KDE is forever improving, and 3.2 is nice, but...I can never quite put my finger on it when called to...there is just something about KDE that's just a little, well, as I put it, "clunky."
With a cron script, Debian can do it with zero clicks, zero typing, as often as you want it.
Call me facetious, but you still have to nano a cron script, not an easy task. In fact, the thought of editing crontabs again is filling me with dread.:P
Not true. You might not spend enough time at the command line to notice the difference, but it is a sizeable one.
Ahem. You post anonymously so I cannot check out your credentials, but I can assure you that over the years, I have spent more than a little bit of time at a command line. Thankfully, a lot of that time has been spent at UN*X command lines, but I am not one of those GUI-addict Mac users or a post-Windows-95 (i.e. I-don't-know-what-DOS-is-I'm-scared-of-it) "newbie." Although I am not wanting to get into a bitch fight over experience, I must point out that I cut my teeth on the command line and I will probably die by it...
But I digress. The command line - Mac OS X/Linux. Yeah, I made a bit of a sweeping generalisation but not one totally unjustified. My point was, as I hoped was clear, that they are all UN*X-style operating systems and thus, thankfully, remarkably cross-compatible. I can edit my text files in nano, Pico, joe, vi, emacs..., bash is my shell, I create VPNs from Japan (my current abode) tunnelling pppd's output over SSH to my Debian box in England...I love the power of UN*X and also the fact that it is all here on my Mac...
There are some of us who don't care for these titles. I for one am happy with the software I have now. Don't try to argue with me about how I don't have the software I need, or how yours is better, because I'm satisfied.
Maybe, even, you are kidding yourself into thinking you need those packages. Commercial software has its way of doing that. When I first started using Linux, I was disappointed because I thought I needed this commercial/proprietary program or that one.... But using Linux only helped me to realize that I didn't. I think it really changed the way I think about computers, much for the better.
I take it from the last paragraph that you are quite a hardliner (read: you accept all that Stallman has to say unconditionally:P) - that is, of course, your view. In response, I must say that firstly, I was simply listing apps on the Mac - I do not need or use all of them, but the fact is that they matter to a lot of people and are glaring omissions where computers are used in the workplace. If your copy of Debian does what you want it to do, then that is excellent, but, to put it rather bluntly, that doesn't, by default, make Debian particularly useful to everyone else.
In my opinion though, you do get a certain degree of refinement regarding the installation and use of the system. For the average idiot (and me when I can't be bothered to fiddle around in/etc/ with nano), Debian is far too difficult, rough around the edges - the learning curve is far too great. With OS X, when I want to hack, I can, because I have the might of FreeBSD etc. at my fingertips. When I don't, I don't have/need to.
I say Debian's unrefined, though, but its packaging system is first class, as I have noted elsewhere.
As regards the interface, each to their own is all I can say, and of course any Linux will give you more flexibility in that regard (though, of course, Mac OS X's X11 layer might be interesting as you can use any window manager there...).
Not sure where your understanding came from, I must say...
OS X minor revisions are 10.1.x; the 10.x revisions are pretty major. 10.x.x upgrades require only a reboot. Viz major revisions (i.e. 10.1, 10.2), the upgrade procedure (generally) works fine.
I can't believe anyone is actually trying to argue that Debian is easier to install/upgrade than Mac OS X! At least look at the intended user base - on the one hand, arty types and families, on the other hand, Slashdot-reading UNIX hackers (of which I like to count myself part, most of the time).
I was going to agree with you whole-heartedly, but then I reread your post a couple of times...
Away from the desktop on x86, I'm a Debian man, and it has done a superb job as a router and web server at home. The upgrades are superbly simple for a Linux-based operating system. And, should I be bothered, I'm sure it might make a reasonable desktop...
But you have piqued my curiosity - I am intrigued, what, pray tell, do you mean by "manual upgrades," "install hassles" and "a lot more software available for it"?
Apple's Software Update is automatic. Debian requires that you do at least type the various commands.
The Mac OS X Installer requires that you click Next about 10 times, I Agree once and click a hard disk icon. If you are a geek, then include the Customise button and a few tick boxes. Incidentally, the Installer is also the program used for installing a lot of software on the Mac, providing a unified feel for all installers (obviously apt-get gives you that too, but it's kinda scary for Joe Sixpack). My mum could install Mac OS X; she wouldn't even try Debian - it is hard!
Command line Mac and Linux have exactly the same software. On the desktop/work environment, there is simply no competition - the Mac, though not so "enriched" compared to Windows, wins hands down (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, iDVD, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Maya, the Macromedia apps [soon to change, perhaps], a whole boatload of games)...
So a reread has left me thinking: what on earth are you on about...?
GNOME vs. KDE will perhaps be one of the holy wars of this millennium, and this is certainly another kick in the teeth for the ever-so-slightly clunky KDE (in my opinion). As said in the article, the developers have done some superb work and, well, put it this way, it is almost making me want to lose Mac OS X on one of my iBooks. Do not underestimate the pulling power of eye candy and the HIG!
Liberal inspiration has, of course, been taken from the Apple way of doing things - the spatial navigation is, as noted in the Ars Technica article, based on the pre-OS X MacOS Finder. And that's no bad thing, certainly if FOSS wants to move towards real usability on the desktop.
The file dialogue boxes are also notably similar to Mac OS X's way of doing things, although the puzzling (at least to me) scrollbars that the Mac uses to browse up and down a directory tree are here replaced with arguably simpler tabs. Very nice touch.
Personally I'll keep Mac OS X on this for the moment, if only to avoid kernel recompiles and incompatibilities arising from that, but hell, if I were a Windows user, I'd be sitting here asking myself why the fuck I am waiting till 2006 for Longhorn when I can have this now...
Zealots were quick to criticise the most prominent competition - Mac OS X 10.3 - in terms of eye candy on the desktop when it came to making comparisons with their darling Longorn (which is, rather pointedly, not available for purchase yet). Now that UNIX is offering two superb alternatives, one of them properly FOSS (and, more importantly, runnable on x86), Windows' days should surely be numbered...?
Bite the bullet dude, that's capitalism, I'm afraid.
And if you think Apple are harsh, they're a hell of a lot nicer to customers regarding freebie repairs and the like than any other company (one of the reasons their tech support is rated so highly).
On the whole, Apple are pretty good at the "wanting the customer to be happy" thing (as above), but, as others have pointed out, it's in the small print on the web site, so you've not got a legal leg to stand on.
It is a little mean that you hadn't actually got the machine, but who goes and buys another computer just like that when they've got one coming in a couple of days!?
Sorry to be harsh, but, well...they screwed up with iBook mobos and G4 power supplies...but this...?
I'm in Japan, so I just took my 14" (which had lain unused for quite a few months) into the Apple Store in Ginza, up to the Genius Bar, and they promptly acknowledged that it was, well, fucked. Less than a week later and I had it back.
Better still, they rang me the day before I collected it to say that the LCD cable (another iBook weakness) needed fixing and that it would cost 21,000 (about $200, I think) - a little steep, but I said OK. When I went to pick it up, there were a couple of rather dirty fingerprints on the screen and keyboard plastic surrounds. The man cleaned them off, but not satisfied that he had sufficiently allayed my concerns, reduced my repair bill from 21,000 to zero!
More importantly, viz the topic, the iBook is fine - the only troubling issue is that my 12" model appears to be going the same way - perhaps I shall be calling on their services again in the not too distant future.
Since the Mac runs hardly any software compared to a PC, you are going to use the Mac a lot less, and of course you will get fewer tech problems.
There really are some worrying moderators out here - at the time of writing, this wonderful piece of insight has been awarded 30% Insightful. Hate Macs all you like, but it is positively childlike logic...
Re:I fix PC's by day... and use Macs at home.
on
Mac v. Microsoft TCO
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
As long as you buy good hardware, keep your antivirus and windows critical patches up to date, and do a system cleanup / defrag once in a while
Still a heck of a load more than I have to do on my Mac. And the bit about "buying good hardware" is interesting - cut to the chase and just buy the goddamn Mac already!:P
Well, maybe not yet, because remember, the reason that Adobe, Quark et al still develop for Mac is because a large proportion of the Mac user base uses this software, buys this software, etc. It does actually make business sense. The Mac has always had these apps, so one must continue to satiate Mac users' demands for said software.
Whereas let us look at Linux. OK, the installed base is growing, but what is the proportion of users of it who are professional graphic designers with the money to buy this kind of expensive software? Very few. Linux is for cost-saving businesses, the hobbyist wanting desktop UNIX on x86 and possibly, soon, the home user. Graphic designers are not in that list.
Obviously you aren't going to see a mass migration of said users to Linux until the apps are there, but I'm afraid the chicken-and-egg situation remains. Like Windows, the Apple has the advantage that it has momentum - it was the graphical OS of the 1980s, so acquired all these graphical apps. It's the same for music software.
Still, nice to see that Linux is making progress, because even one percentage point less in share for Microsoft can only be a Good Thing.
iqu:)
Encoding audio and video?
Steve would cry if he read this. Where have Macs been widely been used all these years? The music and film industry...???
In fact, whilst it is a little irresponsible to say the reverse is true, it is certainly not unfair to suggest that people on a budget buy a low spec PC (i.e. even worse than the Mac's "meagre" specifications - i.e. 700Mhz x86 = 700Mhz PPC) to do "normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc." There are , I am sure, a few that use their Macs for just this, but I would have thought the majority might like to flex the power of iLife (i.e. DVD burning, movie editing, digital photography, music), Final Cut Pro, Logic, Photoshop, etc. The list is not small...
True, Macs don't do as many games as PCs, but that's more a marketing/business-sense decision rather than any inherent weakness on the Mac's part. Indeed, of course, time was when Mac games were vastly superior (I am going way back to the time of Prince of Persia here, folks, so...)
iqu:s
Yeah, the shell is easy to change in the Terminal application. In the Terminal menu, go to Preferences, and change the 'Run this command' to/bin/bash or/bin/csh or whatever takes your fancy. If you want more shells, go get Fink, if you've not got it already, and install them from that.
But in the end, isn't that where we're going, with all this TV-computer integration, or something along those lines. I mean something like the computer as an appliance, or wherever it is this tech is headed.
Alas perhaps it is this kind of "brain food" that the populace wants - (and at the risk of sounding elitist) it is the elite few who actually want to seek out information; the rest would rather just have it shoved in their faces, without a care as to its source or bias.
Ugh, I sound like a historian or something. Oh well...
As I have said 4 or 5 times on this story now, VLC uses FFMPEG/libavcodec to play back DivX/XviD/other MPEG4 compliant video. Therefore, even if it were the case that it was the codec which displayed the ads, it wouldn't matter, because VLC doesn't use it.
But as usual, the idiot moderators mod you up as 100% Informative. Those actually informed would know that it is 100% rubbish.
Eugh! Mplayer on OS X? I have to say my experiences were not pleasant. It was slow and really not worth much time or effort.
Personally, I (and all other Mac users I know) far prefer VLC - the VideoLAN player, which is unbloated, fast and pretty. It's also far more cross-platform (Win, Mac, BeOS, Linux, *BSD, amongst others) and actually possible to compile from source without setting aside a day to hack around. It also has the nifty feature of playing region-encumbered DVDs on different-region drives without any need for firmware programming or anything (certainly on Windows).
YMMV, but mplayer, as is widely reported on the Internet, is murder to compile. In addition, the developers are unbearably arrogant and unhelpful (the fuss they made over GCC 2.96 springs to mind). I've also generally found it to have rather high CPU requirements - it is always bitching that my machines are too slow when other software is perfectly capable of playing the same file.
But anyway, if you like MPlayer on OS X, I'd wager you'll love VLC.
Slashdot Mirror
KDE is forever improving, and 3.2 is nice, but...I can never quite put my finger on it when called to...there is just something about KDE that's just a little, well, as I put it, "clunky."
:D
Just me being picky/peculiar, perhaps...
iqu
With a cron script, Debian can do it with zero clicks, zero typing, as often as you want it.
:P
:P) - that is, of course, your view. In response, I must say that firstly, I was simply listing apps on the Mac - I do not need or use all of them, but the fact is that they matter to a lot of people and are glaring omissions where computers are used in the workplace. If your copy of Debian does what you want it to do, then that is excellent, but, to put it rather bluntly, that doesn't, by default, make Debian particularly useful to everyone else.
:|
Call me facetious, but you still have to nano a cron script, not an easy task. In fact, the thought of editing crontabs again is filling me with dread.
Not true. You might not spend enough time at the command line to notice the difference, but it is a sizeable one.
Ahem. You post anonymously so I cannot check out your credentials, but I can assure you that over the years, I have spent more than a little bit of time at a command line. Thankfully, a lot of that time has been spent at UN*X command lines, but I am not one of those GUI-addict Mac users or a post-Windows-95 (i.e. I-don't-know-what-DOS-is-I'm-scared-of-it) "newbie." Although I am not wanting to get into a bitch fight over experience, I must point out that I cut my teeth on the command line and I will probably die by it...
But I digress. The command line - Mac OS X/Linux. Yeah, I made a bit of a sweeping generalisation but not one totally unjustified. My point was, as I hoped was clear, that they are all UN*X-style operating systems and thus, thankfully, remarkably cross-compatible. I can edit my text files in nano, Pico, joe, vi, emacs..., bash is my shell, I create VPNs from Japan (my current abode) tunnelling pppd's output over SSH to my Debian box in England...I love the power of UN*X and also the fact that it is all here on my Mac...
There are some of us who don't care for these titles. I for one am happy with the software I have now. Don't try to argue with me about how I don't have the software I need, or how yours is better, because I'm satisfied.
Maybe, even, you are kidding yourself into thinking you need those packages. Commercial software has its way of doing that. When I first started using Linux, I was disappointed because I thought I needed this commercial/proprietary program or that one.... But using Linux only helped me to realize that I didn't. I think it really changed the way I think about computers, much for the better.
I take it from the last paragraph that you are quite a hardliner (read: you accept all that Stallman has to say unconditionally
iqu
Dang, you got me there! :P
/etc/ with nano), Debian is far too difficult, rough around the edges - the learning curve is far too great. With OS X, when I want to hack, I can, because I have the might of FreeBSD etc. at my fingertips. When I don't, I don't have/need to.
:D
In my opinion though, you do get a certain degree of refinement regarding the installation and use of the system. For the average idiot (and me when I can't be bothered to fiddle around in
I say Debian's unrefined, though, but its packaging system is first class, as I have noted elsewhere.
As regards the interface, each to their own is all I can say, and of course any Linux will give you more flexibility in that regard (though, of course, Mac OS X's X11 layer might be interesting as you can use any window manager there...).
iqu
Not sure where your understanding came from, I must say...
:s
OS X minor revisions are 10.1.x; the 10.x revisions are pretty major. 10.x.x upgrades require only a reboot. Viz major revisions (i.e. 10.1, 10.2), the upgrade procedure (generally) works fine.
I can't believe anyone is actually trying to argue that Debian is easier to install/upgrade than Mac OS X! At least look at the intended user base - on the one hand, arty types and families, on the other hand, Slashdot-reading UNIX hackers (of which I like to count myself part, most of the time).
iqu
I was going to agree with you whole-heartedly, but then I reread your post a couple of times...
:?
Away from the desktop on x86, I'm a Debian man, and it has done a superb job as a router and web server at home. The upgrades are superbly simple for a Linux-based operating system. And, should I be bothered, I'm sure it might make a reasonable desktop...
But you have piqued my curiosity - I am intrigued, what, pray tell, do you mean by "manual upgrades," "install hassles" and "a lot more software available for it"?
Apple's Software Update is automatic. Debian requires that you do at least type the various commands.
The Mac OS X Installer requires that you click Next about 10 times, I Agree once and click a hard disk icon. If you are a geek, then include the Customise button and a few tick boxes. Incidentally, the Installer is also the program used for installing a lot of software on the Mac, providing a unified feel for all installers (obviously apt-get gives you that too, but it's kinda scary for Joe Sixpack). My mum could install Mac OS X; she wouldn't even try Debian - it is hard!
Command line Mac and Linux have exactly the same software. On the desktop/work environment, there is simply no competition - the Mac, though not so "enriched" compared to Windows, wins hands down (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, iDVD, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Maya, the Macromedia apps [soon to change, perhaps], a whole boatload of games)...
So a reread has left me thinking: what on earth are you on about...?
iqu
GNOME vs. KDE will perhaps be one of the holy wars of this millennium, and this is certainly another kick in the teeth for the ever-so-slightly clunky KDE (in my opinion). As said in the article, the developers have done some superb work and, well, put it this way, it is almost making me want to lose Mac OS X on one of my iBooks. Do not underestimate the pulling power of eye candy and the HIG!
:)
Liberal inspiration has, of course, been taken from the Apple way of doing things - the spatial navigation is, as noted in the Ars Technica article, based on the pre-OS X MacOS Finder. And that's no bad thing, certainly if FOSS wants to move towards real usability on the desktop.
The file dialogue boxes are also notably similar to Mac OS X's way of doing things, although the puzzling (at least to me) scrollbars that the Mac uses to browse up and down a directory tree are here replaced with arguably simpler tabs. Very nice touch.
Personally I'll keep Mac OS X on this for the moment, if only to avoid kernel recompiles and incompatibilities arising from that, but hell, if I were a Windows user, I'd be sitting here asking myself why the fuck I am waiting till 2006 for Longhorn when I can have this now...
Zealots were quick to criticise the most prominent competition - Mac OS X 10.3 - in terms of eye candy on the desktop when it came to making comparisons with their darling Longorn (which is, rather pointedly, not available for purchase yet). Now that UNIX is offering two superb alternatives, one of them properly FOSS (and, more importantly, runnable on x86), Windows' days should surely be numbered...?
iqu
Bite the bullet dude, that's capitalism, I'm afraid.
And if you think Apple are harsh, they're a hell of a lot nicer to customers regarding freebie repairs and the like than any other company (one of the reasons their tech support is rated so highly).
On the whole, Apple are pretty good at the "wanting the customer to be happy" thing (as above), but, as others have pointed out, it's in the small print on the web site, so you've not got a legal leg to stand on.
It is a little mean that you hadn't actually got the machine, but who goes and buys another computer just like that when they've got one coming in a couple of days!?
Sorry to be harsh, but, well...they screwed up with iBook mobos and G4 power supplies...but this...?
As long as we are OT...
:)
If we didn't render the Japanese ra-ri-ru-re-ro as such, we wouldn't be able to make election/erection jokes...
But you're right, it's definitely far closer to an ell than the English 'r,' especially the stronger American 'r.'
iqu
I'm in Japan, so I just took my 14" (which had lain unused for quite a few months) into the Apple Store in Ginza, up to the Genius Bar, and they promptly acknowledged that it was, well, fucked. Less than a week later and I had it back.
:)
Better still, they rang me the day before I collected it to say that the LCD cable (another iBook weakness) needed fixing and that it would cost 21,000 (about $200, I think) - a little steep, but I said OK. When I went to pick it up, there were a couple of rather dirty fingerprints on the screen and keyboard plastic surrounds. The man cleaned them off, but not satisfied that he had sufficiently allayed my concerns, reduced my repair bill from 21,000 to zero!
More importantly, viz the topic, the iBook is fine - the only troubling issue is that my 12" model appears to be going the same way - perhaps I shall be calling on their services again in the not too distant future.
iqu
Since the Mac runs hardly any software compared to a PC, you are going to use the Mac a lot less, and of course you will get fewer tech problems.
:s
There really are some worrying moderators out here - at the time of writing, this wonderful piece of insight has been awarded 30% Insightful. Hate Macs all you like, but it is positively childlike logic...
iqu
I've got to say it (because no-one else has)...
:P
BSD/Darwin is dying/Apple is beleaguered*.
iqu
* delete as applicable
As long as you buy good hardware, keep your antivirus and windows critical patches up to date, and do a system cleanup / defrag once in a while
:P
:)
Still a heck of a load more than I have to do on my Mac. And the bit about "buying good hardware" is interesting - cut to the chase and just buy the goddamn Mac already!
iqu
Well, maybe not yet, because remember, the reason that Adobe, Quark et al still develop for Mac is because a large proportion of the Mac user base uses this software, buys this software, etc. It does actually make business sense. The Mac has always had these apps, so one must continue to satiate Mac users' demands for said software. Whereas let us look at Linux. OK, the installed base is growing, but what is the proportion of users of it who are professional graphic designers with the money to buy this kind of expensive software? Very few. Linux is for cost-saving businesses, the hobbyist wanting desktop UNIX on x86 and possibly, soon, the home user. Graphic designers are not in that list. Obviously you aren't going to see a mass migration of said users to Linux until the apps are there, but I'm afraid the chicken-and-egg situation remains. Like Windows, the Apple has the advantage that it has momentum - it was the graphical OS of the 1980s, so acquired all these graphical apps. It's the same for music software. Still, nice to see that Linux is making progress, because even one percentage point less in share for Microsoft can only be a Good Thing. iqu :)
(damnit! forgot that I have to put >br< tags in!)
:(
iqu
Encoding audio and video? Steve would cry if he read this. Where have Macs been widely been used all these years? The music and film industry...??? In fact, whilst it is a little irresponsible to say the reverse is true, it is certainly not unfair to suggest that people on a budget buy a low spec PC (i.e. even worse than the Mac's "meagre" specifications - i.e. 700Mhz x86 = 700Mhz PPC) to do "normal everyday things that don't require much cpu power: word processing, email, web etc." There are , I am sure, a few that use their Macs for just this, but I would have thought the majority might like to flex the power of iLife (i.e. DVD burning, movie editing, digital photography, music), Final Cut Pro, Logic, Photoshop, etc. The list is not small... True, Macs don't do as many games as PCs, but that's more a marketing/business-sense decision rather than any inherent weakness on the Mac's part. Indeed, of course, time was when Mac games were vastly superior (I am going way back to the time of Prince of Persia here, folks, so...) iqu :s
Is this a troll? Because it really, really does sound like one...
:s
iqu
Isn't it usually Step Four that is "Profit?" iqu :P
Yeah, the shell is easy to change in the Terminal application. In the Terminal menu, go to Preferences, and change the 'Run this command' to /bin/bash or /bin/csh or whatever takes your fancy. If you want more shells, go get Fink, if you've not got it already, and install them from that.
:)
iqu
But in the end, isn't that where we're going, with all this TV-computer integration, or something along those lines. I mean something like the computer as an appliance, or wherever it is this tech is headed.
:s
Alas perhaps it is this kind of "brain food" that the populace wants - (and at the risk of sounding elitist) it is the elite few who actually want to seek out information; the rest would rather just have it shoved in their faces, without a care as to its source or bias.
Ugh, I sound like a historian or something. Oh well...
iqu
I wasn't actually trying to troll, just being an idiot...
:P
So in effect, I have proved my point about moderation...which, of course, is what I was planning all along...
iqu
Hmmm, on my iBook 700, I find the opposite. Perhaps I'll check MPlayer out again...
:s
iqu
Mod me down! I am misinformed! VLC does indeed only use FFMPEG on Mac/Linux.
:s
iqu
As I have said 4 or 5 times on this story now, VLC uses FFMPEG/libavcodec to play back DivX/XviD/other MPEG4 compliant video. Therefore, even if it were the case that it was the codec which displayed the ads, it wouldn't matter, because VLC doesn't use it.
:s
But as usual, the idiot moderators mod you up as 100% Informative. Those actually informed would know that it is 100% rubbish.
iqu
Parent is misinformed. VLC uses the FFMPEG libavcodec library.
:s
iqu
Eugh! Mplayer on OS X? I have to say my experiences were not pleasant. It was slow and really not worth much time or effort.
:)
Personally, I (and all other Mac users I know) far prefer VLC - the VideoLAN player, which is unbloated, fast and pretty. It's also far more cross-platform (Win, Mac, BeOS, Linux, *BSD, amongst others) and actually possible to compile from source without setting aside a day to hack around. It also has the nifty feature of playing region-encumbered DVDs on different-region drives without any need for firmware programming or anything (certainly on Windows).
YMMV, but mplayer, as is widely reported on the Internet, is murder to compile. In addition, the developers are unbearably arrogant and unhelpful (the fuss they made over GCC 2.96 springs to mind). I've also generally found it to have rather high CPU requirements - it is always bitching that my machines are too slow when other software is perfectly capable of playing the same file.
But anyway, if you like MPlayer on OS X, I'd wager you'll love VLC.
iqu