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?

[linvir (970218)]

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

Two users!

[pedantic bore (740196)]

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!

[Millenniumman (924859)]

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.

Oh no.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Cory Doctorow has switched to Ubuntu GNU/Linux?

Not PROMINENT INTERNET BLOGGER Cory Doctorow!

NOT PROMINENT BLOGGER CORY DOCTOROW!

Re:Oh no.

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

Apple won't miss 'em

[bheer (633842)]

Apple must've been happy that lots of geeks/nerds/whatever switched to Apple and were singing its praises, but you must remember that the Mac was never a geek machine and did great and had terrific fan following -- in fact most geeks stayed away from the classic Mac because of the lack of a command line, stdin and stdout.

Lots of geeks discovered the joys of Apple hardware with OSX because, well, it was based off Darwin-- but make no mistake, Apple won't even miss these guys-- they have their own rabid contingent who won't switch no matter what. They want the computing analogue of the guys who buy BMWs.

Also, Mark Pilgrim is running Ubuntu on an Apple machine, so Apple is still getting his money. Cory Doctorcow OTOH has switched to a Lenovo (IIRC).

Ubuntu is the killer distro!

[Max Threshold (540114)]

I'm starting to see more talk about Ubuntu in non-Linux-related contexts... newbies asking how to do this or that. The message is reaching the masses: Windows is shitware, and Macs are too expensive. Why put up with any of that when you can get the best of all worlds for free?

I think Firefox might have had some effect in waking people up to Free Software.

Their reason for switching

[Millenniumman (924859)]

Their reasons for switching are proprietary file formats and DRM. The main issue with proprietary file formats is the iTunes library file, which has an XML file that mirrors it. Apple uses some proprietary formats, but is that any worse than an open format no one has heard of that has no support or documentation. Apple supports most of the important file formats. No one has to deal with the DRM. In Linux, you can't use anything with it.

The market apple could lose: nerds with time

[kwerle (39371)]

I installed ubuntu on a PC a couple of months ago. It took me about a day to get the graphics system to work on the machine (X11 - text was fine). And by work, I mean "display at all." I never got the res out of it that I wanted. And once I had some graphics up, I tried to do anything else, and was misserable.

I cut my teeth on linux back in the .8 and .9 days; I stuck with NeXTSTEP. I revisited back in the late 90's; I stuck with OpenStep. I revisited it around 2000, when MacOS was very much in transition; I stuck with OpenStep and/on Windows. (though my servers were FreeBSD during the 90's and early oughts') And now I've taken a look in '06; I'm still going to stick with OSX (which is now my server).

It's not there yet. Everything I do on *nix other than OSX feels like pulling teeth. I'll continue to use this expensive OS ($600 machines and $100 OS upgrades every 2 years) for some time, I guess. And while I do, I'll continue to submit bugs and toss a line or 2 of code at various Open Source code/systems I use.

I have stuff to do, and I don't care to muss with the kernel and video drivers. If you don't have stuff to do, or you DO want to muss with kernels/vid drivers - go for some flavor if linux.

Going the other direction

[thephotoman (791574)]

Recently, I've made the opposite migration (from Ubuntu to Mac OS X). Now, while I love Ubuntu, and continue to use it on my desktop, I must say that Mac OS X has a lot going for it. There's nothing really wrong with the platform inherently. However, given the particular people in question, Ubuntu seems better suited for their needs than OS X does. Furthermore, with the latest release, things are quite easy to use on most hardware sold for Windows. Of course, the reason I removed Ubuntu from my MacBook is because I'm familiar with GRUB, which doesn't work on EFI. Perhaps I'll dual-boot the MacBook again when they've had time to work out that particular issue. I'd like to have an Ubuntu environment on here that isn't emulated over Parallels, too.

So honestly, between Ubuntu and OS X, to me, it's an even trade, based on what one needs. If you're doing heavy programming, Ubuntu is the place to be. However, if you're looking for a simple user-oriented Unix-like system, Mac OS X is just fine.

Count me in.

[greenguy (162630)]

As a long-time Macophile, I played with Linux for years and was never completely happy with it until recently (read: until I installed Ubuntu). I've always had a Mac around as a back-up, but for the last several months, I find myself using it less and less, and getting frustrated with it more and more. The final straw was when I couldn't get the FreeNX client to work on it so I could use Linux on my nice, big flatscreen iMac. Now the only thing standing between me and putting Ubuntu on the iMac is a lack of free time.

On an off-topic note, it appears to be my Mac background that makes me like Gnome. KDE feels too much like Windows. Cue flames!

Since when?

[NineNine (235196)]

Since when have nerds been a "canary in a coal mine" for any kind of technology? Nerds that I know have been into : laserdisk, betamax, etc. Nerds have been into Linux for a long time, and it still hasn't taken off. I'd say that what nerds choose in terms of consuming is generally the exact opposite of what the general public does.

Most users aren't ideological

[Logic Bomb (122875)]

Both of these guys switched because they decided that open file formats are their top priority. Neither switched for any of the things most users care about. (It's also worth noting that most of the file formats Apple uses are industry-standard, like PNG, vCard, and PDF. It's a handful of things like the iPhoto library database and iCal's weird calendar files that seem to bug these guys.) Yes, the opinions of the techno-elite are important and Apple should take their concerns to heart. But this has nothing to do with Apple's pursuit of the larger computing market. Unless these guys start recommending Ubuntu (or some other Linux) over Apple to non-techies, it doesn't hurt Apple's sales.

I switched off ubuntu

[hfastedge (542013)]

I ran linux at home for over 6 years. On desktops and laptops.

First, linux requires so much configuration on laptops. Neither debian nor ubuntu could support acpi (aka SLEEP) on my laptop. CD-ROM support was annoying as I switched from kernel 2.4-2.6. I had to recompile the kernel so many times and I could never get acpi to work (not even dell supported it, just some hacker in france that never replied to my email bug report). Other annoying things: getting vpn through a windows PPTP server will take you a long as time.

Linux is a great thing for a desktop though, the hardware is pretty standard and theres less things to worry about.

Linux is best for a server, and best for a beginning sysadmin to run at home to learn more about the operating system that is run at work.

And while I will probably buy a macbook for my next computer, I hope to have the resources to also get a windows vista to play around with.
I really like desktop machines that just work in most cases. I've been running windows xp on my dell laptop for a few months now, and while its not ideal, at least i get easy vpn access, the ability to turn off zeroconf to get my intel wifi card working,although i do miss being able to simply edit my crontab to give me a streaming radio alarm clock that goes off at different times during the week.

I tried to switch, but...

[mad.frog (525085)]

So Ubuntu 6 got all the great buzz, so I grabbed a copy and installed it on a spare Windows box I had.

Gee, I think, this looks pretty good. Finally some attention to nice graphic detail. A good installer. Software install that includes "blessed" prebuilt exes.

But then the rough edges showed up again.

First... this is an nForce2 machine with built-in video, and the default config refused to let me select a screen-res larger than 1024x768. I know, the nerds out there are saying "just edit your x config file", right? OK, but here's the thing:

(1) that's an INEXCUSABLY STUPID AND LAZY way to design operating system software
(2) it's too easy to screw up your x config file and break x (and by "too easy" I mean "remotely possible")

Second... I discovered that the oh-so-lovely disk partitioner has the added feature that on some systems (including mine) it borks the MBR of the resized Windows partition in such a way that Windows will refuse to boot. Even after uninstalling Ubuntu. And even after applying various fixes via UBCD and friends. (Right now this system is sitting disconnected under my desk because I refuse to reinstall Ubuntu, but reinstalling Windows is a horrible half-day affair on its own...)

Look, I know I'm gonna get flamed and burn karma for this, but the whole point is that for a system that I want to use mainly for surfing the web and playing games, it has to Just Work.

Not "mostly work with some crap I have to hand edit", it has to be freakin' bulletproof against a stupid user who neither knows nor cares that "sudo gedit foo" is required for some otherwise-seemingly-trivial configuration options.

No, this is not an apology for Windows, whose install and configuration is a nightmare of its own, but when you're the underdog, you can't just play catch-up, and you can't make boneheaded mistakes like those listed above.

Doesn't make sense to me...

[Qwavel (733416)]

Linux and Mac are, in many ways, complete opposites. I'm surprised that people would switch between them.

The Linux desktop (Ubuntu in this case) is free. It is flexible and is appealling technically and politically, but is quite rough and not ready for the average consumer. It is particularly strong in corporate, third world, and limited use, environments.

OS X is the opposite. It is high margin, high sytle, and slick. It is perfect for the brand-concious, reasonably wealthy, consumer who wants everything to work together easily.

Re:I switched as well

[roscivs (923777)]

I've actually seen far more developers switch from Linux to OS X than vice-versa. I think there are definitely switchers in both directions, but I'm not sure that there are more in one direction than the other, and I'd be doubtful that there are more switching away from OS X than those switching to. (Full disclosure: I run Linux on my desktop PC and OS X on my media center PC and haven't touched Windows in years.)

Re:I switched as well

[Phisbut (761268)]

I am one of these switchers as well. I am a gamer and developer, and had been a long term Apple user.

What kind of gamer are you that your needs are satisfied on Ubuntu? I recently switched to Ubuntu (Dapper), and yesterday installed vmware-player with a WinXP virtual machine, and then installed 2 games (first is PopCap's Dynomite and the second is Civ4), and although both of them installed, neither would actually play. Maybe I'm missing something, but Ubuntu looks to me as underwhelming as any other distro when it comes to gaming (although overwhelming on everything else).

What's the best way to get games to play on Ubuntu? I still need to dual-boot with Windows because of games, and I would really, really like to get rid of that.

Re:I switched as well

[by Anonymous Coward]

how about instead of discussing gaming on Ubuntu, we just bust the owner or employee of linux certified trying to lie to us about his identity to get some traffic?

"whois wineverygame.com" and grep for chander kant. now google for "chander kant" and linuxcertified.

gamer and developer my ass. probably never even used a mac, ubuntu, or even linux before

Re:Apple has it coming

[ZorbaTHut (126196)]

The difference is whether you consider each application to be its own layer, and not homogenous with other applications, or whether you consider each window to be its own layer, possibly interlacing different applications.

I personally prefer the window-layer approach, so I'd agree that this is not the desired behavior, but I don't know what the public in general would expect. In any case, don't expect to get a bunch of replies agreeing with you - as I write this you've already got one person disagreeing. What you have here isn't a Correct Semantics question. It's a Preferred Semantics question.

Re:Apple has it coming

[by Anonymous Coward]

Apple is also shipping all their Intel-based Macs crippled [blogspot.com] with Trusted Computing hardware DRM... essentially, a Big Brother chip. [cam.ac.uk]. As with all the companies sneakily trying to get this nastiness into their product lines, they desperately don't want to talk about it. Apple fans, naturally, don't want to either.

Make them.

Re:Apple has it coming

[agent dero (680753)]

How in the hell was this modded up?

MacOS is becoming less refined with every release. The UI changes every time, behavior that was sensible and elegant from the Classic days is being forgotten

You're right, so switching to a GNOME-based distro, that's fine, if that's your cup of team. What about when you want to run a Qt based application? You've got two different looking widget sets competing and distorting the entire view of things. What about openGL (if you can get it running properly)?

Simple things, like making the list view (or icon view or column view) standard in all Finder windows is all but impossible

Again, you're right, because you can't change the Finder preferences (it's only Apple+, like in any other Mac app) or change the View options (Apple+J in finder) to apply to all windows.

Mac OS X isn't perfect, i've got about 10 open bugs at bugreport.apple.com, but you've absolutely lost your mind to think that things aren't amazingly better than they used to. I remember a time when simple Finder operations would lock up my System 7 machine. Stop spreading FUD, file bug reports; as much as I love bitching on Slashdot. Apple doesn't read slashdot, and they're the ones with the power to change things.

Re:Apple has it coming

[BitwizeGHC (145393)]

No, no, you don't get it.

The original Macintosh was the UI Bible, 1984 King Steve Version, the only version which can claim to be divinely inspired. All other UIs are apostate.

Re:Apple has it coming

[T.Hobbes (101603)]

I beg to differ! See http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~hannon/windowlayers.jpg [cs.dal.ca]. Finder on top of Quicktime on top of Finder.

Re:unlikely

[Poppler (822173)]

Try telling the average computer user that .mp3's, aac's, or any other proprietary media format won't play out of the box and see how they react.

If installing Automatix [ubuntuforums.org] or Easyubuntu [freecontrib.org] is too hard for this hypothetical "average computer user", they're probably not going to be the one installing the OS.