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 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....
Re:factual errors. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My Macbook (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:2, Interesting)
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* UNIX, seeing as how BSD counts as UNIX (to me). I'm not clear on how you deny that. You can boot straight into a standard BSD command line, or access one any time. Most importantly, it meets both definitions of "based on UNIX": it works like UNIX and was also developed from the same code.
Windows meets neither of the definitions for based on. It's not UNIX.
Re:My Macbook (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh is that so? (Score:3, Interesting)
On the second point, word of mouth bashing of companies and their products seems to happen a lot in the Linux world.
IF (Score:2, Interesting)
So apple has an unfair advantage as it doesnt work on anything
also:
If the Ununtu interface isnt to your liking you have the choise to install kubuntu (more gui configurable) or xfce + mac style stuff
If the apple interface isn't to your liking your screwed
If you buy a linux certified pc/laptop it will outperform a mac in the same price range
If you want to spend you could pay for a years support on a good linux distro, or pay a linux friend to tweak your system acording to your spec
If you dont want to spend anything, you could get your linux friend to tweak your system for free
Linux supported hardware is growing, mac supported hardware is growing more expensive!
i should also ad that apparently gutsy was quite a buggy release so you should try feisty or another distro before giving up
Re:My Macbook (Score:3, Interesting)
Lack of graphics support isn't a problem for servers (neither is wireless) so that's where I'm most likely to be utilizing Linux at the moment. I keep checking in with Ubuntu's progress, when it works I really like it and it's always getting better.
As I said... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, an X application can run on a remote X server, but the platform executing the binary still *must* have the X libraries, so the distinction is moot to this discussion. Before bundling/having X11, Apple had no X server nor libraries in terms of first-party support. Considering the overwhelming majority of Unix applications that people specifically care about require X11 *and* are not Step derived, the lack of X11 server/libraries was a very practical obstacle to being usefully Unix, as opposed to being technically a Unix.
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.
Re:My Macbook (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:"both UNIX based" (Score:3, Interesting)
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. And I'd have to get scons. I stopped manually fetching dependencies in the 90s (ok... it was 2001), and just told my friend he should install the game in his Ubuntu installation under Parallels. (We ended up playing Nexuiz I think).
Even if I'd had to compile the game from source code in Ubuntu, it would have been a lot easier. Most of the source code that us regular folks have access to is free software, and most of it is developed on GNU/Linux first, and ported to other platforms later. If you ask me, at least as far as consumers are concerned (not talking about big iron) GNU/Linux is the new UNIX. In that sense, it's more UNIX than some expensive certification.
Every time I sit down at a Mac I inevitably end up swearing at the lack of a util I'm used to having (why no wget?). And why are folders like
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.)
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.
Re:Unbalanced article. (Score:1, Interesting)
You are clearly focusing on learnability, not usability, or you would have to take all those little aspects into account. Macs have amazing learnability and good usability, which is impressive, but they are basically always cut short of excellent usability due to a lack of options. That said, Linux has its own usability problems. Ones perfectly tuned to a user, Linux can have the best usability, but it can never compare on learnability.
Assuming that I need to judge a desktop according to learnability instead of usability when, after a week or so, I'll be done with learning and down to steady usage, is outright flawed.
Re:More importantly is how they are vs Vista (Score:2, Interesting)
What do you use your computers to do? How does Apple impair your ability to do those things? What can you not do in OS X that you can do in Windows or *nix?
Let's leave games/3rd-party software out of it. They are irrelevant to an OS's internal functioning and GUI.
I am genuinely curious, as I've heard this sort of thing here before.
-b
Re:As a longtime OS X user with one Ubuntu machine (Score:1, Interesting)
Try connecting a 10-button mouse, configuring each button to do something different (and useful), and tell me how long it takes you in OS X vs. Ubuntu. (hint: the answers will be measured in minutes and days, respectively)
After you've got that done, try it again with a Bluetooth mouse.
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."
Re:Unbalanced article. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 statement might've had.
And proprietary developers are able to collaborate?
News to me -- I'd always assumed that free software and open source both at least have licenses that allow them to collaborate. Most proprietary software doesn't. How much code is shared between Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage?
What the fuck?
How, exactly, can anyone be objective about this? Obviously, you can't:
They tested it on the entire range of users, did they?
If not, then it's entirely their opinion -- specifically, often Steve Jobs' opinion -- on which interface will work "as best as possible for the entire range of users."
That is exactly why we use Linux in the first place.
Linux doesn't force us to work the way it wants us to. It lets us work however we want to -- including the OS X way. This is a feature, which allows it to actually support all users, after a bit of tweaking for each user, rather than most users out of the box.
And I find that I do far more, with much more efficiency, without OS X getting in the way. And I did use it for a very long time -- long enough, I think, to understand the "application of its metaphors" (or, in less flowery-bullshit words, the way its UI works).
Re:My Ububook (Score:2, Interesting)
porl
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).
Re:My Macbook (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My Comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Screw the Mac (Score:2, Interesting)
As soon as I can I'm heading back to Linux.
*1. YMMV
*2. For Mac users who share my pain, may I recommend using a start up script to kill the Dock and use Butler to show tasks as icons in the menubar. Best solution I've come up with so far...
Re:My Macbook (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:My Comparison (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting flash to work was problematic, too. The install just didn't sem to take for Opera. So I ended up manually copying the flash
I think it's that with OS X, the system was designed from the start so that everything could be done via the GUI. With Linux, it's more of a conversion job, where people are plugging holes, filling in things that need GUI's. There are going to be holes, and it's going to be a bit of an inconsistent patchwork of GUI's, designed by different groups. Thankfully, these holes are far fewer than before, and for a common user desktop, it's possibly "good enough." But with the number of times I've dropped to the command line because I couldn't find a GUI to do it, I have some concerns.
There may have been GUI's to do some of these things, but I couldn't find them, which is just as bad. And if I were to add software, I would have to use "Synaptic Package Manager" (which would probably scare away Joe user, "what's a synaptic?"; why not just call it "Add Software", keeping it obvious), possibly adding repositories by URL.
I'm not knocking Gutsy for the average desktop; I do think it's aweswome. And the average user who just browses the web and uses email, might be just fine. But comparing it to OS X, OS X still wins for completeness and friendliness, in my opinion.
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.
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 my needs. In my case, the iApps are an important part of my use of a computer.
(otherwise, I'm a fan of Spotlight, but there's Beagle on Linux which (more or less) does the same thing)
You're all missing the point (Score:2, Interesting)
OSX - 1
Ubuntu - 0
Re:My Macbook (Score:3, Interesting)