Nerds Switching from Apple to Ubuntu?

Mindpicnic writes "The recent switch of two lifelong Mac nerds to Ubuntu hasn't escaped Tim O'Reilly's radar. He cites Jason Kottke: 'If I were Apple, I'd be worried about this. Two lifelong Mac fans are switching away from Macs to PCs running Ubuntu Linux: first it was Mark Pilgrim and now Cory Doctorow. Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.'"

Mac nerds?

Mac nerds? Are they the same sort of people as Windows hackers and Linux gamers?

Re:Mac nerds?

This isn't 1995 anymore. Mac OS X has changed Apple's demographics quite substantially. Most computer geeks wouldn't touch the classic Mac OS with a 10 foot pole. Now half of the CS professors and students that I know own a Mac, solely because of OS X.

(Spoken by a soon-to-be MacBook user currently using FreeBSD)

Re:Mac nerds?

This isn't 1995 anymore. Mac OS X has changed Apple's demographics quite substantially. Most computer geeks wouldn't touch the classic Mac OS with a 10 foot pole. Now half of the CS professors and students that I know own a Mac, solely because of OS X.

I'd be willing to switch now (I find Parallels to be an interesting solution and I like the dual-core Mac laptops) except for 2 things:

1) I don't care for the keyboard on the MacBook. I was setting up a 13" MacBook on Friday and the keyboard just isn't quite right for extended use. My Tecra 9100 and the ThinkPad keyboards are much nicer. (I don't use external keyboards or mice, so keyboard feel is very important.)

2) No mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard like is found on the Thinkpads or the Toshiba Tecra line. For a keyboard-centric user that little pointer is just enough mouse to do the job 99% of the time without having to take my fingers off of the home row. It lets me click on wayward dialog buttons or for drag-n-drop of the occasional item.

Since I still need to use a laptop as my day-to-day machine those two desires are a deal breaker for me to switch to a Mac. I'm not interested in replacing my dedicated game PC for a Mac and am leery about switching my video editing / development box over to a Mac.

Re:Mac nerds?

No mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard like is found on the Thinkpads or the Toshiba Tecra line.

Oooh, I would never trust a computer with a clit.

You should learn to use the "clit"

"No mouse pointer in the middle of the keyboard like is found on the Thinkpads or the Toshiba Tecra line."

Oooh, I would never trust a computer with a clit.

Someday, when you get some experience with one, you will learn to love it. Learning to operate it truly is the best way to move things in the direction you want. Good luck and have fun.

Re:Mac nerds?

More likely solely 'cause of the stylish design. CS professors/students are not beyond getting something 'cause it looks cool---without thinking too much about how it works

I used Linux religiously for 10 years (I was the first Linux user of India - stuck with it when the kernel did not even have networking built in). I used Mac OS once in 2003 summer, switched and haven't used anything since. The interface _is_ intuitive, and I don't have to worry about rpms not matching with libc versions all the time (and variations of the same problem with different linux distributions). I have bought 6 different Mac machines since then and am very happy with it and have no plans on going back to any other OS in the near future. Yes, I am a computer science professor and no, I didn't buy it for the "coolness" factor, but for it's usability. I get a nice GUI and most applications "just work", and MS Office compatibility becomes important in one's life at some point.

  -Vishal

Re:Mac nerds?

>OS X is really just UNIX + a Mac style GUI.

Plus a non standard filesystem layout. That IMO makes it unnecessarily harder to
use for unix people. And its not like the Macs tradition user base is ever going to
delve into the command line filesystem so I'm not 100% why they had to mess about
with the layout compared to "normal" unix or linux.

Re:Mac nerds?

Plus a non standard filesystem layout. That IMO makes it unnecessarily harder to use for unix people.

This cracks me up. I've used, oh, pretty darn near every UNIX since V7 and you know what? Stuff moves around, names change, even amongst the classic UNIXen. OSX is way less weird than AIX, for instance. And any loss in terms of filesystem reorganization is more than made up for by excellent GUI tools.

I think the reason you see a lot of geeks not using Macs is that they can get more or less the same thing using a dirt-cheap laptop and Linux and there is a lot of do-it-yourself ethos amongst geeks. If you're doing development work or just using it for Internet access there's little difference between that and a Mac, and you have a lot greater choice of hardware -- especially at lower price points. The differences in usability and ease of administration are not that material to a geek.

On the other hand there are benefits to using OSX over Linux, amongst them the fact that you just unpack it and it works (some geeks have less free time than others), and of course there is a lot of commercial software for OSX. I know a lot of people poo-poo about this benefit, and I realize the free stuff is often good and sometimes excellent, but let me tell you there is a reason I was willing to fork over $600ish for Photoshop rather than using The Gimp and even if the Mac is a backwater to Windows in the gaming world it's still head and shoulders better than Linux. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Now, there are still lots of times when I would prefer Linux over OSX (or, if I'm on the desktop, Linux over Windows) but luckily VM technology lets me run both at the same time. And if I'm using Windows perhaps the coolest thing is that builds, cvs checkouts, and source tree greps are much faster in Linux in a VM than they are under native Windows. Nice.

YMMV, of course, but amongst the geeks I know it's pretty common to see them run a mix of hardware and OSs and OSX certainly improved the standing of Macs in that community. They were rarer than hen's teeth back on OS9, today they have good representation, far better than what you'd expect from the couple-percent market share Apple holds overall.

Re:Mac nerds?

However OSX is the wierdest one I've seen yet. I guess I'm not seeing why it is so difficult to deal with /usr/lib moving to /Library and /home (itself a modern change) to /Users. Other than that it's very BSD (with good reason).

I will grant that the organization /Library is like nothing else I've seen, but AIX's library system at least asunique. OSX has its quirks, but so does every UNIX I've ever used and for the most part you don't even have to think about the stuff that differs from BSD because it's hidden behind an excellent GUI system (kind of like IBM hiding all their weirdness behind SMIT, except that SMIT sucks).

YMMV, and apparently does, but I don't see people skipping OSX on account of it not being UNIXy enough. No, the UNIXy nature attracted a lot of people, including myself. Rather, I see them skipping it primarily because they think the hardware is too expensive.

Re:Mac nerds?

For the most part, /Library and the corresponding ~/Library are meant for Mac-oriented stuff, as opposed to Unix-oriented stuff.

There are some exceptions - the site_perl stuff you mention, for example. I would say those aren't a quirk of the filesystem layout, but rather a quirk of the way Apple has configured their bundled apache dictated by the default configuration of OS X such that /Library is visible in the Finder, but the Unix directories are not.

Granted, if you configure your Mac so that you can see all the directories, then it seems weird, but there is some logic behind it.

More importantly, there is nothing that requires the use of /Library or ~/Library instead of /usr. So for the most part you'll have a few quirkily-configured programs using /Library, but everything else will be installed in typical Unix directories.

Re:Mac nerds?

Come on, if they were *real* nerds they'd be switching to Gentoo, not Ubuntu.

Re:Mac nerds?

Real nerds build their own distro [linuxfromscratch.org].

The tagging system

It shows the effectiveness of the tagging system when an article about two people switching to linux is tagged "fud" and "notfud".

Re:The tagging system

Actually, that's very useful information as it tells you there's no consensus on it.

Re:Mac nerds?

Not quite, I'd probably be considered a Mac Nerd. You never hear from us because we (Well, I) hate most Mac users. I love OSX, but I'm tired of everyone who has an orgasm every time they see a Macintosh. Computer = a tool. Computer != a religion. It's usually not important enough to talk about. I don't know what it is about the less common operating systems, but they seem to attract the asses. (Free/Open/DietBSD etc. seem to be immune to this, not sure why.)

Re:Mac nerds?

"Oh no! Apple should be worried about two guys! Two guys have switched. What ever will Apple do about two guys?"

The other two Mac users were unavailable for comment.

Re:Mac nerds?

While I won’t even attempt to address specific numbers, the service life of a Mac is markedly longer. Five times as long? Frequently, yes. Both of my Macs are about that old, a G4 tower and a G3 iBook dating from 2001. And my previous desktop machine was a 7500 that orginally shipped with a PPC601 chip that I later replaced with a 604 and then a G3 chip when I moved to OS X. Granted, I’m not typical, but then again neither is the typical Mac user. I find that ten year old Macs are not uncommon in the real world. In fact, my girlfriend is hoping I’ll get one of the new Core Duo iBooks later this year and give her my G4 tower. I’ll either do that or put dual G4s in it, not quite sure yet. But it’s still a great machine even if it’s used primarily for running Opera and doing Access development work under VirtualPC. I would appreciate more than a single 533mhz G4 for using Canon’s RAW software, but Photoshop runs just fine, even when I start going all layer-whore on high-res photos.

Re:Mac nerds?

It was FUNNY. Try laughing. It doesn't hurt.

Why God?

Why can't there be a Retarded or Slightly Confused mod? I have mod points but they are no good here!

Two users!

OMG! That's 0.0004% of their installed user base! In a single week!

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this. Or not. Jeepers. Someone out to FUD Apple this week, or something?

Re:Two users!

Closer to .00001%. If that occurred every week, and no one switched to the platform, no one would be using Macs in 20,000 years.

Re:Two users!

That's assuming that mac users live 20,000 years. Otherwise, Apple will have to pick up some new users -- they don't necessarily have to switch from windows, but they do need to be born.

Re:Two users!

That's assuming that mac users live 20,000 years.

That's always been my experience, or did you think we used Macs for the intuitive interface?

Re:Two users!

Not really. Mark Pilgrim, Sam Ruby, and Tim Bray all have very strong influences on an extremely important segment of the market. Cory Doctorow has a very strong influence on a slightly different segment of the market. In the former group's case, we're really talking about the fact that the architects of some major systems are switching to Ubuntu. This will ultimately have virtually zero effect on Apple's market share, and honestly, I don't think anyone believes it will. However, it does mean that Apple may start losing PowerBook market share at certain conferences. Instead of 90% PowerBooks at the next RailsConf, we may only see 80% instead.

At least in my case, I know that ever since Sam and Mark started talking up Ubuntu, I've been wanting to find an excuse to set up an Ubuntu box. I doubt I'll leave Apple for my primary machine, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to explore Ubuntu. But who knows? I might really like it.

Re:Two users!

It's also interesting that the Mark Pilgrim blog article linked to from the main one can be summarized thus:

I don't like Apple anymore because:

1) There are some open source apps that I like better than the ones that come with OS X. I am going to mention how great they are without noting that Apple also think they're great enough to list them on their web-site together with links via which they may be downloaded.

2) I have been writing open source apps for Macs since 1993, when MacOS was entirely proprietary and closed source. They are much more open now, so I am abandoning them because they aren't open enough.

3) After over 20 years advocating Macs, I have discovered that Apple are more expensive than some other PC manufacturers, especially as they refuse to give me an IBM employee discount. Of course, they used to be massively more expensive rather than merely a bit more expensive, but I supported them then even though it sometimes meant paying thousands of dollars more instead of a couple of hundred.

4) Having bought a laptop from Lenovo, I am pissed off to discover that nasty old Apple won't let me run MacOS X on it. Of course, I've been happily supporting Apple since 1983, despite the fact that they did everything possible to stop people from running MacOS on Atari STs and Amigas which had compatible hardware but lacked Apple ROMs, sued anyone that dared to attach a mouse to something vaguely graphical, and generally behaved like arseholes. I used to justify it on the grounds that Apple weren't obliged to support people whose computers weren't made by them; this time however it's me that's affected, so I'm going to condemn Apple for it.

5) I don't like iTunes and iPhoto, and have said so for years (well, one and-a-bit years actually, but longer in reality, as my wife will tell you if you could ask her, which you can't). My main reasons for this are that they lost some of my settings, but not my songs or photos. Of course, I completely neglected to make any backups because alpha geeks don't do that sort of crap, but now put all my photos in other directories _on the same machine_ as well, despite the fact that iPhoto didn't lose any photos, only some metadata that my cleverly constructed directory system also completely lacks. These directories are organized by date because despite my alpha-geek status and all the amazing software I've written, I cannot write a small program to read the date information in each photo's EXIF header and automatically display them in that order despite the fact that there are libraries in a variety of languages that do most of the work for me.

Meanwhile, the Doctorow blog in the link says he's _going to switch_, but so far has only ordered a machine (again from Lenovo!). He has not yet actually tried installing or using Ubuntu, but intends to do so on his Lenovo, apparently because Mark Pilgrim's done it on _his_ Lenovo.

So the sequence goes thus: Mark Pilgrim gets pissed off at Apple for behaving just like they always have during the many years that he defended and justified their actions. He buys a Lenovo, and after discovering that he can't run MacOS X on it, decides to use Ubuntu instead. Cory Doctorow reads Mark's blog, and buys a Lenovo because that's what Mark has. He already knows he can't use OS X on it because Mark's told him, and therefore decides to use Ubuntu because that's what Mark is using. He's never actually tried it out for himself, and has no idea if there are any better distros out there for his purposes -- Ubuntu is for him because Ubuntu is what Mark's using, and Mark is so clever that he never needs to back stuff up at all.

If these are what pass for influential Alpha geeks in the Mac world, then their versions of Gamma and Phi geeks must have trouble pulling their knuckles of the floor to wipe away the drool that constantly run down their chests.

Re:Two users!

Erm, ok.

I think suggesting someone's reasons are poor because they didn't seem to consider the same things issues fifteen years ago is stretching it somewhat.

Apple has moments of positiveness and moments of negativity. Frequently, it's easy to miss instances of the latter. Right now, they're suing bloggers, refusing to release source for a project they've touted for years as their open source jewel in the crown, releasing hardware that, frankly, is no more innovative or interesting than any other PC manfuacturer's, and their software is over-proprietary as usual (Pilgrim mentions Mail.app's switch to a closed mailbox format, I'd had my fight with iTunes during the 4.x to 6.x debacle. I'm surprised more people aren't screaming at them, to be honest.) So Apple is at a low point.

Anyone who's spent 20-25 years using proprietary software with an emotional, rather than logical, attachment to their primary supplier is, at some point, going to realise that they're being screwed over, repeatedly. The move will come during a nadir in the support and offerings their supplier goes through. For Pilgrim, and many other Mac fans, the question isn't "Why weren't you complaining 25 years ago when Apple was worse, jack-ass", it's simply the subtly different "What took you so long?"

And I can't answer that, except to suggest that since 1997, most Apple fans expected "the perfect system" to be just around the corner, that with the Steve in charge, making changes, the real problems users had with Apple's products would be fixed with new, better, products. And Mac OS X was released, and now we've kind of come to a head in terms of how good OS X will ever be, and it's great, but after three or four years of using Mac OS X, some are realising that not everything that was wrong in the Apple world was a matter of products, that a hell of a lot of it is because of Apple's mentality and its proprietary approach.

Oh no.

Cory Doctorow has switched to Ubuntu GNU/Linux?

Not PROMINENT INTERNET BLOGGER Cory Doctorow!

NOT PROMINENT BLOGGER CORY DOCTOROW!

Re:Oh no.

If Cory "Self-Promoting Trendoid is my Middle Name" Doctorow is doing it, it's guaranteed to be a fad.

If Doctorow heard that the "cool kids" were removing their own testicles with a fork, he'd quickly do the same.

Re:Oh no.

If Cory "Self-Promoting Trendoid is my Middle Name" Doctorow is doing it, it's guaranteed to be a fad.

Oh so you mean the Mac fad is over now. Thats my view too.

Re:Oh no.

And that's the point, really. Two people, who owe their positions in the pantheon of 'Internet celebrities' to a certain amount of nerd-cred, find they have to [be || appear to be] even nerdier to keep those positions. What better way to do that - and generate a nice little publicity storm in a teacup at the same time - than to "switch" to Linux?

Wake me up when RMS buys a Mac...

Re:Oh no.

Meanwhile I switched from Slackware to Gentoo this week and nobody seems to notice.

Maybe if I put Plan 9 on my FreeBSD box, someone will care.

Re:Give me a break...

Who cares? Well, some [daringfireball.net] very [oreilly.com] smart [tbray.org] people [kottke.org] do. (Of those, Tim Bray himself switching as well.)

Whether you personally know or respect Mark, Tim and Cory, they're being looked to by a huge amount of others for guidance. This isn't a lightly made switch - "oh you know, I have a spare box lying around and I'm going to see how this shiny new OS works out, and then next week I'll go and play with Gentoo, and I've always been meaning to give Solaris a try as well". This is people with a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge, having spent their whole life on Macs, deciding that enough is enough, that the bough has broken, and that they care more about their data than about anything else. They all have a huge following, and their thoughts will reverberate.

Most people who will actually read their thoughts (rather than going for the knee-jerk "no, it's Monday so apple is good!" slashdot reaction that I've seen far too many posters here resort to) will probably be set thinking because of it. And everyone will make up their own minds, and most people will probably decide not to switch, for reasons that for them will be very valid. But you can sure as hell bet that the importance of open data formats and lack of DRM will become more of a talking point in the months to come, and that if Apple doesn't heed this warning, more and more people will come to the same conclusions as Mark, Time and Cory have.

(If you want to get the whole story, I'd read the following articles in this order:

1. Mark Pilgrim: Bye Apple [diveintomark.org]
2. Mark Pilgrim: When the Bough Breaks [diveintomark.org]
3. John Gruber: And Oranges [daringfireball.net]
4. Mark Pilgrim: Juggling Oranges [diveintomark.org]
5. Tim Bray: Time to Switch? [tbray.org]
6. Cory Doctorow: Mark Pilgrim's list of Ubuntu essentials for ex-Mac users [boingboing.net]

Re:Give me a break...

Wait, you helped found Gentoo and now you've switched to OS X, I think that says more about Gentoo then anything else.