Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon vs. Mac OS X Leopard 669
walterbyrd writes "Linux magazine has up a decent article comparing Gutsy Gibbon to Leopard. 'The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let's see how they stack up against each other.'"
Oh god (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh god (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh god (Score:5, Funny)
Just remember...there's no such thing as "nowhere to go but up", especially in software. No matter how bad it is, it's possible to make it worse.
Microsoft proves that all the time!
Re:Oh god (Score:5, Funny)
That's what people said about XP.
My Macbook (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:My Macbook (Score:4, Insightful)
I should have to sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg-plow to get a GUI, ya know? Yet, it's nice to know I can if I have to.
I don't think either OS is poaching much from the other's pool of users.
Re:My Macbook (Score:4, Insightful)
OSX is designed to run on Macs.
If I came out with a new CPU and wrote an operating system around it, yeah, I bet it'd run pretty well there, too.
</fanboy>
Re:My Macbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My Macbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you sometimes have to work around things on exotic hardware, very new hardware, or if you're trying to do something very specific that is outside the mainstream. In order to get a system that 'just works', you have to buy hardware that's known to work well on Linux. That's it. Stick with hardware that's been around a bit or has vendor support (like Nvidia graphics cards). Get an Epson or HP printer (and install Stylus Toolbox [sf.net] if you have an Epson printer). Use the well-supported Connectix Webcams. Get a scanner that's known to work with SANE. You get the idea. If you follow these guidelines, you will find that Ubuntu 'just works' every time. Or, if you're not quite so ambitious, go out and buy a machine that has Ubuntu pre-installed. Dell sells them.
Unfortunately, people don't realize this and then dismiss integration issues as Linux being 'too immmature.' That's crap. If all your hardware is known to work well under Linux, you won't run into these integration issues.
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Re:My Macbook (Score:5, Insightful)
"you have to buy hardware that's known to work well on Linux" is not necessarily the same as "my not-new and not-exotic wireless card, or any of the different but also not-new and not-exotic wireless cards" due to that.
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The trouble with most consumer level wireless cards is that the chipsets keep being changed without updating the model number of the card. Cisco cards always have the same chipset...
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Windows does it with vendor supplied restore cd's...
Solaris does it on sparc hardware
IRIX did it on sgi hardware
Amigaos did it
Ultrix was one of the easiest os's i ever installed, asked me for like 1 confirmation and then got on with it.
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You may have a point about it being easier to install Ubuntu on a random untested piece of hardware than OS X, but. on the opposite end of the spectrum, installing Mac OS X on a Macbook Pro (made for use with OS X) takes fewer clicks and requires less dialog pages be clicked through than installing Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 1420 N (made for use with Ubuntu)).
Oh yea!..well...upgrading Unbuntu from Feisty to Gutsy only takes '1 click' from the package manager...so there...take that... ; )
Seriously, what
Re:My Macbook (Score:4, Insightful)
If the GUI of OSX fails, you get dropped to a commandline shell, i have had this happen to me when the videocard in my G4 wasn't seated properly, also OSX will not try to run the gui if it doesn't detect a videocard (like in a server).
What linux does need, is a "recovery mode", where it loads a minimal X using vesa or generic vga drivers and lets you reconfigure it properly (this is exactly what windows does with safe mode).
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Re:My Macbook (Score:5, Interesting)
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Prior to that, it was setting up the Nvidia driver to make Gnome/KDE anywhere near usable, but I think that was resolved the last time I played with it.
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Lack of graphics support isn't a problem for servers (neither is wireless) so that's where I'm most likel
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Re:My Ububook (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if I could get Gigasampler or any of the Native Instruments synths or samplers to work in Linux...
I don't really care for the whole "Jack" audio engine thingie, which seems pretty kludgy, and it took a good while for me to figure out what it wanted from me, but some of the open source music apps that came with Ubuntu Studio are definitely for real, once you get past the fact that they didn't have some big corporation pouring money into making them look slick. After Christmas, when I've got some disposable cash on hand, I'm going to check out some of the professional, non-free (as in "expensive") music applications that are starting to become available.
No, it's not as smooth as Leopard, but it's getting there. And now that Eve-Online has a Linux client, I don't care if Microsoft ever fixes Vista. I just don't need it.
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Re:My Macbook (Score:4, Informative)
Intel produced the ACPI specs, and people implemented those specs into linux/bsd/etc even before there was much ACPI supporting hardware...
Microsoft implemented ACPI too, but not quite according to the specs...
Hardware manufacturers follow microsoft's implementation, and use microsoft's dsdt compiler etc, instead of the standard intel one. And ofcourse the specs aren't published for the broken microsoft implementation.
End result is that ACPI works fairly poorly almost everywhere. If you have a laptop that still supports APM suspend on linux usually works pretty well (i always used apm suspend on my older thinkpads), modern windows no longer supports apm at all (and amusing things happen if you install ibm's apm suspend drivers on xp).
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wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, you do.
Have you never heard of "Migration Assistant"? Not only does it copy your applications, it copies your system setting and documents as well.
Migration assistant copies from one Mac to another; that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about making a fresh install on an existing Mac.
Migration Assistant doesn't help new users; they need to install everything they want to use from scratch.
Migration Assistant doesn't work reliably: some applications never get copied,
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Re:wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Hang on, you originally implied that with Linux, you didn't have to install third-party applications. So, it turns out you do have to manually install applications.
Where is this feature on a Mac? Well, www.versiontracker.com would be a start. And that helps you decide what to install. On Linux, how does a new user decide which package to use? A package manager in itself is not going to help much. Most Mac apps are extremely simple to install (usually drag-n-drop to applications folder) - so I don't see how that is any more difficult than installing using a package manager.
How does having a package manager equate to applications being "automatically installed", as you imply in your earlier post?
Tell me - what application bundle does do 100% of what every user wants to do with their computer? There are certainly plenty of things I want to do that I can't under Linux. Hell, there are tons of things that I want to do, that I can't do on any platform, because those applications simply haven't been developed yet.
Utter horseshit. under Linux, you can't even get many types of app - for example, there are no Photoshop-class image editing apps, and no professional video editing apps. Frankly, your contention is ridiculous. Consistency of quality and usability is also much better with Mac apps. If a new user chose a Mac or Linux app at random, it's likely that the Mac app is of better quality and usability. Having a ton of average-to-poor apps available hardly compares to having many first-class apps available.
It's not about the OS, it's the iApps (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm surprised no one on the thread (that I found) emphasize on the applications. At work I'm on Debian, but at home, it's Leopard. I *want* to switch to Ubuntu, but sorry, the iApps have no equivalent to my knowledge. The ability to use the same multimedia files from iPhoto, to iMovie, to Mail, to iWeb, etc make the significant difference. I don't doubt both Ubuntu/Leopard are "good" OS, but as a customer, that's not what matters, what matters is the overall experience in regards to
Re:wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
P.S:
The point of my posts was not to say that the Mac is superior in every way, or has all software covered. My point was that the way that the "finding and installing applications" argument was presented was too simplified, and out of touch with reality. It's not a task that something like a package manager can solve. It requires social solutions, like support networks, and reliable software review sites.
The other thing i disagree with is the idea of "the average user." I don't think such a person exists. If so, I've never met him. Most people have their own interests and tastes, and don't want to be constrained by what's "average." I think it's this attitude that stops many people from trying new things. I think some of these average users are pushed into that role, because of talk about "complex or specialized" software. What is special to one person, is normal to another. If you grew up playing a musical instrument (and having never used a computer) then music composition software might seem completely normal to you - but seem weird and specialist to somebody else. Likewise, Excel is considered "normal" software by many - but if somebody has never had any need for a spreadsheet, it wouldn't really make any sense to them.
I think the "average user" is a myth that should be abolished. It's insulting to both people and software. It's the kind of thing perpetuated by the corporate world, who want every employee to fit a mold, and for everybody to use the same thing.
installing software on Macs (Score:3, Informative)
Linux (Ubuntu, Debian and Redhat, as well as many others) have a nifty little package manager where you can install a program for almost anything you can think of. Where is that feature on your Mac? The Mac may come with a number of third party tools, but they still don't do 100% of what every user wants to do with their computer. Under Linux, it's much closer to "feature complete", as far as application availability.
There's MacPorts [apple.com] and Fink [finkproject.org]. Macports uses RPMs and Fink uses "Debian tools like dpkg an
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Once you find the good apps, such as iTerm instead of Terminal, figure out how to install XCode, MacPorts, and XWindows things start to feel good again. There are some warts, such as mounting Volumes where you like, but overall it's a pretty good setup. I'm in the command-line most of the day, but I can still r
factual errors. (Score:4, Informative)
both UNIX- based
OS X Leopard *is* certified Unix (r). Ubuntu (and Linux) is not based on original AT&T Unix code nor is it certified Unix. It is a unix-like kernel.
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Re:factual errors. (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely not! Were you asleep for the whole SCO lawsuit thing?
Re:factual errors. (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux, BTW, is proud of this, and it also helps when they get sued by stupid copyright trolls like SCO. Linux is UNIX reimplemented from scratch, and thus, technically, is not UNIX but Unix-like.
I tediously explain this to every one of my employees when I'm training them on using their new Ubuntu laptop.
And then I tell them, "But basically, it's Unix."
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Re:More importantly is how they are vs Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows has a monopoly on a software method of jury rigging a bunch of hardware from different manufacturers into something resembling a modern computer. Apple turns the computer into something more resembling a television.
Apple aren't better than Windows when it comes to freedom and monopoly. Far from it, MS has always been the lesser evil, that's why they succeeded in the marketplace. Apple is a bullet dodged that is currently ricocheting back.
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Re:More importantly is how they are vs Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
Computers are cheap because Compaq reversed engineered the IBM PC and fought the battles against IBM. MS did supply the OS, but this was the essential issue. Compaq still had to come up with a legal BIOS, which is did. One has to imagine they could have come up with an OS as well. In any case, this started a boom, lead by the likes of pheonix technologies, to create a clone market.
In the midst of this, Apple kept it's original mission to supply a good competing computer. The architecture was different, which meant it did not IBM software, and therefore most people went with the cheap clones, which happened to have MS DOS. Those that were not attached to IBM, went to other machines. Apple competed in an environment that included many different platforms. Apple did not compete in the IBM PC market. It just had to keep prices and quality high enough so that people who were not satisfied with IBM PC market, and were looking for a better choice, would include Apple in the search.
It is a anachronistic mistake to assume the state of the world in 1980 was similar to the state of the world today. It was a much more dynamic time with competition sparking genuinely interesting innovations. Unix was still a big player, and ATT developed a Unix microcomputer which was really cool. Apple did not kill this machine, MS did not kill this machines, cheap clones did, which happened to often run MS DOS, as MS Windows was still quite a joke.
In fact in the midst of all this, Apple was a good citizen. The machines could run CP/M, for example. The machines could boot without a DOS, and one could load any number of options. The machine could buy EEPROMs. Later, when the machines were powerful enough, and the chips included a PMMU, Macintosh user could run Unix.
What most people focus on it the Linux connection, which is philisophically opposed to the Apple philosophy. open standards, build your own box, do everything yourself, which is where we were in the 70's. This philosophy has it's place, but is not the entire world. Apple machines could run *nix, and a damn sight better than most of the PC junk, but the code is not there. Likewise, in every story about *nix, some fool always complains that *nix won't run because some driver does not exist, or it takes forever to set up. That is the whole point!. *nix is a build your own system. It offers the ultimate flexibility, but at a price. If you need a driver, write it. That is was OSS is all about!
In the end we lost a lot of good functionality due to the MS shenanigans, but also gained some accessibility. Apple is part of the old culture, which has it plan. MS is quickly becoming the Nouveau riche neighbor you wish would move away. At some point *nix will mature, and run well, and at that time it will support all the cool hardware, not just the cheap hardware. MS does a good job supporting cheap hardware. Apple does a good job supporting mid price systems. *Nix needs to find it's own niche.
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Then we get to Compaq, which didn't exist until 82, and didn't have a machine until mid-83. There were man
Re:More importantly is how they are vs Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
It boils down to this: "Apple turns the computer into something more resembling a television." That's exactly right, and framing it as a Bad Thing(tm) is not unexpected, but certainly ludicrous. Linux wouldn't have gotten off the ground on Apple machines, no. That would be contrary to the computer-as-an-appliance model.
Under no contorted version of reality would Apple ever be the sole vendor of computers. If everyone followed the Apple model, you can be absolutely certain that Linux would have a better hold on the marketplace. Getting the hardware and software from the same people (IBM, Apple, Amiga, SGI--the "dinosaurs") would have ensured that some cross-compatible development would go on; a common reference design for low-end competitors to cut costs, and customizable for each vendor.
Most computer resellers wouldn't have had the resources to develop an end-to-end solution on their own; the thought of using something free and not having to get in bed with another corporation would have clearly been desirable. Microsoft won because it got there first, not because it is or was the "lesser evil" (are you kidding me?!). Microsoft solved the problem of manufacturers having to do their own OS and support, making it cheap for them to enter the market. There was no such thing as Linux; there was no cheaper option, so they sucked it up and signed on with MS. It was the cheapest, easiest path.
If the other model had succeeded, you'd see all kinds of companies jumping at the chance to have a free OS that they could have tweaked to their desires, and be beholden to Microsoft for security, connectivity, or making their products functional. It's the detached expectations that created the 800-pound gorilla. If each company were expected to develop and sell a wholly working product like Apple does, the budget brands would be using Linux to do it, and there'd be no OS monopoly--just several different OSes that worked together.
And NOT be beholden to Microsoft, that is--NT (Score:3, Informative)
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The terrasoft people may beg to differ with you.
And if you insist on being revisionist and ignoring all Linux distros for Mac, please be sure to logically consistent and stop using all utilities and programs they spawned, like yum.
Also why is a computer that is made with mix & match components something resembling a computer and a computer that is treated by the vendor somewh
Here's a video version of the article (Score:5, Funny)
Gutsy indeed!
Re:Here's a video version of the article (Score:5, Funny)
Oh is that so? (Score:5, Interesting)
The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time.
Well, I'd say that Ubuntu is elegant, easy-to-use and intuitve, while Mac OS X is stable, secure and getting better all the time.
I don't want to troll... But both visions are true....
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Like extended warranties. :-D
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On the second point, word of mouth bashing of companies and their products seems to happen a lot in the Linux world.
Surreal Suppositions? (Score:2)
I'd rather see all-out WINE/Cedega funding to take *doze binaries and make them run better in Linux so I don't have to buy a version of XP or 2K to run CAD apps I want to buy in the next 3 months. (yep, I'll buy a 2nd hard disk and keep the main for any necessary warranty problems, but I'll clone it, suck it into Virtual Box or Win4Lin, and corral the bitch and never let it run native on
Re:Surreal Suppositions? (Score:5, Informative)
Mac runs on Mac hardware. Hardly what I would call a fair test to what Linux has to stand up against.
Although Macs have switched to Intel processors I bet OS X wouldn't be as easy to install on all the PC configurations that Ubuntu has to deal with which I think is a point that most people miss out on.
Even if you were comparing Gutsy to Windows, even XP doesn't have driver support for my old web cam and TV tuner card which is really out of date. Gutsy does it out of the box because the support for the third party hardware is kept there, which keeps me from having to buy new hardware just to get back what I already had after an upgrade.
Re:Surreal Suppositions? (Score:5, Insightful)
I move a window to the edge of my screen and it snaps into place at the last second so that it's exactly at the edge of my window. I can keep any window I want on top of or behind other windows so that I can work with two windows at once without having to constantly Alt-Tab between them or make them ridiculously small. When I browse an audio CD, it displays the tracks in a series of folders that shows me what the files look like ripped and encoded in all of the audio codecs I have installed ready for me to drag and drop onto my hard drive. When I zoom in on a jpeg, my photoviewer applies an algorithm to blow it up without pixelating it. When I want a piece of software I just pick it out of a list and it's there... oh wait. I don't remember any of that from using a Mac.
Okay, "Just Works" just like on a Mac... hmm... I put my thumb drive or a data CD in and the mounted volume appears on my desktop? Media just plays for me right in my browser? My music organizing software recognizes my MP3 player and offers to load it for me? No wait, it didn't care what brand I used. I actually had a much easier time mapping to a printer shared from Windows than any of the dozen or so attempts I've heard of people making on a Mac, but I'm willing to assume they were all nincompoops or picked a printer that wouldn't have worked for me either and call it a push.
But seriously, I can't hardly think of a Linux user-unfriendliness headache that I haven't seen dramatically improve in the last two or three years, at least not one I care about. If you don't believe me, try installing the new Nvidia manufacturer drivers. It prompted me to kill my X server first, warned me that it didn't mean by dropping to single-user mode, found my kernel sources without any help, said something about them being a little off and creating a new kernel interface for me (again without any help on my part), then offered to update my xorg.conf file for me, which it did, beautifully. I swear the only reason that driver install didn't do everything it had to do without asking or informing me is that the average Linux user would have considered it rude. Maybe if (assuming you haven't) you used a Mac long enough to discover all its warts and you weren't trying administer 8 machines, use Win98 as a webserver, and get Linux to run CAD software on a shoestring budget, you wouldn't have Macs up on a pedestal.
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Comparison results (Score:5, Funny)
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http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Code%20Monkey [jonathancoulton.com]
Linux Mag? (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Connection timed out ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Comparing apples to ... (Score:5, Funny)
Unlisted advantages? (Score:2, Insightful)
Risk (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unlisted advantages? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's been out for 6 years now at no point have I ever seen it referred to as OS\X. In the same manner It's not Windows\XP or X\P or ViSTA. They're not MACS or MACs or MaCs. It's not an IPOD or an Ipod or an iPOD. FreeBSD is just that, not FREEBsd or FREEBSD or FreEBsD. Macintosh System * was used before the clones came out at which point it was changed to Mac OS 8, then 9 and X followed.
Capitalization and punctuation as important to my built in English parser as spelling and grammar.
Bogus comparison (Score:4, Funny)
Except that Apple users are not so humor impaired as to feel compelled to point out that gibbons aren't orangutans.
As a longtime OS X user with one Ubuntu machine.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I can say that they are both impressive, and both have their share of problems. Both could learn from each other (OS X probably more so from Linux)
OS X.. it's polished, integrated, (UNIX) powerful, and easy to use (stays out of my way).
But if you have a problem... start hunting for preference files and deleting them.
Why an addressbook would completely crash mail and iChat, in this day and age is beyond me. Restarts due to updates are entirely too frequent.
Ubuntu... it's good, again (UNIX) powerful, extremely easy to keep updated. Editing config files is a blessing and a curse. With one edit of a file, I've configured a Microsoft mouse (they make good mice) in under 30 secs. On OS X I had to download a file, install, restart and configure.. yawn.
I needed to connect to the Mac for file sharing and Ubuntu presented me with a GUI scp! I hadn't been that excited about an os, since working on UNIX for the first time. I was very impressed.
But on the other side, my screen resolution is different each time I restart...
Considering that I only use Ubuntu for one thing and one thing only (ET:QW) it doesn't bother me too much, since the game sets its own resolution.
All that being said, they are both light years ahead of at least XP. Not sure about Vista, since I've never used it.
It's a matter of taste. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you like getting your hands dirty, they both have a good shell and can be scripted with little difficulty. They both have a nice set of apps in the default installation.
Ubuntu is somewhat ahead with application installation, with synaptic, while OS X is somewhat ahead with commercial application support.
It's hard to compare the default installation on each of them, because it's really a matter of taste.
My Comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
This past week, my Macbook was off for service (battery issue, power cord, and cracked edges), and I installed Gusty for the heck of it, to see how the distros were coming along these days.
It's definitely the nicest Linux distro that I've tried. But I still find myself popping to the command line, editing GNU configuration files, compiling modules, editing sources.list with additional repos, fighting isues with Flash not working on the latest Opera (still unresolved), and so forth.
I do like it. I even managed to get up SunRay server up with it to play with a few of the dozens of surplus SunRays I have (takers anyone?
But when my Mac is back tomorrow, it will become my primary desktop, hands down, once again. The user interface, the clean design, and so forth, make for a better daily experience. (I've done some hacking with drivers for a test hackintosh, and I do like the
So as impresed as I was by Gutsy, I will stick to my "develop on OS X, deploy on Linux" approach. (And for deployment on a server, the distro is less important; I generally prefer Debian as first choice; often I have to use CentOS for virtual dedicated hosting, which works, too; for a server, Ubuntu is probably third choice. As a Linux desktop, it's first choice, but as discussed, I just keep falling back to using OS X as the desktop, and Linux as the server.)
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Can you please list your hardware so I can get something similar and have all this editing fun I am clearly missing out on. Simply put, I feel left out of the fun club
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Getting
Mac OS X isn't free. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me tell another difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Their reason was "Lack of new hardware". That was really noted by PowerPC users, not just iMac G5 people, XServe G5 and Quad/Dual G5 Workstation users too.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCReview [ubuntu.com]
You can't compare OS X Leopard to Ubuntu Linux for a simple reason. It doesn't exist "officially" on PowerPC Mac. Ubuntu showed something real bad for its image after that decision.
Of course, there is always real Debian, Yellow Dog and others for PPC people.
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:5, Informative)
Admittedly, though, no, Linux is a clone of a clone of UNIX, and shame on them for it.
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:5, Informative)
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The other day my friend asked me to install some free software game on his MacBook... I think it was called Bos Wars. The webpage for the game claimed that it supports OS X but I couldn't find a binary, just the source. Downloaded that, read the INSTALL.txt and discovered that I'd need to install SDL and about 5 other libraries
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, how many times does this need to be said before people stop claiming OS X isn't UNIX or UNIX-based? Leopard is a certified UNIX 03 product [opengroup.org].
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:5, Informative)
OSX is to an extent the exact opposite. Technically speaking, it derives from BSD code (actual Unix code). Technically speaking, it implements the appropriate APIs and can run a program that runs on Unix. I want to say even before X11, Apple legitimately got the Unix moniker to describe their platform, but I recall there being confusing around this point. The addition of X11 out of the box makes it more complete, and less of a technicality. However, the fact of the matter is the extensive use of a non-X based graphical architecture and the almost universal situation is that NeXT derived APIs are used and required, and the underlying pieces that are true to a Unix heritage are nearly moot. A user accustomed to Unix will find OSX fundamentally different.
Technically speaking, OSX has a valid claim to being Unix, but could be accused of not necessarily being true to the 'spirit' of Unix. Linux is absolutely not a Unix, but on the other hand, people can certainly fairly claim Linux to being true to the spirit of Unix.
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Modern day BSDs including Darwin, which OSX is built on top of, do not contain any of the original AT&T code. 4.4BSD-Lite, which the big three BSDs are descendants from, contains no actual Unix code as all that was removed back as terms of the settlement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi#Terms_of_the_settlement [wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.4BSD#4.4BSD_and_descendants [wikipedia.org]
absolutely right! (Score:4, Interesting)
>necessarily being true to the 'spirit' of Unix. Linux is absolutely not a Unix, but on
>the other hand, people can certainly fairly claim Linux to being true to the spirit of Unix.
Absolutely! After all, if it isn't hard to use, it isn't in the spirit of unix. Really, lacking compatibility with other versions of unix makes it *more* in the spirit on unix, as historically and currently unixen have had huge compatibility problems (thus autotools/autoconf).
Also, since OSX takes a subsystem that was horribly designed and whose implementations were buggy and broken, X11, and replaces it with a modern, slick, robust, and efficient subsystem, aqua, it is *clearly* committing the cardinal sin of unix. Given historical precedent it would be *much* more unixy to instead standardize on the bad design, and then try to fix it with a bunch of extensions which are in themselves problematic and inconsistently implemented.
Seriously, people who talk about how great the unix system design is have no understanding of the internals and how they compare to other modern operating systems. Everything is inconsistent and many things are fundamentally broken. Linux's approach to unix has been largely to take something broken, and add more broken and incompatible parts to it.
Now, I use and develop on Linux quite a bit, which is why I *know* there are so many things wrong with it. However, there is a reason why I use it, and it has its strong points. Permissive licensing, lots of drivers for commodity hardware, and a very efficient kernel are some of Linux's strong points compared to other OS's. System architecture is just not one of linux's strong points. Comparatively, OSX and solaris have a *much* more impressive unix architecture. Windows also has some strong points in some of its API's, although not the core win32 windowing API, which is disgustingly crufty).
As I said... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Linux is not UNIX. Linux is UNIX-like. Linux is modeled after UNIX, and could be said to be "based on UNIX" if by "based on" you mean "intended to function similarly", but not, of course, "based on" the code from either AT&T UNIX or from BSD.
Mac, however, *is
That's why there are standards for these things... (Score:5, Informative)
The other thing that came out of this effort is a means to verify conformance. Note that word, "conformance". This is the term used in the standard, and if you want to talk about whether some operating system meets the standard, it's the word you should use, too. When you hear someone say 'compliant', you should ask them if they mean "conformance, as defined in the standard, or just some term made up by the marketing staff to confuse the buyer/user." An informed technical person will know the difference.
Conformance is rigorously defined in the standards, but I can informally summarize it this way:
-- Conforming Application uses only facilities within the standard.
-- A Conforming Implementation implements the whole standard (no subsets, unless allowed by the standard!).
From the POSIX effort and X/Open merged activities, there's a "Single Unix Specification", which is a proper superset of the POSIX standards and includes facilities not formally standardized by ISO. The Open Group (http://www.opengroup.org) both maintains the SUS and conducts a certification program against the specification.
It is good to see Apple go through this and pass (apparently Apple tried earlier and hit a roadblock/inconsistency.)
So when someone -now- says "Unix" they should mean a conforming implementation of the Open Group's Single Unix Standard. That includes POSIX conformance. And it should mean that the vendor has the certificate to prove it.
Now what about Linux? Last I heard, there were still inconsistencies between Linux and the SUS, so LINUX won't pass the POSIX part of SUS, and therefore isn't legally "Unix", nor is it a POSIX Conforming Implementation. My understanding these differences aren't trivial, but are in corners that the average user won't bump into. But the differences in the API specifications does have a significant impact on the implementation (kernel), and that's why the Linux community has stuck to its incompatibility with the POSIX standard.
dave (worked on POSIX standards from 88-94, primarily the Ada binding...)
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Re:From TFA (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oooh, I'm all a-tingle (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, look at the ESR rant about cups. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html [catb.org] Part 2 goes on to say how cups developers contacted him as well. And have you seen cups lately? It got better. So, I think the article will point out some significant faults. And I bet you won't find many of them next year...
The real fun part will be looking at this article in a year and see how many Linux faults got fixed, and how many Mac faults are still there.
Re:Unbalanced article. (Score:5, Insightful)
The author, as such, appears to have slept through the last 30 years, in which the original Macintosh established the desktop metaphors Microsoft poorly reimplemented and Linux re-re-implemented many many times over.
By that reasoning, nothing is as good as what Xerox has, because they established the fundamental metaphor first. Nevermind they didn't take that project out of the prototype phase themselves, they must know better than Apple because they did something with a mouse first. It's simply not accurate to say ideas cannot be built upon and improved by anyone other than the first. The first one to establish something doesn't *necessarily* follow the most prudent evolution of the ideas. What the state of things 30, 20, 10, or even 5 years ago isn't automatically overriding of the situation of *today* (though certainly heritage influences the current, hence Microsoft being able to moderately screw up and lag in innovation and still maintain a lead).
As to the statement that there exists no meaningful HIGs in the *nix desktop world, that's just not true. Gnome and KDE both have their own HIGs, and if you stick to that software, the HIG is consistently obeyed. Ubuntu by default presents a pure Gnome environment, and generally you have to pick something out special to deviate. OSX and Windows are not immune to this. In OSX, if running an X11 app, it sticks out like a sore thumb and almost certainly doesn't follow the Apple HIG. Even without X11, some companies like Lotus release software that doesn't follow the HIGs (Notes looks equally hideous and out of place on all platforms). The point being, you can't fault a wide architecture for giving choice, and compare it against a specific implementation. You must compare a distribution to OSX. If you said Apple lays a better framework than Gentoo for a coherent HIG, then I'd have to admit it. Among the various Ubuntu flavors, each has picked and preferred a HIG. OSX, Windows, and Linux platforms can all be subject to misfit applications that refuse to obey HIGs or even use the most common toolkit. The following behind HIGs in the Linux desktop world is not so small as to be counted out.
Try not to state subjective experiences like snap-to-screen-edge or focus-follows-mouse being far more efficient when this clearly can only be true for you.
Obviously, it can be true for more than one person, but I think you must have misspoken, that sentence didn't parse to my eyes. The power to do these things in a relatively standardized way is not a bad thing, however you slice it. Windows can do focus-follows-mouse, and no one accuses them of trashing the user experience because of it, and subtle edge-resistance isn't going to hopelessly confuse someone not expecting it, and certainly a non-default option of it won't.
Ubuntu just as good? No. Free software just isn't there yet. If it were, Dell, HP and Acer would have dumped Microsoft quite some time ago in the home market. People want cheap and easy. Not necessarily good, just cheap and easy. Linux doesn't even qualify as that yet - the market has spoken as always.
By your logic, OSX 'just isn't there yet' either, because the market en masse hasn't ditched Windows entirely. The market reality is that an intrinsically better platform is *not* going to automatically win over the market magically. The market reality is one of a great deal of maintaining the status quo. Microsoft from a business perspective got their product out there in the most accessible form early on, and because so many people use windows, so many people will continue to use Windows, even if you can claim it to be worse than the competition. Application developers are in the same boat, they target the platform that is popular, helping to contribute to a deadlock of microsoft. Microsoft's technical work in the mid 90s was on par with the Mac experience, and the Linux experience was no where to be seen. By the time OSX and Linux could be argued as being superio
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Even when making bullet lists of user-friendly features, distributions have implemented a lot of niceties nowhere to be found in Windows or OSX.
I can think of a couple, but the same is true in the reverse. Both OS X and Vista have features that have not made it into Linux distros yet.
My favorite example is the yum or apt facility.
Actually, there are a couple of nice package managers for OS X that handle both Linux/BSD ports and native OS X apps. It would be nice if it was there in a default install though.
...it provides a common methodology for third parties to register repositories of their own and not have to provide tools to help with dependencies themselves or to have their own update programs.
Which is nice, but realistically that does not happen for commercial software. Linux package managers lack the ability to handle Web and Bittorrent downloads or software registration,
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The purpose of the global menu bar is to present document windows as spaces in which to do work, and not as applications. When you switch to another document window, the menubar at the top of the screen changes to present options appropriate to working with that document.
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I suspect you're a bit confused by the fact that there are so many different pieces of free software that it's like suggesting that Windows sucks because not all Windows programs look the same.
I should also mention that Apple loves to violate its own human interface guidelines, which pretty much destroys any credibility that state
Re:Unbalanced article. (Score:5, Insightful)
This was rated +5 Insightful? How is it insightful to say that you can get the most out of an interface by using it the way its designers expected you to?
The rest of the post is just a trollish assertion that if you don't recognize the inherent superiority of the Macintosh, you either have no taste or just don't get it.
Here's an idea that platform partisans will never get: Tastes differ. To each his own.
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Actually I think the progress the free desktop has made is impressive beyond words. The fact that people do have a choice to use some
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