Why Run Linux On Macs?

jones_supa writes Apple has always had attractive and stylish hardware, but there are always some customers opting to run Linux instead of OS X on their Macs. But why? One might think that a polished commercial desktop offering designed for that specific lineup of computers might have less rough edges than a free open source one. Actually there's plenty of motivations to choose otherwise. A redditor asked about this trend and got some very interesting answers. What are your reasons?

Comments

a better question

[kuzb]

Why run a mac at all if your goal is to use Linux? PCs are a ton cheaper and in most cases just as good.

Re:a better question

[C3c6e6]

and in most cases just as good.

Well, that's where I respectfully disagree! PCs might be cheaper but I have yet to find a PC that is "just as good" as a Mac, hardware-wise. For instance, I find the trackpads on Macs highly superior than those on PCs. Also, display quality is unparalleled, IMHO

Re:a better question

[Kjella]

More like there's a ton of markets that Apple choose not to compete in and if you want to force a square peg into a round hole it gets real expensive. Like not offering a machine with drive bays, if you want more than one drive you should buy some wildly expensive Thunderbolt 2 enclosure. Or offering any cheap solutions, no cheap HDDs, no cheap screens, it's all high end or not at all. But their laptops are pretty much the same as everybody else's, the form factor hasn't allowed them to turn it into an art project. If I was in the market for a $1000+ laptop I'd consider a MacBook no matter what OS I was going to run on it. Not least because I could change my mind, even though dual booting (or even triple booting) is a hassle.

Re:a better question

[quenda]

The best question is "Why buy a Mac to run Linux", and the answer is conspicuous consumption. To show that you can.

If you already have the Mac, OS-X vs Linux is usually just a matter of personal preference. They both do the job.

Re:a better question

[hcs_$reboot]

Lighter, thinner, longer time (battery), nicer... Boot on Linux for some work, boot on Mac for the rest.

Re:a better question

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is because those PC's counted in those margins are low end and mid range models. When you move into the high end, the margins grow much closer and even beyond Apple with companies like HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc. Companies like Samsung, Toshiba, Asus, etc do not even compete for the high end.

Try adding more memory to the competition's laptops, it's almost exactly the same. And yes, it's been proven that people aren't paying attention to the finer details when making these comparisons...such as using low power DDR when others were simply using standard DDR. You're right about them becoming a worse deal over time.

Re:a better question

[Megol]

Right... If one can find a position where the screen glare doesn't ruin it all. I personally can't use an Apple as the glare drives me insane unless seated in a pitch black room - not the best way to do some work...

In fact that isn't true at all - PCs often have better colors, contrast and/or brightness. Just don't buy the bargain basement level of stuff, select computers with IPS screens.

Re: a better question

[TWX]

Yeah! I can enjoy those Blu-Rays I have on my 5K iMac amd make use of the high resolution!

Re:a better question

[lkcl]

because people pay apple more money, so they can afford better designers and can get better components. [longer post explains more, see http://slashdot.org/~lkcl%5D

lenovo *used* to do this when they were IBM. IBM *used* to buy the more expensive components then run them at lower clockrates, which *used* to result in much more reliable products. the thermal stresses (even during normal operation) placed on ceramic packaging causes them to develop micro hairline cracks; high temperatures also cause migration of solder as well as the heavy metals within the silicon ICs themselves.

Re:a better question

[Anonymous Coward]

He was too busy masturbating over how awesome Apple is to read your silly comment.

Re:a better question

[TWX]

Typing this on a MackBook Pro, I wholeheartedly agree that the shiny reflective screen thing is a huge annoyance. In complex lighting I'm having to adjust the screen angle as I change my seating position from time to time.

I'm running OSX on this MacBook, but mainly because while I'm a Linux geek first, I work in a Windows/AD shop that formerly was a Netware shop that has had Macintoshes and Linux servers. I can use anything. OSX gives me enough command-line to be functional doing network administration easily and lets me interface to Linux boxes, and with the multitouch touchpad is quite good, the touchpad on my Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga running Windows is *almost* as good, the touchpad on my Alienware 17" running Linux kind of sucks compared all of the others.

To me it doesn't matter, the software I want to use runs on just about everything, and all of the platforms have their strengths and weaknesses.

Re:a better question

[Knuckles]

However, the Apple trackpads are limited to two fingered use on non-Apple operating systems through the use of crippled drivers and therefore something like a Logitech T650 is far superior when using a non-Apple OS.

Wrong. At least on my 2009 MB Pro 3- and 4-finger touch has been working out of the box on Ubuntu for many years.

To answer the question from TFS, I can only echo what others already wrote. When I purchased this laptop, the MB Pro had by far the nicest product design for my needs, and the PC laptops I found in the same price range did not come close: Full-body aluminium instead of plastic, smooth outer shell instead of little knobs and slits everywhere (important, e.g., when having to remove the laptop from the bag at airport security check), low-key LEDs instead of a blinking christmas tree telling me useless stuff like my wifi working (I know, no need to blink for every packet!!!) but require the use of tape when you want to watch a movie.

Re:a better question

[pakar]

I run Xubuntu on a Macbook pro laptop because it was cheaper for the wanted hardware.. The requirements i had where:
- Good keyboard (i like it anyway)
- Good screen (1080 pixels high is just bad..)
- Good battery time. (getting 7-8 hours without problem)
- No dual gfx card.. Intel only...
- Good CPU.
- Size/Weight of laptop including AC adapter.. (since i do travel a bit)
When searching around i found a couple of laptops.. but none fit the requirements i had.. Either it had a good cpu and keyboard, but not a good screen or battery time. Or it was good screen/keyboard/battery-time but a slow CPU..

So in the end i found 2 options... Either one that was a bit heavy and price at around 2500EUR or the current macbook that i got for 2000EUR..

It is not perfetct hardware, but it does give back for the buck.. There are several negative things with it like lack of docking, non-replacable battery etc, but none of those are too important for me..

Re:a better question

[kschendel]

I run Linux on a 2009 Mac Pro, and no, an equivalent PC wouldn't be much cheaper, plus I do run OS/X on it occasionally for various reasons.

The Mac Pro is dead quiet, which is extremely important to me. The hardware is completely solid and well designed, I've only had one drive failure in 5 years of continuous use. It's as fast as the (Very expensive!) shared company development machine; I'm going to upgrade the CPU and memory on the Mac Pro and easily get another 3 or 4 years out of it. Almost all of my co-workers with PC's have suffered fan failures, power supply failures, etc etc and gone through at least one replacement cycle in that time.

Sure, a PC *can* be almost as good, it's just that usually they aren't.

Re: a better question

[Applehu Akbar]

When I run Windows, it's safely in a VM inside OS X.

Re: a better question

[kthreadd]

It makes a lot of sense if you want to edit 4K video at 1:1 resolution and still have space left for palettes and windows.

Re: a better question

[14erCleaner]

When I run Windows, it's safely in a VM inside OS X.

Apple has a bad track record of security updates. It's more secure to run OS X in a VM hosted on Linux.

So I should run Windows in a VM under OS X in a VM hosted on Linux? My brain hurts.

Re: a better question

[Anonymous Coward]

PCs are a ton cheaper and in most cases just as good.

Nothing compare to the Air or the 5k iMac.

In laptops? The Dell XPS 13 competes with the Macbook Air. Similar config is $150 more than a MBAir. It does have better screen resolution.
The Lenovo X1 Carbon costs more too. (Lots more if you get the high res screen.)

In all-in-ones, the Dell XPS 27" w/ 16GB ram is $2599. The 5k iMac w/ 16GB RAM is $2699. That isn't "a ton cheaper" in my book.

And sure, you can buy crap systems for less. People who are buying Macbook Air and 5k iMacs aren't shopping against the crap systems. Apple tax? What Apple tax? (Yeah, haters gonna hate. Mod me down, I don't give a crap.)

Re:a better question

[lolocaust]

If you already have the Mac, OS-X vs Linux is usually just a matter of personal preference.

Exactly. I bought my Mac back in 2011 because nothing came close to the battery life and those specs at that price while being slim enough to be able to fit in my bag every day. Now, Yosemite really does look like an awful OS upgrade, visuals aside, there are some seriously bad bugs, the new spotlight (desktop search) sends every query to Apple (no idea why) and Microsoft (for Bing) and the fact that most of the new features require a recent iPhone. I'm clinging on to OSX Mavericks for now, but I will move to Linux if the battery life is decent.

Re:a better question

[chavez chiu]

Why run a mac at all if your goal is to use Linux? PCs are a ton cheaper and in most cases just as good.

I have been a Linux desktop user for over 10 years, love it, even back in the days when a lot of things, especially internationalization required tweaks.

Been using OSX for a year, the touch pad plus safari experience is spectacular, but there a ton of things I don't like:
File browsing - Finder abstracts too much away from power users
Package uninstall - pieces everywhere, no free reliable way to track files down, which is unfortunate since it should be one of the basic features
var/folders - I think it's a brainfuck decision to design your cache like this
Safari itself - ... ... the list goes on, it comes down to how customizable the OS is, which Linux is much better.

So why buy a Macbook?
You have to consider overall user experience when you're talking about pricing. Their hardware is superb, till this day I'm still loving the aluminium design, it makes you feel good when you're using it. The charger, the connector of the charger, the form factor, the battery life, everything is just perfect. There's also the prestiage when you pull out a Macbook. (although I mainly just it at home, and it's something I used to despite. Sadly it is valid thing, hello taste/artistic sense? ) You get all these things and markup isn't really that much. I consider it one my best gadget purchases in my life.

If it weren't for the non-existence webcam driver for my late 2013 version, I would be running Linux on it most of the time.
Latest development I could find.
So IMO buying a Macbook to Linux isn't that stupid.

Re:a better question

[NicBenjamin]

Apparently you don't live near a big American City. There's nothing wrong with that, but one of the trade-offs for doing that is you there are no Apple stores.

I've gotten free repairs on them for parts I admitted I broke simply by going to the Apple Store in-person and being polite. For example, there was one time I spilled Dr. Pepper on the keyboard. Another time the MagSafe board (a daughterboard attached to the motherboard that allows the laptop to connect to the AC Adapter) died. It was out of warranty/ Any company but Apple would have charged me $500, forced me to do the two-week shipping thing you hated so much, and probably fucked it up because the guy reading the work order did the wrong thing. They charged me some ridiculously tiny fee for the part ($10-15) and that was it.

Re: a better question

[Buck Feta]

(Yeah, haters gonna hate. Mod me down, I don't give a crap.)

You posted AC. Nobody gives a crap.

Re:a better question

[ColdWetDog]

No stop this. You can fix that aberrant behavior with a simple preference switch. Which I did immediately, but my wife LIKES the fact she can search for 'everything' in one place. No accounting for taste.

The visuals - a wash and always subjective. The bugs are there and won't be fixed until 10.5.

Then, OS X 10.5-10.7 will be great and 11 (or whatever the hell they are planning on calling) it will arrive, be full of bugs and questionable UI changes. And the Wheel of Time....

Re: a better question

[dow]

Funny, at x-mas I had some friends over, and there was two of them using brand new Mac Book Pros but neither of them was running OSX. Linux was the desktop of choice, one also had Win8 but we ended up installing Win8 on the other one as well so we could play Elite Dangerous together. Those MBPs aren't so bad once you get a useful OS on them, I can certainly see why they are so popular.

Re: a better question

[TWX]

...and apparently no one got the joke, since Macintoshes don't have internal blu-ray drives or software to play blu-ray discs...

Re:a better question

[danbob999]

Try to do the opposite now. Build a $800 desktop PC and try to build a Mac with similar specs and look at the price. You will end-up with that expensive Mac Pro.

Re: a better question

[bazmonkey]

"Wrong. At least on my 2009 MB Pro 3- and 4-finger touch has been working out of the box on Ubuntu for many years." Yeah, and how many apps in Ubuntu understand and use it?

Re:a better question

[Jesus_666]

The price/performance ratio for Macs has always been highly dependent on what kind of device you're getting. Since the G4 iBook (which is when I started using Macs) their notebooks have been a pretty good value for what they did, especially if you want to run some kind of unixoid without having to fiddle around or compromise on capability. Since the unibody MBP they're pretty damn robust, too.

Their desktops, on the other hand, cater exclusively to a) people who need big workstations and b) people who see a sleek form factor, no fans and fewer cables on the desk as serious value-adds. I fall into neither of these categories, which is why my desktop is built from COTS parts.

Unfortunately even the notebooks are becoming less attractive as Apple is focusing on the "I want my notebook to be as light and thin as possible" demographic at the expense of everyone else. My next notebook will still run OS X because I'm used to it but it won't come from Apple.

Re: a better question

[kthreadd]

...and apparently no one got the joke, since Macintoshes don't have internal blu-ray drives or software to play blu-ray discs...

I have not tested myself, I'm not interested in blu-ray. But I believe that you can get it to work on a Mac with VLC.

Re: a better question

[BasilBrush]

Even most of those getting an iMac really want a real tower (such as a Mac Pro) but are stuck with the iMac because they can't afford it.

This isn't true. Marco Arment for example bought a Mac Pro, then traded it in a year later to get an iMac. Clearly he could afford the Pac Pro, but the year later iMac offered a better display, without compromising the speed.
http://www.marco.org/2014/10/1...

Re: a better question

[Knuckles]

Yeah, and how many apps in Ubuntu understand and use it?

None apart from Unity itself as far as I am aware of, but the claim I responded to was "However, the Apple trackpads are limited to two fingered use on non-Apple operating systems through the use of crippled drivers".

Re: a better question

[Geeky]

This.

Rather than running other systems on Mac hardware, I want to run OS X on other hardware. But I can't, not officially.

I'd rather have a mini tower with room for at least two, preferably three, drives (an SSD for the OS + apps and a big data drive or two), built in card reader and maybe built in optical drive. Oh, and a decent number of USB ports.

Instead, to run OS X I have to have a bunch of cables hanging out of the back to peripherals, some of which need their own power supply. It's almost enough to push me back to Windows (not Linux, I mostly use Photoshop and no, the Gimp is not a substitute).

Re:a better question

[chihowa]

If the trendy new flat grey-on-grey visuals annoy you, try the "Increase contrast" option in the Accessibility System Preference. It doesn't restore the visual scheme to what it was (which had its own problems), but it's different enough that it may appeal to you. My eyes are fine, but I'm not a big fan of the war on contrast.

Re: a better question

[BasilBrush]

Most people buying an iMac get the base version, not the 5k display one.

You complain about anecdotes, then pull that out of your ass?

Re:a better question

[Thumper_SVX]

You know what? I'm a "lapsed Apple guy"... ran MacBook pros for years, had iPhones... now I'm Android and Windows. Reason? The "Genius Bar". Yeah... I'm going to take 2 hours out of my day to go to the closest Apple store... which is in the mall... which sucks because I hate malls. I have to fight for parking, battle my way past the Starbucks stand where the hipsters are yelling at the Barista because the milk has .01% too much foam on their triple-espresso low fat low carb mocha latte frappucino hot... to finally put my name on the list for the Genius where I'm in a one hour queue to get some just-out-of-college hipster who was probably earlier yelling at that same barista to waggle his waxed moustache ends at my laptop and tell me that it's broken. I freaking know that. Then they tell me how they could fix it there but this is a return-to-base factory warranty and that I now need to go fight my way to the FedEx store in a different freaking mall to ship the tucker to Cupertino and be sans laptop for a fortnight.

You know what? When my Alienware dies, Dell will SEND A FREAKING TECH TO MY HOUSE. On my schedule... not a cable-company "sometime-between-10am-and-2020", but a guy who calls me up and makes an appointment to make sure I'm home. If he doesn't bring the part he'll take it with him and either ship it return-to-base himself or he'll get the part overnighted. I don't need some 20-something hipster telling me it's broken... I have being working in technology since before he was born (most likely) and I can diagnose this shit in my sleep.

Oh, and you know what? Every MacBook Pro I've ever purchased has gone back to base for some warranty repair. All of them. Except my last one which suffered a GPU problem literally the week after the warranty expired (one of the many 2011 model 15" units with cracking solder balls that Apple still won't admit is a problem). That latter was the last straw for me... Apple products are beautiful but every one of them has been fundamentally flawed, and their support is a joke. My Alienwares (I have three) have been rock solid... only a lid replacement on an M11xR1... and again Dell sent a tech to my house to fix it. I have an AW15 on order too to replace the MBP... which is away to get the solder balls repaired AT MY COST and then will find its way to eBay. Thus will end my Apple experience.

Oh, and as much as Apple fanboys like to give Microsoft shit, I am typing this on a first-gen Surface Pro that is my take-everywhere PC, has traveled extensively and has been absolutely rock solid. Five years ago if you had told me I'd EVER say that about a Microsoft product I would've seriously laughed in your face.

Re: a better question

[Billly Gates]

Windows 7 is a good solid OS with true color support that matches Apple if you have a decent monitor. Not sexy but just boring solid.

I use vmware and virtual box is free for my turnkey Linux appliances for backend stuff like php. Best of both worlds. Check out www.turnkey linux.Com if you want something that turns on and just works?

If I did own Mac I would still use vmware workstation which is much much cheaper on a mac for Linux stuff so I can keep Dreamweaver and office on my host.

Re: a better question

[Stormwatch]

Look at the GPUs... the iMac is laptop hardware on desktop format.

Re: a better question

[angel'o'sphere]

It was always legal to run Mac OS X in a VM and officially suported by all VM vendors when the host os was Mac OS X Server.

Since 10.7 or 10.8 there is no distiction anymore between 'normal' and 'server' Mac OS X.

So you can easily e.g. run an older or newer Mac OS X under 10.8 in a Virtual Box e.g.

I have no idea where this 'illegal' myth and 'not possible' myth that is constantly repeated in /. comes from.

Re: a better question

[phayes]

Who says that the drive MUST be internal for people to get work done with it?

Re:a better question

[thecombatwombat]

I've found two reasons for this in the more than a decade since I got my first PowerBook. There's two things: there's always a few hardware features that come at a premium, and the mac stuff has some hardware niceties that I like regardless of what OS I'm running.

Everything comes and goes in cycles, feature parity is always shifting around.

For example, when I got my first G4, comparable PC laptops didn't have:

- bluetooth
- firewire
- target disk mode
- a widescreen IPS display
- gigabit ethernet

without getting really expensive.

When I got my first intel mac it was:

- dual link DVI
- a backlit keyboard
- a builtin camera

On my current macboor pro, which I bought about two years ago it was:

- thunderbolt and the ability to drive an insane number of displays
- that screen, when the first retina came out, that screen was unmatched

Laptops that had all these features have always come in at similar costs. There's sort of an 80/20 rule in play, and Apple just doesn't bother too much with things below the 80, but this seems to change a little more every year.

Also, I really love how my current MBP plugs into my display. One cable for power, USB, and display. The thunderbolt displays are basically a solid docking station.

If you dig the hardware and want some premium features (usually really current IO options) the cost makes sense to me.

Re: a better question

[unixisc]

The keyboards of both are too cramped and lame for my liking. I wish Microsoft would release their ergonomic keyboard, but with a bluetooth interface, so that one can use it wirelessly while using the tablet as the screen.

Apple tends to segregate their tablet and laptops. I think they should make the A8 the CPU for the Macbooks as well, and have OS-X on that. Then they too could provide a common platform for both iOS and OS-X, and people could, depending on what they needed, get either and still have access to all the iOS software.

Re: a better question

[jonnyj]

what on earth could make Linux a more useful OS than Mac OS X?

Windows i get for specialty applications like gaming and such, but Linux?

apt-get, perhaps? Linux repositories typically have a far superior range of free apps and dev tools compared with the OS X software centre and other stuff like Mac Ports. More comfortable integration of many Linux apps than their OS X ports, perhaps? A consistent user environment between apple and non-apple hardware where a user has multiple machines, perhaps?

It sounds ridiculous, but, for me, it's about the shortcut keys. I have to use Windows in work so keyboard shortcuts for navigating and selecting text (eg ctrl+shift+right) are deeply embedded in my brain. Editing text on OS X becomes a tedious chore because the shortcuts are all different. That's why I always choose Linux rather than OS X when the boot screen fires up on my home laptop.

Re: a better question

[Aighearach]

Yeah, if you run linux the input impedance is too high, so the CPU runs less efficiently. You need real Monster brand OSX to get the full battery life. /s

Did you imagine that the defaults would be different depending on distro, and that if you adjust everything for maximum battery life and have the same software load, that it would be exactly the same? The technology is not substantially different, there is no excuse for a wide battery life gap. But your claimed reason... it is very funny.

Re: a better question

[Aighearach]

Most people buying an iMac get the base version, not the 5k display one.

You complain about anecdotes, then pull that out of your ass?

It makes sense, he omitted the anecdote and jumped straight ahead to an unsupported assertion.

Personally I prefer the bare assertion, it takes less time to suffer through and laugh down than the anecdote. I don't know how many times somebody has threatened to stab me for insulting their grandpappy when actually no, I just wasn't interested in weighing the anecdote about him.

Re: a better question

[Applehu Akbar]

VMware Fusion is what you're looking for. I can use it to run any of the Linux versions without the pain and trauma of actually installing Linux.

Re: a better question

[thegarbz]

I once got 3 hours battery life out of a Surface Pro 3.

Chrome locked up and maxed both CPU cores and the computer didn't sleep while I was out. I got back and the battery was nearly empty. But you have a great gift for talking without having a clue.

I use my Surface Pro 3 pretty much all day at work, and then for the 1.5h each way commute in the bus, on the occasional day the battery will be flat when I get home. Keyboard is better and detachable. Storage is expandable.

So yes other than your comment in the brackets the Surface Pro 3 really is better than the MBA.

Re: a better question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it isn't.

The fans are all controlled by the SMC chip, which is an H8 micro controller residing on the logic board. OS X uses the SMC to retrieve the decryption keys for most of the major CoreServices binaries, and for occasional fan reporting but nothing more.

The SMC *does* have a fan override mode and there are third party utilities that utilize this but OS X by itself does not modify these parameters.

Re: a better question

[retchdog]

perhaps, but what can linux do that OS X cannot?

Re: a better question

[funwithBSD]

Parallels works great for me.

I work for IBM, and Mac Airbooks are the #1 choice for those of us who get to pick our hardware, although the Samsung 9 is gaining popularity too. I run the client image under parallels and while there are some focus problems, it is worth putting up with it.

Why? I can carry one very light laptop for personal and business use. Turn the VM off, and all the IBM "security" ware is disabled.

The battery life is a little worse than other IBMers get running the native WIN7 image or MacOS + IBM client software.Running the MacOS version of Lotus Notes sucks power just as fast as any other version, emulated just adds a little more. Running Win7 sucks even more.

Most Win7 users immediate switch to MacOS+Parallels once they see how well it works. For most the only reason they need Win7 is for spreadsheet support. Mac "native" version of Excel has some serious problems with Macro support and large numbers of rows.

Not sure about Linux, have yet to meet anyone running Linux on the MacAir yet, and IBM supports all the major distros as a desktop client.

 

Re: a better question

[omfgnosis]

Taking your price comparison claim for granted (which is not a safe bet, but one I'm willing to indulge for the sake of making a point)...

Plenty of people find a reason to pay extra for a mostly-equivalent product. Some people buy Coke or Pepsi versus RC; some buy Crown Royal versus whatever the other one is that CR rebrands; some buy Acura versus Honda or Toyota or whatever. In all of the cases where this happens, a price comparison will be convincing (pretty much) only for people on the economic margins of the target market. It turns out people are willing to pay more for perceived quality or even for differences you do not yourself find substantial even if they do.

I have a number of reasons to prefer OS X versus competing operating systems, and I have a number of reasons that I'd "pay more" to continue using it. Some of them are deeply subjective (I prefer the way OS X works versus Windows or Linux, in a lot of ways) and some of them are pure balance sheet (I spend less on software I already licensed, I spend less on hardware that either I know how to maintain or I can trust won't require maintenance). Those reasons are, to me, worth a very large chunk of a price comparison between computers which, on the whole, cost nearly nothing compared to how much they provide to me in income.

If you don't feel the same way? If you'd rather purchase based on price-to-spec alone? Sure, go for it. Why does this need to be a battleground? Why do you need to convince me to spend my money differently (or vice versa)?

Re:a better question

[david_thornley]

Apple doesn't sell into all the market segments. If you want what they're offering, they're quite reasonable. If you don't, then you're going to pay extra for things you don't want or don't care about. They seem not to care at all about the geek market per se (although they're happy to sell stuff to geeks), which means they really don't care what you can do for $800 from Newegg or Micro Center.

Essentially, for certain purposes you're best off with a Mac. For others, you're going to be best off with something else.

Re:a better question

[danbob999]

Apple doesn't sell into all the market segments. If you want what they're offering, they're quite reasonable. If you don't, then you're going to pay extra for things you don't want or don't care about.

Exactly. And my point was that many people buy Macs, paying extra for things they don't care about, and then they will justify their choice by saying that a similar PC would have been just as expensive, while they would have been just fine with a cheaper PC.

Vanity vs Logic

[bgibby9]

Vanity < Logic after all :)

Debian on shiny Retina Macbook Pro

[Ivan Stepaniuk]

My company buys apple hardware for everybody and I have been working on GNU/Linux for 15 years. I use the operating system where I'm most productive, which is GNU/Linux. Also, nowadays OSX seems to be more prone to problems that were reserved for windows users in the past, like unexplicable slugginesh, tons of crap loading at startup, etc. No thanks.

Re:Debian on shiny Retina Macbook Pro

[sribe]

And, WTF is "slugginesh"? If you meant sluggishness, try rebooting.

He may be referring to Mavericks/Yosemite. They've fucked up something with virtual memory, so if you run memory-intensive apps things get slower & slower, regardless of whether the apps have memory leaks or not.

There also seems to be something wrong with the window server, such that it is prone to sluggishness, confusion, and ultimately locking up.

The only time I get sluggishness is when poorly written apps don't exit well and leave residual inactive memory allocations.

What exactly is a "residual inactive memory allocation"??? Oh, that's right, there is no such thing--it's just a phrase you pulled out of your ass to shift blame for an OS bug which you do not understand onto apps. It's a UNIX variant, app quits, allocated memory is reclaimed.

I've got a nice reproducible case here--memory-intensive command-line utility dealing with image data, run it once it takes 1.5 minutes, run it a second time, it takes 2.5 minutes. No shared memory or semaphores or anything exotic, just malloc, use memory, free memory, exit.

Re:Debian on shiny Retina Macbook Pro

[sribe]

Well Mac OS X doesn't kill applications when you press the "close" button, it only kills/detaches/hides/whatever the window
So I think what he thinks is residual inactive memory is probably used memory from any "closed" application.

Actually, there's some weird stuff going on in Yosemite.

1) They now name the per-page webkit processes with the url of the page. So if you look at your processes, you can see which pages are hogging CPU and/or RAM. You'll also see that in many cases, long after you close a page, the process is still running.

2) Starting way back, I noticed that when you close a document in Preview, the file is still kept open by preview. But in Yosemite it's worse, fucking *quit* Preview, then run lsof, and you'll see the files still open in some preview process.

Also, an unused application with all windows closed should not slow down the machine. Prior to Mavericks I would have stated "will not", but now I have to say "should not, but may well do so, considering how badly Apple seems to have fucked up the performance of virtual memory."

Re:Debian on shiny Retina Macbook Pro

[Thumper_SVX]

Reboot?????? Bwaaaahahahahaaaaa!!! OMG... that's brilliant. "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"

Seriously... there was a time that Apple fans were so smug when they said that to Windows users. Now suddenly that Mac OS needs it, it's suddenly the first troubleshooting step.

Look, the problem is not applications; it's APIs that remain inconsistent between Mac OS versions that require a recompile and reinstall. I know; I've written Mac OS software and I abandoned my project because I was tired of hitting documented APIs that either vanished or changed radically with a single update of the OS. While I do respect the idea of cleaning up old code and not providing too much legacy cruft, Apple takes it to extremes and dumps APIs because they're inelegant or just because they decided that they're going to force a new way of doing things on the developer community. And it would be OK if it were just major revisions, but even minor revisions will deprecate an API without warning.

Make fun of Windows all you want, but at least the software I wrote a decade ago can still run cleanly without recompile unless I want to take advantage of new API's. This is the way things should be.

BTW... recovering Apple-a-holic here... I'm finally getting clean :)

Re: Debian on shiny Retina Macbook Pro

[aaaaaaargh!]

Yeah, nice systemd trolling attempt. I've been administrating a little NetBSD box for quite a while as a hobby in the 90s and believe I know pretty well what the difference between Unix and Linux is. The point is that as the hybrid bastard nonstandard Unix that it is, OS X is just enough of a pain in the ass that most people who actually need to install and use Unix tools will find it a rather displeasing. Especially if you want to compile and install scientific software with lousy make files in an academic environment. I speak from plenty of personal experience, as I've been using Macs from around 1992 to 2007 (in addition to NetBSD) and started using the underlying command line tools in OS X 10.0 and later Fink when it became available almost from day one.

If your mileage varies, good for you. After all, computers are just tools and nobody in his right mind would actually care about which operating system he's using as long as it does what it's supposed to do.

systemd

[Dan East]

Why run linux on mac hardware? To get systemd, of course.

Re:systemd

[binarylarry]

No, you don't get how systemd works.

You run systemd to get linux on macbook, like Soviet Russia even.

Systemd don't depend on nobody but systemd.

Re:systemd

[real gumby]

I presume by the end of this year we'll have systemd running on bare iron, handing off to emacs, which then allows you to run instances of Linux in different buffers.

(Why yes I am a lifelong emacs user which means I am allowed to make fun of it)

MkLinux is pretty good

[slashdice]

No offense, ninnle linux, but mklinux is pretty good. It's linux on top of the mach microkernel. (Think of it as a "fuck you" to gnu/hurd, though that's not why it exists :-). Since it's sponsored by Apple, it works better on Apple hardware than the stock linux kernel. Maybe now that Linux is using OS X and Sublime Text for linux development, we'll get better Macintosh support in the mainline kernel? Anyhow, mklinux is pretty cool.

Re:MkLinux is pretty good

[ClaraBow]

I though MKLinux wasn't being developed anymore?

Re:MkLinux is pretty good

[goarilla]

Latest release: 2002 !

Running Linux on a MacBook Air ...

[michaelamerz]

.. and completely happy. Works like a charm with long battery endurance and a rugged aluminum body. mm.

Re:Running Linux on a MacBook Air ...

[rasmusbr]

Okay, but how is that better than running OSX and firing up a VM when you need Linux?

Aren't you missing all the optimizations that Apple has supposedly put into OSX over the years?

Mac OS is too susceptible to viruses

[jfdavis668]

You know that hackers are always attacking mainstream OS. Use an obscure one and everyone leaves you alone.

Re:Mac OS is too susceptible to viruses

[quenda]

You know that hackers are always attacking mainstream OS. Use an obscure one and everyone leaves you alone.

BSD?

Re:Mac OS is too susceptible to viruses

[chihowa]

Whoosh? Mac OS X is BSD.

Nice laptop, but dislike the keyboard design

[DoofusOfDeath]

A recent employer issued me a new 15" MacBook Pro. I really liked the weight, battery life, screen quality, and the feel of the keyboard. But the non-PC keyboard layout drove me nuts. I.e., the absence of stand-alone keys like home, end, page-up, alt, etc.

If I was using only native Mac apps, I would have been okay enough. But I was accessing Linux GUI apps within a VM, and linux console apps via SSH. It was a real challenge to get decent Mac-to-PC key bindings. I also had real finger-memory issues as I'd switch between driving Mac and Linux programs from the same keyboard.

If I could get a laptop that's just like a MacBook Pro, except it had a PC keyboard layout and a 17" screen, I'd be all over it for my Linux work. But barring that, I'll choose a non-Apple laptop.

Re:Nice laptop, but dislike the keyboard design

[TeknoHog]

IIRC, the keyboard I had looked something like this. There's no clear indication what key combination I'd use to even simualte home, end, etc.

In contrast, all of the non-Apple laptops I've used either had those keys present (in 17" laptops), or had the keys silk-screened to indicate what key combo I'd use to simulate a home key, end key, etc.

I see, good points. I'm only familiar with older Apple keyboards that do have the indicators for simulating keys with Fn. For years, I've suspected there is a real trend to eliminate keys like PgUp/Dn altogether, as people learn to use scrollwheels and touch gestures for mostly the same thing. This might explain the lack of the Fn indicators in more recent keyboards.

I personally think it is dumb to move these things away from the keyboard -- better use different tools for different jobs, rather than force everything into mice and touchscreens. Particularly with the rise of keyboardless tablets, you'd think that the remaining keyboard market would become more sophisticated. Fortunately, this has actually happened to some extent -- I recently ordered a "gaming" keyboard as it was impossible to find a decent keyboard (with no numeric keypad, but otherwise full keys) any other way.

Of course, laptop keyboards are still problematic. At the moment, the trends seem to be split between a full layout with the numeric keypad, and the minimal Apple style. I don't like the full layouts either, mainly because the actual typing space is forced towards the left side. Also, there are still space limitations which makes the overall feel very crammed -- no space around arrow keys, for example. I'd much rather take the 15"..17" space with no number pad for larger and better-spaced keys.

Because OS X is no longer supported on my Mac

[the_humeister]

Power Mac G4: Debian 8 runs like a champ. The latest Mac OS won't even install.

Re:Because OS X is no longer supported on my Mac

[RuffMasterD]

This. My company has a Mac OS web server. We run Apache, MySQL, and php. Nothing Linux can't do cheaper, and without the GUI bloat. Some fanboy before my time recomended Macs of EVERYTHING, and the boss had a hard-on for them, so now we have a nice looking server that no one ever sees. The hardware is fine for a webserver, but without updates, the number of security issues is starting to accumulate, and I can't upgrade php any further without compiling from source. Time to ditch Mac OS for Linux.

Some people like to tinker

[scotts13]

...or have other specialized needs. Apple hardware has an unparalleled build quality; no one disputes that. The only question on that front is whether you find it worthwhile to pay for that quality. My Apple Laptop is dual-boot; Windows at work and OSX at home. Both work perfectly. My home system previously also had a Linux boot volume; that worked well too. However, for MY purposes, it did nothing that other Unix variant, OSX, did not - and it was trickier to install and maintain.

So the answer is, specific needs (like my absolute IE9 requirement at work) or just like to play with the OS.

Re:Because

[FudRucker]

you've doubled your chances of getting laid

high quality hardware

[lkcl]

whilst i find the practices of apple absolutely deplorable - forcing people to sign up for an ID in order to use hardware products that they have paid for, taking so much information that even *banks* won't work with them - bizarrely the amount of money that people pay them is sufficient for apple to spend considerable resources on high-quality components and design.

i have bought a stack of laptops in the past (and always installed Debian on them - see http://lkcl.net/reports/) and have found them to be okay, but always within 2 to 3 years they are showing their age or in some cases completely falling apart. the 2nd Acer TravelMate C112 i bought i actually wore a hole through the left shift key with my fingernail after 2 years of use. hard drives died, screen backlights failed, an HP laptop had such bad design on the power socket that it shorted out one day and almost caught fire. i had to scramble for a good few seconds to pull the battery out, smoke pouring out of the machine as the PMICs glowed.

about 6 years ago my partner had the opportunity to buy both an 18in and a 24in iMac at discounted prices. i immediately installed Debian on it: it took 4 days because grub2-efi was highly undocumented and experimental at the time. so i had a huge 1920x1200 24in screen (which over the next few years actually damaged my eyes because i was too close: my eyesight is now "prism" - i've documented this here on slashdot in the past), a lovely dual-core XEON, 2gb of RAM and it was *quiet*. there is a huge heatsink in the back, and the design uses passive cooling (vertical air convection).

awesome... except not very portable. and no spying or registration of confidential data with some arbitrary company that you *KNOW* is providing your details to the NSA, otherwise there's this conversation which begins "y'know it's *real* hard to get that export license for your products, if you know what i mean, mr CEO".

so, when i moved to holland i had to leave the 24in iMac behind - apart from anything, 2gb of RAM was just not enough. i leave firefox open for 4-7 days (basically until it crashes), opening over 150 sometimes even as many as 250 tabs in a single window. it gets to about 4gb of RAM and starts to become a problem: that's when i kill it. on the iMac, it was consuming most of the resident RAM. i compile programs: 2gb of RAM is barely enough for the linker phase of applications like webkit (which requires 1.6gb of RESIDENT memory in order to complete within a reasonable amount of time). i run VMs with OSes for study.

so i was used to the 1900x1200 screen now, where i could get *five* xterms across a single window. i run fvwm2 with a 6x4 virtual screen, and run over 30 xterms in different places, 3 different web browsers; as i am now developing hardware i run CAD programs in one fvwm2 virtual screen, PDFs in the ones next to it, i run Blender in one virtual screen, OpenSCAD in another, firefox in another, chromium in yet another, then i have to view and manage client machines so i use rdesktop to connect to those (move over to a free virtual window area to do it) - the list goes on and on.

so i figured, "hmmm laptop... but with good screen. must have lots of RAM too, minimum 8gb, must have decent processor". i then began investigating, and found the Lenovo Ideapad. great! let's buy it! .... except their web site crashed. so i then - reluctantly - began investigating iMac laptops. 2560x1600 LCD, 8gb of RAM, dual-core dual-threaded processor: $USD 1500 and *in the UK*, with a U.S. keyboard so nobody was buying it. researched it, saw the success reports of people installing debian on it, knew it could be done: sold, instantly.

so now i am extremely happy with this machine - not with apple themselves - but with the hardware that i have. it's light, it's fast, it's a sturdy aluminum case, the fan only comes on if i swish large OpenSCAD models around in 3D (or if firefox gets overbloated as usual).

the only downsi

I can think of one reason: Predictable hardware.

[Qbertino]

Apple still has one thing going for it: Predictable hardware. Even after 15 years or so of OS X, the range of devces is fairly overseeable. If a crew gets Linux to run on a mac, they've like also gotten the drivers and all the extras to run halfway properly.

But that's about the only reason to get a mac to run linux. Besides, I'd pick up this device these days. Awesome project - deserves every support they can get.

Bottom line:
You buy a mac for the awesome hard- and software integration and their sleek product design. Using a mac without its OS isn't that smart, IMHO.

Because OS X is going to crap...fast

[DigiAngel69]

I've run OS X since Tigar..I got this MacBookAir around the Snow Leopard/Lion days. OS X isn't an operating system anymore...it's Apple's sales platform now...BookStore..iTunes Store...AppStore...all about selling, not about a good OS. So Linux is now on this MBA...it runs sweet, less resource intensive, and doesn't phone home to anywhere when I turn it on (capture the traffic for a Mavericks/Yosemite bootup...it's ridculous...even on a clean install with nothing else installed).

Responsiveness ...

[MacTO]

OS X does a good job on my 2012 MacBook Pro, yet I have noticed that it becomes very unresponsive at times. It appears to be due to memory management issues, and switching to Linux is a far less expensive upgrade route than bumping up the memory. The other consideration is my ability to maintain the system. While OS X does make certain things easier, Linux is easier to maintain over the long-term.

Actually, that's not that complicated...

[Anonymous Coward]

From a hardware perspective, Apple devices rock. If one disregards the "walled garden" aspect, most of their equipment is well thought, with great usability and clever solutions for some annoying PC problems. That said, there are some problems:
- because they are so good, they also manage to create planned obsolescence with greater competence; other makers, while generally producing worse products, can now and then make a product that lasts forever (in the "Volkswagen Bug" sense); because of the "walled garden", these superb devices won't work with Apple things...
- some problems arose out of philosophical stances: the double-click, for instance, out of a then prevailing notion that mouses should have one button (double-click IMHO being one of the greatest turn-offs in a GUI).

From a software standpoint, one might consider Linux better than "Applesoft", because Apple software is aimed at a certain target public, which aims at not really using the PC. There's a lot of defaults and "unique better ways" of doing things. In real life, a developer or a power user might want to have a more equipped tool belt. Linux (IMHO) is more faithful to the Unix idea than OS X. Ultimately, perhaps one could install a better shell (or even Bash) and use OS X' BSD roots -- but like one considers *BSD, Linux stands stands out as a wilder frontier. Some people like that, just not the usual Apple clients.

From a human point-of-view, I was once asked whether using Linux would give any advantage over using Windows. I took into consideration the context and the nature of the one who asked... and concluded in that case it was better to stay in Windows. That was in 2003 or 2004. Fast forward to 2015 and it's becoming clear M$ is not a long term option anymore. Human attitudes change slowly, so perhaps I failed in my reply: I should have recommended Linux use, just for the technical prowess gains. Same thing with Linux versus OS X.

A lot of people here are missing the point...

[MMC Monster]

(I'm not an Apple fanboy, I think. Of the 8 computers in my house, only two are Apple hardware, and one of them is > 5 years old.) The rest are either Acer or System76.

A lot of people buy Apple hardware because it's a known quality and (relatively) easy to get fixed. You (probably) know you're going to pay a little extra, but you know the build quality is generally consistently good and if there are hardware issues you can take it into an Apple Store and get it fixed fairly quickly.

It's fine for people that buy PC hardware all the time to say that a particular brand or model is good price and excellent quality. Most people don't want to do that much research for a laptop or desktop. And many have burnt themselves with buying something expensive and had it go bad in a couple years or need to be troubleshooted over the phone or mailed back due to some obscure issue. Better to drag it to the local Apple Store for many.

Makes sense if you have an older Mac

[erp_consultant]

I've got a 2009 era MacBook Pro. Originally it ran Snow Leopard but since then I have upgraded OS's as they came out and now I'm on Yosemite. One thing I have noticed is that memory requirements have steadily gone up. At the moment I'm running an email client, Skype, Chrome and a password manager and it's using over 6GB of RAM. The same thing on Windows 8 uses less than 4GB of RAM. On Linux it's about 2.5GB of RAM.

The MacBook is pegged at 8GB of RAM - I can't add any more than that. So just a very basic load, like above, and I'm almost maxed out on RAM on OSX. That is unacceptable to me - almost unusable.

Ubuntu or Mint on the MacBook runs flawlessly. Faster, smoother, way less system load. Multi finger gestures work perfectly out of the box. The Mac trackpad, incidentally, is a major reason to run Linux on a Mac rather than a commodity PC. PC trackpads suck. Running Linux gives you infinite configurability, whereas on the Mac it is limited in that regard.

So for me on an older Mac, Linux (or even Windows 8) is a better option. The hardware still performs flawlessly (have to hand it to Apple there) and a new OS just breathes new life into it.

Re:Because

[m.ducharme]

2 x 0 is still 0.

Repurpose Old Hardware

[SirAudioMan]

Back in 2008 I bought a refurbished 2007 MBP. The machine was great, I ended up replacing the battery after 2 years. After a couple of years of use, eventually it got too old, the second battery crapped out completely. Fast forward to about 3 months ago. I began the process of ripping all 250+ CD my wife and I own. I didn't want to tie up my Linux laptop or desktop with ripping. I decided to see if the MBP would still boot on AC power, which it did. OSX was hopelessly outdated and nothing would install any new software without a progressive Apple upgrade (costing $$$), which on old hardware was not worth it.

I tried installing Mint but the installer couldn't handle the graphics card and simply initialize. I ended up getting Ubuntu to install, but it didn't like the graphics card much either. After messing with Grub I was able to get it to boot and load Unity (don't even get me started on that crap) but the software rendering was PAINFUL! I installed Gnome 2 and fiddled around with X drivers a bit to get a working machine. It runs pretty good still and is used for playing all music to my stereo. Video playback is troublesome as I suspect it's still using software rendering.

Re:Better software support

[unimacs]

Homebrew is a decent enough package manager for my purposes.

I am a software developer and my main OS is OS X but I have VMs that I use with various flavors of Windows and Linux. OS X comes with a lot of OSS stuff built in like perl, Postgres, PHP, Python, and Apache. The problem is that they're not always the version you want and haven't necessarily been compiled with the options you need. It was especially rough early during the transition from 32 to 64 bits.

Personally I like OS X enough to deal with some minor hassles but I can see why other people might prefer to install Windows or Linux. Having choices is good.

Because I like the hardware

[HalAtWork]

I prefer Linux and the software ecosystem, and want a laptop with good specs, battery life, features, and build quality. So I got a Mac and run Linux. I tried OS X but don't like the interface. They kept switching up the file manager on each OS revision, hiding folders I wanted to see, and it was hard to get apps I like working properly on the OS such as Inkscape. It is just not ideal for what I want to do.

Because of service

[bananaquackmoo]

Here's the deal. I am not a fan of Apple. If I weren't recommending a laptop to someone I would never recommend an Apple product. BUT! When it comes to laptops, Apple is really the only option. Why? Because you can walk down to the apple store and someone will fix any hardware problems for you. You can't get that with any PC maker. Heck, the best rated PC maker for customer support took a month to repair something for me, and that's after it took me weeks to get them to even look at it. If you think your laptop hardware is ever going to break or die within the timeframe of a warranty (hint: they almost always do), then Apple is really the only option.

Re:I used to do this

[BostjanSkufca]

Precisely the opposite of my experience (albeit on MB Air).

To summarize what is explained below with more details, when I bought MB Air and installed Ubuntu, I consented to:
* some configuration tweaking in the beginning (wifi, brightness bug, etc)
* occasional packet loss on Wifi (reboot resolves the issue)
* some SATA controller errors in syslog
* occasional problems with hibernation (if that happens, it succeeds if I reopen and close the lid again)
* having to hold down alt key on every reboot to boot Ubuntu (I consider this a feature as it hides my OS)

Benefits:
* quality hardware,
* longer battery life (even surpassing OS X),
* way more usable OS (personal opinion),

Longer explanation:

I was a Linux (Ubuntu mostly) user before and I did not own any MB before Air. General experience with laptops+linux was: it generally works well, except for exotic components and 3/4 of battery life compared to Windows.

I must note here that Ubuntu satisfies my computing requirements very well (sysadm work, Linux systems mostly) and having multiple workspaces and being able to quickly switch from one to another really aids mental context switch when I get the call about something unrelated to my current task.

So, when I got MBAir, I really tried (honestly, I really did) to use OS X as my primary OS. However after a couple of days of frustration (with the final nail in the OSX coffin being requirement to pay around 20$ to get workspaces in two rows!) I gave in and installed 14.04. I try to think of myself as NOT retarded for computing-related stuff, but if after a couple of days OS still feels weird (or better, if going from Ubuntu to MacOSX feels like step back), I do not believe "the most intuitive OS" any more.

Hardware wise, what surprised me was that battery life was even better than if I run OS X (15h vs 12h). Note that nothing cpu-intensive is done on this machine - it is generally a lightweight terminal to servers that do the heavy lifting.

I learned to live with glitches that come with running Ubuntu on this HW. If I had to do it all over again, I would do it all over again (except for those days of OS X frustration).

My €2c.

b.

Re:To escape the walled garden

[bitingduck]

I install all sorts of open source packages on OS X and have for years-- I just got a new MacBook with Mavericks on it, and stuff installs just fine. For things like perl and ruby I've been using perlbrew and rvm so I can have any versions I need. For most libraries, I typically install them from source rather than the package managers because there often ends up being some issue with other stuff I want to use if I do the package manager versions. It's usually pretty quick and painless.

That said, I also have VMware installed so I can do stuff in windows or linux when I need to, and it's very convenient. Plus, Yosemite is bad enough that I'm finally interested in looking at linux as a long term option to get away from the increasing number of bad decisions and serious bugs that apple has been making lately.

Actually, not a single interesting answer

[davids-world.com]

Sorry, but I couldn't find interesting answers in that Reddit thread. It's mostly that people choose to run OSX over Linux, and why.

The few GNU/Linux users do it for idealistic reasons, or because they're developers, or because they like the latest OS on very old cheap hardware and don't mind to deal with whatever this entails.

The more interesting question is really if freedom exists when you never make use of it. (Do you actually hack the kernel or fix somebody's proprietary binary-only drivers as a GNU/Linux user?)

A good reason not to:

[zerofoo]

EFI updates. On Mac hardware, they can only be delivered by a Mac OS update. Run Linux exclusively, and you will not get firmware updates.

I'm as Mac a fanboy as one can be - but if you want to run Linux, build yourself a nice PC - far less pain that way.

Re:A good reason not to:

[Ash-Fox]

Of course, those EFI updates may break Linux compatibility, so it may be better not to have them.

My reason

[grahamlee]

I switched from Debian to OS X in 2004, then from OS X to Ubuntu in 2014. The story of the switch back is told in full here. That meant that the cheapest route for me was to install a distro on my MacBook, because I already owned it :). And it really is good hardware, so I'm happy with the amount I paid for a high-quality laptop that fulfils my needs. The interesting part of the switch for me is the question "why not use OS X"? There are all sorts of bugs in OS X and its applications, just as there are in Linux, GNU and their applications. The difference is that I'm allowed to fix the bugs in GNU, and other people can take advantage of those fixes. So I've been learning about GTK+ and Vala, as well as getting back up to speed with GNUstep, so that when I find a bug I can contribute a fix back. Plenty of other posters have discussed that there are cheaper GNU/Linux-compatible laptop choices, and indeed had I not already owned a MacBook I probably would've considered some of those. But "cheapest" is a non-goal for me, or at least far down the chain below reliable wifi, good battery, solid construction and (to the extent that this is at all an option on any laptop) decent keys.

systemd

[Curunir_wolf]

So I can experience the joys of systemd and everything that comes with it, of course! You can't run all that software perfection from God's own coders on BSD.

Dual-boot

[nut]

So I can dual boot two actually useful operating systems.

Mac OS X for video editing, Linux for development - and nearly everything else, really.

Re:MacPro????

[danbob999]

What I meant is that you need a Mac Pro to get specs similar to a $800 PC. Just put two hard drives in RAID1 or a good video card and the iMac doesn't make it anymore. Since you have no other option, you have to go to the Mac Pro. Also I am not saying that a $800 PC is equivalent to a Mac Pro. Only that to get similar or better specs to a $800 PC, you have no other option than the Mac Pro, since the iMac will have some inferior specs.

Exaggeration, much?

[King_TJ]

I dislike the malls too, but truthfully - I consider the Apple retail stores a net positive, and another reason to keep buying Macs instead of something else.

If I don't want to visit a "Genius Bar", I don't have to, and neither do you. Apple has a toll free number you can call for service and support, which I've used several times before. They'll even overnight you a postage paid return mailer box to pack up your machine in, to go back to them for service, if needed. (This is identical to the service procedure I've gone through in the past with Toshiba -- except Apple is much quicker to answer their phone, vs. leaving you on hold for 45 minutes first.)

The GPU problem you're complaining about on your 2011 model of Macbook? That was a WELL known issue, across the board, with just about ALL notebook manufacturers who used those GPUs. So it's not even fair to use that as a reason you feel Macs lack quality or reliability. By contrast, I've got a 17" Macbook Pro that's from early 2010 which I leave on 24 hours/7 days (typically in a Henge dock on my office desk these days) and it's never needed service at all. It's my main work computer, and with a 512GB SSD I put in it a while back, it still feels pretty fast too. 5 years of daily use isn't bad at all for a portable, no matter what the brand.

I agree that Dell, arguably, does Apple one better in the area of service by sending out on-site technicians. BUT, I've worked for years in places that used exclusively Dell so I'm very familiar with that whole process too. Especially in more recent years, those techs are notorious for not showing up when they're scheduled, or bringing out an incorrect repair part, causing you the inconvenience of waiting around for them to show a second time.

For what it's worth, too.... Apple does have a couple of different programs you can join if you're a business user of their machines, to make the repair process a lot easier. They don't advertise these as well as I think they should, but they do exist. With one of them, you can get your own employees certified as Apple technicians so they can troubleshoot problems themselves and call Apple to get repair pairs overnighted to them under the warranty.

Re:Exaggeration, much?

[Thumper_SVX]

You realize of course that every time I've called the toll-free number, they've told me to go to the Genius Bar with a service request ID? Yeah... they want to "verify the problem" before they've fixed it. That alone is enough reason for me to say "Nope!"

Re:command line, finder

[danbob999]

It has basic tab completion by default. It doesn't have bash-completion. http://bash-completion.alioth....