Linux vs MacOSX

Shan · Guru Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 558 Location: /dev/null

Forgive me if this is in an inappropriate section but this seemed to be the closest fit.

Anyway, I've been a Linux user for about 3 years, and a Gentoo user for about 6 months (made the switch with every system I own no less). Outside of that my only other experiance is just about every windows install under the sun. From Win2.0 (floppy based) 3, 3.1(1) 95, NT, 98(SE) ME, 2K, XP, .NET and 2k3, but until my girlfriend got her (used) iMAC, I'd never actually touched a mac. I'd heard (unofficially) that OSX was supposed to be using a [Free|Open]BSD kernel, but I wasn't aware that it so closely cloned Linux (or Unix, whatever you prefer) Cron, init, CUPSd, file system layout (/etc /usr, et al). Am I the only person who didn't know this? and how did Apple get away with this without infringing on the liscencing?

And since it basically seems that its a Linux distro core made for PPC, just with everything hidden, wheres the console? Hell even a virtual console would be nice for exploring the system a bit more in depth....
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zenlunatic · Guru Joined: 09 Apr 2003 Posts: 312

OS X isn't really that great. I tried panther on a G5 for about 1 hour.

*No full screen console while running gui.
*Drag-resizing apps is still a bit slow on G5/Panther, at least for a modern OS. I attribute this to bad code, not Processor speed or GCC. My ibook 600 with Debian resizes perfectly on-the-fly.
*Aqua has no themability and system fonts cann't be changed. This sucks. Who are apple to say that font choice is confusing or against good UI? Fuck that! I want my freedom, thank you.
*Having the menubar at the top seems like a good idea in theory because it's less for users to think about or whatever, but honestly it's just annoying to have to look at the top of the screen all the time.
*Sure certain things "just work" when you plug them in, but so can those things "just work" on a well developed distro, using apps liek the awesome gphoto2.
*Apple really doesn't have anything against linux as far as drivers go. Sure like I said new hardware just works, but say I'm donated like 10 old g3 powermacs, I mean the first one's they had? Why should I just through those out? OS X wouldn't run, but free software could make great use of those, giving ten machines to 10 people who would not otherwise have machines. At least some poor kid could have abiword and gnumeric and do homework, and GAIM to talk to friends who have machines.

Good things for OS X:
*The dock is kinda nice because you can quickly locate apps and you can dynamically move them around. Having apps stay open in the dock until you quit is dumb IMO. It wastes RAM and if Panther really were fast, loading times would be null and it wouldn't matter. It's not really a new idea, just a different implementation of a paradigm of modern GUI's. Doesn't make your life any easier or using your computer easier. They just invented it to advertise and sell it.

*Safari is just another browser, but I do personally like how hovered links are shown in the URL insertion bar instead of the status bar as well as loading progress. GTK could easily add this though, which means it's not worth using the OS over.

I'll improve my list later. I have class.

monotux · Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 9:12 pm Post subject:

My only experiences from mac is from kindergarden - I was like 5 years old, and we had a MAC smaller than a TV, with a black and white display. We could play some really cool games using that monster...
I harassed a new mac in a computerstore the other day - when I saw the desktop, I felt like screaming. It's a total (insert any cursing word here) ripoff of gnome! gaah....

Can't we just go back to those early mac days? :-D

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wilburpan · l33t Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 977

OS X is based on FreeBSD/Darwin and the Mach kernel, not Linux. Both are open source Unix-based systems, so there's bound to be a lot of similarities between the two systems.

What Apple has done is create a layer on top of Darwin that provides a GUI that rides on tp of Darwin. These components include Aqua, Quartz Extreme, QuickTime, Carbon, and Cocoa. This is the proprietary part of OS X, and this is what you pay your money for.

More info is at the Apple website.

The Terminal for OS X is in the Applications > Utilities folder. It's a pretty nice console program -- it even has TRUE transparency, which still doesn't exist in Linux with XFree86.

Personally, OS X is my favorite Unix based OS for everyday use. I love tinkering with Gentoo on my old P3 desktop at home, and I use Gentoo on a daily basis on my work laptop. However, when it comes time to replace my work laptop, I am going to ask for a Powerbook, and when I get home, I would rather use my iMac and OS X. [/url]
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zojas · Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 9:58 pm Post subject:

I have an ibook which dual boots with OS X & gentoo.

originally the ibook was just the best price/feature set/battery life deal I could find for a linux laptop.

OS X eventually captivated me. my ibook usage went from about 90%gentoo/10% OS X to 50/50 to about 90% OS X/ 10% gentoo. I have 3 desktop systems/servers which run gentoo exclusively, and my work machine is exclusively gentoo, so when I'm using OS X I'm still kind of using gentoo too since that's how I get my internet access, email, etc

I wouldn't want to go exclusively OS X, but it sure is fun to run alongside gentoo. OS X definitely takes some getting used to.

my main gripe about OS X is that I wish I could change the colors.

and I wish portage were ready for OS X, fink sucks. it has an apt-get interface, but half the stuff I want has to be compiled from source anyway using the 'fink' interface, and it all just seems kludgy. I'll be much happier when portage is released for OS X.
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ozonator · Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 11:10 pm Post subject:

I, too, have an iBook that dual-boots OS X and Gentoo (and since zojas's web page about setting this up was very helpful when setting this up, I should take the time here to say thanks!

). And, my GF runs OS X on her G4, a machine that I set up for her, and use regularly myself. Unlike zojas, however, I've gone away from OS X on my iBook: after using OS X most of the time, I'm now using Gentoo most of the time; when I do run OS X, I do it mainly within mac-on-linux.

It's hard to say why, exactly, since some of this comes down to personal taste. I like a minimal window manager with multiple desktops (*box), even more than the OS X dock (yes, I know I can run fluxbox with multiple desktops in OS X's X11). I like that things seem faster on the same hardware with Gentoo, across the board (this is especially noticeable with offlineimap, a python program I use a lot with my e-mail; but still, things are generally fast enough in OS X). Portage is indeed way better than fink, mainly because it doesn't make the stable - testing - unstable distinction like Debian does (yet it isn't hard to run all the *nix software I want in OS X). I don't feel like paying Apple what amounts to about 10% of the original cost of my iBook for the 10.3 upgrade (no not much money in the end, and if I were happiest using OS X most of the time, I wouldn't hesitate).

There are other little things, but in the end, two things triggered my going to Linux full-time on my iBook, and they happened around the same time. First, the 'straw' news aggregator got stable enough for me to survive without the absolutely wonderful NetNewsWire Lite in OS X. Second, I had a rare crash in OS X one day, and even rarer, checking the disk after rebooting with Apple's disk 'first aid' identified a problem that it couldn't fix, even after repeated runs, and even when I booted into single-user mode (text console only) and ran fsck from there; this, to be honest, made me lose a tiny bit of faith in HFS+, enough for me to feel more comfortable with ext3, which I know isn't perfect, but I've never had disk errors in ext2/3 that I couldn't fix with fsck (yes, I know about DiskWarrior, but I don't want to have to buy software to fix something that should be fixed by a built-in utility). Neither of these things amount to a reason to say that Linux is better; they just seemed to tip the balance just enough for me not to think about using OS X every day.

All that being said, OS X is a fantastic OS, and I'm really impressed with how Apple fused the BSD bits with their proprietary OS X bits on top -- fire up a terminal with your favorite shell, and it's thoroughly unix-y. Besides, iTunes is great, multiple network locations are a cinch, it's just about as stable as Linux, it is pretty (in spite of the lack of customizability), it's certainly easy to use, etc. etc. etc. I was able to work in OS X just about as efficiently as I do in Linux, and things like MenuMeters even made me not miss gkrellm too much! If I were forced to use only OS X, I wouldn't be disappointed.

So, I strongly recommend OS X to anyone and everyone, unless you have a near-pathological desire to tinker with everything on your system and/or use old hardware, or want to run only free (as in speech) software as much as possible. I guess those reasons, in the end, are the clearest expression of why I stick with Linux.

zojas · Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 11:38 pm Post subject:

I'm firmly in the camp that OS X's file systems suck. I've had to wrestle with fsck in single user mode in OS X about 5 times in a year. it's a pain because you have to turn journaling off before you can run fsck

so far so good, but it certainly makes me nervous. one time I got a file with overlapping extents. and of course it only reported the inode number. I had to use 'find -inum xxx' to find the file & delete it.

I'd take even the lowly ext3 over hfs+ any day. but better yet, I have reiserfs on my ibook in gentoo which is significantly faster (noticeably so for 'qpkg'). (just be sure to use at least a 2.4.22 kernel with reiser).
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gsfgf · Veteran Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 1266

i like OSX. I don't have a mac (i'm waiting for the G5 powerbooks) but i like the OS. OSX runs most linux apps as well. When i get my mac i'm gonna try OSX and gentoo with Mac on Linux and see which one i like. Either way i can ge tthe best of both worlds.
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chrispy · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 228 Location: Tokyo

ozonator · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 3:30 am Post subject:

Unne · l33t Joined: 21 Jul 2003 Posts: 616

I'm trying to convince my parents to get a Mac as their next computer, because I think it'd be good for someone who just wants to sit down and use their computer once every couple days to do this or that. For me though my computer is a toy / hobby, so Linux > OSX for me. My experience with OSX wasn't too great. At work someone left a CD in the drive and logged off a computer (or something like that), and the CD wouldn't come out, and it took about a half hour to figure out how to get the thing out (holding down some random keys while rebooting? God only knows). At my high school we only had Macs, and that kind of ridiculous crap was so common that I can barely stand to look at a Mac any more, but for someone like my parents who want to have things just work without any effort, I think it can be good. Better than Windows, anyways.

The other thing I dislike about OSX of course is the price tag. A bit much for my budget when I can get better things for free or far less money.

zojas · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 3:47 am Post subject:

I always recommend apple for those who just want to read email & surf the web. for those kind of people, every thing they need is included.
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JHuber · n00b Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 33

I use my OS X ibook for everything. I manage UNIX, MAC, Novell and windows servers with my ibook. i have no need for any other OS. the GUI is more customizable than some of you give it credit for. OS X is solid. it really is. it is as good as any other *NIX i have ever used. it is great for home users, office users and power users. in fact any OS is as long as the "user" knows how to use it to its full potential.
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smith · Apprentice Joined: 12 Sep 2003 Posts: 222

I have had an ibook for about 2 years.. and I can honestly say I would rather have my toes smashed with a hammer then actually try to do work on it.
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ghotirsd · n00b Joined: 12 Jul 2003 Posts: 30 Location: San Diego,CA

avenj · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 8:19 am Post subject:

chrispy: of course nobody is forcing anyone to use one OS or another. Why should that prevent us from discussing the pros and cons of the two? If you really don't want to see people mentioning OS X cons, don't read the thread.

filerba · n00b Joined: 16 Oct 2003 Posts: 29 Location: Oregon

I used macs for years and one thing I discovered was that those things you can't customize are often set up the best way anyways. I know that people differ, but Apple does put a lot into their interface research. When they introduced Documents and Applications folders, it took me a couple of years to start using them, but I eventually realized that that way really was better. I only got to use OS X for a few months, and the new column view mode in the Finder was a little difficult for me to adapt to but I kept using it because I figured Apple probably knew what they were doing.
You should also realize that Apple is in a fascist period right now. Every so often they make big reforms a cut down on the number of options the user has, but the configurability eventually creeps back in. It's kinda like the complete regulation of the economy during WWII that snapped the US out of the Depression.

chrispy · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 228 Location: Tokyo

zhenlin · Veteran Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 1361

zhenlin · Veteran Joined: 09 Nov 2002 Posts: 1361

Mystilleef · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 561 Location: Earth

Macs are overpriced and overhyped. It's funny how people talk about getting the job done on Macs. What job? Macs can't handle the load a typical Linux box would easily handled.

I can't count how many times I've crashed my iMac because I was running too many resource intensive programs. On my linux box, I run several servers, ftp, apache, in addition to more than 10 applications, and the box hums along nicely. Not to mention that I run each of them on seperate workspaces.

Macs are good for one thing though. Prettiness. Apart from their multimedia applications and the formidable PPC CPU architecture, Macs are a pretty toy.

People say Macs are unified. But so also are the two defacto desktops on Linux, GNOME and KDE. GNOME and GNOME apps are probably the most unified, well integrated and most predictable desktop environments I've used. Easy to use and simple.

I think people's zealotry for Macs is more superficial and religious than it is functional. If you are into multimedia, video editing and production, sound editing and prodcution, then get a Mac. Otherwise just stick with your cheap and high-load, functional Linux box. With regards to handling high load, Linux wins hands down.

How about customizability? I mean using a box designed for you, not the general public. I mean using an environment streamlined to your needs, your tastes, your preferences, your moods, your creativity and your working patterns. I mean an environment you look forward to using.

Dude, you are better of with Linux than with any other OS, if you are one of those people, like me, who believe products should be designed to fit their needs and not the other way round. If your not a professional artist, video or sound engineer, you have no business with a Mac. Except of course you have money to waste. If so you would do no wrong with a Mac. It's also great to have alternatives. I do agree that some Mac apps are much more polished than anything you'd dream about on Linux(especially with regards to multimedia).

<edit> Oh, I forgot to mention Macs are dog slow. I haven't used the new G5s though.
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chrispy · Apprentice Joined: 10 Nov 2002 Posts: 228 Location: Tokyo

ozonator · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 2:34 pm Post subject:

Mystilleef · Guru Joined: 27 Apr 2003 Posts: 561 Location: Earth

-I'm glad you agree with me on most of my points. However, somewhere in the mist of your arguments, you labeled me a troll. I find that amusing.

-I use Jaguar on the iMac. Correct me if I'm wrong, but to the best of my knowledge that qualifies as OS X.

-I use one desktop environment on Linux namely, GNOME. There have been occasions where I've tested out XFCE4 to mention but a few. I used to be KDE fanatic prior to my maturity into GNOME. I believe you and I as OS users both use one desktop environment, so I don't see your point. Of course, I have an edge. If tomorrow GNOME bores me or exasperates me, I have an alternative desktop environments to choose from. That's a plus.

-After using an environment for I while it gets boring and monotonous. Even changing the desktop background can spice things up a bit for me. If I can change window decorations, widget styles, workspace number, the better. My environment needs to be in tune and streamlined to my needs. I don't accept other peoples default. I think I'm old enough to know what's good for me and what's not. Or what works and what doesn't. But I also think I'm among the minority. So you win here.

-I don't care what people tell you. Jaguar has frozen on me on several occasions, even when I'm not working on it. A few days ago I was shocked to discover apple knew about this problem and planned originally only to fix the problems I was experiencing. They released a bunch of security fixes and patches the other day. I'm yet to install the fixes and security patches on Jaguar. But it's clearly not as reliable as my Linux box. And most definitely can't handle Linux' load. Oh, please let's not talk about servers. Linux reputation as a good low-medium range server speaks for itself. In my mind, Linux will always be a better server than OsX is. I wouldn't dare using Jaguar as a server. God forbid! I haven't tested or tried the server versions of OSX. But I doubt I'll be doing that anytime soon. Again, it's overpriced for what Linux can do.

-It's expensive period. You can argue all you like. But for the kind of stuff I use my computer for, it's just overpriced.

-iapps are lovely. Very professional quality and very nice and fun to use and just outstanding. There are, however, gnome apps that provide equal functionality for most of the iapps do. They are as intuitive, easy and fun to use. For a free product, the gnome apps are more than impressive and satisfactory. I wish I could kiss the devs who devote their spare time to it.

Indeed, it comes down to choice. But I also think common sense is a better reason for using an OS. Like I said earlier, if you are a multimedia professional, I highly recommend MacOS X. If all you do is listen to music, browse the web, chat, write reports run a home based webserver, and you happen to be a home user, you have no business with the Macs, except of course you are lured by their prettiness and cool looks and you have the cash to burn.

Macs (by Macs, I mean the hardware and OS) are clearly targeted to multimedia professionals than they are to home users. Instead I'd recommend you order nephew to run over to purchase Lindows, Lycoris or Xandros and help you install the whole OS for you. Oh, and don't worry about configuring stuff with those distros. Stuff just works, like you put it.

-Again I'm not saying make OSX sucks! Far from it. I'm just saying it doesn't make sense purchasing a Machine just because it looks good, or pretty. Prettiness hardly gets the job done. From a price/performance analysis, Linux wins hands down. It's cheaper, it more flexible, it's more robust, it's scalable, it doesn't force you to upgrade paths, and from it's core, it's designed to handle unimaginable workloads that home users will never have the need for. Which further lays credence to its stability.

Macs on the other hand are designed with prettiness first and foremost in mind, before anything else. That's understandable especially considering the fact that there targeted audience are multimedia folks who are artistically oriented. Unfortunately, I'm not. If Macs were cheap or OS X was ported over to x86, I wouldn't mind owning one. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

-Finally, because MacOS X evolved from Unix doesn't make it as robust or as stable as its older Unix clones *BSD and Linux. Apple is still new in Unix land, which is evident by the slew of security fixes and patches that they've released for their OS X over time. Compared to FreeBSD and Linux developers, the Apple folks are Noobs with regards to Unix and are likely to make mistakes or implement things that are non-Unix-like. I don't take OS X as serious Unix clone as compared to Linux or *BSD, partly because of Apple inexperience with Unix, and the fact that some of the features I find useful in Unix are absent in OS X natively. {hint env variables, file system, powerful scripting tools via cli, text base configurations etc}. Yes, I know I can run X in OS X and what not. But there is nothing like doing it the real way.

Linux vs OS X. No brainer Linux.
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JHuber · n00b Joined: 24 Jun 2003 Posts: 33

OS X is bringing *NIX to the masses, providing a user freindly interface for your common user. isnt this what we all want to happen? sure there are always going to be power users who want more, i know i always will. but you simply have to be happy that apple is bringing a UNIX based desktop to people who dont even know what unix is.

as for the comment about apple having to release security patches, last time i ran BSD or gentoo for that matter, there have been updates every day for just about every package, fixing holes and bugs. so i dont buy into that theory.

One of the best things about apples OS's is the compatability between apple products, that you simply do not get in any other enviornment. I had the task of upgrading about 700 Powermac g3's, different flavors of i macs and emacs with os X this summer. in a windows world i would have to make different images for every different machine and then woory about hardware differences so users dont get BSOD's. you know how many images i had to make for several different kinds and generations of macs? 1. thats it. load the image, name the computer and i was done. sorry but no way it gets easier than that.

macs have made my life easier. sure i run gentoo and windows at home cause i enjoy working on my systems. but when things need to work all the time and need to be fixed easily, give me a mac.
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