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Mac OS 9 Versus Corel GNU/Linux At CNet 316

Posted by emmett from the all-in-the-name-of-fairness dept.
petard writes: "CNet is holding an OS death match between Corel GNU/Linux and Mac OS 9. An advocate of each is invited to answer the question of which is better on the desktop in the areas of Installation, Interface, Applications, Hardware Compatiblility and Internet Support. At first I thought it was flamebait, but the article is reasonably well done and highlights genuine strengths and weakness of each OS." It's really easy to say, 'Yeah, well, wait for Eazel,' but this comparison is a hard reminder that people think about the here and now, not just the soon.
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Mac OS 9 versus Corel GNU/Linux at CNet More

Mac OS 9 versus Corel GNU/Linux at CNet

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  • What the heck is this title I'm seeing? "Corel GNU/Linux"? What the heck is that? I've looked all over the Corel website, and they don't offer such a product! The closest I could find was "Corel Linux". Is this what you meant, emmett?

    I can only conclude one of two things. First, since Corel Linux is derived from Debian GNU/Linux, the names got confused while the proofreader was asleep. Or second, this is GNUspeak. Slashdot, beholden to the whims of the FSF, has to rename everything. God forbid they should get a reputation as independant thinkers!

    Regardless of your views on the name of a certain operating system, at least have the moral fiber to call a rose a rose! You can argue all day whether the OS is GNU/Linux, LiGNUx, Linux or Fred(tm), but the name of the distribution offered by Corel is correctly spelled as "Corel Linux OS". Shortening the name to "Corel Linux" is certainly acceptable, but changing it is not.
  • Simply to make the record complete:
    Pretty much anything related to software development. I mean you get a free (high quality) optimizing compiler, debugger, a whole load of libraries, etc.
    You can download MPW [apple.com] for free from Apple's web site: debuggers, libraries, and the compilers used to build Mac OS and the ROM, which I guess is high-quality enough for Apple (although Mac OS X does use gcc).
    Network servers. I hope I don't need to say any more about that.
    Well, you might mention that the first HTTP server outside CERN was written for the Mac, as is the one currently used by the US Army's main web site.
    Remote access. I can log into my computer at work from home, and do everything I could do if I was actually sitting in my office!
    Me too! Timbuktu [netopia.com] (commercial) or VNC [att.com] (open source).
    Mathematical typesetting. Nothing beats TeX and LaTeX when it comes to this. Sure, there's TeX for Macs, but (AFAIK) you have to buy it.
    OK, you got me: according to this page [psu.edu], the five versions of TeX available for the Mac are either commercial or shareware (as low as US$30).

    I admit that if I was building a system purely for free software development or as a network server, I wouldn't think of the Mac first. However, I don't think these are the kind of "applications" the original author had in mind (except maybe mathematical typesetting).

  • I put MacOs9 on a 7100 recently and had actually recently downgraded the HD and left the RAM the same and it really runs pretty nicely. (Actually in some ways I think it's faster than 8.1)

    I also have a (free) 486 that I had to upgrade the HD on to make linux usable and I couldn't upgrade the RAM (physical size problem) so I wouldn't want to THINK of running X on it.

    You can be a cheap b*&^(* w/any OS and you can spend WAY too much supporting any OS.

    Alot of speed issues come down to poor configuration.

    If you'd like to see some of this, you could drop by on the way to the LUG meeeting tomorrow night! ;-) (I live pretty close to clc)

  • I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't read them at all, much less auto-mount them. For the 3 Mac users who might actually be interested in such a feature, I'd suggest they just use FAT-formatted disks when copying the files off their Linux box. :)

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • my perfect OS is apparently OS/2 Warp 4 and 5 [cnet.com], PAH! pseudo scientific my auntie.
    I would've answered other for all of the questions had there been the option.
  • Like the GUI, Apple didn't invent it, they just made it easy. Localtalk may suck, but it's totally plug-and-play. I can't tell you how many times I've just plugged two macs together, turned on Appletalk, and started moving files over...no config, no setup, just go.

    The comment about them inventing it is hyperbole, certainly. I won't even try to defend it. But the networking on a Mac really is just like the GUI: simple, easy, and works out-of-the-box. That's the whole point as far as I'm concerned.

  • - Where was the "system recovery" round? (I'm dealing with this right now, and let me tell you: at the best, diagnosing an ill Mac is a hair-rending, tooth-gnashing occation - and fixing it is worse, often involving three or four third-party apps).

    I suspect this reflects much more on your experience with both platforms. I find things to go the exact opposite. My Mac, when it breaks, is fixed nearly instantly, and almost never requires 3rd-party apps.

    - Where was the free support round? (Visit alt.linux, your problem is usually solved right there before you even have to post a question.)

    You know, Macs have newsgroups too. There are also web sites, forums, and so forth. In short, the same sorts of resources that Linux users have. You don't have to ask Apple just because you own one.

    - Where was the free documentation round? I can find out anything about linux for free, and usually right after I do a Google search. When I had questions about Mac, I had to BUY a book.

    This reflects on your inability to conduct a coherent web search, as opposed to the lack of documentation. There are plenty of sites, ranging from newbie stuff to obscure things like how to change that enter key next to the spacebar on powerbook keyboards into a command key. There's also that little Help menu (did you miss it?) that will answer many common questions.
  • Oh, come ON... no one actually took this one seriously, did they?

    Here are six reasons why you shouldn't have - or, rather, six rounds that would make this "shootout" somewhat more believeable:

    - Where was the "stability" round? (no elaboration required)

    - Where was the "system recovery" round? (I'm dealing with this right now, and let me tell you: at the best, diagnosing an ill Mac is a hair-rending, tooth-gnashing occation - and fixing it is worse, often involving three or four third-party apps).

    - Where was the official bugfix round? It takes Apple weeks/months to release patches for buggy software, as opposed to a couple hours...

    - Where was the free support round? (Visit alt.linux, your problem is usually solved right there before you even have to post a question.)

    - Where was the free documentation round? I can find out anything about linux for free, and usually right after I do a Google search. When I had questions about Mac, I had to BUY a book.

    - Most importantly, where was the FREE SOFTWARE round? By far, this was the *most* disappointing bit. Both sides were so fixated on shrink-wrapped software support from big names that no-one mentioned the somewhat important notion that, as far as software goes, LINUX CAN DO *EVERYTHING* A MAC CAN DO FOR exactly $0.00. Office compatability? Free. Graphic work? Free. View PC files? Free. Internet? Free. All of these cost money on the Mac, and will *only* cost a Linux user if you're paying modem costs per minute. It may still be cheaper, 'cause linux apps are generally much smaller then Mac apps (the most bloated of all).

    Until these, and other simple and important rounds get addressed, this "OS Death Match" should be taken in with the same amount of seriousness as Monty Python's "Holy Grail". (Note: the fact that the article briefly mentioned that Apple HW is more expensive does not dismiss the money issues listed above).

    May the One shine in us all, even if OS X might be worth it in the future.
    --WorLord
  • Right, like I am going to die laughing from watching two twerps utter banalities at each other. Next article please!
  • Gimp is [...] too big for joe average user

    I quite agree. I'd recommend ImageMagick for such a person.
    LaTeX is 80's technology.

    Don't write LaTeX off. The default document classes are indeed academically-orientated. But if you're a power user (and who else'd use LaTeX) you'll write your own document class for to suit your needs, in which case LaTeX is still not really all that beatable.

  • IIRC, office LANs started taking over the world (well, according to the commercials) as soon as Xerox released their coax Ethernet. Actually LANs probably started cropping up long before that, but it seems like they were pretty prevelant in the 70's, and Macs didn't appear until the early 80's IIRC.

    Not really. There were very few office LANs in existence before the mid 1980's. Ethernet was mainly used to connect minicomputers to their peripherals before that (and even then, serial lines were much more common).

    Macs were the first mass market machines to have Local Area Networking built-in. It wasn't Ethernet, but it was easier to network Macs for years before it was easy to do it to Intel-based PCs. I think the claim is good, at least from the mass market perspective.

    Note that I'm too young to actually have experienced any of this, so a lot of it could be wrong.

    Without wanting to sound too old (too late, too late...) I was around for this stuff.

  • I can't believe they gave macos the internet support category. It took me months to find ssh for the mac. ssh is definetly an internet necessity. Also outlook sucks and crashed many times on my mac eudora doesn't come with an imac or macos. You can download the free version but then you get an advertisement filling your screen.

    Ludicrous. Eudora isn't even available for Linux. Also, if you don't want the ads, Eudora Light versions are still available(no 4.x versions though). Also, there are other options for MacOS (Green [eware.fr] comes to mind).

    With linux I can do what I want on the net. proxies, servers, clients. Not so with macos, does apache run on a mac.

    They appear to be judging desktop OS's as opposed to server OS's. There may be a case to be made for Linux as a desktop OS, but your post isn't it.

  • It was on early Macintoshes, and even on the Apple IIGS [ufl.edu], imo one of the best personal computers ever made. I'm using a now-free UNIX variant called GNO/ME [gno.org] with Derek Tauberts GS/TCP (unreleased) to serve web pages [ufl.edu] (currently down, I'm moving to CA).
  • Heh. "As long as all apps use Ctrl+click the same way". Of course, they don't; many, many apps use command-click. Quite a few use option-click. One uses keypad-=, or command-R.

    I have a four button mouse, and three of its buttons are dedicated to providing right-clicks for various applications which I find important.

    This is a tribute to the difference between UI consistency (won't always work) and OS support (will always work, but may surprise you).

    I would not call the illusion of supporting multiple buttons "seamless" on a Mac. Netscape doesn't use ctrl-click for pop-up menus... Right there, boom, no standard interface. None of my word processors do it, either.

    I really wish they'd gone the other way; establish multiple buttons, then let the user configure some modifiers as equivalent to buttons, or something like that.

  • just imagine...

    BeOS vs. DOS 2.1

    Let's see... both have CLIs, both run on intel chips, uhh... they both can boot from a floppy. Sure - let's do a death-match

    Installation:

    • DOS 2.1 - no install, just boot from floppy
    • BeOS - quick, intelligent install, though can also boot from floppy
    • Tie
    Interface
    • DOS - CLI with a limited set of commands
    • BeOS - purty GUI with POSIX-compliant CLI
    • winner: BeOS
    Applications Hardware Compatibility
    • DOS - need really old machine, probably 8086 >= x >= 386
    • BeOS - need rather new machine, pentium class and higher
    • tie - BeOS requires expensive equipment, whereas DOS restricts me to only using shit I should have recycled ages ago.
    Intenet Support
    • DOS - I once used my 9600 baud modem to gain a telnet connection, where I could surf the web using lynx.
    • BeOS - native TCP/IP
    • winner: BeOS
    Stability
    • DOS - I never saw it crash
    • BeOS - I never saw it crash
    • tie
    Price
    • DOS - (originally bundled with $5000 piece of hardware) currently - $.25 at local garage sale
    • BeOS - (originally $100) currently - free Lite version, full version is $69.95 [gobe.com]
    • tie
    Death Match winner: BeOS

    Come back next week when we pit the Palm OS vs. Irix

  • Yes, it is preferable to not have these server services running (or even installed) by default for a desktop user. A "typical" desktop user doesn't even know what the heck telnet is, let alone find it a useful tool. If, however, they do find such services helpful, they can get them for the Mac. And if they like them too much, they can get OSX, or for that matter, LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog, whatever.

  • Bluargh! I say.

    This could have been an interesting comparision if:

    1) These buffoons had non-cursory familiarity with the OSes they were allegedly advocating.

    2) They hadn't chosen Corel. I mean, come on. That's like comparing American to British pop music, giving the Brits XTC (=Mac OS 9) and sticking the US with Ricky Martin. How 'bout a Debian/OSX column next year, when a comparison is both technologically valid and logically arguable? Take two big-time OSes with similar capabilities and notable pros and cons, list 'em and debate 'em. That's all.

    3) No one named Becky had been involved in this. I want a guy named Eugene and a woman with an unpronounceable Chinese name telling me which OS I should use, not some pom-pon girl from Long Island. I'm almost ashamed to be a Mac weenie.

    But I use both. Linux guys mostly don't know what's possible in Mac OS, because they don't know how to use it, and vice-versa. They are both easy to install if you're not a Becky. They both have workable GUIs, though the current Mac's is more coherent. They both have tons of applications if you don't have a Becky-ish need to use Microsoft's various hand-holding memory-leak-generators. They both have command lines if you want 'em; the iMac I'm typing this on has six different ones, in fact. ("What?! What the hell's he talking about?! Brain segmentation fault!") A default install of either OS = a huge, messy pile of crap that does way too much and lets you do way too little. True, and who cares.

    Let's make it a real challenge. Brainiac Linux guy says, "I can telnet with SSH," Mac guru says, "Me too, no prob. I've got Photoshop with true color-matching capabilies, how's yer li'l GIMP doin'?" etc, etc. That could be interesting.

  • There can be only one "OS death match" winner (Score:3)

    by seebs ( 15766 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:24PM (#1052232) Homepage
    http://www-ccsl.cs.umass.edu/~barrett/bm/Viewer_Se ctions/Articles/15_BS2

    BS/2. The world's fastest OS.
  • Interesting, that it is such a small world.

    My brother has a 7100, which I believe only came with 16M of RAM and a 1G hard drive. Many of the even older PPC Macs (6100, etc) were not even equipped that well -- I've seen a number of them with 200-500M HD's and only 8M of RAM. A 1G hard drive is probably adequate, but would MacOS 9 actually run very well in 16M of RAM? Especially when it came time to try to run heavyweight applications like Microsoft Office or Photoshop as mentioned in the article?

    Most of the 486's I have can be bumped up to at least 32M (if not 64), which is adequate for most things for Linux. The exceptions would be wretched abominations like a couple Packrat Bill's I've seen which could only go to 20M (4M soldered, and 4 30-pin sockets). I've actually used Word Perfect 8 under KDE on a 32M 486 box, and it was usable. You can actually get by for light usage on 16M, but that can be a little painful in X.

    BTW, if you are at the LUG meeting, say hello so I have a clue as to who you are... You obviously know who I am.


  • Applicatons: truthfully I would rather have vi then quicken or rather have vi then notepad, word, Word95, any MacOS or Windows Editor.

    Why do I choose `vi`, well because I am a system admin and wanta be programmer and could give a shit about `easy to use` and want `effective to use`, I don't want to trip over any dam pull down means or stroke my mouse off to save a dam file, I want it raw.

    But then again, I am a system admin and wantabe programmer, I want a Unix or Unix-like system to work with, not some glossy peice of shit as my server. I want to be able to sleep 5 hours staight without getting a call saying "You know that iMac with MacOS 9 you are using for your web server/ ftp/ radius and email server for 50,000 users? Yea, surpise it went down again, please fix it again"

    But then again I have differant requirements in OS then other people, surpise NOT EVERYONE in the world wants the exact same thing. Sure Macs and great, for GrandParents, but they totally suck as server, as Linux totally sucks as a "point-click-drool" type of system.

    I wonder if CNET is doing an article next week "Apples VS Oranges, the DEATHMATCH, which really is the BEST fruit"

    Dam atleast the Gnome Vs KDE or BSD Vs Linux or vi Vs Emacs had some dam content, atleast they where comparing to things that it made sense to.

    CNET next week, which is the BEST FOOD, find out in our next DEATHMATCH: Ford Vans Vs Empty Soda cans.

  • "I would not call the illusion of supporting multiple buttons "seamless" on a Mac. Netscape doesn't use ctrl-click for pop-up menus... Right there, boom, no standard interface. None of my word processors do it, either." Thats strange... My three button mouse (with scroller) with ctrl+click on the right key, works fine in Netscape, Word, and Claris works... ---- Joel.. For x-mas, I want to decide who lives and who dies. Um.. Well.. I don't know.. ----
  • Grow some balls? Coming from an AC that's almost funny. Can you see the smirk on my face?

    Sorry if my use of the jocular "Good Thing(tm)" annoyed you so much. My advice is to chill the fuck out. It would be a Good Thing(tm).

  • well, since mac os X is bsd based I see no reason why you can't run X server (I think it already uses X server, right?) + fvwm / gnome / kde / enlightenment... there goes your "single, elegant, easy-to-use UI". Aqua will be just one of the many mac UIs:-))

    erik
  • How can they do a Mac vs. Linux article and not mention BSD-based Mac OS X?

    I don't follow Apple very closely, so I don't know if OS X is officially released yet, but I would think that either way it would factor heavily into this comparison.
  • As the subject goes... they did a good and fair job. I thought the internet decision was a little dicey just given my experience with macintoshes and networking in general. IMHO, I don't think you get much better (or faster) net apps than with Linux/Unix. But ofcourse, that's just a preferences.
  • Apache will be preinstalled in Mac OS X. The little personal web sharing feature built into OS X is going to be based on it (talk about overkill!).

    --
  • WordPerfect is cursed, I tell you! First, Microsoft starts beating WordPerfect (the original company) with Word, so they sell to Novell, which subsequently falls into its worst market position since the 80s (until 2 weeks ago, anyway). Then Novell sells WordPerfect to Corel, who's now knocking at death's door, too. WordPerfect is cursed, I tell you! Cursed!

    Seriously, though (so as to avoid an "off-topic" moderation, I suppose), I do not think Microsoft Word is the end-all be-all word processor like the Mac person in this article seems to think. In fact, I hate Word, with all the hate one can have for a stupid piece-of-junk software program. Impling that Word is the only real word processor like she does is an affront to all of us who just want a nice, easy-to-use word processor (despite WordPerfect's curse).
  • When I got it (used) it had 24mb of RAM and a 700mb hd. While it was my main machine I had a 4.5G hd and bumped up the RAM to 88mb. Recently I acquired some other machines and moved the 4.5G hd to my current main machine and swapped the 1G from the newer machine into this one. So this machine has had it's config played w/ a bit, but it was running 8.1 till a couple weeks ago and I decided to check out 9 on this machine. I think much more of the OS is now native and is therefore a bit peppier than before.

    As for expandability, the 7100 could take up to 4 32MB sticks (128MB) and had 8MB on the mother board IIRC. The 486 that I have can only use single sided SIMMs and I didn't feel like searching for higher density SIMMs for that, so I'm currently stuck at 16mb on that machine. I'm not complaining (too much) as it was free, but my point was that I put MacOS9 on a 7100 as it sat in my bedroom, while I have had to upgrade and limit the functionality of Linux on the "free" 486 I have. That's OK, I have fun w/it. Both machines serve purposes in my house and I do think the whole concept of the article was silly (along the lines of: what is more masculine, a pinapple or a schoolbus?) and was argued by advocates that were woefully inadeqately knowlegable about their opponent's OS (and in some cases their own).

    PS. The 6100, 7100 and 8100 are exactly the same age. they ware all first gen (nubus) 601 ppcs. w/different clock-speeds and different cases. The 6100 which was the low end could do up to 72mb IIRC (2 SIMM slots + 8 MB on mother board) Anything older is moot or this discussion as MacOS9 only runs on ppc machines.

  • "The Mac has offered USB support from day one."
    Day 1 would be when?? the coming of Christ? some time in the early 80's or at the inception of the IMac sometime within the last 2 years. Seems like history is a bit vague here. How could i have missed that usb adapter on the Mac+ or the MacII, Any 680X0 Mac. How about the first 4 years of Power Macs. they all had USB too. As far as you know.

    Since USB was introduced, duh. What else would he be referring to?

    They invented Cdroms, local area networks and floppy drives?

    Don't know about the lan's, but he said pioneered, not invented. Apple was the first comapny to ship standard 3.5 floppies and cdroms, and of course mice.......

    wow.. so thats where the mouse came from. And all this time I was sure that they had taken it from xerox just like everyone else.

    So long as you remember that Xerox got paid with Apple stock. And we're still talking about pioneering; just how many desktop computers has Xerox made?

    There is no place where they talk about the power of linux as a server.

    No shit. When I read the "Internet" section, my first thought was, has cnet never heard of sendmail, nfs or routing? Obviously the section was only about user software, like web browsers, email clients and messengers like icq. They should have made that clear thou, or at least mentioned the server capabilities of Linux......many of which you can do on Mac OS 9, but generally only if you shell out hundereds of dollars for commercial, closed source applications.
  • I'm sorry, this article is lame. Period. People use Mac OS and Linux for vastly different reasons, largely because they are vastly different operating systems designed to emphasize vastly different things. That CNET actually ran this article leads me to believe that either their content is getting thin, or their editors are smoking something they should be passing around...
  • It doesn`t matter how much you improve and upgrade a buggy. It will never become a Mercedes Benz.

    Linux, MacOS, Windows, etc are based one truly obsolete principles. Trust me, I know all these OSs from top to bottom.

    Mark my words. :) Within two years my post would be rated "5 ingightful"
  • two completely different operating systems...one started from the point of being robust and bulletproof and is trying to evolve a human face, the other started as amazingly user-friendly and optimized for the newb and is trying to evolve toward stability. OS X will be slick, BSD-based, with more available source code than you can get from M$...of course, the Eazel guys invented useable GUI...the only real hard fact is that cNet obviously know what two groups of fanatics they can exploit when it comes time to drive up the hit count...
  • You, my friend, are wise....
  • there are about three things that need to be done to fix a sick mac, and they don't involve reinstalling every application on your computer like with Windows


    Has anyone else noticed how a majority of the claims regarding Mac superiority from the Evangelistas invlove pulling out the MS Windows card when this thread is suppose to be about Linux? I think they're getting desperate.


    AC

  • Did you read the articles? They tell exactly why they picked either OS to win in a catagory. It was a c|net article written for the average suit or home user not dudes who think in Assembler.

  • TCO (Score:2)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 )
    Actually.. TCO *IS* well understood in companies. Believe it or not, most cfo's and finance types, ceo's, upper management *WILL* hear a different solution, other than windows, based on TCO. They understand these financial terms better than the technical ones. Usually, I find the argumen thinges on two key points.

    1) What is the TCO according to the IT dept. analysis?
    2) Is your IT dept. competent enough to handle the scope of the switchover?

    #2 is by far the biggest.
    I mean.. heck.. I sit in a company. I *know* that in the long run, a linux/solaris mix (solaris for those engineering apps that aren't 'ported' (recompiled) for linux yet) may cost more in initial setup and outlay, and appear to do less, but cost out over the next 3 years, it more than pays for itself in reliabilty alone, nevermind the way cool integrated IT environment you could build out of it.
    My problem is putting it down on paper, in terms that beancounters can understand. You have to be very thorough with these guys... VERY thorough. It's big business. There can be no doubt as to your numbers.

    If an IT professional took a week to install corel linux, he should go learn some basic computing theory.
  • Linux seems strange to some because windows (or perhaps the mac) is the *only* thing they have ever known. Some of the concepts involved are completely alien (like.. partitioning...)

    I find it strange that people can be sysadmins, be responsible for million dollar budgets, tons of computers, yet not understand what partitioning really is. It makes me damn ANGRY!
  • Unfortunately Be is missing alot of the things c|Net was paying attention to. If every OS was as easy to set up and use as Be the desktop world would be a wonderful place.
  • Really, though - that's what this is. The two operating systems are, at this point, not really comparable.
    It's comparing Apples to Oranges.
    I like oranges better.

    Hmm, that's not as hard as a lot of people make it out to be....

  • This is a good point, for any OS discussion including NT. If it takes me a week to get a box up and running smoothly or I have to spend X number of hours of my day reading manuals on how to do something it adds to the overall cost of the system. Lets say I want to put in a SCSI card and hook up a RAID to a system. With Linux I have to find a SCSI adapter that will work (Adaptec 15xx series tend to work well but that may or may not suit my needs) and then get a RAID setup. If I was using many other Unix vendors finding such hardware would be easy, I call up the Unix vendor and tell them what I need. With Linux you don't have that sort of support which is a serious drawback that many people don't think about. If I have MacOS or Windows on a machine I can grab a SCSI card that in Windows or Mac compatible (has drivers written) and then order a RAID that is also certified for the OS. A really great IT dude would know these things before hand but not every company can afford such IT dudes.
  • Yeah, Linux has great apps for every aspect of the Internet...except for what people actually spend 99% of their time on the Internet doing: browsing and email.

    Email is of course a matter of preference, although the fact that until Evolution there won't be a good multi-pane GUI email/PIM program for Linux is a definite weakness of the platform overall. Pine may be good enough for you, but for someone whose job revolves around contacts, meetings, etc, it doesn't cut it.

    As for browsing--which, for most, *is* the Internet--there's simply no comparison. IE 5 for the Mac is hands-down the best web browser ever made. (Except for the fact that most Macs only have 1 mouse button; of course, that's hardly IE 5's fault.) If you disagree with me, it's almost certainly because you haven't used it. And no, I'm not a Mac owner. In any case, Netscape for Linux (or anything for that matter) is objectively god-awful, and Mozilla, Konquerer, etc., while promising, are not ready for prime time yet.

    Frankly, for the way most of the computer-using population (and the people for whom this article--and Corel Linux, while were at it--was targeted) use the Internet, the Mac is clearly the better platform.
  • The other thing to consider, of course, is the castly different user bases. Unix boxes will often get used by geeks who like being able to bost aout an uptime in months, Macs tend to get used as workstations by the designers. Hence likely lower average uptime as they get switched off at the end of the day.

    It's a few years since I've used a Mac unfortunately - though I want to play with iMovie :) - but my memory of their uptime was that some apps would crash fairly frequently but the system stayed up pretty well. And, importantly, when it _did_ crash, it was quick to reboot.

    To a user, a crash matters a lot more if the rebooot takes 10 minutes (as with my Windows box if it has to ScanDisk) than if it takes 10 seconds (as with my old Amiga before I started adding lots of toys to it...)
  • >As I post this message my OS 9 server(it provides email and backup services for a small company) has an uptime count of 840 hours 37 minutes and 35 seconds. That's pretty good stability,

    And I set up a BSD box on a 486 with 32 meg of DRAM handling 20,000 seperate e-mail users that has 228 and 847 DAYS of uptime. If you use the Micro$oft downtime methods, it was up for over 1000 days. (They had to unplug it to move the box.)

    840 hours is not a timescale Unix users consider 'long'
  • Well, there are always sweetheart deals out there, but they really can't be used for general comparisons, as they can't be reliably found. In general, I think it is fairly safe to say that Macs usually hold their value better than PC's (which is a good thing if you are a Mac owner that wants to sell, and a bad thing if you are in the market for one) and that really cheap deals on PCs are easier to find, if for no other reason than there are so many 'obsolete' PCs out there.

    I've not run into very many problems using large EIDE drives even in relatively old x86 machines. I have a 486-DX4/100 machine at home with an 8.4G drive in it. Its BIOS autodetect wouldn't automagically find the correct settings, but I had no problem entering the cyl/hd/sec values in.

  • "OSD/DFSG compliant" - uh, is that something you made up?

    Nope. OSD [opensource.org], DFSG [debian.org].
    Can I read the source? Yes. Can I modify the source? Yes. Must be open source then.

    Can Apple ban me from distributing the modified source on the slightest whim? Yes. All your efforts can be rendered useless if it happens to suit Apple to ban you from distributing the source. (It says in the license that if they claim that you infringe their IP, you have to stop distributing modified-APSL software until it's sorted out in court. That could potentially be indefinitely). [At least, this was all true the last time I checked the APSL].
    Everything else is just grousing

    You can't e.g. have a viable business strategy that permanently depends on the whim of a potential competitor.

  • prediction (Score:5)

    by ChristTrekker ( 91442 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:37PM (#1052328)

    I predict lots of Linux zealotry to follow this post. What the heck was c|net thinking? Thanks for stoking the fires, emmett.

    Anyone with sense knows that Linux and MacOS have vastly different user bases. Comparing the two head to head just isn't going to work. Give it a year, though. With a BSD-based MacOS X, and a little more time for Linux application development, 2001 will probably be a great year for everybody concerned: the average end-user (Mac guy) is going to have excellent stability, and the uber-geek (Linux dude) will have kick-butt productivity apps. Best of both worlds!

  • There's a fair bit of merit in what you say, that much is agreed.
    OTOH there is a large degree to which 'suitability for purpose' is apposite. In particular, there are stereotypes: Mac for graphics, Unix for servers, Windoze for desktops; and I have a suspicion that stereotypes come from /somewhere/, after all.

    What you learn by advocacy is not that 'linux r00lz' but rather that the person advocating it for roll-out across a 1000-strong company as a desktop OS is an idiot.

    OTOH there are also one or two OS-independent factors; I don't know of anything where reliability isn't key, I know security is generally favourable, and ease of *use*[0] is also probably a good thing.

    [0] I said use, not installation. I'm more than prepared to spend 2 days installing a Debian GNU/Linux system if it makes my life easier for the next 6 months...
    ~Tim
    --
    .|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,

  • Am I the only one who wondered... (Score:5)

    by dufke ( 82386 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:38PM (#1052335)
    Am I the only one who wondered why there wasn't a 'Stability' round? I mean, that's pretty important, to me at least.

    -
  • I can't believe they gave macos the internet support category. It took me months to find ssh for the mac. ssh is definetly an internet necessity. Also outlook sucks and crashed many times on my mac eudora doesn't come with an imac or macos. You can download the free version but then you get an advertisement filling your screen. With linux I can do what I want on the net. proxies, servers, clients. Not so with macos, does apache run on a mac.
  • Who's to say that a cat couldn't be an NT admin? Although I hear that cats sometimes have problems [penny-arcade.com] understanding TCP/IP..
    ---

  • Re:Current user interfaces are pitiful ! (Score:4)

    by alannon ( 54117 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @03:03PM (#1052348)
    I just had to point out, as a regular Mac user/owner:
    1) PPP is in a control panel called either PPP, or Remote Access, depending on if you're running MacOS9.
    Alternatively, there might be a Remote Access icon in your control strip in addition to a Control Panel, looking like a computer next to a telephone pole.
    2) To save as a postscript document, select the Laserwriter driver from the chooser, hit print, and change the "Destination" drop-down menu from "Printer" to "File".

    I'll give you this, though: The Chooser is a poor piece of UI. Even Apple admits so. It's GONE in MacOSX.
    I spend a good chunk of time working with Windows, MacOS and Linux, as my profession requires of me and despite the internal deficiencies of the MacOS, it still allows me to get my work done a fair bit faster and with FAR less aggrivation than Linux or Windows.

    While I'm on the soapbox, I might as well say it, MacOSX IS going to be the OS that people will have a hard time complaining about. The kernel is Mach, which is BSD compatible. The kernel is also open-source, and thus, hackable (See Darwin). Is has:
    1) MacOS interface.
    2) UNIX reliability.
    3) UNIX compatability (command line programs should compile without complaint as they would on FreeBSD, X Window server is availible as an option)
    4) A great selection of business applications.
    5) Runs on fast, pretty hardware.
    I could even go on to speculate that it should be possible to write support for PPCLinux executables into the kernel, the same way that X86 Linux executables will run on FreeBSD.

    Now if only Apple will fix that stupid dock feature, and move the widgets on the window scroll bars back where they belong...
  • "since when is being able to set a computer up to display applications running on another computer by default a bad thing? "

    "Gee, boss, I don't know why that dialog with porn popped up in front of our CEO. Must've been some nasty vandals or something.."

    There's a reason why things should be secure by default. OpenBSD [openbsd.org] is the only distribution of a free OS that I've seen that takes this into account (3 years without a remote root hole in the default setup, 2 years without a local root hole in the default setup, and audited applications all around!).
    ---
  • Ah, but MacOS version 8.x will

    Actually, I am pretty sure that the most recent MacOS that will work on a 68020 or 68030 based Mac is 7.6.x. I believe that you need at least a 68040 to run MacOS 8.x, although I've heard that with some limitations software hack called Pseudo040 and Wish-I-Were which can kind of kludge MacOS 8.x onto some 030 machines. I'd be surprised if it worked on an 020, especially one without a 68881 MMU, as most Mac II's didn't ship with the real MMU. At any rate, the articles I've seen describing how to do it make it sound like it is a fairly big hassle in that you have to boot 7.6.x and then restart into a different partition/drive with 8.x.

    Compared to the MICROS~1 world, both Linux and Mac OS provide astonishing life-spans for the hardware they run on.

    That is true.

  • Apple is preparing to move Mac users to what... MacOS X. Which is based on ... BSD. So what then, will all the 'SMART' people go to?

    Personally, I don't really believe that all Mac users are complete morons. I don't even believe that all Windows users are morons. I don't understand the idea that the Linux community can't coexist with non-techies, or that if the techies must all flee from Linux just because some non-techies might be able to grok it.

    Look, no matter how they wrap Linux or BSD or whatever with GUIs, they can't take away from us techies the command line tools we know and love. Even if they take them out of the distros, they can't keep us from putting them back in ourselves.

    Listen, there is room enough for a wide variety of people in the Linux world. If you can't deal with diversity, maybe you should go to something else, albiet I bear FreeBSD (and the other *BSDs) no ill will, so I can't say I would wish a lot of negativity on them.

  • "You know, Macs have newsgroups too."

    Yes, for Warez. Not interested.

    Obviously you've either never actually looked for them, or you're a total smeghead. (Ok, ok, it's possible your ISP doesn't carry them. If they don't, sorry.) Check out the comp.sys.mac tree.

    "this reflects on your inability to conduct a coherent web search, as opposed to the lack of documentation."

    [snip commentary about lack of info on problem]
    Ah, sarcasm. Tell you what, I'll read that help menu as soon as you give me a coherent, relevant, and competant description of how to turn on the iBook in question without it bombing due to a rotating cast of type 11, bus, and address errors at startup, before the extention loading phase.

    Have you called Apple? They offer free support to their users for a reason. This sounds like a fairly serious problem. Anyhow, without more information I can't say for sure, but here are some things to try. First, boot while holding down shift. If that works, then it's probably a bad extension; look through the Extensions manager and turn off any 3rd-party ones. (I believe MacOS Help should work at this point as well.) If that doesn't work, then your system is probably shot. I can't recommend anything better than booting from the CD and reinstalling the OS, and even that's not guaranteed. As another poster said, this sounds like it may be a hardware problem.
  • While a "OS stability test" program can't say for certain that an OS is stable, it can say for certain that it's unstable and it can give some indication of how unstable it is. Write a MacOS version of the Linux "crashme" utility and run it and I think you'll find ample evidence for MacOS's instability.

    Crashme allocates some memory, fills it with junk, and jump to it.

    Crashme emits this stern notice:

    *** WARNING ***

    The use of crashme could result in lose of data! crashme is not a joke. It really can crash your system, and result in the irrevocable loss of data, or make your computer explode, or any number of other things.
    but it hasn't done those things to my machine on the few occasions when I've run it and I feel safe running it. I don't feel that safe just running Macromedia Director with unstable Xtras on MacOS (although my experience with MacOS has been with 8.5, not 9). For some weeks, an Xtra that we developed was in such a state that I began keeping a log of Director crashes and MacOS crashes to show my boss when he came around asking why development had ground to a halt. I was getting about 40 director crashes and 15 MacOS crashes PER DAY.

    I hate MacOS. Not because I'm a UNIX bigot or a PC bigot or because I'm otherwise prejudiced, but because MacOS has earned my contempt my being unstable as hell.
    --

  • You can still run Linux on a 386 from 1987, though unless you're putting together an embedded system based on a 386, you probably shouldn't.

    Mac OS 9 isn't going to run on the Macintosh II which had just come out in 1987... Mac OS X sure as hell isn't (though I suppose Darwin could be ported!).
    ---

  • What you learn by advocacy is not that 'linux r00lz' but rather that the person advocating it for roll-out across a 1000-strong company as a desktop OS is an idiot.

    That's funny. I once did a short analysis of some of the factors involved in converting everyone in a 7,000 person company from NT to Linux. A few of the major points were:

    • Heavy usage of Office with no drop-in replacement for Linux available
    • Business critical apps deployed on Lotus Notes; migration to another platform expensive and time consuming; Notes client not available for Linux
    • One really bizarre business critical app from some vendor I've never heard of that is sure to never port to Linux
    Obviously some of those are internal to the company, and some of those are gaps that the open source community is hard at work filling in.

    It's interesting to note that everyone I spoke to who had ever heard of Linux was very interested in it, and in the last year or so, I think nearly all of them have, and many have switched over on a regular basis. A few have dumped Windows altogether. Those who hadn't heard of Linux took longer to convert, though...
    ---

  • Re:prediction (Score:5)

    by seebs ( 15766 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:42PM (#1052372) Homepage
    You make a very good point about the user bases. Is MacOS 9 a good platform for Unix development? No. Is Corel Linux a good platform for photoshop? No.

    Systems tend not to be be-all/end-all projects. If you have a number of widely different needs, you may need to run more than one OS.

    Next on C|Net: "Screwdrivers vs. Hammers: A tool deathmatch."
  • Of course it's a Good Thing (tm) ... when done right. One day the "browser" will be the only application you need, and everything else will plug in to it. That's my theory, anyway ... you're welcome to disagree (of course ;)

    That's the funny thing; on the surface it seems eminently reasonable to combine file & HTML browsing. It seems to me like a logical progression. Microsoft did it wrong, of course, and in the process deliberately tried to force Netscape out of the "market" ... but really, should there even *be* a browser market? Despite all the technical improvements and new features added to HTTP/HTML I can't help feeling that users have been short-changed in this stupid browser war. When Mosaic was the only browser, everything worked properly ;)

  • Re:Where is Mac OS X ? (Score:4)

    by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:44PM (#1052378)

    How can they do a Mac vs. Linux article and not mention BSD-based Mac OS X?

    That's a great question...

    I don't follow Apple very closely, so I don't know if OS X is officially released yet, but I would think that either way it would factor heavily into this comparison.

    Mac OS X DP4 (that's Developer Preview #4) was released to developers last week at Apple's annual World Wide Developer's Conference. In the conference keynote speech, Steve Jobs announced that a public beta of Mac OS X would be available this summer, and it would ship pre-installed on Apple hardware starting in January.

    Mac OS X looks very good so far. Its got the Mach kernel, with BSD on top (all opened sourced as Darwin). Above this sits three API layers: Cocoa - dervied from the NextStep operating system; Carbon - essentially the legacy Mac OS APIs; and Java - the JDK 1.3.

    On top of these API layers is Aqua, which is the new improved Macintosh UI. This is gives a single, high quality user experience to the OS.

    The Eazel work is potentially very interesting, but its still going to be just another of many Linux UIs. Apple hardware will have full-on BSD with a single, elegant, easy-to-use UI. Its going to be a compelling experience to use one of these new Macs.

  • How about a cats vs. dogs article? (Score:3)

    by Glowing Fish ( 155236 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:49PM (#1052397) Homepage

    I think this article is fairly ridiculous. Not that it wasn't well written and fair enough (although it was a bit brief), but I wouldn't say that either one of these OSes is better then the other. If the article was going to talk about some kind of technical points that could be quantified, that would be one thing. But what we have here is some vague generalizaions about what "most people" would want.

    THe choice of OS is mostly a matter of personal preference. There are no 'average' users, and if there were, they would be using Windows anyway.

  • DeathMatch? I think they mean "DeathWatch" (Score:4)

    by Zico ( 14255 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:50PM (#1052398)

    Anyone know how many more months before Corel, touted here many times as the Linux distribution juggernaut to destroy Microsoft on the desktop, has until they either go bankrupt or have to start selling off pieces of their business? Less than 90 days now, isn't it?

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • You are correct. The reason for my confusion was that my old Duo 230 was stolen last year, and replaced with a 280 from a pawn shop. I have 8.1 running on the 280, but still think of it as an 030 machine (it is actually an LC040). My mistake.

    Still, 7.5.3 does almost everything 8.1 does, and on older hardware it often does it better, so I think my point is still valid.

  • Still, 7.5.3 does almost everything 8.1 does, and on older hardware it often does it better, so I think my point is still valid.

    However, we've now slid all the way back to MacOS 7.5.3 from MacOS 9. If you want to talk about old and/or spartan hardware, Slackware 3.x will run pretty smoothly on a 386... This whole tangent has strayed an awful distance from the original article.

  • It's true that Apple's Macintosh was the first *PC* to include networking support - however - it was support for the incredibly proprietary AppleTalk, which was limited to troublesome daisy chain topologies only and a maximum speed of 230 kbps.

    Although they finally gave in a couple of years ago, Apple resisted Ethernet like hell: in the early 90s they did everything they could to make Ethernet expensive and hard to use on the Mac. In fact, IMO, it was this insistence on running up the cost of Ethernet for Macs that was chiefly responsible for them getting drummed out of most corporate networks in the mid-90s, as Mac adapters were always a minimum of about 4x the cost of their ISA counterparts.

    Remember, Apple went so far as to establish thier own completely incompatible tranciever interface, AAUI, which had no benefit over the tried and true AUI except that it used a (slightly!) smaller connector, and forced customers wanting Ethernet to buy from Apple for a year until the third parties got geared up.

    And then there were the heinous atrocities that AppleTalk and AppleShare inflicted on the rest of your network if you through some means ever put those protocols on your Ethernet.

    Apple was no friend of networking other than the proprietary kind until they realized they had to interoperate or die. They came to the Internet party even later than Microsoft, so I have lttle respect for them as a network innovator. Keep in mind that AppleShare (file sharing) was a very expensive extra until a few years ago.

    Apple doesn't "get" cost, and until recently has always assumed that it didn't matter, and even intentionally drove it up. It was this attitude that led Intel-based hardware to become cheap and commoditized and that in turn drove the creation of Linux. Apple has made its bed, and now must sleep in it.
  • Good luck running Navigator or Gimp in an X environment on an old 386 though.

    People can, and do, run Photoshop and web browsers on old '030 and '020 Macs.

    Like I was saying, the differences from 7.5.3 up to 9.0 ammount to mostly incremental upgrades. Specifically, a slightly spiffier-looking desktop, PowerPC-specific code, and support for new hardware like USB.

  • How can they do a Mac vs. Linux article and not mention BSD-based Mac OS X?

    It was mentioned.

    I don't follow Apple very closely, so I don't know if OS X is officially released yet,...

    It's not out yet.

  • When I started reading this article, looking at the first page, it looks like they may pick CLOS as their choice, I was thinking that's pretty impressive since the distro is only version 1.1 running on an underlying kernel that is only version 2.2.x.

    However, peeking ahead at the conclusion page I read the headline and saw they picked MacOS because of its support for 'applications'. Without reading anymore I predicted that when c|net says applications, what they really mean is MS Office. Low and behold, when you read the detailed reason for the decision they specifically cite failure to support MS Office as one of the key reasons behind picking MacOS over CLOS.

    Why someone that is trying to select an alternative to Windows, would set MS Office support as a selection factor is totally beyond me. MSOffice IS Windows. Just ask Bill Gates, in his TIME editorial he explained how inextricably linked the two products are. At anytime, MS could shutdown support for a MacOS version of Office, in fact they practically did in the past but eventually conceded to continue the line only with Jobs' promise to bundle MSIE (and therefore even more Windows code) with MacOS.

    If you want a Windows free machine, you must also have an MSIE and MSOffice free machine.

    I also got the strong impression that the MacOS advocate (Becky) didn't even look at WordPerfect Office. She seems to think that Excel (and aparently every other component of MS Office) is better than Quatro (and every component of WPO2K-L). If she can identify a feature, or usability issue, that Excel has and Quatro doesn't, I would like to know what it is. I expect the only difference is that she is more familiar with Excel.

  • I've had windows computers fail to respond to the 'three fingered salute' plenty of times. I've even had a few so screwed up that they lost track of their power switches (which, like the iMac, were not simple hardware switches).

    You may want to look up and see if the iMacs have the latest firmware. I believe that there was a stability helping fix published try
    http://asu.info.apple.com/
    and click on the search for the imac updates link

  • As someone who is using both this very minute.. (Score:5)

    by Otter ( 3800 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:52PM (#1052420) Journal
    This seems like two zealots largely ignorant of the other platform talking past each other. Here's my take:

    Installation: Nothing is easier than the MacOS install. The only thing that comes close is installing Linux on Mac hardware. I've never tried Corel Linux so I'll assume that the installation is as easy as Rex says it is, when it works. But let's see it on the "486 'o' mystery" in my office. As CNet notes, if you're installing on a PC, Corel wins.

    Interface: Becky hardly does the Mac justice here. I like KDE but the Mac blows it away. (Yes, you can buy a two, three or four button mouse. No, the flexibility of Mac cut n paste more than makes up for having to go to a menu or Cmd-C).

    Applications: Well, do you want Quicken or vi? Word or LyX?

    Hardware: I'm not sure what the editor's point is. Macs support most standard interfaces so you can get most any PC hardware to work. The only problem is when there's no driver. You can bet the Linux people will write one themselves before the Mac gets one.

    Internet: They can't find anything to disagree about.

    It seems to me this completely neglects Linux's strengths - vastly better performance and a CLI.

    Emmett writes: It's really easy to say, 'Yeah, well, wait for Eazel,'

    Well, easy but silly. You may as well say, "Wait for OS X." I guarantee the Mac will have friendly Unix before Linux becomes easy. And instead of vaporware, why not point to KDE betas available today [kde.org]?

  • One Size Fits All? No. (Score:3)

    by Silver A ( 13776 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:52PM (#1052426)
    C|Net's fundamental error was to try to say "This OS is better", not "This OS is better for this type of user". Granted, at the end, they make a money issue, saying that OS 9 wins, unless you're a cheapskate, but the whole article is flawed by the approach.

    A much more useful article would have been "What users should get Linux, MacOS, or Windows". For my wife, Windows is still the best choice (we don't have the money to buy Macs), and I couldn't do my job at work with Linux (and the company would rather not spend the money on Macs), though it's on my home machine.
  • When I got it (used) it had 24mb of RAM and a 700mb hd.

    That is better than average for what you usually find on the used market. I was looking out on eBay, and most of the PowerMacs I saw equipped like that were selling for more than $200.

    As for expandability, the 7100 could take up to 4 32MB sticks (128MB) and had 8MB on the mother board IIRC. The 486 that I have can only use single sided SIMMs and I didn't feel like searching for higher density SIMMs for that, so I'm currently stuck at 16mb on that machine.

    One bad thing about x86 machines is the complete anarchy of hardware compatibility. I've got dozens (literally) of 486's, and their rules for memory expansion vary quite a bit. I've got several that have 4 72-pin sockets and can easily expand to 128M, and like I said, one really crapola Packrat Bill which can only go to 20M due to the 4M soldered, and 4 30-pin sockets.

    I'm not complaining (too much) as it was free,

    Yea, free is awfully hard to argue with. Although I'd have never bought a machine like the aforementioned PB, for free I have plenty of storage space in my basement.

    but my point was that I put MacOS9 on a 7100 as it sat in my bedroom, while I have had to upgrade and limit the functionality of Linux on the "free" 486 I have.

    In all fairness though, if you didn't already have a well equipped 7100, it would cost less to put a 10G drive and 32M of RAM (should run about $175 for both) in a free 486 than it would to buy a used 7100. For that matter, you could probably find a used low end Pentium machine (75-133) for similar money to a 7100.

    That's OK, I have fun w/it. Both machines serve purposes in my house and I do think the whole concept of the article was silly (along the lines of: what is more masculine, a pinapple or a schoolbus?) and was argued by advocates that were woefully inadeqately knowlegable about their opponent's OS (and in some cases their own).
    You'll not get any argument from me on that one. The article certainly would have been more interesting and accurate if they had found a little more knowledgeable people (both on their own platform and on the other's) to advocate for each platform.

  • Above this sits three API layers: Cocoa - dervied from the NextStep operating system; Carbon - essentially the legacy Mac OS APIs; and Java - the JDK 1.3.

    I was under the impression that the three layers were Cocoa, Carbon, and Classic -- classic being the layer that still runs legacy apps.

    Ahh, here's the picture I was thinking of: http://www.apple.com/macosx/inside.html [apple.com] .

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • True enough, but that is true in general that many people don't know much about any platform other than their own. The exception is that a large number of Linux users are ex-Windows users (or begrudging co-Windows users). The same thing is true of a lesser extent of Mac user's knowledge of Windows, as many are forced to use Windows at work/school or whatever. Cross knowledge between Linux and MacOS isn't as common. I've got some MacOS experience, but it isn't recent, or at least it isn't with recent hardware/software (I've got a couple of old IIfx's which are running MacOS 7.1 or 7.6.x). I try to limit my commentary on MacOS to what I know for sure to be true, and I certainly don't try to portray myself as being any kind of Mac expert.

  • internet services are a *bad* thing? (Score:4)

    by matticus ( 93537 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @12:53PM (#1052438) Homepage
    in the article, becky complains that linux has a whole bunch of internet services that have to be blocked by a firewall, and the mac is better because it doesn't have those services. *ahem* since when is an FTP server a bad thing? since when is being able to ssh (or telnet) into your desktop from any computer on the network a bad thing? since when is being able to set a computer up to display applications running on another computer by default a bad thing? there's a reason why linux has them-because they serve a *purpose*.
  • my reccomendation would be to buy the old Mac 6100, drop in a huge HD, and dual-boot with LinuxPPC! :)

    For the price that I've seen 6100's going for ($100-$125), plus the price of a decent sized SCSI drive (I found 4G SCSI drives on pricewatch for about $120 -- of course the same $120 will buy a 13G or larger EIDE drive) and a decent amount of RAM (figuring you need at least 32M, and figuring about $40), you could probably get a reasonably equipped midrange Pentium-class x86 box. Not to mention that you either need to buy a monitor converter cable or a Mac-style monitor for the Mac which is an extra cost compared to an x86 box.

    Come to think of it, for what a decently equipped first generation (6100, 7100, 8100) PowerMac costs on the used market you can just about buy a brand new low-end prebuilt x86 Linux box (I found a bunch of them for about $330 or so on Pricewatch).

    How much does MacOS 9 cost anyway? That has to figure into this equation somewhere too, as used old PowerMacs are probably going to come with MacOS 8.x most of the time I would guess.

    BTW, calling MacOS 9, 'OS9' is rather confusing, as there is a real-time OS by that name from a company called Microware, and it has been around since before the Mac existed (like I knew people using it on Motorola 6809 processors back in the 1980 or 1981).

  • Personally, I thought the same thing. I'd consider Mandrake to be a better choice for this kind of shootout than Corel Linux. For that matter, just picking one Linux distro is eliminating one of Linux's advantages, the fact that I can pick and choose the best distro for what I want to do. With MacOS (and Windows too, for that matter) I have a lot less flexibility.

  • Macs had Localtalk (PhoneNet) built-in from very early on (possibly the beginning - not sure), up until recently, when they dropped the serial ports and went to all USB & built-in Ethernet.

    IIRC, Localtalk was a shared broadcast network running at 400Kbps. Slow as sin compared to Ethernet, but you have to remember that this was in the era when ArcNet and Token Ring were still around, although Ethernet was starting to take over.

    Real networking was expensive and quite complicated then, and so it was really impressive to be able to plug 3 stock Macs together with a cheap cable, turn them on, and have them networked, sharing printers, hard drives, etc.

  • Current user interfaces are pitiful ! (Score:3)

    by Submarine ( 12319 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @01:03PM (#1052466) Homepage

    I have been programming for the last 10 years. I am pursuing a PhD in computer science. I have installed Linux networks, and even have coded some Linux device drivers. I can thus be called fairly familiar with computers.

    Yet I think that systems are inadequate for the user:
    • Linux is not yet ready for the desktop. Installing fonts is a pain; printer support is pitiful (I have yet to see how to get colors right for the Deskjet 690C); decent desktop applications are not yet there (Gnumeric is still fairly weak and still has quite a few bugs etc...)
    • Windows automates everything and tries to think instead of the user. I do not appreciate it when a computer tells me what to do, even less when it does something stupid. Furthermore, the desire to make things simpler for the casual user had them not to include any diagnostic tool. The icing on the cake is the absence of protection, which favors the spread of a myriad of viruses.
    • The Macintosh is even worse. You just can't order it to do something if it is not proposed in the standard choices. Some system options, for instance in PPP, are hidden in some obscure dialog boxes and no documentation is available. I have just spent some time trying to get a Mac to export a drawing into PostScript: impossible, or there is yet another obscure choice to make.

    It is a pity that with the power of current computers, nobody is able to make a system that is truly user-friendly; that is, that does what the user wants instead of getting him to do stuff in obscure command lines described in even more obscure documentation (Linux) or pissing him off with silly restrictions and railroaded choices (Windows).

    I have seen the Eazel presentation at Guadec [guadec.enst.fr]. I have hopes that it will be a bit more like what I'd like. Yet I am a bit afraid that it is going to be the next step of evolution of the current interfaces: more eye candy and gizmos, but little actual change.

  • IIRC, office LANs started taking over the world (well, according to the commercials) as soon as Xerox released their coax Ethernet. Actually LANs probably started cropping up long before that, but it seems like they were pretty prevelant in the 70's, and Macs didn't appear until the early 80's IIRC.

    Note that I'm too young to actually have experienced any of this, so a lot of it could be wrong.

    FWIW, I thought both proponents did a horrible job. The Mac lady touts Mac's allowing you to change the colours on the GUI?! The Mac has a great UI and I'm sure any sane person could have picked much better points (i.e. ones that KDE doesn't do better).
  • OK, what's the deal with putting the linux review first in each section? By the time you read about MacOS, you forget about what the Corel guy said.

    Also, did anyone else pick up on the HUGE problems with her Internet statements? The majority of malicious code is written for Unix? huh? And last time I checked, that file called rp7install is the install for RealPlayer7, which she claims isn't available. Oh, and I'm listening to mp3's that I ripped on my Linux box. But from what she said, I couldn't have done or be doing this.

    grr.

  • I was pretty disappointed myself when I finally tried it out (I've even got a shrinkwrap version with the little foam penguin). It's as if they couldn't decide what they wanted it to be. It's obviously aimed at the desktop user, so why do they have so many daemons turned on by default? It's not like your average business user needs (or even expects) to have web and ftp servers running right out of the box. That's just asking for security problems -- just as bad was for them to release a distribution in this day and age without shadow passwords.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com,/p>

  • Applications: Well, do you want Quicken or vi? Word or LyX?

    How about GNU Cash as a better comparison to Quicken than vi? How about Word Perfect or StarWriter (from StarOffice) as a better comparison to Word than LyX? Personally, I like Word Perfect 8 a lot more than Microsoft Word. Not only does Linux have a lot more applications than this article would suggest, it is gaining new applications far faster than any other platform, including MacOS.

    Interface: Becky hardly does the Mac justice here. I like KDE but the Mac blows it away. (Yes, you can buy a two, three or four button mouse. No, the flexibility of Mac cut n paste more than makes up for having to go to a menu or Cmd-C).

    Personally, the convenience of middle button paste in X is something I really miss if I have to use something else.

    Hardware: I'm not sure what the editor's point is. Macs support most standard interfaces so you can get most any PC hardware to work. The only problem is when there's no driver. You can bet the Linux people will write one themselves before the Mac gets one.

    Macs don't really support PC-style parallel ports or ISA cards very readily.

    Internet: They can't find anything to disagree about.

    I can't believe the guy who was supposedly representing Linux didn't mention things like Plugger (multimedia plugins for Linux). Not to mention that Linux has a wide variety of GUI based mail clients, news clients, FTP clients, etc. Linux isn't nearly as bad off as they make it out to be. Perhaps Corel doesn't offer quite as full a selection of those things as other distros do, but then again, many of those tools have to be downloaded and installed on MacOS as well.

  • but they also turned a blind eye to the fact that OS9 can run just fine on first-generation power macs from 1994, which you can easilly find for under $200.

    Just like Linux can run just fine on 486's from 1991 which you can get for free. It really depends on what your definition of 'just fine' is. In either case, you are probably looking at upgrading memory and hard disk with either platform, and that still leaves the Linux side as much cheaper.

  • IIRC, Localtalk was a shared broadcast network running at 400Kbps

    I believe it was 230Kbps, unless you purchased 3rd party add-ons to upgrade it to 400Kbps.

  • Yeah, but how easy does CorelLinux make it for a user to read floppies with other filesystems? Does it do it on the fly, like the Mac, or is he expected to bust out the mount command? If the latter, then for the target audience of the article, I'd definitely give the nod to Mac.

    However, I thought that Apple was been telling us since the debut of the iMac that nobody uses floppies anymore. Does the machine they reviewed MacOS on even have a floppy drive? It's a bit odd to hype up its floppy-reading abilities if it doesn't even have a drive.

    As far as a telnet client goes, most users don't even use them, especially not the ones that would be targetted in any MacOS vs. CorelLinux review. For most internet users, having Internet Explorer trumps every single internet app available for Linux.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Re:Apple created Local Area Networking? (Score:3)

    by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @01:14PM (#1052491)
    Yeah, I agree with you on that. I think Apple was first to make it standard on all their machines though. I'm not a Mac guy, but wasn't Appletalk standard equipment like 15 years back?

    numb

  • Dogs Versus Cats (Score:5)

    by albamuth ( 166801 ) on Tuesday May 23, 2000 @01:14PM (#1052492) Homepage
    Installation: It's easier to install cats when you're living in a city, as dogs require more acclimation to the space constraints of an apartment. Across all platforms, Cats tend to be just "Plug-N-Chug" while Dogs seem to take some tweaking (*smack*).

    Interface:While some users prefer the limited functionality of the Cat, the variety of commands available with Dogs is more suitable for the "hacker".

    Applications:Most cats will retrieve all sorts of dead animals for you; Dogs can be used as NT Admins for your home network.

    Internet:Though Fetch [dartmouth.edu] (for MacOS) and Lycos [lycos.com] figure prominently on the Internet scene, neither of those compare to the fame of Persian Kitty [persiankitty.com] (that's not an endorsement).

    As for myself, I'm tired of living with animals.

  • There are two possible motivations for writing this kind of article:

    First, about a billion comparisons between Linux and Windows and MacOS and Windows have already been done, so there isn't much fodder there for more articles for a while.

    Secondly, if they are really Microsoft-partisan, then it could be a 'divide and conquer' strategy, to get Mac and Linux advocates going at each other instead of teaming up against Microsoft...

    Yea, the second one kinda sounds like a conspiracy theory... :-)

  • It'll provide exactly one window manager, exactly one desktop, etc. It won't bother with any useful network tools...

    There already exists an O/S dumbed down to the extent that you described. It's called "Windows" and is available in almost all computer stores.
  • No kidding, most of the Deathmatches I've seen (or participated in) ended when one of the combatants couldn't take any more, fell over, and died. Which begs the question...how many times was each machines revi^H^Hbooted during the "death"match?

    --
  • This is true. Right now (according to Netcraft) the market share of Linux web servers is only about a third (compared to Windows' approximate 20%), and is growing at a much faster rate than anything else (Microsoft's share has been holding steady or actually dropping for the past year or so). A third isn't most, but it would certainly be fair to say that Linux has moved into position as the market leader on the Internet.

    It would certainly be fair to say that 'most of the internet is powered by web servers running Apache', however, as Apache and its variants account for over 60% of the publicly visible web. Of course Apache is also popular on the *BSDs and commercial UNIXes.

  • We're not comparing a Linux box like you or I would use with MacOS, we're comparing a CorelLinux -desktop- oriented distro with MacOS.

    This means, quite simply, that every daemon running that doesn't serve a desktop user's needs is one more target for a DoS or other attack. Yes, enabling them by default -is- -bad-. Especially on CorelLinux, where the very notion of logging on remotely while a console is logged in can be considered a security vulnerability.

    About the only service a CorelLinux box needs to run is samba maybe, for handy file sharing with Windows boxes. Other than that, I can't imagine a daemon that CorelLinux should be running by default. Quite simply, it's not supposed to be a server, that's why they call it a desktop. :)

  • Which is better? Depends on what you want to do with them, what your preferences are, what kind of style you prefer, etc.

    Comparing operating systems in this way is largely pointless. It presupposes that there is an optimal choice that everybody should agree on, and that's probably the biggest problem in the computer industry. Systems like Windows and MacOS wouldn't be such a nuisance if they weren't trying to take over the world. At 20-30% market share each, they'd be fine. At 90% market share, any operating system inhibits innovation and deprives many people of finding the optimal tool for their specific needs.

  • Specifically, Corel's April 19 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They write:

    If the proposed merger with Inprise Corporation does not occur, other sources of financing are not secured and/or Corel's operating results do not improve, a cash deficiency may occur within the next three months. Corel is currently examining its cost structure and exploring other sources of financing, but it is not clear whether changes to the cost structure or obtaining other sources of financing are feasible or would be sufficient to avoid the cash deficiency.

    Corrections welcome, but I'm taking this straight from the horse's mouth, not from any newspapers. (Note that they say they may go bankrupt, not that they definitely will.)

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • I don't know if I would guess that she was intentionally lying. Exaggerating, probably. However, I think the sad thing is she just plain doesn't know diddly squat about Linux and what she thinks she knows is based largely on outdated hearsay. Her comments about things like lack of Plug-in support for multimedia in Linux (which Plugger handles pretty well) and digital camera support (gPhoto, amongst several others) are examples that would certainly indicate to me she is basically just ignorant. The sad thing is that the guy who was supposedly representing Linux didn't do a very good job of rebutting such obvious inaccuracies.

  • CMYK

    Tell me that Joe Average-end-user uses CMYK more heavily than is supported by Gimp. Alternatively, if you're talking about for a minority of power users who really need advanced features, then LaTeX beats Word hands down.
  • Ummm... I am probably feeding the trolls here... But:

    There are several million Mac users.

    As noted, Macs are fairly expensive. This means that Mac users have money, and aren't afraid to spend it.

    Now, doesn't that sound like a group of people you'd like as customers? You can bet that if Linux doesn't think so, Microsoft does.

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