Jamie Zawinski Switches to Mac OS X

iskander writes "After a disappointing experience with sound, Jamie Zawinski has finally given up on desktop Linux and switched to Mac OS X. The future of apps like xscreensaver and Gronk is now ``highly ambiguous''. He has already ditched a free/open platform before, but he seems a lot angrier this time. Indeed, twisted by the Dark Side of the Source, young Zawinski has become."

Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[by Anonymous Coward]

and why should i care what OS he is running ?

maybe i should submit a story about what OS my neighbour runs, or perhaps his brother and wife

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[Jeff DeMaagd (2015)]

Slashdot used to be a OS advocacy site for Linux. Now, Slashdot is an OS advocacy site for Apple. Of course you should care.

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[matt me (850665)]

Zawikski's just this guy, you know?

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[prodangle (552537)]

http://www.jwz.org/hacks/ [jwz.org]

"Back before you had heard of Netscape, I was responsible for the Unix versions of Netscape Navigator through release 1.1."

"Before Netscape, I was primarily to blame for Lucid Emacs"

"...I was one of the folks who created and ran the Mozilla Organization during the first year of its life"

"But now I've taken my leave of that whole sick, navel-gazing mess we called the software industry. Now I'm in a more honest line of work: now I sell beer."

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[isny (681711)]

From free software to selling beer? What happened to the 'free beer' step?

Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski

[shish (588640)]

Does anyone want a list of OS I'm running?

Are you the core (sole?) developer of a base app included in every desktop distro?

From TFA

[byolinux (535260)]

Dear Slashdot: please don't post about this. Screw you guys.

D'oh!

Re:From TFA

[RonnyJ (651856)]

It's pretty evident that the editor actually managed to read at least some of this article, as the following line shows:

from the don't-worry-jamie-we-won't-post-it dept.

new flash...

[rednip (186217)]

JWZ disallusioned, posts comment in blog... news at 11.

I hate to be a jerk, I loved all his negitive comments about Netscape/ Mozilla, and whatever else he works on, but it got old like 6 years ago.

Sounds familiar

[October_30th (531777)]

I gave up and went to Mac. I still have a Linux desktop, but I am sick, sick, sick to death of having to tweak every last little friggin' thing.

I also gave up and went for a Mac for exactly the same reason. It's unacceptable that in 2005 a Linux distribution (FC3, in my case) doesn't recognize a three-button+wheel USB mouse out-of-box or that setting up a TV card requires you to edit some config-files by hand.

Re:Sounds familiar

[generic-man (33649)]

If I buy a TV tuner card, I don't want to examine the model numbers of all the chips on it just so I can use it to watch TV. I want to insert it into my computer, toss in a CD, reboot, and then watch American Idol until my brain falls out.

Re:Sounds familiar

[October_30th (531777)]

My logitech usb mouse has a windows driver

I don't quite understand why you're using Windows as a reference, when I was clearly talking about Mac. I plugged the mouse in and it just worked.

Oh, I know, it needs you to know what you're doing, and that usually needs some brainwork.

Ah yes, the tired old "If Linux is not good enough for you, it's because you're not good enough for Linux" argument. Ten years ago I used to spout that elitist bullshit, too.

I've lost the count of how many Linux computers I've built. I've set up and maintained Sun and DEC Alpha boxes (running both DEC Unix and Linux) and, quite frankly, I feel like I've done my share of tweaking. Now, all I want is a desktop computer that works for me -- not vice versa -- and Linux just doesn't cut it.

telling

[bwy (726112)]

I think it is pretty telling that someone who has a lot of technical expertise has the same problems that a lot of us have had with desktop Linux. The problem is real, folks.

If Linux on the desktop is to survive, I really think there needs to be a major coordinated effort to get lots of things in line. Maybe some type of consortium that would facilitate dialog between different groups and/or state a common direction. It is really hard to build a solid desktop OS when you've got thousands of developers operating independently or in small groups. You might get a few good solid apps, but the OS itself is going to be a patchworked hodge-podge.

Obnoxious screensaver

[art6217 (757847)]

Perhaps it is because the Mac OS X screensaver does not have the obnoxious features like:

1. Short timeout for writing passwords, what may make it difficult for some people to unlock the screen at all.

2. Stupid, delaying messages after entering the wrong password, as if the security delay by the authorization system was not enough.

3. Ugly, ugly, *ugly* logo.

4. Small, non-antialiased fonts in the password dialog, as if the screen space was so scarce when all other windows are hidden anyway.

;)

Dark Side

[Ed Almos (584864)]

No, he has NOT been twisted by the dark side, he has just been pissed off for the last time by Linux software which does not do the job.

We have a printer system that was developed for line printers and never matured.

We have a sound system that works most (but not all) of the time if you are lucky.

We have power management issues on laptops which Microsoft fixed in 1995.

And finally

I have a laptop running Red Hat 9 because Fedora 1, Fedora 2, Fedora 3 and SuSE 9.x all have so many major problems with their basic installation that the machine is unusable. My next laptop will be an Apple machine.

Instead of adding more features I for one would be grateful if the Linux software developers fixed existing software. Bug hunting is not sexy but it might avoid more incidents like this.

Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary

Funny thing...

[ATMosby (746034)]

Some of the same reasons that I'm switching away from Linux to OSX. Don't have the time to fight those battles anymore. *Don't* want to fight those battles anymore

Sound

[ultrabot (200914)]

The posts so for have missed the main point. That is, sound in Linux sucks. It just needs to be fixed.

- arts must die, and it will w/ KDE4

- esd must die

- every program should start using gstreamer

- ALSA must learn to do proper software mixing out of the box.

Imagine my "pleasure" when I inadvertly caused a "beep" to emerge from my terminal window, and as a result had to wait a while (20 seconds? can't remember) before I could start playing a video with sound. Or how I had to do "killall -9 artsd" to start playing video in totem after listening to music on Amarok (which is superior to rhythmbox in most ways).

That's it, I'm switching too!

[bgfay (5362)]

I've had it with these complicated operating systems. I've never gotten my printer to work correctly on Linux, my Mac is just a total pain in the ass and slug, and I spend hours upon hours trying to do the easiest things on Windows.

The hell with all of you. I just installed DOS on my box and all is well.

Slashdot, please don't post this. You guys are jerks and I'm going to tell my mommy about you.

Time for linux to change its focus.

[jellomizer (103300)]

If Linux is going to succeed on in gaining Desktop Market share. You should really listen to the rants of people who tried the platform and then ditched it. So except for calling the ditcher Dumb or a quitter. Look at the complaints. He wanted to get the sound card to work, or 2 sound cards to work and went threw the processes of RTFM and Asking for Help with no avail. So guess what they switched. And on the Mac it just worked. I think a lot of Linux Zealots and/or developers should use Macs for a while to get use to "Just works" and what it really means. I mean if this was 1990 sound cards were considered a speciality item on a PC like adding TV Tuner Card today. But every modern computer has a sound card. And for God sake Linux should support sound. Sound it no longer just for cutisy dings and for games. It is used for practical application such as VoIP and Watching DVD, Sound is now an integral component to the system and Linux should support it and support it well.

Howto: Make linux work properly on the Desktop

[WhiteWolf666 (145211)]

Get SuSE.
Get an SB Live! Value or an SB Audigy! Value.
Get an Nvidia Geforce(1/2/3/4) MX or not video card.
Use an ACX110/111 802.11g wireless card.

Done.

Hardware audio mixing, all the drivers will auto-install. An almost Mac OS X-like experience, and certainly much easier than Windows.

From the blog of George W Bush

[p3d0 (42270)]

I have decided I'm going to go ahead and invade Cyria.

Dear CNN: please don't report this. Screw you guys.

Bullshit

[bobbis.u (703273)]

Maybe he just got tired of fucking around with Linux. He got bored of having to trawl through "help" documents, fiddlying with config files and generally wasting time to achieve a second best result. He probably decided his time was worth the cost of buying a professional operating system that works. OK, so maybe he can't now reconfigure the colour of the drop shadow on the mouse pointer, but he clearly doesn't care about that.

Also, he doesn't really care what the Linux crowd thinks, which is why he posted the remark about Slashdot.

Re:Sounds like a hardware problem to me...

[harlows_monkeys (106428)]

Hard to hear you say that (I heard this on Slashdot, alas). I heard you had problems with sound cards in Linux. However, I do belive you may have the same problems with MacOS X -- you can't play two sounds at once

I don't know where you got that notion, but it is wrong. Right now, for example, my OS X system is playing music in iTunes, environmental sounds from World of Warcraft, and my terminal can beep, as can my email program when I receive a mail.

Multiple issues with that ...

[khasim (1285)]

If some individuals would spend the time they do hunting down negative comments about Linux, to actually fix Linux...

Hunting down articles doesn't require to you learn any programming language. Anyone can hunt down articles, very few people can program. So the two groups aren't coincident.

...you wouldn't have to worry about people exposing how difficult Linux is for the average user.

What "worry"? Linux is very easy to install and run ... except for sound, wireless, 3D graphics and certain laptop chipsets.

Now, if your "average user" does not use those features, then Linux is easier than Windows and on par with a Mac.

The "problem" is that most of the HOME user market DOES want those features. But the CORPORATE/GOVERNMENT desktop will NOT focus on those features.

So it all depends upon how you segment the market on whether this is an "issue" or a "critical problem".

I'm all for bringing Linux to the mainstream and replacing Windows as the dominant OS, ...

Eh, whatever. It's a tool. You use whatever works best in each situation. The key point with Linux is that it CAN be modified to suit your requirements.

...but that just won't happen until the average person can install their video games without calling tech support.

The home desktop market will be the LAST market segment that will fall to Linux.

First will be the servers - we're already seeing this happen.

Second will be the corporate/government desktops - this is just beginning.

Last will be the home market - there are just too many limited-run, proprietary hardware pieces out there that work "good enough" right now. In time I believe they will migrate to Linux. But focusing on the LAST segment and claiming that there's a problem when the OTHER segments are starting to migrate is just silly.

Re:Sigh...

[earthbound kid (859282)]

Yes, everything you said about Linux is true. The problem is that OS X also "doesn't blue-screen, crash, corrupt and die every few months/years, I can leave it running overnight and not worry about if it'll crash before it finishes it's downloads, I can access it remotely (a good thing when you're working behind restrictive child-safe proxies all the time), and I can do things without wizards, dogs and paperclips jumping up to 'help me find a file'." Oh, and also the sound just works out of the box.

Linux is going to have to get better if it's going to compete with OS X. Competing against Windows isn't that hard. Linux is basically at par with it in most areas. The real problem for Linux is that it has to be not just as good as Windows, but better than Windows and its other competitors. And right now, other competitor #1 is OS X, and OS X just 'stole' a Linux developer by being easier to set up sound cards.

Is it a little thing? Yes, and that's exactly the problem: In OS X, the little things, just work!