platform seems to be headed, right? That's certainly an okay reason to try your luck elsewhere.
But you've already indicated with your "not Win8" comment that you ALSO don't like where the Windows platform is headed.
Windows 7 may be further from the hated future of the Windows OS than the current Mac OS is from the hated future of the Mac OS, and so Win7 may seem nicer for a while because of that. But in less than a decade Win7 will be orphaned for security updates and you're going to have to jump ship again to an OS you don't hate, and the only OS it looks like you're going to want to consider at that point is Linux.
It's time to dive into Linux and start learning what you like and how to make it work for you. Better now while you've got some lead time than in a few years when it becomes an emergency.
When Mac and Windows users complain that Linux doesn't work, I really don't know what they mean; my experience of late has been that I have fewer annoyances and more things just work, with little-to-no need for configuration when using Linux. (Computers in my household running a mixture of Win 7, 8 and Debian at the moment.)
*Ubuntu - before some troll jumps on that. :D
I have used both Linux and Windows pretty extensively for my desktop system, and for servers (not always my choice). I love using Linux servers (specifically CentOS) - they perform well for the tasks I use them for, and they are rock solid.
I miss Linux on my Macbook Air probably about as often as I miss having Windows on my Macbook Air. There are plenty of things I don't like about Apple: expensive hardware often lagging on the performance-features front (e.g. USB3 took a while), their 'our way or get lost' approach, how truly awful Finder is (and it is truly awful), and all of the bollocks about 'It just works' (it mostly works). However, I can use the apps I need on it (e.g. Photoshop: and no, Gimp is not a replacement; MS Office: and no, OpenOffice is not a replacement). The touchpad functionality is brilliant (multi-touch, swiping, etc). Menu bars always at the top of the screen is genius, as it turns out. I don't need to deal with installing GTK+, QT, etc etc - although this is mainly just an artifact of the packaging system.
So in essence, I don't feel like a traitor. I feel like I'm using different OSs for different things based on their match to my needs. Mind you, I revisit Linux fairly regularly to check on how it is going as a desktop OS (and was one of the weird folk who didn't mind Gnome 3), and it is certainly getting better, but I always wind up back on OSX (or Windows, prior to that).
If I stop being able to install apps without the app store, or they all need to be digitally signed and approved by Apple, then you'll see me switching to something else faster than you can blink, but that's a ways off yet.
The "iOSification" of OS X is overblown hyperbole at the moment. Yes, Apple's simplified some of the core apps like iPhoto. Yes, Apple's made the Calendar app fugly. They added the "Launchpad", which you never have to actually see unless you invoke it, and they added the Gatekeeper security feature, which you can switch off with a few clicks of the mouse.
They also recently got rid of the guy who was responsible for some of that stuff, so we may see a roll back on the nasty skeumorphic nonsense.
The core OS, and its UX in general, are still excellent, and every single app distributed outside of the App Store still have as much freedom as they used to.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
That just is NOT true anymore. Windows 7 has been stable from the word go. Uptime measured in days and weeks for a DESKTOP computer that is only interrupted by important updates and other administrative tasks that require a reboot. Otherwise, it Just Works. This coming from a guy who LOVES Linux- on servers.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
You're too smart for OS X. You're not geeky enough for Linux. Windows is just right for you. Be smart enough to ignore the lunkheads that can't figure out how to 7ize windows 8. It will make upgrading to Windows 9 that much easier. You can only hope that Microsoft doesn't totally screw up their cloud initiative. They've had plenty of time to learn from others, and they should be ready to roll. Office 365 is actually not as bad as I thought it would be. p.s. keep your old Linux box plugged in just in case. You will need it sooner or later.
GNU/Linux is rewarding if you are willing to learn how the OS works. Rather than focus on a GUI, I would suggest you learn the command line which is the underlying system in any GNU/Linux distro. Once you know the command line, you can run Gentoo, Ubuntu, Slackware, whatever. Even if your GUI fails or gets glitchy, the command line will save you. Another benefit of GNU/Linux is that whenever a friend (who does not have a lot of money) gets a computer virus, an install of Ubuntu really sets them on the right track and they get amazed at all the cool, free software and pretty interface(s) to pick from. Not all people like learning or have the patience (it was frustrating for me the first year) but it paid off in the long run. I am not rich, but have all this great software for free and am doing things I never dreamed. I never thought I would edit audio, or design album covers because I cannot afford the industry standards. But software like Audacity, Gimp, Inkscape, Scribus gave me opportunities to do amazing things. I ran a record label and music distro biz on a shoe sting budget thanks to GNU/Linux. Apple/Windows still hold the industry standards, but free software seems to be catching up. So it really comes down to; do you want to spend money or time/patience? If you go with the latter, you may be the better off for it.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
http://www.oslike.se/
Windows 7 for the commercial junk until support drops in 2020
Ubuntu Unity, OS X 10.7/10.8 and Windows 8 totally suck ass.
Touchscreen UI's do NOT belong on the desktop, neither do fingers on the screen, except on a tablet or phone.
Apple, Microsoft and Shuttleworth are all a bunch of baboons.
OSX is a prison that keeps getting smaller. Linux on the desktop is wonderful. Stable and easily configurable .
I started using OSX in 2010, and like you I still use Linux. For the most part, I use Linux to develop software and for data munging. I'm still good with OS X. If they get rid of Terminal then I am done. Until then, I can do most anything I need on OS X that I can on my Linux box. The difference being, I don't have the same ease of use for all the Open Source projects on OS X that I do on Linux.
I'm fine with OS X moving towards an iOS interface. So far they are maintaining the ability to work around the interface. I have yet to encounter any limitations that cannot be bypassed. I also use OS X because it works without me having to maintain it. When I was in high school, I had days to spend screwing around with Slackware, and I learned a lot doing it. But, I no longer want to mess with setting things up just so I can get to the point where I start doing my actual activities. Which is one reason I moved away from Slackware to Ubuntu.
I've used Ubuntu on the desktop, and it is fairly good. But, there are still problems. A number of times I would have to kill the Synaptic Update system and do a manual apt-get update apt-get upgrade. Not sure why the GUI version wasn't working, and these days I no longer care. I don't have time to figure that out. As well, my network card would not alway be enabled when I booted my Lenovo R61 Thinkpad. This was in 2011. I bought the Thinkpad in 2007. Its hardware is old enough that it should just work at this point. To fix it, I would have to reload the card's module. There may be other issues I had. I can't remember any right now though.
My point is, I want my personal computer to turn on and work. I don't want to spend time configuring it. I realize I am betraying, in some sense, the Stallman Free Software ethic, that, in large part, is responsible for the programming skills I enjoy today. I have contributed to an Open Source project recently. And, I intend to do so in the future. But, I have become a pragmatist rather than an idealist in my thoughts on Free Software.
As for moving to Windows, I see no sense in that. Unless you want to use Cygwin or something like that, and those projects may be more mature now, but Windows is so far removed from the Unix philosophy that it is painful to use. At least in OS X, I can still pipe individual programs together to generate something useful.
I switched over from linux to OSX, here's what I found out:
Apple wins at:
- Setup is way longer in Linux (No surprise). OSX was pretty quick thanks to google integration and good defaults (i.e for the trackpad).
- Applications. Work uses Go2Meeting and others, so I'm a bit stuck with that. I don't like dual booting, so OSX was my best shot.
- The hardware is really good. I do not regret having paid the price for a retina, since I use it a real lot, on the go and at home. This isn't really about OSX, but I wouldn't mind having an Apple laptop with Linux as the main OS. That's if the price isn't too much of a problem, I guess.
Linux wins at:
- Compliance to my development work. Rarely have any problems installing anything from source. With OSX you can expect a problem whenever you try that.
- Linux, in my experience, is much less buggy. OSX works in very narrow setups, but will recklessly bug everywhere as soon as external monitors are involved with my laptop.
- Customisation, if you're that kind of guy.
Now, if you're a developer or other IT professional, I recommend some good flavor of linux nowadays (Arch, Debian, Gentoo...)
OSX is good, but it's in decline if you ask me. They aren't doing any real improvement that will matter for me, and we see more and more software being ported to Linux, so it only gets better. The stuff is all locked-in to iCloud and iOS, and even having an iPad, I don't want that. I much prefer having my notes on Evernote or google for example, rather than using the very limited Apple solutions. Whenever you get a bit serious in any usage, you'll see apple falling short quite often.
Drafts being saved in like 40 duplicates by default on google? Check
Same for notes? Check.
Reminders only sync on iOS? Check
Calendar randomly resets own settings as it syncs up to Facebook while I specified it shouldn't? Check.
iTunes missing many audio formats? Check
That's the tip of the iceberg. I'd rather choose my own solutions rather than being bloated with completely useless software that I can't delete.
I have seen more Linux crashed than windows crashes from XP on.
However the stability is really based on the hardware and drivers more than the actuall OS now adays, having running windows on good hardware and Linux on cheap hardware isn't really a fair test. But compared to the mess of the DOS based windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME. It is rather stable.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've been thinking that I might like to own a retina Macbook. My reasons are: the good screen, the BSD-based OS, a professionally-made desktop environment.
What is this "iOS-ification" of the Mac you write about? Is Apple making changes to close the platform to non-Xcode development?
Tell me more.
After having tried all the others (best liking XFCE of those), I am back to KDE3.5. An update should be out shortly once heavy internal restructuring is completed, then the lo0Oong 'feature freeze' should be over for KDE3. *joy*
That just is NOT true anymore. Windows 7 has been stable from the word go. Uptime measured in days and weeks for a DESKTOP computer that is only interrupted by important updates and other administrative tasks that require a reboot. Otherwise, it Just Works. This coming from a guy who LOVES Linux- on servers.
That's the first problem with Windows : there is so many things that needs you to reboot it is ridiculous. And the freakin updates that FORCES me to reboot. Only thing you can do is tell it to postpone the reboot for 4 hours. Then 4 hours later that fu***n thing pops-up again requesting you to reboot. And the worst : if you are not in front of you machine when it pops, after about a minute it will decide that it can just reboot. So you come back, your computer is at the login screen and you just have to re-open everything to get back to work. Who the f**k decided this was a good idea ?
Now I don't have that problem anymore. I installed Mint on my work computer and the only time I need to reboot is when I upgrade the kernel. After the upgrade there is a popup that tells me it needs to reboot to fully apply the update. If I click postpone IT WILL NEVER BOTHER ME AGAIN.
Also, I measure uptimes in months, not days and weeks. In fact I have an internet-facing server that is up for more that 5.5 years.
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
Use whatever you want when you want...
I switched from Linux to OS X in 2003. I switched back in 2011. My reasons were (roughly in order of importance):
- The package managers suck. Yes, all of them. Compiling packages from sources is a huge waste of time, and at least back then, the management of the Mac package manager projects was amateurish at best (read: stuff breaking all the time).
- I needed a new computer, and at the time Apple didn't make one I liked.
- Apple's generally worsening "our way or the highway" attitude; Everything Just Works as long as your needs line up neatly with what Apple provides. When they don't, you're better off in Linux where you can at least more easily tear open and patch anything you need to.
I'm using Arch Linux now. Not because I enjoy tinkering with my OS, but because I don't. It was a pain in the ass to set up (who the fuck decided it was a good idea to get rid of the installer altogether?), but now I have everything working pretty much exactly the way I need it to, and as long as I take a few minutes to read about major system changes every few months or so, it's rolling smoothly. I've had nothing but bad experiences with the supposedly user-friendly distros.
Brief background: I've been using Linux since Slackware '96, with kernel version 1.0.0. I prefer using Linux for servers, but often have used Windows in cases where it presents some advantage (like using Active Directory so I can govern Windows desktops, etc)., and most environments I've worked in have become mixed Linux/Windows environments. Still, I am known much moreso for my *nix talents and content to leave Windows to the armies of Windows sysadmins out there.
For a while now at work, I've been using Windows 7. Using KiTTY (or PuTTY) I can generally work well with unix systems, and the Windows system gives me an environment like a normal user, which helps in reproducing issues, etc. The downside is, well, it's still Windows and prone to quirky issues, e.g. problems caused by Windows update, wanting to reboot more often than I'd like..
At home, I use Mac OS X rather than Windows 7. I run a custom-built hackintosh pro system (built late last year, i7-ivy bridge type). Using Mac OS X, I can still interact with systems I need to (using CoRD for Windows Remote Desktop), and it runs all the other programs I need elegantly. It also doesn't need reboots very often and is quite a stable system.
However, I too have been looking for a solution now that Apple is moving in the iOS-y direction for OS X, in terms of a system that lets me keep the awesome BSD power of Mac OS without being confined to Apple's walled garden of App Store restrictions etc.
Linux doesn't work as a Desktop environment for me for a lot of reasons, despite the fact I love Linux. It requires too much overhead to install software (packages, dependencies, etc), often doesn't run software I need (and/or open source equivalents fail to install on my distro, etc etc), and the end-user experience in X windows is generally clunky and not nearly as elegant/streamlined as Mac or Windows. A lot of open source products that do work are second-best to the product you could use on a desktop -- e.g. Microsoft Word on Mac and Windows vs OpenOffice on Linux. It'll work most of the time, but sometimes, it'll be a problem. I'm not a one man team and I work with people using Windows and Mac -- so I have to accomodate. In order to work in Linux, I'd have to have a VM running Windows or Mac -- and that kind of defeats the purpose of Linux.
So, in short, I am searching for an operating system that has the nice interface and POSIX-compliant backend of Mac OS, the openness of Linux, and runs all the software Windows can. Will a solution ever exist? :)
A decently managed XP box could do the same. Hell a well managed 95/98 box could keep highish uptimes as well. The 95/98 still were not in the same league with *nix at the time but still.
I say this as a fan of *nix and someone who is no fan of MS's policies/politics but having worked with their software for...man I feel old now...too long they have done OK on the desktop as far as it goes. The idea of setting up some end user back in the day with a Slackware install vs 98? Yeah I know there were the hardcore who forced it on their friends/relatives and they "managed" to get buy. I still doubt were as happy as they would have been with a 98 install AND its faults.
The who trend of pushing smartphone/tablet UI's on to the desktop is the current problem. A bad one that is self inflicted by in large.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Hold fast to your Apple anger. It is liberating.
I divested myself of Apple shares in early 2012 to finance my daughter's education, and now I'm comfortable wishing ruin upon them without fear.
The choices they make are anti-consumer, anti-competitive and anti-free market. It pleases me that they've lost nearly 1/2 of their value.
As someone who was a great fan of Apple computers going back to before the first Macintosh, I find their current direction extremely disappointing and destructive.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you compare 2001 Windows with 2001 Linux then yep.
2013 Windows vs 2013 Linux? It really starts leaning in the opposite direction.
I've used a Ubuntu desktop for years and make my living working online. I use it because it just works. Once I get my desktop setup right it stays that way.
Maybe someone could explain what's not working so I know what I'm missing.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Of course if you care about the principes of individual freedom no closed source solution is acceptable, but then you allready went to the shiny toy side,
so you probably do not feel very strongly about it...
But if you change, ... it does not really matter very much... make an inventory of the tools you really use, and you'll probably find out that you could use
FreeBSD with some minimal clickomatic task in pretty window launcher...
And welcome back, do not go astray again...
i moved to osx on my desktop 2003-07-01 from Debian, have the same feeling and will probably move back to Debian some day when i had it with osx.
A decently managed XP box could do the same. Hell a well managed 95/98 box could keep highish uptimes as well.
You could not keep 95/98 up more than 49.7 days : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216641
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
You can turn the automatic reboot off. Its easy. On my blog:
http://tidbitsfortechs.blogspot.com/2011/06/turning-off-automatic-reboot-when.html
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I liked the MacBook Air form factor, but not the OS so I blew away MacOS completely and replaced it with Fedora 17. Overall it's been great, it "just works." Gnome 3 works well on it and fully integrates with the brightness and volume buttons without issue. I did however install a few Gnome extensions like Axe Menu, Alternate Tab, and Task bar, now it's not unlike any desktop I've grown used to. Libvert also works well on it allowing me to build test servers when I need. Overall it's a 95+% solution for me.
---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
Everything that you mentioned is a thing. They aren't family, nor friends, nor pets, nor anything else that ought to be the true source of your emotions. Invest your emotions in the people who matter. Just use the tools that work.
You know you can just disable automatic updates if it bothers you? Or set it to download them - but not install them until you're ready?
And how are you supposed to keep that thing "almost" secure if you don't install updates ?
And it does not change the fact that it is REALLY stupid to reboot the machine without my consent.
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
I use CentOS/Gnome, OSX and Win 7 and 8 and hands down 8 beat them all. The minimalist UI looks fantastic, task manager is mind blowingly awesome, but the one that took me over the top was the new copy/move dialogs. MS really nailed it with this new feature. Shows a graph of move activity, current speed, etc. but even better when it sees that you're trying to copy another file to a location that you're already trying to copy to, it cues it up rather than try and make two simultaneous transfers. On top of that you can pause/resume transfers. No longer will people say “wtf why does it say x seconds left” because they’ll clearly see that the transfer speed ebbs and flows. When you try and move files to a location where the file name already exists it gives you a very nice grouped choice dialog so you don’t have to click through prompts, this actually removes the need for “yes to all”, hard to explain without seeing it. I would say that this copy/move dialog like this would sell me on any system, it’s that good.
And of course it plays windows games, which is the primary reason for consideration in the first place. Hard to beat win 8 with all that.
Oh yeah, before I forget, fuck metro and whoever made it they should get some terrible STD. Fuck the start menu, I never liked the old one, the new one just makes me want to rip my eyes out with a spoon, but at least they removed the damn useless start button.
I've never been a fan of Stardock, but ModernMix actually seems like a good idea (for once). It allows you to run metro apps in a window. And they also have a start menu replacement for people who actually liked the old start menu, but I am not one, so you can find that link on your own if you're interested.
I'm not sure if you are being serious or not. Mac OS X is simply put the best desktop operating system available if you want something that just works. Mountain Lion is incredibly stable, memory efficient and fast. It has full UNIX underpinnings.
The only "iOS-ification" is that there is now an app store. Whoop-de-do. If you don't like it, don't use it.
Mac OS is still UNIX, still fast, easy to use and works properly. It sounds to me like there is no problem you just are looking for a reason to change.
Switched from Linux to Mac's only about 5 years ago, mostly cause that was when I could afford to go Mac. Don't miss Linux and I have not had any major issues w/ getting OSX to work as I want it too. Still don't find the iOS'ification of the OSX all that bad since the "old" ways are still mostly there.
Mostly my job is doing project work and System Admin, so really as long as I have command line ssh, cssh and a web browser I am good.
My only real gripes at the moment are:
- lack of 32-bit Java or a 64-bit version of Chrome
- Can't customize the UI
- Have to wait for some games to be released
- Discontinued MBP 17" :(
Other than that, Meh, I will stick w/ OSX for now.
Cybrhippy - "It all makes sense... Well, To me anyway." The Maxx
I utterly hated the Metro interface. Actually, that's 'I utterly *hate* the metro UI'.
However, use either of the above and you get to enjoy Windows 7.1 (to give it its' proper name) without the bolted-on second OS designed for hardware nobody owns getting in the way :-)
In the 1990's I was an OS2 and then Windows user. However, I soon got tired of all that and switched to Linux. Slackware full time in 1999.
All was well but the update manager was really ragging on my nerves and compiling everything was getting old. So I switched to Fedora.
In 2007 I got tired of supporting 4 separate Windows laptops at home (for the kids and wife) and I switched everyone to OSX.
I was as happy as can be! I decided that I liked OSX so much that I switched myself.
I went all out. In 2008 I got 2 fully loaded MAC Pro's, 32GB memory and 3 (yes 3!) 30" monitors for each one.
I was in heaven! Everything worked as promised and it was amazing. Spent big $$$$!
Well, life has not been so good lately. I am so disappointed with Apple... They let me down!
No MAC Pro updates in 2 years and empty promises galore. I hate Apple's shit talk.
Especially how they just stopped making 30" displays just because (insert BS excuse here).
Apple is catering to the middle of the road and that's where I get off this fucking train.
I am a power user and I demand the latest and greatest hardware! Dammit, I see all the
nice ASUS and Supermicro mobo's and I am drooling!!!
What are my options? Well my CentOS 6.x desktop, which I use at work, is rock solid. Yes, CentOS for the desktop!
I am thinking of building a massive CentOS desktop: (2, 512GB SSD's RAID1), (2, 3TB disks RAID1), the fastest multicore mobo,
and at least 64GB of memory.
That should be enough to run any Windows 7 VM machine that I will need (for MS Office, and other stuff).
Apple, is losing the power user base. Fortunately for me, I have other options!
For other home users I'll stick with OSX.
Fuck it! Maybe Linux and Windows VMs is the right answer for today's power user.
Cheers!
So, let me get this straight : Linux is hard because you need to modify text files to change something, while in Windows there is that super easy click-happy interface anybody can use.
Then, every time I want to do something more advanced, I have to go hack the registry to do it ?
And the first big warning is that if you fuck the registry, your computer may not boot anymore.
Like if you want to disable that CapsLock key, you have to modify some hex value in the registry. On my KDE machine, I just went into the control panel and assigned the CapsLock to another CTRL.
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
Although I use Fedora w/ LXDE as my main distro, my #2 is Mint 14 with Cinnamon (#3 is Lubuntu, and #4 is Puppy, which uses JWM).
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
If there is something in OS X that bothers you because its like iOS ... stop using it. There is nothing in OSX that came from iOS that is even on by default except notification center, let alone are you forced to use it. Notification center is hardly intrusive but its certainly trivial to turn off.
What exactly is your problem? What examples do you have of things from iOS that being forced on you in OSX now?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"Ubunti" - that's Ubuntu plural, right? ;)
With all the growth of OS X, LLVM/Clang and a slew of corporations moving to LLVM/Clang I'm seeing FreeBSD getting a lot of love. With version 10, a lot of infrastructure for both FreeBSD proper and Debian FreeBSD is making Linux less and less attractive.
My problem with these "just work" descriptions is that people have very different needs.
I use both Ubuntu and Mac OS regularly. The things that I need to "just work" are a lot of programming tools (gcc, python), databases, and servery stuff like databases, web servers, etc. Getting those to work on Mac OS is unpleasant. MacPorts and Homebrew are both terrible in comparison to the APT world. "apt-get install apache2" is very much "just works" in my book. On the Mac, I'm fine as long as I use Xcode and other Apple-specific tools, but anything else ends up being frustrating.
People complain a lot about desktop choices for Linux, but I never found any of them any worse than Mac, and some are better tailored for certain workstyles than others. All the major ones (GNOME with Shell or Unity, KDE, XFCE) are mature enough now for everyday work, even if they weren't so a few years ago. I really find all of them easier to work with than Mac's desktop. I don't like Mac's bubblegum dock, and I find the Finder to be perhaps the worst file manager ever made.
Another aspect of "just work" is installation. Installing a free OS can be painful on some hardware (and trivial on others). Since you can't (easily) install Mac OS on non-Apple hardware, this problem doesn't exist there, so it indeed "just works" in this respect. If you want a "just works" experience with a free OS, just buy a machine from System 76, a truly wonderful company that has yet to disappoint me. Comes with Ubuntu and everything working, great hardware and great support. And for me, all the things that I want to "just work" indeed do.
I use Windows 7, too, and it's fine, but I really need the Unix stuff to do my work.
Can we retire the "just works" phrase, or at least find better ways to qualify it?
Annoying as hell, but you can disable that behavior.
Everyone changes their stuff around too much for me to want to deal with. So I just maintain my own desktop exactly how I want it.
Debian Testing (until the new stable is out), a custom maintained kernel (was having problems with stability on new-ish thinkpad that new kernel fixed), and windowmaker. I maintain my own versions of a few things like java and some VPN software that works with my company's old server. I also bit the bullet with wireless tools and relearned iwconfig/wpa_supplicant stuff fully so I can work in coffee shops and not need the GUI wireless config (which was actually nice and I do miss). I setup LUKS for homedir encryption and just manually mount it. My workstation isn't rebooted all that often.
Sure, it's a bit of work on occasion to keep things going the way I like it - the deal is, it's a lot of work to keep any desktop functioning the way you prefer. When things are constantly changing "for their own sake" ala Ubuntu, or win8.. and you have to fight to revert stuff how you're the most productive until it's no longer possible.. there comes a point when it's much less frustration and time to just bite the bullet and control things how you want.
I've yet to find anything I want that I can't get working. I have VirtualBox for win7 if needed for the odd work-related tool. The biggest struggle I have is consuming media I pay for ala netflix and the lack of a decent flash player in Linux. I prefer Firefox but often have to load web videos in chrome (which isn't 100% either).
It's somewhat ironic since I've come full circle; when I was younger, I enjoyed maintaining my own desktop env and custom packages.. then I just wanted stuff to work so used Ubuntu+gnome putting up with its quirks for a while.. now here I am maintaining my own setup again. Mostly because desktop UI folk can't just leave well enough alone and want everything to be designed for a tablet or smartphone.
in my case linux doesnt even have the ability to detect a monitor correctly
I formatted my drive, installed windows 7, even in setup with no drivers it ran at my native 1280x1024 resolution, linux on the other hand tossed it into some weird ass resolution at 50Hz causing the lcd to spaz like crazy, swore up and down that my VGA connector was plugged into the HDMI port, and when I installed the nvidia driver I didnt see X for the next two nights.
As I stumbled around nano and links -g whipping up a fucking hack script using xrandr I sat there wondering why the hell I ever started using this software in the first place... but then I remembered that it used to have no problems detecting my monitor ... once KDE 4.9 loaded I just sat there for a moment thinking of how far backwards linux has moved in the last couple years.
sane + gimp
ghostscript + cups
take out memory card from camera and insert into memory card reader like a pro. done
it Just Worked, and they weren't trying to screw around with adding useless UI elements to it all the time
KDE 3.5.13.1 looks to be the latest stable at trinitydesktop.org. It's not as much of a smoothie as G2 but if you like KDE 3.5, they have a UBT 12.04 spin with .13.1 as the primary DE. I like it because it reminds
me of the Slackware renaissance period. (Late middle ages). Feels
like you are close to the iron, don't know how true that is though.
You appear to be talking about a Windows Vista issue. I mix Ubuntu and Windows 7 all over the place without any problems out of the gate.
I do this at home and here at work.
My laptop's discrete GPU is dead (it's one of those Optimus ones, with two GPU's), so I'm in the market for a new one. I was in Best Buy last week looking at their models, and saw one with this weird-looking flashy colorful thing with a bunch of boxes on the screen. "Huh", I thought, "this must be some shiny Best Buy demo software designed to show off the laptops' displays, or something."
Nope, it's the damn OS itself!
First and last time I'll ever use Windows 8.
Yes you can, the clock just got all fucked up.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
He lost me when he said iOS-ification. That's when I realized this was just a troll for comments.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I'm in pretty much exactly this situation. My livelihood is in Linux, and I've always had a Linux box or two at home, but I ditched Linux desktop around 2004 when I got my first Powerbook and thought I'd never look back. Forget "iOS-ification," boat loads of bugs in Lion and Mountain Lion made me flee back to a Linux desktop. I've been using Fedora 18 on a nice simple tower I built for just that purpose for about a month now and am really happy. My rather new rMBP will probably get loaded with it soon. I say try a Linux desktop, it's come a long way. I was impressed when even my wi-fi worked right out of the box. I can't think of anything that didn't, though my bluetooth mouse settings seem to sometimes forget themselves and the pointer goes back to default, unacceptable speed. We have Steam, Chrome(ium) and I bet even Netflix support soon. Also, the guys at Yorba are doing some cool modern apps in Shotwell and Geary. I really like GNOME 3, but of course there are plenty of current options if that's not your thing. If you've been happy on a Mac, you'd likely be just as happy or more with a modern Linux distro than with Win 7.
They also block running the older OS on new system.
Just think if all dells and other windows pc where locked to only windows 8 or newer.
It went Windows, Linux (around the time of Vista, for obvious reasons), OS X (work got me a new iMac, figured I might as well give it a chance), then back to Linux. I love Linux. Everything is open to the user to be configured as they wish... whether to make things faster and more efficient, or shoot themselves in the foot. I like that. (Ubuntu may be a little bit more like Windows now, which is why I moved to another distro.)
But then, I'm a developer. I'm not exactly the most common type of user. Even at my workplace, we have maybe four Mac users, a Windows user, and myself with Linux. It all works out. Just use whatever works best with your workflow, and ignore the haters. I find that last bit is a good rule for life in general.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I use what is productive for me, and I won't dictate to others what is productive to them.
The cross-platform file formats/standards/etc. are such that it makes a heck of a lot less difference, these days.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken
Agreed. I have kept my win7 VM up for the last month, just logging in and out occasionally to backup my roving profile. I'm quite happy, finally having moved from an XP-running VM.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
In effect they are. Try running Windows 2000 on modern hardware (and XP isn't far off).
If you allowed it to do auto updates, you consented. Turn them off if you don't. Seriously, I turn them off on all my machines. It's not hard. And it keeps the patches installed on folks too lazy or tech-impared to figure out the couple of clicks necessary to turn them off, so there are less zombies out there.
The downside is, well, it's still Windows and prone to quirky issues, e.g. problems caused by Windows update, wanting to reboot more often than I'd like..
So turn them off, or at least wind them back. Windows updates are not as important as most people would like you to think. There was a period about 10 years ago when a number of vulnerabilities needing patching regularly or you'd get hosed, but since about WinXP SP2 it's no longer a big deal. I do mine manually every few months, haven't had problems in years.
I am one of those who moved and moved back. I switched to OS X back in the day of PowerPC iBooks. On paper, it was the ideal operating system. Beautiful, supported by commercial software developers, Unixy, and with all the open source software you know and love available. The iBook was also a great machine, easy to carry, great battery life, and surprisingly affordable.
Unfortunately, reality was not so great. The differences from other Unixy systems were small, but annoying. A lot of open source software wouldn't work out of the box. Even when things did work, the experience wasn't the same, e.g. fork was annoyingly slow. I also realized that one of the great assets of the Linux systems I was used to is the package manager. All your software managed with a few simple commands. By comparison, OS X was and is an absolute mess. So I switched back and have been happy since.
I do use a MacBook Pro now for work. It runs, basically, a web browser, and ssh client, a VPN client, and a mail client. That's a manageable amount of software to keep up to date with the hodgepodge of updaters you get. I guess this would have been easier if I used only the software that Apple supplied, but, unfortunately, their mail client doesn't work for the volume of email I get, and the browser has enough of an impact on my productivity that it's worth it to me to install a different one, even though Safari is very good. With all this, I still think I *should* install Debian, if only to keep my windows from being rearranged to useless positions when I plug in / unplug an external monitor.
As for Windows, I use it at home to play games. In my definitely not humble opinion, it does that better than any other OS, but I wouldn't want to use it for anything else. I've tried that, and while I'm sure one can get used to it, it made me run away screaming.
I use a lot of computers just to run a web browser and an SSH client. Chrome OS, your favorite Free operating system, OS X and Windows will all do that just fine. For anything beyond that, I prefer Debian, because, in my experience, it requires the least maintenance effort. If you're used to something else, it may or may not be worth switching.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
In effect they are. Try running Windows 2000 on modern hardware (and XP isn't far off).
If there's even a generic driver for the hardware, then Windows 2000 generally screams along very nicely. Up until a few months ago, I had W2K Server running nicely on 2 year old rack mount systems very nicely.
To be fair, the AC may be referring to the fact that one often needs to locate and download drivers for Windows whereas Linux typically comes "batteries included".
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
Unless you installed the patch listed at your link...
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
And how are you supposed to keep that thing "almost" secure if you don't install updates ?
You keep it secure by installing patches. Just do it at a time that's convienient for you (turn off auto updates).
It's just not that hard.
I guess I should bitch and moan too because my Ubuntu desktops have a red icon in the upper right sometimes, wanting me to reboot after installing some updates. Geez.
I deal in all 3 operating systems (Mac/Windows/Linux). Actually 4 as I have a number of Solaris systems
to maintain (project underway to migrate to Linux). I have not used WIndows 7 very much; I used to use
XP as my main desktop but the system got wiped after a minor infection (caught and fixed by the AV but
that was not good enough) so I have been using my Mac laptop heavily. When I use Linux I am mostly
in a terminal window running command line mode. One thing I like about the Mac is that I have a robust
GUI but I'm just a terminal window away from Linux command line - something just not easy to do under
WIndows.
I am currently using Snow Leopard but need to move to a new Mac Book Pro and Lion but where is the
time... I must admit I am disturbed by the IOSifcation of the Mac and the slow death of Mac shareware
and freeware (aided and abetted by the Mac App Store).
I too feel like Linux will be more important in my future as a desktop OS.
Dr. Frank J. Nagy Fermilab Computing Division Authentication and Directory Services Group
I have a windows 7 box at home.. huge beast of a machine that I use to play games. I've got windows 8 on a laptop to experiment with. What I love so far about windows 8 is that it boots on my laptop in 2 seconds (with a solid state drive). That's from power-on to usable. Linux Mint came close to that speed but not quite.
The laptop is for taking meeting notes, reading email, taking on trips, etc.
My desktop at work is a Linux box. I fired ubuntu a few years back and went to straight debian. This wasn't as bad as it sounds, and with 3rd party repos for most of the big apps it never felt out of date. I occasionally would package things or repair packages if I wanted to deploy to servers or help with debian community stuff, or just wanted to make sure whatever it was installed cleanly.
Recently I upgraded the computer at work and decided to try ubuntu again, but while I was feeling experimental I decided to try KDE again too. I've been a gnome user for years because I wanted something unobtrusive that just worked. Like CDE on Solaris (most of the time, long ago).. slightly bloated but quick, something where terminal + firefox + thunderbird + pidgin just worked.
I hadn't used KDE since probably before KDE3 days.. so I hadn't given it a fair shake in a long time.. I'd given windows and MacOS X more of a shakedown than KDE, so it was only fair to try it again. It was hideously terribly ugly.
But everything I hated about it has become easily customizable via the menus, and the terminal feels like it's made for developers or power users. Everything has a power user tweak or a way to get rid of it, if you decide it's something you don't want. My last big gripe was I couldn't tell the dumb ATI driver which monitor was really primary so it always put my taskbar on an old 21" 4:3 I have turned sideways. I wanted it in my middle monitor where it's easy to navigate.
KDE lets you drag it to another monitor and put it wherever you want.
So, while it's pointless to ask slashdot for opinions on these things, I feel like I've tried all the OS's recently and Linux is mature enough to be a primary desktop OS for anyone, if that's what you want.
After the story about Miguel de Icaza switching to Mac OS X, it got me thinking about my own history of operating systems. While I had happily used OS X for six and a half years, over that period of time I have drifted back in favor of Linux. This had less to do with new features being offered in Linux as it did with growing tired of foibles in OS X. Here are a list of some of the bigger issues:
- Beach Ball of Death (BBOD): While this didn't occur frequently, when it did it was more frustrating than a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). At least you knew you were fucked when you saw the BSOD. With the BBOD, sometimes you would recover from it and other times you could wait for up to ten minutes before realizing that you're never coming back. During that period, you are completely unable to access the System menu or start another app to find the proc that is chewing resources so that it can be killed. In 2013, this is completely unacceptable from an OS.
- Mouse Acceleration: There is no way to modify the acceleration curve in OS X, let alone disable acceleration. This is not a problem when you are using a trackpad since the acceleration curve is one of the best out of all OS'es for that, but it is incredibly frustrating when using a mouse. I have gone through many forums and found many other users complaining about this issue, but no one has come up with a decent solution for disabling mouse acceleration. For situations in which I am better off with a mouse, I always hopped over to a non-OS X machine.
- Poor Multi-Monitor Support: Since the menu for each application is in a detached panel that is only displayed on one monitor, this means you will be racking up a lot of mileage on your pointing device to hop between apps on the secondary monitor and their menu on the primary monitor.
- Updating Settings Behind Your Back: For me, this shit started with Microsoft and was one of the big reasons I left their OS. After an update, some of your settings would be changed to whatever they felt you should be using. Apple has since taken up this behavior, doing things like resetting all of your file associations to iTunes after one of their many updates. This didn't happen with my latest update, so maybe they stopped, or at least took a break from this behavior, but it has still left a very bad taste in my mouth.
- Frequent Update Cycles: This would not be too bad of a thing if they didn't regularly remove features they didn't like (but you may have loved) as well as make changes that disrupt your workflow. At this point, I am an old curmudgeon who has everything exactly as he likes it. I don't want to upgrade and run the risk of having the upgrade go south. Such an issue would cause me to have to reinstall all of my apps from scratch and attempt to reconfigure tons of settings to get it to work like it did before the upgrade. And with the update frequent cycles, it won't be long before your current OS version is not supported. Once that happens, Chrome and Firefox support go out the window as well. And don't even get me started on how Apple stops supporting perfectly fine hardware when they come out with new versions of OS X. Apple: you control the hardware in your machines yet you can't be bothered to continue supporting it six years after it is released while Microsoft supported XP on an almost infinite number of hardware configurations for eight years and Linux even longer!
There are many, many more reasons, but these are the biggest gripes. None of them on their own were dealbreakers, but over time they wore on me to the point of driving me back to Linux. While I still use my Mac for some commercial software that isn't available on Linux, it's Linux for everything else.
I moved from Linux to Mac OS X back in the days of OS X 10.1. I bought myself a PowerMacintosh G3 (Beige desktop) when I was in college on ebay and thus begun my Apple fanboydom (as an aside, spell check wants me to change 'fanboydom' to 'bondwoman').
Over the years, as my income increased, I began buying myself brand new Macs from Apple - A PowerMac G4, A PowerMac G5, various PowerBook/Macbooks and finally iMacs. My experience with my 27" iMac finally did it for me. I had, against my better judgement, bought an all-in-one because the Mac Pro was just too dang expensive.
I quickly learned the hard way that all-in-ones are NOT user-serviceable. Power supply go bad? No, you can't slap another one in your tower, you get to lug your big iMac into an Apple Store, walk past all of the hipsters fondling their iDevices, and up to the "genius" bar and leave it there for a week. A week during which, btw, you're not getting any work done. I was so mad, I blogged: http://jamesadam.me/blog/why-im-switching-from-mac-to-linux/
So, the hardware situation, combined with the whole iOSification thing you mentioned, has driven me back into the clammy arms of the penguin. I tried a handful of distributions, and finally settled on Xubuntu, because I hate Gnome 3.
Odd - one laptop is Ubuntu - the other Win7 - and they did not play well until I disabled any (Microsoft released) IPV6 support...Could be the old Netcreer router, but regardless....
Office 365 is actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
Yea, 12 hour service outages aren't a problem or anything!
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Why not? Maybe you just have some preconceived notions, like I did? Read too much internets, like I also did? I was scared to upgrade my laptop, because the new one only came with Win8. I did it anyway, and could not be happier:
- it looks awesome. Granted, I don't use any "metro apps", just desktop only. The UI is super sharp, osx looks like something from the 90s compared to it. After using it, even Win7 with the aero stuff looks dated.
- everything works. Everything. And works well. Programs from 10 years ago, git, power management, drivers. I now run linux in a virtual machine under Win8, because I don't have to deal with driver issues, hacks for hybrid graphics, not being able to use keyboard shortcuts for screen brightness etc.
- the new "metro" start menu is pretty cool. Hit "win" key, type the application name (or whatever), click enter, done. Same as Win7, except now I have extra space on the taskbar.
- there are some really handy shortcuts, like win+1 (switches/starts first application on taskbar), win+up maximizes current application etc. Very similar to xmonad, my go to window manager on linux.
- nu fluff. No flying windows, no pulsating icons etc. Less is more, looks better, doesn't get in the way and doesn't induce motion sickness.
- cleartype. This might be the same as Win7, but it's still the best for serious wor (like programming, reading slashdot, jut to name a few).
- no need for any pay for or free classic start menu applications. Really. Desktop works just like it did in Win7, and better. There's only one reason for osx: ios development. But it's turned off as soon as the build is posted. For servers and other headless machines it's linux, for getting stuff done, Win8.
Right on brother. the problem is that windows users have come to just expect constant reboots to be normal. *nix machines will go forever unless you replace the kernel. I don't know why people have so much trouble getting programs to work, I've found linux/bsd works out of box. Arch has some quirks but its my fav so far, and if that's a problem, mint works great out of box.. better than any windows I've used. Thanks for the "Unknown Error" popup, that helps me a lot, MS. Windows 8 even pages kernel memory. What!?!
bio->bi_end_io(bio, error);
See what I mean about fear being the enemy of good decision making? You give Microsoft much more credit than they deserve. If you think the Microsoft sneezes without checking with their EU lawyers first, you are just another conspiracy wingnut.
I guess I should bitch and moan too because my Ubuntu desktops have a red icon in the upper right sometimes, wanting me to reboot after installing some updates. Geez.
And it pops-up every-now-and-then bugging you to reboot ?
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
> What is the feeling/experience of other 'traitors' who run
> OS X for the desktop and Linux for everything else?
That I will stick with OS X on the desktop because it still sucks less than the others. 10.7 and 10.8 brought some annoyances but nothing unbearable. I'm hoping 10.9 is a genuine improvement. (If they'd just quit messing with the trackpad settings with every release I'd be a happy camper.) I'm still running 10.6 on every machine under my control that supports it.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
OK, there's some justification for this. Some.
Older versions of the OS do not support, and are not expected to support new hardware. If I was making an OS (let us be thankful I am not), I'd do the same thing.
That being said, it's often frustrating to buy new machines that won't support an older OS version. As the network admin for a small college (happily) infested with Macs, we often deal with major software (Avid, Pro Tools, etc.) that is very version-specific. Trying to find the latest version we can run on a lab's computers that will work with every 3rd party software application that the situation demands is like walking a tightrope. Run too new an OS version and you'll break something, guaranteed.
All of this kvetching aside, I'd 100X rather manage Macs than Windows. As to Linux, and we have a number of Linux servers on campus, I sit in my office with the 27" iMac my boss so generously purchased for me, and most of what's on the two screens it's running are xterms. Yet in a moment I can switch to Photoshop CS6 to do some tweaks on an image that is soon to become part of an informational how-to poster that students and faculty alike will completely ignore. Life is fun.
In effect they are. Try running Windows 2000 on modern hardware (and XP isn't far off).
Erm, no they aren't.
Lack of driver support is an issue yes, but they are not actively blocking you from developing your own driver. They wont make it easy for you but they aren't blocking you. Most of my XP/2000 applications have moved into Virtual Machines anyway and 2000 seems to work fine of VMware virtual hardware version 7. I wish the users who still require a Win 2K application worked half as well.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I've got 30,000+ software packages available to me from Debian's repositories, all of them tested before I install them. I don't have to deal with downloading funky software packages from questionable websites. I just do a sudo apt-get install and I'm good to go. Debian was so stable that I decided to upgrade the software on my workstation every day with a sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade for 3 1/2 years without problems.
I use KDE on my workstation an LXDE on my 7 year old laptop. Everything "just works" for me. Either I'm missing something or you folks must be using some really sucky Linux distro.
Maybe it's the hardware. I always check to make sure the hardware works with vanilla Linux. Are you folks using hardware made straight from Redmond? Are you using those funky windows drivers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NDISwrapper)? I wouldn't trust that steaming pile for anything. Don't ever use a windows driver on your Linux machine. That's just insane.
If you've never heard of Debian Linux, do yourself a favor and check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Linux
Ubuntu Linux is based off Debian, except Ubuntu is about the bling, Debian is about the stability.
There and back again...a nerd's tale!
Real iOS-ification would be sandboxing applications so that they can't operate on arbitrary files in the file system, and removal of access to said file-system. I can't really see either of those happening.
That's exactly what happens in the Mac App Store sandbox, as I understand it. Several application developers have released special crippled "Mac App Store edition" versions that have had features removed because those features don't work in the sandbox.
Or probably since about 2002 with the nvidia produced driver and a bit later on with xrandr. Just because you didn't know about it doesn't mean it's not there.
I suggest writing about stuff here and now instead of playing games (intentional or not) with history based on nothing but your own personal memory. A comment like your one above makes you look dishonest with an agenda to push even if it's just an innocent comment.
XP will get bug fixes to 2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Support_lifecycle
On April 14, 2009, Windows XP and its family of operating systems reached the end of their mainstream support period and entered the extended support phase as it marks the progression of the legacy operating system through the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy. During the extended support phase, Microsoft continues to provide security updates every month for Windows XP; however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes are no longer being offered. Extended support will end on April 8, 2014â"after which no more security patches or new support information will be provided.
When you think it was released October 25, 2001 providing bug fixes for 14 years is not that unreasonable.
And the thing is it will still work - I'm sure there will be a few XP boxes sat behind hardware firewalls for a long time after 2014 simply because people have forgotten about them and they work fine.
If you wall a machine off from the internet but for a couple of ports and keep the software that listens on those ports patched it could last until the PSUs and hard disks fail.
The activation is already cracked for the corporate versions and I'm sure someone will make an "XP forever" bootleg with the last set of security patches slipstreamed in and activation cracked. If MS patch the machines to self destruct with the last Windows Update I bet people will work out ways to disable that patch.
It doesn't support UEFI but most boards have the compatibility support module necessary to boot XP. Like I say, people will be running XP boxes long after 2014.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Yeah, because rebooting every once in a while is just sooooooo much of a hassle. I mean, who on this sweet sweet Earth can handle the gawd awful waiting for a computer to boot?
Waiting 1.5 minutes for my computer to reach desktop stage is an AGE. How can anybody live with waiting an ENTIRE 1.5 minutes! its crazy!
Losing 90 seconds a week is intolerable, the only solution to this unmitigated time-disaster is to spend thousands on an entirely different computer platform.
Yeah, I so totally would have guessed that just by looking in the mist logical place for it!
Already happened to me; I bought Aperture, version 1, then upgraded to 2, then to 3. Then I bought a new camera, moving from a Canon 50D to a Canon 6D. Apple's support for the 6D only works under 10.8, not under 10.6, A large number of my scripts and such stopped working with my OS upgrade to 10.6.8 from 10.5, and although I've worked through most of that, I'm just not willing to do it again.
So I moved to Adobe Lightroom. Featurewise, it's a step down, but at least it works.
My next Macpro will almost certainly be a used one from EBay; something I know I can install 10.6.8 on and keep all my stuff solid.
I like the machines I own, I even like OSX at the 10.6 level, but Apple annoys the heck out of me.
And yes, Linux powers my servers.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
For what it's worth, I'm running Ubuntu 12.10 with Cinnamon and I swear I have to reboot just as much as I do in Windows. There are prompts for updates almost every other day, and probably a reboot prompt every other week or so. Now, I know in Linux I probably don't *have* to reboot and could just kick services, and it's probably a lot related to the desktop manager and I could just restart that. But at least for me it's far from the panacea of infinite uptime, at least from a desktop user perspective.
Except for when it doesn't - coming from someone looking over more than a hundred linux, solaris, freebsd and AIX boxes and about a dozen MS Windows machines. Guess where the most of the time gets consumed. If you can't guess it's the idiot that managed to sneak an underpowered Vista laptop into the place who doesn't want an upgrade, but next in line are some Win7 machines that are still a bit flaky (USB3 drivers etc - full crash when you plug stuff in). More stable, yes. As stable as anything outside MS - not yet.
I was a so-so Linux user, primarily using Windows for most of my tasks, and just sort of playing with Linux. I went to OSX for a laptop, and although didn't like it at first, and still have issues, I'm reasonably happy with it. New job though, and I'm in front of Mint Linux 100% during the day. I've found it surprisingly adept at just about everything I do for work (heavy embedded work, libre office, web, pdfs, etc)....enough so that I have a VM of it at home running 24x7 on my Windows machine, and use it quite a bit. In fact, I've scaled back the things I do on Win7 quite a bit, and with a few tweaks, think I could be happy running Mint full-time. It runs well enough as a VM that I'm inclined not to mess with it. I don't think I'd gain much from having it native, except the endless stream of background Windows updating that's always going on. I can't slam Win7 that bad though. It is rare as hell for me to need to reboot the machine, maybe once this year so far.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
There was a time when a post like this would get 800 fish on the hook.
Thing is, people don't care as much about the desktop - especially the younger readers.
[Sent from my Amiga phone]
Son as soon as y ou have a desktop, you are ready to work ?
I need more than this to work. Beside starting my dev environment and logging myself un gmail, our project management etc, I think it takes more than 1.5 min.
And who said I spent any money on a new platform ? Linux is free you know
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
If you have to run a really old OS on a new system, you often find that while there's no drivers, the default ones work fine. The "standard VGA" driver works ok for display and so on.
There's also the minor issue of 2000 being unsupported (meaning unpatched) and almost 14 years old.
I don't think companies should have to support everything forever, but MS and PC makers like Dell do a pretty good job with older and newer stuff.
We had to install Windows XP on some newer Lenovo systems, for temporary project. It worked surprisingly well. These were Sandy Bridge Core i5 systems, with Intel graphics, and Realtek NICs. We were able to get graphics, sound, and network all working without a problem. It wasn't as easy as setting up Windows 7, which they were designed for, but it worked. While these are exactly latest hardware, they're not all that old.
Also, as you say, it is quite different between not actively supporting something, and actively stopping it from working. Apple not only has extremely short support cycles, they only support to previous OS versions, and their OS release cycle is pretty quick, but they'll then go and actively stop old OSes from working on new hardware.
Microsoft support its OSes for a minimum of 10 years from release. That's pretty good, and far longer than Apple. PC makers generally doing okay job of supporting older OSes on their PCs at least for a good while.
I have no doubt that windows XP support is going to become fairly hard to come by for new hardware quite soon. This is because it is falling out of support in 2014. However, it's rather hard to hate on a company for "only" supporting something for 13 years.
Apple nerfed both, badly, in the last two years. That has me anxious about what they're going to do with the rest of the Mac OSX product line.
Also, a WiFi-only retina MBP? Given the wifi issues my 2011 MBP has had with non-open WiFi, I'm not looking forward to that mess.
Finding God in a Dog
this is PROOF that gheyness can be cured; therefore it *is* a choice!
C|N>K
One of my biggest pet peeves with Mac OS X is it's non-conformance to Focus Follows Mouse. Why can't Apple fix that for fucks sake?
Because Apple shows you the only way (or the highway).
For novice users, I think it is a pretty good O/S. For semi-advanced users, there are traps in the making. For power users, aside from the FFM issue, in my experience, I have been happy with it (after doing some tweaks like macports and some UI customizations). http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/geeklets/collections/dark-is-beautiful-1/
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
I've got a similar attitude - I've got the same e16 theme on my desktop (ganymede) that I was using in 1997. So from RedHat linux 3.0 to Fedora 17 it has looked the same and acted the same way. At home I'm using e17 and some day I may bother setting up a similar theme in that to use at work. Having windows with red, green, blue or grey borders depending on task importance is good when you have tasks spanning weeks that you go back to every now and again.
> You have to reboot because the files are in use. What happens to shared libraries that are in use when you update them on Linux?
Why would you EVER modify an in use library?
If anything, you would get a NEW version.
The management of system software for critical production systems is not exactly a new thing. There's really no excuse for WinDOS to keep screwing it up in 2013.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Just for perspective, Erickson's telephone switches that ran Erlang regularly ran for years without reboots, including periodic code updates (the Erlang language was effectively the kernel). It of course also ran thousands of processes in parallel on as many processors as needed. AFAIK no other machines have had uptimes comparable to those phone switches. I keep planning to learn Erlang. I've done a few toy programs but nothing past the level of the Erlang book.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Parent poster does an excellent job outlining all the ways in which both the grandparent poster and the original submitter of this Ask Slashdot are incorrect about the perceived "iOSification" of Mac OS X. He makes an excellent point about the recent removal of Scott Forstall, which will probably bring both the "skeumorphism" BS and any further iOSification of OS X to a complete halt.
The main thing that people like the original submitter seem to be worried about, that Mac OS X will become a locked-down walled garden in some future version, is so unlikely as to be preposterous until someone like Microsoft leads the way. There is a huge difference between creating a walled garden for maintaining control of a brand new software ecosystem on proprietary limited-function devices like tablets and phones, and locking down a previously-open general purpose operating system on a general purpose computer. It would be suicidal for Apple to do something so stupid with Mac OS X, and those who are expecting it to be right around the corner are just ideologues fighting an imaginary enemy. The backlash if either Microsoft or Apple tried this would be legendary.
I'll be the first to eat my hat if this really happens, and join the crowd moving away from Mac, but for now the submitter is a part of a very small group of zealots who have simply latched onto a cause without sufficient evidence. Mac OS X is still the best, most consistent and user-friendly desktop for something like 90% of the populace outside of the small group of people who are technically minded enough to deal with the remaining quirks of Linux and who need the better environment for programming work. There are a lot of technical folks here which makes it seem like there are a lot of people who don't like Mac anymore, but the rest of the population is doing just fine with both OS X and Windows 8. Honestly at least two thirds of the few posts I see on articles like this from people who moved away from Mac are always from some kind of programmer, and they don't seem to realize what a tiny fraction of computer users they represent.
The funniest part about all this is how many of these idealogues are "fleeing" Mac and going to Windows of all things, as if this is some sort of improvement that will protect their computing "freedom". It's a rather bizarre phenomenon.
Hey man, if all you like to do with a computer is watch porn and reboot often, Windows is for you. As a Linux/BSD user, I prefer to watch porn without rebooting.
bio->bi_end_io(bio, error);
This isn't like Win 8 where you can't reach some features without going through the metro desktop. All the tools are still there, Apple hasn't threatened (yet) to prevent installation from other sources outside their app store. They aren't making you use their little app display thing (which is really the same thing as the start menu in windows) and they let you change the weird backwards scrolling they introduced.
I'm really not sure what your anger is about? That OS X has changed? It's been around for nearly 14 years, of course it's changed. Are you worried it's losing its unix roots? iOS is unix based as well!
Besides what would you switch to?
Ubuntu? It has the best support in terms of "just working" but they have ADD about their interface which has changed how many times over the last five years? And now they decided they didn't get enough derision over the Unity fiasco so they're going to go recreate it with the Mir/Wayland controversy.
Fedora/Redhat? Kind of ADD on features from time to time. Less easy to get some components working with normal hardware. Redhat especially isn't as bleeding edge. I guess if you're going linux that's the better route but either way you lose the polish.
Win7? I don't get this at all. MS isn't going to support Win 7 forever and you'll be forced into the nastiness that is whatever windows they come up with next. Microsoft is trying to recreate Apple's success with a worse interface. If you don't like Apple I can't understand why on earth you'd switch to MS.
The Anti-Blog
what do you mean if...
all the dells you buy right now with windows 8 home ARE locked in.
??
I switched for OSX 10.1. Though I should say I switched from dual boot. I had been using Unixes all during the late 1980s onward and Linux offered me a way to run Unix software. OSX had XFree86, with Fink it had access to Unix software (worse than most Linux distributions but still fairly good selection).
As I saw it: OSX was only slightly worse than Windows for Office productivity and only slightly worse that Linux for Unix software. The ability to freely intermix was hugely important.
2013 I still think the same things. Linux is great for open source though OSX is still pretty good. Windows has some advantages on productivity apps though I like OSX a lot. My reasons haven't changed.
The only thing that is making me 2nd guess is I love the idea of ubiquitous computing. I really like the One Note and would want that on a tablet. I really would like to be able to twist my screen and use a finger. That might get me to switch. But honestly 85% of what I want ubiquitous for I can get from my iPad.
Apple does this on 2 year cycles. That would be liking blocking Windows 7 next year. Of blocking XP in mid 2008.
I followed a similar curve, but I saw OS X going to hell in a handbasket after the iPhone was launched and became a huge money maker. Suddenly I couldn't trust OS X updates not to break things anymore, etc etc. I think I went back 100% around 2008. For me, it was a relief to to back to Linux. I know I can trust my Linux system not to change unless I want it to. I know that my Linux apps will 'just work', and I won't have to screw with MacPorts or Fink or whatever the cool kids are using these days. To the OP: If you know what you want in Linux, I'd say just try the mainline distros (Debian, Fedora, even Ubuntu), see if they meet your needs. If not, maybe Windows. Like other commenters I don't even really hate Windows 7. It's just not well-suited for what I need. I have no experience with Windows 8.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
I installed Xubuntu, and then tried to get Compiz running on top of it. I ended up with an unholy mess (maybe my fault, I dunno). Things deteriorated from there, the UI was a weird mishmash of various things. Now I've wiped the machine, and I'm using live CDs (and DVDs) to try out other distros to move everything too.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
hah, read your title as suggesting the VMS operating system. having had at one time a VaxStation at work, I can with experience tell you it's not really the best desktop OS.....
Seriously? Its obvious you're lying when you talk about having trouble with 'java, python, web' as a developer ... since until recently it came with all 3 of those things built in and working 'out of the box'. Python and Apache httpd are still part of the base install, though Java no longer is, thats a recent change.
You sir, are a liar.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Well they did manage to run something like two years without the EU-required Browser Option Button, apparently by mistake. It's about to cost them $600 million for this one line code error. So I would argue that somebody forgot to check with the lawyers.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
What restrictions? I hear you saying 'all restrictions' but you aren't actually naming any ... just like everyone else who uses that tired meme.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Right now, Windows 7 sucks the least.
Unix was described as "like a toolbox of small, sharp and well-honed tools that do precisely what is expected of them; no more, no less."
I wish that were still true. On the command line it's still mostly true. The once-and-ever big thing of Unix was that these simple, reliable, straightforward commands like 'cat', 'echo', 'ls', etc. could be combined into programs of arbitrary length and complexity - basically the shell environment could be considered as the inspiration for Perl and many scripting languages. But these all-consuming GUI Desktop Environments like KDE and Gnome have a different purpose, and a different model. And while I was a cheerful Gnome user for quite a while, I think these environments have Lost The True Way. X11 is, of course, problematical and possibly was the essential negative inspiration
So I think the way forward for me is going to be one of the very simple window managers, with additional support for 3D visualizations (e.g. Desktop Cube) and compositing, each of which are also simple features in their own way. Think of them as filters of the visual field comprised of the collection of windows. In that sense they can be added to the simple environment and taken away with minimal impact on anything else that doesn't depend on them.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I haven't used a Mac regularly since the late 1990s. There are two things from back then that I recall with fondness - the Eudora mail system, which I don't recall very wall so by now Thunderbird and/or Evolution may well have passed; and a time tracker thing whose name I forget - I think it was called "Watch-It". It was perfect for logging my time on different projects and the user interface was great. I don't think the Mac OS X GUI was as good as its ancestor, NextStep.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Me too. I tried switching to XFCE again recently, but went back to FVWM after a day. I have too much configuration and automation built in to FVWM and it works neatly and quickly and I get my work done better. Looks like I'm stuck with it for another ten years of productive work.
They also block running the older OS on new system.
Just think if all dells and other windows pc where locked to only windows 8 or newer.
umm, citation? I have never heard this before. I'm pretty sure you could install any osx variant on any computer in the apple store. unless you mean the system 7 os, which yes, you can't install on new machines.
Especially how they just stopped making 30" displays just because (insert BS excuse here).
Today I just happened to see a bunch of 30" displays. I basically searched for '2560 monitor' to see what kind of extreme HD hardware was out there. Turns out there are lots of 27" and 30" 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 displays available. On E-bay there are even ones from Korea that are only about $400 (but may have a few dead pixels, no speakers, only DVI, or other weirdness). I kept seeing the names 'Catleap' and 'Yamasaki' (IIRC). Many of them are using the exact same IPS panel as the Apple ones. So let Google or whatever be your friend, and you may find happiness.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Apple not only has extremely short support cycles, they only support to previous OS versions, and their OS release cycle is pretty quick, but they'll then go and actively stop old OSes from working on new hardware.
umm, citation? this is not true to my knowledge. I'm pretty sure you could take any osx variant and install it on any computer in the apple store.
Where are my mod points when I need them. My kubuntu machine's even automatically rebooting after installing security updates. Please mod parent up.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
I was a Mac guy but I was alienated by all of the changes that Jobs made when he returned. I began my PC-ward move around the time of the iMac. In two years, you'll wonder what it was about Macs that had you hooked.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Linux still feels pretty 1990s to me. I use Debian all over the place for servers, but if you want
- CUDA or OpenCL
- iPhone syncing
- advanced audio
- multiple monitors
then I hope you like playing with drivers, and xorg.conf, and automake. Because that's going to be a few days of your time.
There is a much easier way to deal with updates than GP's method:
Click the start menu.
Click "Control Panel."
Click "System and Security."
Click "Turn automatic updating on or off."
Change "Install updates automatically (recommended)" to any of the other three options.
Congratulations! Now you won't get surprised by Windows Update automatically installing updates that require reboot.
Not only can you disable the behavior, you can avoid having to deal with it in five mouse clicks.
In effect they are. Try running Windows 2000 on modern hardware (and XP isn't far off).
You know, Windows 2000 predates the existence of the first version of OS X by over a year. You are having to go a long way back to make a point.
Why does everyone hate gnome 3 so much? I viewed it as an upgrade. Windows 8 doesn't look that bad either. Unity seems a little clunkier than gnome3, but still quite usable.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
OK, I have to be truthful here. I did purchase a single Apple Cinema HD 30" monitor and the damn thing cost me $1,500++
So, I checked out Newegg and the HP LP3065 was a dream come true: 3 Dual-link-DVI inputs and $1,100.00 price tag.
So, I had 1 single Apple 30" display and 5 HP ones.
About 5 months ago, I read somewhere a review of the eBay 2650x1600 30" Korean
monitors and the review was all praise. Which is a good thing for me because
my Apple Cinema HD just bit the dust 2 weeks ago.
So, I tried to see if I can fix the damn thing but there is little info on the web about replacement parts.
I still cant find a Maintenance Manual. Not to mention that the whole unit is like glued together
and difficult to fix. No wonder it blew up. There are no holes for hot air to escape. Stupid shit....
Back to my post. No, I would not spend a premium on an Apple display, but if I wanted to
get a 30" I no longer can. Not because nobody makes them but because Apple thinks
that "most of it's customers do not want a monitor that big".
What really REALLY, bugs me is that I have a friend who had a 30" display and he had to settle
for a second 27" (because he only buys Apple) and when I asked him about it
he was: "Yeah, I think Apple is right. 27" is the way to go."
I told him that he was a dipshit that drank the cool aid. We had a major fight. Still not talking.
Life, you gotta love it...
away from you
Apple still offers PPC Mac and 10.2 downloads.
Then insist you should buy a new computer. OS X is like leasing a car vs. owning one.
I'm using Snow Leopard, 10.6 and if I don't want to I don't have to install Lion or Mountain Lion and I can still use my Mac. Ubuntu stops supporting 10.04 desktop in April, and 12.04 server in 2015. And 10.04 is a Long Term Support edition. Canonical increased LTS to 5 years now for both version starting with 12.04. That is shorter than Apple's, and Microsoft's support.
I think however that I bought my last PC (personal computer) and OS from Apple. I may buy another Macbook Pro but I'm not sure. I don't think so but I may also try to build a Hachintosh.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Microsoft supported Windows 2000 up until 2010. A 10 year support life cycle. The LONGEST Apple has EVER officially supported a release of OS-X was 4 years, and it's generally 3 or less (n-2).
So I'm about to loose support for my Mac running 10.6? Why would Apple do that when they still offer 10.02 downloads? 10.2 was replaced with 10.3 almost 10 years ago. There goes your "4 years".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Adobe Creative Suite
Until I can run Photoshop and Illustrator natively, Linux will not be anything more than a hobby for me. Yes there are alternative programs out there such as GIMP and inkscape that could substitute in extremis, but the fact is when it comes to design work Adobe Creative Suite is the one and only game going anymore. If Adobe released a version of Creative Suite for Linux I'd switch over in a heartbeat. But as it stands, my iPhone, iPad and Mac Mini all integrate seamlessly, and even though I occasionally chafe under certain restrictions (please Apple let me set a different default browser in iOS), I have far fewer headaches now than I ever did working in a Windows environment.
"I'm making perfect sense, you're just not keeping up."
Nope. My wife and I both have 2011 Macbook Pros, mine came with 10.6; her's, purchased about 2 months later, came with 10.7. I had a BITCH of a time getting 10.6 to install on her's, and I'm still not sure how I did it. The reinstall disk that came with mine wouldn't work, and getting it to boot from an external disk with 10.6 was a pain although it finally worked. The install never did complete successfully, but it did boot after manually shutting it down and I was able to update it to 10.6.8. All told it took me several hours and a lot of luck to get Snow Leopard to install.
I was also told by an Apple employee that the firmware won't allow versions older than what was originally installed.
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
LaunchPad descends from Launcher in classic Mac OS. The reason it is necessary for most users today is that users have hundreds of apps, not 5. Take it out of your Dock and ignore it if you don't want to use it.
Mac App Store is a necessary part of a world where there are malicious software developers and consumer users. And also necessary when you have hundreds of apps, not 5. You can ignore it, though, if you like. You can set the Security preference to run anything.
Full screen apps make perfect sense on systems that only run Photoshop all day, or only run Aperture all day, or only run Logic all day. There are many Macs like that. You can ignore the full-screen button if you don't want full screen apps.
Even if iOS never existed, these features would have come to the Mac. They are simply ahead on iOS because iOS moved faster since its launch.
I can't really think of what else would be your problem. I'm running Macs since the 80's and the latest release seems to me to be a very natural extension of everything that has gone before. It hasn't changed in any significant way to me. I hated downloading disk images and installing apps and putting in serial numbers, I hated updating them manually. I hated having 30 things in my Dock and digging through the Applications folder for the rest. Now, I don't keep anything in my Dock, I launch apps from LaunchPad, and my Dock shows me what is running, only the apps I'm actually using. It works a lot better for me. Nothing to do with iOS. In 2001, you could put all your apps in the Dock and it would not even be full. Now, there are just too many.
I strongly recommend you don't look down your nose at these features. They are not only for newbies. Mac App Store protects newbies and enables them to install and use native apps (and pay developers for their work,) but for sophisticated users, it enables you to have hundreds of apps without having to do any updating or managing. If Mac App Store doesn't seem necessary to you, get more apps! It will seem necessary pretty shortly.
Also, I can tell you, I've had like 20 years of virus-free computing. I'm not willing to give that up. I'm glad Apple is continuing to enhance security, because I have unpublished work on my Mac. I can't have viruses and native malware digging through stuff.
Maybe it is browser plug-ins you miss? I certainly don't. They were always supposed to go away. I was a Flash developer from 1997 through about 2002 and we used to dream of a future where vector graphics, animations, and audio video ran in the browser. The Web needs to improve in order to compete with native apps, even if there weren't massive security and administration issues with plug-ins.
If you can get by with a Linux on your desktop, that is great, you should probably do that. But the reason to do it is apps. The non-app part of the Mac is functional, it is just a foundation for the apps. If the apps on a Linux desktop do it for you, then you have that opportunity. If you're not using apps like iMovie, iPhoto, Keynote, Pages, BBEdit, Hype, Xcode, PaintCode, Transmit, iTunes, Pixelmator, Sketch, or Creative Suite, Logic, Final Cut, Avid, Aperture — then use Linux. If you're not depending on subsystems like CoreAudio, CoreMIDI, CoreImage, CoreVideo, QuickTime — then bolt to Linux. I use Linux Web servers but I use a Mac workstation because I really need the unique-to-the-Mac apps. The apps pay for themselves for me many times over compared to any other system.
>> I might just go to using Windows 7 for the desktop (not Win8, however).
congratulations to the 2013 Slashdot Posting Darwin Award.
If you have to run a really old OS on a new system, you often find that while there's no drivers, the default ones work fine. The "standard VGA" driver works ok for display and so on.
There's also the minor issue of 2000 being unsupported (meaning unpatched) and almost 14 years old.
Yep, default drivers work fine on the VM, no VMtools though but W2K is small enough I can back up the entire VM.
I wish I could get rid of ancient W2K boxes but unfortunately they haven't found a replacement program yet.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Strongly disagree. I'm forced to use it on my workstation at work. Most of my company (devs and ops) know they would be better off if we could use linux on our workstations. But we're vendor locked-in as a company.
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
Iv'e been using Gentoo on my servers for many years now and I can't even imagine trading that for even another Linux flavor. No other system gives me the flexibility I need for development and the power tools to back it with, it is BY FAR the best tool for my job, the way I see it. That said, my desktop environments HAVE to just work, I learned that the hard way after fighting a rather ugly system upgrade my Gentoo desktop required after I've mistakenly updated a configuration file - which cost me an expensive half day of work. That's why on my desktop there's only one choice - Kubuntu. For me it's not plausible to use OSX or Windows, they just don't do the stuff I need them to do and their UI doesn't and CAN NOT (nor is it designed to) work the way I want to work. KDE4 on Ubuntu makes the most sense. Everything hardware-wise just works perfectly, package management is a breeze and KDE is the right power tool for the job. I'm sorry, but as much as I try I just can't figure out how OSX is an acceptable solution. Other than utilizing the hardware right it pretty much does everything WRONG for me.
I feel that the elementaryos.org project is actually crafting the kind of experience I have wanted. I went Mac because I got tired of trying to make laptops sleep consistently, device drivers work just so - but with carefully chosen hardware and Ubuntu customized with the elementary UI on top, I think the lean, carefully crafted interface has finally arrived.
Even if they change elementary to resemble OSX less, and I think they should consider that, the framework has been extremely well thought out. They're using Vala instead of anything virtual machine-based for standard apps. Things feel light and fast. I approve.
My desktops have been Linux-only for years. I can run any games I care about in Wine, easily, and unlike a Windows system, I can transplant my hard drives into any x86 box Linux supports and it will just work.
My main work and home machines run Mac OS X, but I have a Fedora 18 (w/ Gnome 3) box on the side. I'm really impressed with how far Linux has come, but man.. if you think being an OS X user in a Windows world was hard 10 years ago try being a Linux user in an OS X/Windows world. Even though my main tools (Vim mostly) run fine on Linux, there's a lot of small things I miss from OS X. I'm not happy with the direction Mac OS X is going (especially how Apple keeps breaking the Unix side of things), but on the other hand I'm really glad that the OS has finally become sort of mainstream (in terms of software support etc.). Besides, I feel really comfortable using OS X, so I'm not switching for now. However I can heartily recommend you give Linux a try for 30 days, because it really has come a long way on the desktop.
jasnw at least try Windows 8. If you have used Windows 7 (or Linux with Compiz) on a daily basis and appreciate the way windows dock, and launch most applications via the startbar anyway, theres nothing to be missed in Windows 8. If you used Win7 daily and didn't appreciate that, go back to XP or linux. If you haven't tried Windows 8, there is no reason to avoid it except if you don't have a touch laptop anyway and want to stick with the old ways, or if you believe the mass media ensued hysteria, i blame low news days for that. And please don't install a startmenu replacement within 60 minutes of using Win8, that just shows you couldn't cope with the learning curve. (amazingly a lot of people i considered smart failed to find out that how exactly those screen edges work in context. I dont blame Win8, they just failed to grasp (as conservative adults) a really simple concept that any 2 year old gets, much like initial iOS adoption actually)
Hivemind harvest in progress..
I own my own system,
very quickly got over being owned by Apple,
Apple want to own the world just as Micro$oft did,
Gates is gone, Windows is a has been,
Jobs is gone, waiting for Apple to go stale.
Go well
Also the new keyboards are shit.
So where does the future lie? My latest computer purchase was a Dell XPS and a copy of VMWare Workstation 9.
I have set it up to load VMWare automatically on boot, and then I have various Linux distros and Windows 7 installed in VM's (the machine runs 8 which I consider a "server" OS as I would never want to "use" it.)
I get:
I moved from Debian to OS X (Tiger) in 2006 because I wanted to try Mac and didn't have the time to tinker with a Linux desktop to make it work. Being tired of not being able to upgrade my programs anymore (e.g., being stuck with Firefox 3.6) and unwilling to buy an OS X upgrade I installed Ubuntu on my Macbook in 2011.
I still use Ubuntu and can't imagine going back. But that's probably because of the tools I use: I think installing and using, e.g., open source programming tools and LaTeX is more streamlined in Linux than Mac.
Tried finding XP drivers for new hardware? Good luck.
> So, in short, I am searching for an operating system that has the nice interface and POSIX-compliant :)
> backend of Mac OS, the openness of Linux, and runs all the software Windows can. Will a solution ever exist?
The answer is Mac OS X. You install Parallels (or another virtualizer) and you run Linux in one instance of the virtualizer and Windows in another instance of the virtualizer, and you can even run another copy of Mac OS X in another instance of the virtualizer. Or, you can run Linux on a remote server that you get at with SSH and not use Windows or a virtualizer at all.
Mac OS X is not a walled garden by any definition. Mac App Store is optional and only contains a small subset of all Mac apps at this time.
What software is it from Windows that you miss on the Mac?
Now that Windowmaker (http://windowmaker.org) has been picked up again, you might look at that one. That's the one i always ran before switching to OSX. And i'm pretty sure it's going to be the one i'm running when i move back since i already decided that my next laptop won't be a macbook anymore.
Windowmaker is close to the NEXTSTEP UI, but it's very different from OS-X. It's different from NEXTSTEP as well in that it rides on X11. I wonder what would be the reason for anyone to go from there to OS-X? Incidentally, if one leaves OS-X, one might as well go to PC-BSD w/ XFCE, which would be the closest interface to that one.
"We had to install Windows XP on some newer Lenovo systems, for temporary project. It worked surprisingly well. These were Sandy Bridge Core i5 systems, with Intel graphics, and Realtek NICs. We were able to get graphics, sound, and network all working without a problem. It wasn't as easy as setting up Windows 7, which they were designed for, but it worked. While these are exactly latest hardware, they're not all that old."
That's because Lenovo provides driver support back to XP (and even Win2K for some) for all enterprise products up to and including the Ivy Bridge generation (i.e. Thinkpad T/X/W *30), and possibly even Haswell when that arrives. Drivers and so on are all available on their support site.
People who use other hardware may not be so lucky... getting decent battery life on a laptop without proper driver support is difficult, for instance. Or getting certain IO features (special hotkeys and so on) working... it's less of a problem on desktops, but on mobile devices, it can be a real PITA...
KDE tried to copy Windows as much as they could - when I saw their annoying Windows-esque dialogue when you connect a USB mass storage device I was done with that. Then Gnome chased the "everything is going Web 3.0 and mobile" dream so this leaves me with only sensible window managers like XFCE and LXDE. Any other ones I should try?
Try Razor-qt, if you like the ability to run Qt based applications. If you are into the OS-X interface, go w/ XFCE. I actually disagree w/ your assessment of KDE - it can be made to look like a lot of things - CDE, OpenLook, Motif, NEXTSTEP, Windows XP and so on. The great thing about KDE is that it's customizable and flexible - you can leave your session, log into another account, and then work there in a different environment, and switch b/w them using ALT-F#. Something that can't be done under GNOME, and I dunno about LDXE, XFCE or others.
I have had no problems with windows 8 myself. I find it works wonderful.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Dude, you know what you sound like? You sound like someone who left his girlfriend, then tired of the new one and having remorse and crying to his friends how much he loved his ex and how much he misses her and what a huge mistake he'd made. And to top it off, you're now considering a third one.
Sorry for the harsh words, but you sound like a never-satisfied disloyal prick, it's always your partner's fault for the relationship difficulties. For once just own up to your bad decisions and live with the consequences. And don't whine to disinterested bystanders.
Does PC-BSD 9.1 still have video & Wi-Fi support issues? For them, it should be easier, since they accept both open & closed source software in terms of drivers.
What on earth do you mean by (when referring to Linux) . "It requires too much overhead to install software" ? Im inclined to think its been a long way since you tried using linux or you have been using some old / obscure distro. cus for the most part (and im referring mainly to debian based distributions here). There is no operating system that i have seen that has a package management system that comes anywhere close to what we have on linux. I honestly cannot remember last time i encountered dependency issues (back in the early noughties sometime maybe?). You can groan about anything you like regarding linux but the one thing that really shines out there is package management.
disclaimer : Other people have preferences such as RPM (which i hate), BSD's ports system , gentoo's portage etc. - I speak generally about debian / apt-get as its a long time since i used others as described above - i Imagine they are all pretty mature nowadays.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
What ever you decide to do, please don't do Ubuntu.
w/ a nice development environment.
Wish it were further along.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I used to be a Mac fanboy but left for similar reasons two summers ago. I've blogged about the experience here: http://www.adventuresinoss.com/?cat=26 Currently using a Dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu 12.04 - don't miss my Mac, although it did take awhile to wean myself from it.
I looked at my desk yesterday, I have a Dell machine running Windows 7 with two monitors. In the second monitor I run Linux in a virtual machine. My Laptop is a Mac running OSX. I also have Parallels on my Mac with virtual machines with Red Had Linux and Windows 7 images. Lately I have been working on embedded software, but I also write Windows apps and do some web site development. Some tools only run on Windows, some only on Linux, some only on Mac. You can wine and cry or just learn to use all systems. If I were to spend my own money today to buy a computer it would be a Chromebook. My children have no trouble using Macs, Windows or Linux as I also have all three types of machines at home. We are also about evenly split on iPhone vs. Android. Tablets, we use the iPad most as my early Visio Android tablet quit due to poor soldering. I just haven't gotten around to resoldering its poorly made power connector. Most people don't have experience with all systems and can't afford to buy multiple systems. Here are a few things I do to keep sane. Don't ever upgrade the OS on a machine. Unless you got a lemon OS like Windows Vista, you are better off keeping with the OS that came with your box. Buy the hardware and OS based upon your application needs. My wife uses iTunes, a web browser and email, so we bought her a Macbook Pro. My kids do school work and play games, obviously a WiiU and a Chromebook is what they need. Don't worry about switching from one system to another. If you are considering a system that locks your data in, reconsider. Even the best system will be out of date in three years. I've been buying personal computers for over 30 years, I was online before the internet. If I had stuck with the CP/M system I took to college I would be way out of date now.
Give it another 20 years, it will get there!
I moved back from OS X to Ubuntu, in part because I disliked Apple's policies, and in part because I disliked the OS X UI and its numerous quirks. Unfortunately, the joke's been on me since Ubuntu went on this kick to thoroughly mess up the default Ubuntu UI and Gnome 3 also breaks a lot of traditional paradigms and behaviors. You can run another desktop on Ubuntu (I suppose until they get around to breaking that with Mir), but it's an uphill battle since a lot of stuff just won't work. Right now, there simply don't seem to be any good choices.
No, you don't have to reboot at all or "kick services", since upgraded services will just get restarted automatically; the only reason to reboot is if the kernel gets updated. Don't blame the OS for your irrational choices.
Just a guess that your experience with Win 7 was in a corporate environment?
I've been running Win 7 at home for just over a year now and not ONCE did Windows force an update down my throat.
In fact, it probably has the BEST update system I've used. It'll download in the background (if you so choose) and only install at your next reboot. It NEVER asks me to reboot. If I happen to, the updates install quickly (already downloaded) and the machine is ready next power-up.
Now at WORK... They force the pop-ups, the force in the installs, and the force the reboots at the most asinine times of day, totally wrecking my workflow. Don't blame the OS for something that is totally under the influence of your corporate IT policy.
The Surface RT already is; x86 PCs are merely the next step.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You bitch about the iOS-ification of OS X but that's exactly what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8. To say your going to Windows 7 and not Windows 8 is ridiculous because you could do the same with OS X, i.e, stick with the version that has not been iOS-ified.
There's no logical consistency with your argument.
This post makes no sense at all. It might have made some sense a year ago.
MS is obviously working to kill off win7.
Thanks - can I send you screenshots every time Ubuntu prompts for updates and insists a reboot is necessary? I don't think the kernel is updating that much...
If I were using a standard "desktop" system I'd be running debian, or maybe a debian-derivative like ubuntu or mint. However I'm a laptop guy, and always on the move. My thinkpad (circa-2002) never suspended, resume was just a vague dream, and wifi chipset support was nil.
What is the current experience of linux on a laptop? And I mean, a normal laptop like a store-bought system? Can you just slap it closed and go, and always awaken upon opening? Is wandering between different wireless access points an easy thing, or a major, manual chore? Do you still have to kneel and pray to the xconfig gods when you have to connect to a projector? I've given up on audio, won't even bother with that for now...
These are the things that led me to the MacBook, then MBP - and honestly the only reason I'm not looking seriously at going back to linux is that I'd have to erase a system and lose about a day of productivity just to find out if it was worth it. I'm fine with the window managers and apps so "just boot from a livecd and see which one you want" doesn't really answer my questions. For me it is totally the operational aspect of having a linux laptop: suspend, resume, displays, wifi.
Can anyone vouch for the current state of laptop living in the linux world?
"The mind is a terrible thing to, um, uh, oh bollocks." -- Me
If linux came in a package as sexy as any Apple hardware, why would you want anything else? All the OS' are flawed in some respect and all have the average user at the mercy of the company/devs: Apple tyranny, MS tyranny, or Linux tyranny (yes, the constant churn of package dependencies, dead projects, etc.), it's all similar. The stand out is the packaging: Apple = uber sexy, PC = affordable and ugly.
So maybe Linux can make more inroads if say a kickstarter project puts together something as gorgeous as a Macbook Air with hardware that has open drivers.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
On the linux side of the house, things are becoming ubuntu-ified, windows-ified, and gnome3-ified. My linux laptop runs worse than it ever has, allows me to customize much less, and I dare say, is now a worse working environment than windows. Thought there would never be a day I would be saying that.
Various MS corporate products demand newer OS's. Sharepoint is one that comes to mind.
It has a file system, an environment that will run applications and services, host drivers, manage memory, and (maybe) add in UI and window management primitives and a network stack. In my lifetime, I've worked on over twenty different OSes (of course, this is because I started back before the Win/Lin/OSX hegemony came upon us), not to mention the at least half-dozen Windows versions I've used. Seriously, they're not all that different, at least where most of us are living each day. You get to a point where you say, OK, how do I run a program? How do I allocate memory? How do I open a network connection? Where's the library for this or that? And, in the end, they all have quirks that make them all a joy and all a pain in the ass. Pick one, use it, stop fretting and kvetching.
Besides, if you really wanted different, you'd be using an IBM iSeries or zSeries - those have OS'es with significant (and interesting) differences.
That is all.
heh - my IT guy at school (I was an assistant manager/TA for several labs) hated supporting macs with a passion, so I usually did the support. He also was a piss poor PC supporter, so I usually found and fixed viruses students constantly installed (either intentionally or not - and I know there were some intentional) because it would take him a month to get in and do it because of his "80 hour weeks" (every time I saw him, he was chatting or doing nothing). The next year after I graduated, the school went heavily to Linux (and I imagine the virus nightmare was horrible without me taking initiative and fixing them).
I went from being a Windows hater to being very platform agnostic at that job. I worked on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and IRIX (IRIX was on its last legs, but I have fond memories... always liked the obscure variants, and I supported many at my first post-college job).
If an app wants access to the user's home folder, they can get it.
When was that capability added? I thought sandboxed applications could read and write user files only by having the user select each individual file through a secure file chooser.
I stopped running a local server a few years ago because a remote staging server is accessible from Mac, iPad, and iPhone, and my remote staging server runs the same Linux as my main server.
The practicality of that depends on how fast the connection from your home to the staging server is.
If this thread proves anything you will not get allot of help from the linux community as i found a over a decade ago, your on your own. If you want to spend countless hours RTM's that are usually out of date and may or may not work depending on what kernel you are using then linux is great. and if you ever ask someone a question the response will be in the realm of 'you should know this , its been in linux for 20 years blah blah blah'. OSX is nice and friendly for home users, the vast majority of the time it just works, however its mostly a toy and usually management just likes it because its trendy and pretty. Now if you are looking to get actual real world work done, Windows 7 is the way to go (not Win8). The fact is the majority of companies still use windows, business applications are still written for windows, and its quicker to install an application on windows and help online if you need it that it is on any linux platform without having to know what Linus Torvalds 1st puppies name was just to get some ones attention.
I won't cough up a citation but I can say from personal experience that the current generation of iMacs will flat-out refuse to allow anything earlier than 10.7.
/* No Comment */
That said, I use RedHat-based distributions with the yum package manager normally. For Debian, there's of course apt-get and dpkg. And yes, I can groan about that -- in case you ever needed to use a version of something that isn't included in the repos.
For example, in the CentOS repos. You can go add epel and remi, but sometimes, other things on the system break when you install packages from these repos. Also, sometimes it just doesn't plain work --- mixed up dependencies, etc that need to be sorted out manually. And further to that -- there's even some open source software you might need/find useful that no one has made a package for your given flavor of Linux yet.
When it comes to Ubuntu and other Debian derived distributions, they usually keep the repos more up to date (often at the expense of stability and/or security). But still -- not everything always just works in package management, and often times I find myself downloading .pkgs or .tar.gz and compiling from source.
It strikes me as you're the type of person who has run Linux on the desktop and hasn't had to do much management of customized systems?
Not at all true. There's been some serious issues with Windows, especially a lot of the MS12 KB's, that could allow someone on the same LAN as you to easily compromise/privilege escalate up to local system on your machine. When you work in the world of "compliant systems" where network security can't be an afterthought, this philosophy is dangerous.
When it was time to upgrade the main workstation (a high end G4) Apple and Adobe were engaged in a pissing match, and as the CS suite was not negotiable, and I didn't know how that was going to play out, so I switched to Win7 on the front end and Red Hat for storage and web servers. Win7 does some annoying things but it doesn't go out of it's way to be cute, and at least at the moment, Microsoft is playing reasonably nice with Adobe.
The back end will probably stay on Linux (no reason to change -- it works well) but I have Win8 up on a spare laptop (taking advantage of the $69 introductory offer) and it stinks. It's not slow, in fact it's fairly responsive, but Microsoft has broken the desktop paradigm. If this is the future of Windows, I may have to switch back to Apple. And if Apple is trying to put IOS on the desktop, I'm not sure where to go. Maybe Linux with a Win7 virtual instance, for as long as the CS suite supports Win7. Hopefully at some point the major players will realize that a cell phone interface is not appropriate for a desktop machine, and "cute" != "useful". In the meantime, we just have to tough it out.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
However, I too have been looking for a solution now that Apple is moving in the iOS-y direction for OS X, in terms of a system that lets me keep the awesome BSD power of Mac OS without being confined to Apple's walled garden of App Store restrictions etc.
Sounds like what you're looking for is... BSD.
I'm not angry at Apple with regards to their desktop OS (I am a bit annoyed at how locked down their iOS devices are, but I switched to Android).
However I am *wary* of the future of OS X, specifically the fact that the late Steve Jobs was always talking about the "post desktop era" and that much like Microsoft they seem to be trying hard to move everyone over to tablets. So I've been catching up with Linux as a contingency for if/when Apple turn around and say "the Mac only accounts for 2% of our sales, so we're withdrawing them from sale". It could be 5, 10 years from now but the whole industry seems to be predicting the death of the desktop in favour of tablets and I'm pretty certain I'm going to end up one of those stubborn old fools who likes his 30" monitor, physical keyboard and mouse and the freedom to customise my own hardware. By then Linux may be the only desktop OS left, and us old-farts-to-be have to be prepared.
The problem it has at the moment is that developers and users alike have kind of invested quite heavily into the GNOME/GTK environment, only for GNOME3 and Unity to get "Tabletification Disease" and end up dumbed down and buggy. I feel that they were right to update the ageing GNOME2 and I don't personally believe that MATE is the answer in the long term, but that they jumped the shark in the process.
It's actually gone kind of backwards from when I was properly into Linux about 5 years before, when GNOME2 wasn't so old and.. 2D. Everything was solid, stable, mature. Now it's like the Linux Desktop, at least on the G side, has gone back to square 1. Basic features are missing and it's just not right in 2013 that the desktop should show graphical glitches and/or lock up on popular AMD cards for example, nor that I should have to do command line incantations to repair my wireless driver after an update, both of which are examples of my recent experiences with it. I'm capable of fixing things but do that for a living and have better things to do with my time at home.
On the positive side, I tried KDE and gosh.... relative sanity! They actually dare to give us controls and buttons and not treat us all like retards who will flip out if there's more than one button on the screen. But most of the decent software (IMHO) is GTK/GNOME based because we all had faith in Ubuntu (and look where that's led us - nowadays with Canonical doing their own thing with everything it's one step away from closed source). *sigh*
It's just..... a mess.
Getting a new camera (Panasonic LX7) and finding that Corel haven't added RAW support for it to Aftershot Pro and "goodness knows if/when they will", then going to my Macbook and having it work instantly on Aperture, was the turning point for me when I thought "why am I back to wasting my time messing with Linux again?". (Plus Aperture is so much nicer to use, but I was willing to make a sacrifice if Aftershot would actually work). I'm now severely tempted to about-turn and flow my way right back to OS X on the desktop and consign Linux back to a secondary drive for playing with occasionally and seeing if it ever matures. Life's too short, you know?
Hi:
I don't think you'll find anyone who'll uncategorically vouch for anything, but
I've had a few different laptops (incl. HP and Dell) and, though reluctant to admit it, have found Toshiba's to be my primary choice.
I do have S2D: hibernation and sleep working, but it took a lot of digging to get right.
Some issues are distro related:
For instance, to not have screen-blanking when closing the lid. The fix: ("Lock screen when screensaver is active") is more ubuntu/compiz related than toshiba hardware specific.
Or getting dhcp to force a new lease on wakup.
Or restarting the sound daemon.
Others are purely hardware related to toshiba and settings/scripts that had to be added to /etc/acpi/events/
It would be nice if vendors were more supportive and I suppose one could pay a premium and get a 'laptops4linux' box equipped and shipped with those deliverables..
If/when I get another laptop I'm going to see if the liveCD can handle suspend/resume... before doing the install, but I haven't tried it yet.
The more immediate issue for me will be when I want a tablet that 'purports' to do native Linux (like an eePC transformer or maybe an Acer) running ARM/Mali/... chipsets.
My experience w/Linux on laptops has generally been satisfactory (uptimes in months) with just a few down-sides that unfortunately consume far too much time to get working perfectly.
I hope that's not going to be the same for netbooks and pads, but expect it will.
resist propaganda
Can't you use Unix? A Unix shell on the Mac is plenty productive.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You have to reboot because the files are in use. What happens to shared libraries that are in use when you update them on Linux?
A copy stays in memory until the last process that uses it, exits. All newly started executables use the updated version.
What, there is another behavior that is not broken?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Come on in, the water's fine! I'd avoid the whole red hat gnome mess (which includes Ubuntu, btw). Go straight debian, or if you want something easier/prettier, got Linux Mint, and in particular the xfce edition.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
The reinstall disks that come with new machines are intended only to install on the new machine they came with. They're locked to the model number they were produced for. It's no surprise you had trouble installing your laptop's reinstall disk on your wife's machine. You're not supposed to be able to install it on other systems because you're violating the license in doing so. Think of it like an "OEM" CD for Windows. It's only going to install (without a fight) on the system type it came with.
If you had a retail install DVD (or created a DVD/USB stick from the DMG in the AppStore download), you shouldn't have any trouble installing an older OSX on newer hardware, just so long as you're not trying to cross the PPC/Intel boundary. Drivers are of course the wild card there, but the OS should work in some kind of fashion.
yeah with apple you're lucky if you're hardware architecture is supported for 10 years.
meanwhile I'm running a program last updated 10+ years ago on windows and it runs better than ever(in win8, opengl - win8 has it's bad sides but old stuff works better than in 7.. it's just the ugly metropolitics that make it bad really).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
away from you
Apple still offers PPC Mac and 10.2 downloads.
But they don't offer any fixes for them, not even security fixes.
I did not know that, thanks!
good point! I have a retail snow leopard disk (and leopard, and tiger) so i wonder if this would be a problem. is it like the GP, where the apple store guy said it was a firmware issue, or is it like the P, where it's the difference between a recovery disk and a retail disk?
a related point is where to find retail copies of old OS versions. Apple squashes them quickly. You might have to go to the resale / ebay market.
On Windows, I'd miss being able to collaborate using MS Project and Visio (as others I work with have made this their choice), being able to test my workplace's Silverlight-driven web application using IE in addition to Firefox and Chrome. I still use Outlook for my email too -- I haven't found Zimbra Desktop, Thunderbird or other products sufficient for my email-power-user needs (they cost me time).
Most of my company's code can be managed through Eclipse (it's Java), but some code requires Visual Studio (Silverlight).
I could run parallels or Fusion on Mac -- but then I'd be running a virtual machine to do both at once. And despite strides towards making it seemless, there's always seemingly a bit of clunk involved. Then what happens if by, Mac OS X 11, Apple makes OS X more IOS-y and walled gardened off, making it less useful for power users? I'd be at a dead end and would need a new OS at that time.
Oh yes, to add to my other comment, here's a big one -- the VMWare VSphere client. Can I convert a 30-server VMWare infrastructure to something I can manage via Linux? Sure, SSH to ESXi functionality is useful, but they recommend turning SSH off, and it's much quicker to manage via the GUI.
In ~2007, after the birth of my first child I had very little time. So I thought to myself "I don't have time to keep up with maintaining a Linux desktop" and I bought a nice iMac, and moved from Linux to Mac.
The experience I had was that everything that was a royal PITA on nix at the time (web browsing, audio, skype, video, photo management, suspend/resume, printing) "just worked" on the Mac. Hurray!
But the problem I had was that the unixy stuff stuff I needed to do my job (X11 across multiple monitors, emacs, serial console control, local command-line tools, etc) did not just work, and was more a PITA to maintain on MacOSX than the flashy stuff was to maintain on Linux. The final straw was when I upgraded to Leopard, and multiple monitor support in X11 was totally hosed at the time of the initial release.
In the end, I wound up giving the iMac to my in-laws after about 9 months, and building another whitebox for 1/2 the price of the iMac, and I have been happy ever after. That 2007 whitebox is now running Kbuntu, and is my 6 year old's PC (while I've built myself a newer one..)
Aside from Service Pack 4 (released in 2005), can someone point out what security updates for Windows 2000 have been released after that? I'm not talking about the application frameworks like .NET; I mean security updates for exploits in the base OS.
And if you fuck the wrong text files on linux, your computer may not boot anymore either...
Linux just stores (most of) its `registry' in ASCII files strewn across directories, rather than binary. The KDE control panel is just a utility editing the right files for you; there is an analogous free utility for Windows called ``sharpkeys". It's a third-party download, but that's just how commercial OSes roll.
You are so wrong ! You can completely remove apache's config file (for example) and the only thing you will achieve is that the apache service won't start anymore.
Even if you screwed GRUB's config file, you can still boot the machine on a live-CD and re-install grub and it will work again.
And the big advantage of text files is that it's really easy to copy them to another system if you want the same config there.
Avoid the MS tax, always buy I.B.M. PC's (I Built-it Myself)
Ubuntu, arguably the most popular distro for end-users (and less arguably, the highest profile), logs everything you type into dash. They don't even warn you. I've only just learned this. Their is even a privacy entry in dash with NO mention of this (and most of those controls don't do what you expect, even worse than any facebook privacy controls I've used). Does Windows 8 do this? I doubt it. And, you think linux is going to win the hearts and minds of the people because they are concerned with privacy. I, for one, will be screaming caveats and warnings if anyone EVER suggests that some popular linux distro has better privacy control than Windows.
The other popular end-user linux variant is Android, and it's a privacy nightmare.
I'll admit that this is distro specific, but if your argument does not apply to a user friendly distro, it's moot. Linux COULD differentiate itself on good privacy, but the one big user friendly distro definitely does not right now, and it's only getting worse. Sadly, I really don't see this happening. Linux distros are always playing catch up because they're always following.
OOPS! their != there
Wrong way to look at this. When I was in high school I almost exclusively used Linux (Mandrake, eventually switched to Debian, back before everyone had proper package managers). Eventually I got an iBook running OS X 10.3 because I wanted a Unix laptop that delivered great battery life, and at the time the iBook's promised 6 hours was far better than the two hours you could find in most competing laptops; plus it had a dedicated GPU, so I could at least dream about gaming on it in my off-time. But it had a big bonus: it ran Photoshop and Illustrator so well (again, this was back in the day where if you threw a 200+ MB PSD file at the Windows and OS X copies of Photoshop, you'd see the Windows copy freak out and crash while the OS X copy would eventually open it). At the time, I thought I was going to get into graphic arts, and this seemed like the best combination of features I could get, though it was admittedly expensive.
When I went to college, I bought a MacBook Pro. I had changed directions in education, and now I was sprinting full throttle into video production, and being able to run Final Cut Pro was a deal-breaker (especially since my school only taught Premiere and Avid Media Composer). The five-day turnaround on repairs was a huge plus, as was the reliability factor. Major bonus points were awarded that I wasn't being conned into getting Windows Vista, but had the option to make that mistake if I wanted. On top of that, Time Machine saved my bacon more than a couple times (mostly user error). This ended up being a very good decision, since knowing both Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer is what landed me my first job.
All the while, I maintained a Linux server. Why? Because just like the Macs I bought were great tools for image and video editing when I bought them, Linux was great at being a reliable file server, firewall, and DVR (thanks to MythTV). I still run one today, though because of the direction Apple is taking the entire OS X platform in (hardware and software), I'm considering changing that. I use Final Cut in the office enough that my skills are kept in tip-top shape, and personally I prefer Avid when I have my druthers, which runs on Windows.
For me, it's not about the politics of this or that, it's about what tool will do the job I need to do, and do it well. Beyond that, then decisions about what kinds of companies I want to support, their practices, environmental record, prices, etc. gets factored in.
Rawr
And I don't know if the shift towards iOS-ness is as minor as we think it is. Right now, it's not so bad. It's far less shocking than the jump from Windows 7 to Windows 8, but what's really chafing me is the hardware. I kind of like some user serviceability. I like being able to buy some RAM and jam it in myself, or doing the same with a battery. And when it comes to my desktops, I especially like being able to upgrade things like my hard disks. It seems pretty absurd that you have to make the decision about how much RAM you want in your machine up front, with no upgrade path.
Rawr
away from you
Apple still offers PPC Mac and 10.2 downloads.
But they don't offer any fixes for them, not even security fixes.
In May Canonical will stop offering fixes for Ubuntu 10.04. In December 1997 I bought a brand new MS Windows NT 4 Workstation. I was shocked in 2000 when I ran Windows Update and received the message MS was no longer releasing new updates. When I checked something like 2 years ago MS still offered update downloads, but there were no new ones. And as a responder said "Update != Support".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm pretty sure you could take any osx variant and install it on any computer in the apple store.
Good luck installing a PowerPC-only OS X version (i.e., anything prior to 10.4, or any of the pre-x86 versions of 10.4) on any computer you can buy now from Apple (none of which have PowerPC processors). Even older x86 versions might not have support for all the hardware available on newer machines.
umm, citation? I have never heard this before. I'm pretty sure you could install any osx variant on any computer in the apple store.
Same incorrect claim, same response.
I've been one of the persons myself who switched to Macs in 2005 and I've just started considering coming back to Linux about ten days ago. I've been heavy into selecting a distribution that I like, and trying out all the current desktops and wms to see what I would choose. I've also started looking at laptops that might be good for linux usage. System76 comes to mind, and even though a MacBook is in a whole different league in terms of design and build quality I think that the prospect of buying a 'designed for linux' laptop is quite appealing to me. The switch will happen this year for me, and my reasons are largely because development of OS X has started to clearly take a back seat on Apples To-Do list. I've been a hardcore user, always on the latest betas, throughout my entire time using OS X, because I like to be cutting edge even if that means sacrificing some 'just works'. However the last releases have slowed down teremndously. OS X is no longer the pool of innovation and quality that it once was. My computer rush sluggish as hell. Chrome is by far the slowest on this platform and it basically feels by now as if my MacBook Air is taxed to 95 by even just looking at it these days. This is not because it is such a terrible old machine, but because OS X has become such a slow slug compared to earlier versions like Tiger. I don't really mind that they are iOSifying Mac OS a bit, I actually liked the things like the new full screen mode. The iOS-home-screen-like Launchpad is of course utter rubbish, but also doesn't get in my way. It is however a good example of how bad ideas are making it into a final product these days at Apple while that wasn't the case years ago. Launchpad is aimed at a beginner user but beginners don't find it particularily clear or simple to use. 'Why do I have a lot of icons down there on my dock and then even more of those behind this button???' It's usability is lacking. The gesture for bringing it up is highly annoying and doesn't work most of the times. In short: It's confusing for a beginner, and it's annoying for a enthusiast. So who exactly does this feature target? My RAM usage?
The gp claimed that apple actively prevents installing older os's. I asked for citation on this. You say that you can't install a ppc OS on new computers with x86. I don't know if it's true or not, but it sounds reasonable. However, there's a huge gulf between technical barriers between chip architectures and *actively* preventing old OS installs. I ask again, citation?
No need. I run Ubuntu on several machines. Generally, Ubuntu only requires reboots when an OS should require reboots: after kernel and firmware upgrades. I think after upgrades to the core C library, reboots are recommended but not required. Packages requiring unnecessary reboots are considered broken.
On Windows, on the other hand, many installs and upgrades that shouldn't require a reboot do so anyway. I don't know whether it's laziness or some limitation of Windows, but it clearly is much worse than Ubuntu and it's clearly broken.
I never upgraded the powerbook as the next versions of the OS felt like being a regression.
I kept it only because some software is not available on linux. But wine may be a way out of that.
Currently another laptop made it's appearance. That one has windows and linux. But I only use linux and never had the need to boot into windows.
The smartphone I bought was not iOS but android.
So yes, the Apple adventure was nice but I did not get hooked.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Here here!
Also my biggest gripe with Windows 7.
It upsets me when you realise that something you 'own' is actually 'owned' by some corporation.
Back in 2009, Ubuntu was a breath of fresh air, and made me realise it doesn't have to be like that.
D
Translation :- You continue to be exposed to security vulnerabilities despite a patch already installed.
The alternative is to lose user's data currently held by the running processes.
Windows decided to do the sane thing and prevent users from getting exploited. Linux will catch up some time.
Servers are restarted automatically by package managers, and web/mail clients have restart notification procedure as a part of the update. Your arrogance on the part of your overlords is misplaced.
You can't even do simple shit like backup 'programs and settings' when migrating on Linux computers.
What the Hell are you talking about? User's home directory contains all his settings.
The entire fucking software repository is under control of distribution and still you cant. No.. you have to keep downloading hundreds of megabytes every single time some stupid OSS dev adds some shit in the repo. But surely.. you can pause and resume updates later right? No? hahahaha...dont worry Linux will catch up in some time.
You have no idea what are you talking about. Distribution updates are indexes, lists of packages. User can choose what to upgrade (UI usually insists on at least all security updates, but it's up to the user to reject or postpone the update), however indexes are always updated, so package manager always knows how dependencies graph looks like.
But surely.. you can pause and resume updates later right? No? hahahaha...dont worry Linux will catch up in some time.
Package downloads can be interrupted and restarted, this is what /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/ is for.
Whats awesome is crappy plugins like "fastest mirror" uses mirror choice based on stupid criteria like ping or geo ip, rather than ACTUAL SPEED.
That's because measuring speed precisely enough to choose among hundreds of universities and ISPs would create more traffic than actual update, you dumbass.
Valve has already figured it out for steam updates... also Microsoft... Oh well..
Except both Microsoft and Valve have nearly glacial download speeds no matter where you are. With their resources they could've paid Akamai to handle that.
Linux only works in places where its locked down and completely out of users hands. e.g. servers,phones and embedded devices.
Do your managers give you those idiotic statements to paste into your postings, or does your software automatically add them?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If only someone thought about that. *cough* SIGTERM *cough*. Current update design is plain broken. You're too stupid to understand that because youre a fanboy.
You don't even know, what currently implemented update design IS. Web browsers ask the user to restart. Text editors do not. One can be pretty sure, a text editor already editing a document won't get any less secure from continuing running, no matter what security bugs its libraries contain, if it was exploited it's too late, and editing another text file will start a new copy of the editor with the updated library. Only if the user will somehow decide to keep opening documents in the old copy, he will be exposed to any threats, but that would be a monumentally stupid behavior after seeing a list of updates.
You think only libs are dependencies? What about after installation. The package metadata should also contain list of locations of all config files created outside of home directory.
They are a part of either the package itself, or referred from it as configuration files, they are not dependencies. Dependencies are other packages -- libraries, servers, utilities -- that are necessary for a given package to work.
Also apart from settings, there is a dependency on data. Package metadata should have included in design..
It already is.
option for application to specify its default data store directory.
Non-user-specific data is always in the same directory. If the admin does not like it, he can make a symlink, mount point, or maintain it by himself. Package manager will still do the right thing -- it will move or update the data if any conversion is required between versions, but it will not destroy data without asking, or touch custom configuration that the admin maintains by himself. User-specific data is handled by the user in his home directory. Package manager does not touch it, however applications are free to provide their own configuration and update mechanisms whenever (almost never) it may be necessary.
What is the point of having unified system if you cant migrate from one pc to another without any problems.
You don't migrate. You move your hard drive, or copy it -- then new computer *IS* your old computer, just with all hardware replaced. I am currently sitting in front of the Linux box that is essentially the same configuration I have first installed in 1994, except over the years it had at least four complete updates of hardware, at one point the base system was switched from Slackware to Gentoo, and then Gentoo switched from 32-bit to 64-bit with the same set of packages. Home directory stayed the same, and set of packages varied more through the life of hardware or distribution than across the transition. And that's Slackware and Gentoo, distributions not known for easy transitions or maintenance. Debian or Ubuntu wouldn reduce any of such moves to running a simple script.
You're talking about downloads... pause/resume on downloads is something that a highschool student can implement.
Actually he can not because he does not know yet how to verify the integrity of the result.
And indeed some of them have implemented such horrible download managers which are fucked up and dont work on many linux dvd ISOs because file is greater than 4GB and they use 32bit int for file size...
What download managers? What DVDs? The only two programs used for downloading updates are wget and curl, and protocol implementations in package managers. They always work.
I'm talking about the entire update transaction.
DVD images are never downloaded as a part of update.
As it is currently implemented transactional model for all package managers in all distributions is broken and fragile (aka shit). I have to "clean" the state when I lo
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Use of any and all of the iOSified features on OSX is 100% optional. If that is the reason you are switching, you have not really thought this through. What in OSX has changed that you don't like?
GateKeeper? Turn it off
Launchpad? Don't use it.
App Store? Don't use it.
Notification Center? Really if you don't like this you should stop using computers.
Mission Control? Don't use it if you don't want to, but really the problem does appear to be you.
iCloud? Just don't use it.
If there is a flow like you describe, it is a very small number of people. Very few people use Linux on the desktop to begin with. They saw a little spike during the netbook fad, but it is all gone now.
Your faith in repository integrity is touching.
Funny thing to say since I am using Linux since March 1996.
No, you don't. Watching slideshows for astroturfers is not "using".
So the USER IS FORCED TO HAVE KNOWLEDGE of the fact that a running application with old .so's is unsecure? How fucking stupid is that? Why would any user even think that hitting update means "maybe" you're safe? Stop defending shitty design.
The only thing "more secure" is to immediately kill all processes, what would be worse, and won't really improve anything. Whenever restarting is possible (daemons/servers) it's already done automatically.
Seriously how hard is it to add a UI checkbox like Windows has for allowing only critical updates to get installed... but no.. Linux has to do everything in its own fucked up way of spamming the user with dozens of updates for all kinds of minor packages.
GUI frontends to package managers have an option to select only security updates, however this is not recommended because updates are already very small.
I download ISO dvd images to install from
If you actually used Linux, you would not have to install it more than once on any computer in the first place. The only people who install Linux often enough to remember it, are people who don't use what they install.
because I can never get a full net install to work.
That's bullshit because network installation always works. Unless, of course, you use some special distribution that Microsoft maintains for its astroturfers.
Actually I got disconnected a few times when installing shit with yum.. and the state got corrupted.
yum does not work that way.
Um.. nope windows server 2008 has (proper ACID) atomic file transactions that do exactly that for years (this is not file system block level journaling) . .. continue digging your own hole..
Filesystem journaling does not work across multiple file updates performed by installer, and unrelated to that, Windows, just like Linux, has only metadata journaling enabled by default on desktops. Either way, there is nothing that can be done if filesystem support or system startup or corrupt when the system is booting. Everything else results in a bootable system, however if something is incomplete, it's incomplete. Installer's operation is not a filesystem-level transaction on any OS. Anyone who needs installer that can survive power being turned off while it is running, can use two-partitions method that I have described. It will even work for Windows, but it's a greater pain in the neck to maintain there, thank to stupidity of Windows bootloader.
Yeah.. I am a Freelance embedded C++ software developer living in India. Anything else you want to add fake quotes around?
Pretty much every word except "I am", and maybe "in India". There are no "embedded C++ software developers" in the first place, embedded development is never done entirely in C++, and no embedded systems developer would ever call himself "C++" programmer without adding C or omitting particular languages. Except, of course, idiots and charlatans.
Anyway, I have absolutely no idea how well Linux distributions update servers are accessible in India, however I am sure, you can choose any mirror server in India, China or other nearby countries with approximately equal results.
Actually .. no. apart from the OS UI... most linux software UI sucks ass.. and tries to usually copy (badly) some windows 95 era product which no longer exists.
Thank you for your opinion. Too bad, you are too stupid to have an opinion.
In which drug-induced-hallucinogen-sprinkled world do you live in that anyone would care to do a google search about linux problems to post a several levels deep comment o
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If this iOS-ification of OS X continues, i will swich to linux too. Windows is big no-no, simply this is not even close to my ideal desktop OS. But it's not yet time to switch to Linux, we can survive with Snow Leopard or Montain Lion a few more years with no problem I think.
or system startup or corrupt
Should be:
or system startup is missing or corrupt.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Use what feels right, there is too much noise about the various options.
If you can do the (short) learning curve Ubuntu (yes with Unity) can do pretty much any day to day task, productivity or otherwise.
I am not a Linux guru but just a small business admin so have to use all the OS's on a daily basis. I find Ubuntu the most natural desktop for ME others will disagree but I have been on Ubuntu for all my business functions for 8 months and have never failed to get the job done, office admin, accounts, graphics, CRM, you name it I do it all on my laptop.
I do boot back into win8 occasionally for a laugh but it really is so slow and painful to be productive I simply cannot use it.
OSX is a paragon of useability for non IT people but as has alredy been stated its not really geared to be "managed" in the traditional sense, that lovely veneer of ease of use becomes a ball and chain in a managed business environment.
So If you have got this far, take a punt on Ubuntu but really commit dont give up after a few days as its unfamiliar once you settle in you will wonder how you did without it, I do.....and yes I am still an MCP/MCSE.......
Being Mutual - Working together for a better society
I HATE what Apple is doing to the Mac OS. I run Snow Leopard and only use Mountain Lion in VMWare emulation for Xcode.
Apple is the only company that's going to kill the Mac and they're doing a hell of a good job with that, trying to push iOS onto the desktop.
Mountain Lion: more animated crap that I can't turn off and a dumbed down user interface that I simply don't want to use.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
FUD