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June 29, 2006

rivals

One Man’s Journey : Leaving OS X for Ubuntu

Posted Jun. 29, ’06, 11:00 AM PT by Cyrus Farivar
Category | Apple » Rivals

Most of us mere mortals will probably never abandon OS X for any full-fledged *nix distribution. But Mark Pilgrim is not a mere mortal — he is among the class of élite uber-geeks. (You might remember him from a few months ago — he spoke on Macworld Podcast #31 on Greasemonkey.) This is from the same guy, who, weeks before, had a blog entry in which the concluding question, with 100 percent seriousness, was : “So, to my illustrious audience, I throw out this question: how do you back up 100 GB of data per year for 50 years?”

But this comment is the best reason why most people who might want to dabble in *nix, will probably come back to OS X:

You’re going from “It just works” to “Hope it works”. I have repeatedly tried to use some form of Linux for home (I use it at work). I’ve found that this is what I want:

1. I want the OS to stay out of my way. No f’ing popups and no applications that look completely different from one another with nonstandard behaviors–there should be a standard way to copy and paste something from one window to another and it should work reliably.

2. I want things to work (media, common proprietary applications, the latest new geeky thing that will supposedly change the world). The LAST thing I want to do is a half-day long Google dance to figure out why something isn’t working.

3. I want it to work correctly on a laptop. This means sleeping and waking without crashing.

4. I want to be able to write software with it. This excludes Windows.

Linux fails most of these. It is getting incrementally better, but people argue with spirit rather than user experience when they promote it. Every time I install it, I go in with a good attitude, but inevitably I start missing the Mac experience. The Mac shows why the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.


5 Comments

Daniel Prieto said:

As most of us have heard, and some proved, Linux is a very powerful and flexible OS, with plenty of potential to grow and a great educational tool, but it's just not ready for the average, non-computer savvy public... and still a little very geekish for a common desktop level.

As an user of both Mac OS X and Linux (both PPC and x86) I recognise the great achievements that have been made in terms of usability, installation and interoperatibility, still I will reccomend that don't hold your breath... it will take some years to be at the an ease level comparable with Mac OS X.

The growing number of distros with subtle differences makes it more difficult, but I still think that someday the GNU OSses will be more accesible to the ignorant masses (sorry for the orwellian comment).

Ubuntu is a great effort and has proven effective in the not-that-geek public. Some of my pupils have installed it and live happy on it, but distros like Fedora Core 5 (which is my main Linux distro) already have the ease of use and installation that we, the Mac OS-spoiled people (a.k.a. the rest of us)desire.

June 30, 2006 7:35 AM
Ben Pazolli said:

I tried Ubuntu on my iMac 333 but it actually seemed to run slower on it than OS X 10.3. However I found it pretty easy to use and everything seemed to work. I also got my scanner working that there isn't drivers for OS X. However I did use to use Red Hat Linux in 1999 or something. And that was hard, linux has taken great strides in the 7 years of development, as far as user friendly-ness. In closing, I found it fine but once the cool effect wears off it is really less practicle than Mac OS X or 9.

July 1, 2006 12:02 AM
rueyeet said:

I tried Linux once--Yellow Dog on an old clamshell iBook, just to see if it really had gotten as trouble-free as the *nix advocates claim.

Spent a day trying vainly to figure out a problem with the netconfig file that was preventing the 'Book from getting on the Internet via my AirPort base station, then gave up.

Installed Panther and lent the 'Book to my neighbor, who is still using it happily for her at-home computing needs, which are mainly web-based.

One of these years I'll give it another try....

July 3, 2006 9:53 AM
Greg Howards said:

Alas, Mac OS X fails on most of those four points too.

1) Macintosh applications have an inconsistent interface for much the same reason that Linux applications have inconsistent interfaces: Classic applications have been abandoned for Carbon and Cocoa; while Motif applications have been abandoned in favour of GTK+ and Qt (and you can make the interface elements in both look more similar than Aqua and Brushed Metal anyway).

And for what it's worth, copy and paste work in the standard way for most (if not all) currently developed Unix applications.

2. While Apple may have a bit of an advantage with media and commercial application support, the claims of interoperability are way over emphasised. Like it or not, Mac users have the same problem that Linux users have: they are in the minority, and frequently don't receive an ounce of support.

3) I'm quite impressed that people have managed to get Linux to sleep, even with crashes. :)

4) Both Linux and Windows offer sophisticated development tools. As an added benefit, you can choose who makes those development tools too. (Anyone remember what happened to Mac developers who used CodeWarrior during the Intel transition.)

If you want to use Mac OS X, go ahead and do it. But please don't show disrespect to the people who choose to use or develop another operating system, simply because you don't like that operating system.

July 6, 2006 10:36 AM
Greg said:

I'm trying Ubuntu on my G3 iMac. The only major problem I'm having right now is that I can't connect to the internet via dial up. Apps work fine and have that X-Windowish feel to them that I got used to under X11 for Mac OS X.

Now while Linux has some great points going for it, it's just rotten on configuring so far, making OS X's maze of preferences look like a cake walk. But alas, I still miss OS 9's super-de-duper easy way of doing things.

July 6, 2006 8:02 PM

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