Mac OS X 10.3 vs. Linux 659
M.Broil writes "This is a nice and fairly complete 'first look' at Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), but author Chris Gulker, who I happen to know was an Apple PR guy years ago, spends a lot of time comparing the Mac 'Panther' release to Linux, which he seems to use most of the time these days. He obviously likes a lot about Panther, but he doesn't think many Linux users will switch to it, and that a lot of 'Classic' Mac OS users may not want to move to it, either."
One line that sums it up IMO (Score:4, Insightful)
Let the flaming commence !
Classic sucks (Score:0, Insightful)
What makes MacOS X better... (Score:4, Insightful)
Switching... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well he can put me down as a Linux user who jumped onto OSX.
I really like Linux, but I just never got on with it as a desktop OS - lots of little things used to irk me, and the frustration of trying to get Linux working with much more modern hardware (like my NForce2 board) just made me get fed up with the whole idea.
Using OSX is like having the ultimate Linux distro.. you have THE best GUI available today, there are loads of Window XP beating applications shipped with OSX as standard, and hardware integration is obviously perfect - stuff just works. Plus you can quite easily get into the underlying UNIX core, and tamper with things - having such a functional GUI, and being able to fire up a terminal and use things like openssh, pico, etc right out of the box just totally sold me.
I still use Linux on my servers though.. you just can't beat that reliability and flexibility.. though I haven't tried out OSX Server yet....
Mac OS X is what Linux wants to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
Major applications ported to it. (no WINE)
Lots of games. (not Tuxracer!)
And it's cool... (not trying to copy existing GUI's)
MacOS X and Linux are not comparable! (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason for that is the simple fact that Linux is CLI (Command Line Interface) first, GUI second. And in MacOS X is the other way round - the interface is the most important part of the OS.
Of course, you can compare the Linux kernel with MacOS kernel, Linux CLI with MacOS CLI, Linux filesystems with MacOS filesystems, and GNOME (or KDE) with MacOS X GUI, you can even compare a disto of your choice (be it RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian or Slackware) - with MacOS X, but not LINUX as a generic OS, for Christ sake!
Re:User experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MacOS (Score:4, Insightful)
BSD 5? (Score:1, Insightful)
The People's Front of Unix (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hate to see users of two fantastic operating systems like OS X and Linux turn into bickering opponents not unlike the factious Judean liberation groups in Monty Python's Life of Brian.
IMO, there's more than enough room for lots of operating systems out there. I hope some of you posting comments favoring one or the other can keep the comments purely at a technical, respectful and impersonal level.
Re:MacOS (Score:4, Insightful)
I admit I'm kind of curious what "hard things [are made] easier" on Linux that aren't also made easier under MacOS X? What impossible things are made possible that aren't that way under MacOS X?
Re:Switching... (Score:3, Insightful)
Send $2000 to my address via PayPal and I will ship you a machine with modern hardware that works perfectly out-the-box with Linux.
Actually, don't do that - my point is that you're comparing apples (hardware+software) and oranges (just software). Apple have a distinct advantage in this area, in that nobody installs OS X on their souped up built-from-the-bits machine or cupboard box, so it's a lot easier to get hardware integration running OK.
Re:MacOS (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is the kernel!!! (Score:0, Insightful)
KDE, Gnome etc.. are available on other OSes like Solaris and the BSDs.
If you're going to compare OSX and Linux then you should be looking at the kernel performance.
Re:Where are the Classic users clinging on? (Score:2, Insightful)
Among the Mac users I know, only about a third have switched to X permanently.
Aside from the superior security, and the familiarity that makes 9 reliable for us (if you know how it works, and you don't run crappy software, it doesn't crash; and if you've got work to do, "Relearn ancient Unix and NeXt arcana" isn't high on your to-do list), what stops us from switching is the immaturity--still--of X in certain areas, like interface consistency, speed (at certain tasks), (certain kinds of) latency, and general "finishedness."
In my and a couple other cases I know of, the stumbling block is incompatability with some bizarre specialized audio software and old devices that won't ever get updated. "Classic" in X is bad with external hardware, and lacks some of the quirks and errors that some old software depends on. Also, X's virtual memory is very good, but it isn't optional; 9 and below let you turn it off if you have to (and sometimes, to do some things, you have to, or the box'll choke--physical RAM always wins).
Basically, we don't need it, so we don't buy it, though we've all tried it, and been half-thrilled, and half-disappointed. In a couple years, our boxes will die, and we'll have no choice. By then X should be as mature as 9 is. See you there.
linux may be great... (Score:4, Insightful)
She buys a digital camera, plugs it on a Mac, and iPhoto does everything for her.
If she plugs in the same camera on a linux machine, will it do the same thing?
This is silly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux and OSX are part of the same culture.
Apple doesn't really compete with linux or the rest of the current UNIX crowd. Maybe SUN but they are screwed anyway. We are not talking about a fork of Unix but rather Apple embraceing a current implimentation (BSD/Darwin) and giving it there own "spin" by, bascially, bolting on their own propriety GUI (quartz and what ever that new metal look is called) plus a bunch of lifestyle apps.
As long as a program conforms to the POSIX stardard then it should compile on OSX just fine. If you absolutely must have all your software "free" in the idealogical sense then I think you can find a open source implimentation of Cocoa and afterstep - a standard which Apple more or less follows. Apple can's own UNIX as much as SCO can since it is a open standard.
What we are talking about is a company talking the best of open source and making it more friendly for your average consumer. This is someting that most linux distros try, the best example being Mandrake. but don't quite get right mainly due to technical (XFree86, dependency hell) cultural (pointless flamefests over which is the best editor) and social problems (not having one standard GUI, installing a million text editors, lack of propriety apps etc). Some of these problems can be overcome, but some, like the idea that to make more people use linux you have to clone the windows GUI are going to take years to get over. I for one am glad that someone is attempting to lead the way and give people what they what - a decent alterative to windows that dosen't require a degree to write your resume on. Yet still has the power of UNIX if yon need it.
OSX is UNIX. That Apple should chose this direction should be taken as compliment to Linux.
Sorry to rant but I wish for once us geeks would stop getting into pointless pissing contests about things which, in the grand scheme of things, just aren't really important. For example who cares that OSX can't crtl alt f1 to the terminal? this is just nitpicking.
Re:not switching? (Score:2, Insightful)
I must disagree.
OSX (I'm typing this in it now) is better in a lot of ways, don't get me wrong. It's great to have a real command line - but the typical Mac user will never use it. It's great to have multitasking, and a real stable OS, that's for sure. The technical underpinnings of OSX are far superior to Classic.
But, if you look at the traditional Mac audience, the folks that have been their loyal customers all these years, the thing that's most important to them is a really well designed and stable GUI. Stable in the sense of not changing needlessly and causing confusion between revisions, not in the sense of not crashing. Classic does crash enough to be a mild PITA, but it was the most stable thing around so far as the GUI is concerned.
And this is the one area where OSX is a step backwards. Apple has fallen for what we could call the Microsoft syndrome, fallen in love with flashy graphics at the expense of a clean UI, and it shows. It's not as bad as XP, no, and that's fortunate for Apple, because otherwise they'd be losing a lot of those old loyal customers. As it is, instead of jumping platform, they're resisting upgrading. Because the GUI just isn't as good. Everything else is a lot better, but we're talking about people for whom the GUI is critical.
I really hope Apple comes to their sense and, if they won't roll back the GUI (I don't have a shadow of a hope that they will) by default at least have an option for the user to do so.
Re:what about all 3 major OS's (Score:5, Insightful)
First, it treats the OSs differently.
Let's take DVD+RW support.
MacOS X is given a "no" without third party tools.
Windows XP is given a strong "yes" despite that you need third party tools to take care of it.
Another example is "Coexists with another operating system on disk":
Current macs won't boot into OS 9, but they can run OS 9 (through Classic mode) natively. They can also dual-boot with Linux without any difficulty. Surely this deserves the same rank as Windows.
iChat AV is listed as an "Extra cost option" when as of when that was written it was free. This is inconsistent with how Windows is treated.
Second, its selective about its categories. It covers 802.11b, but not 802.11g or BlueTooth. No mention of handwriting recognition (which MacOS X has built in via InkWell) , but things like "Web content on desktop" are included.
The list, of course, goes on. Its a very poor choice as comparison sites go.
Re:MacOS (Score:2, Insightful)
Presumably you are refering to MacOS in the sense of 'MacOS Classic'. MacOS X makes the hard and impossible pretty much as easy (or difficult) as on any other Unix driven OS.
Re:Good to see some non biased coverage (Score:1, Insightful)
When Jobs first introduced NS, he said it was 5 years ahead of its time. That was an understatement. And here's a few reasons why:
- OS X uses vector graphics like NS. The NS screen was EPS; this one is PDF.
- Screen coords are in floating point, so are colours, which offer a 16-bit resolution at the very least.
- ISV development. Nobody has the platform NS does.
Chew on those a while. There are inumerable more.
Remember AmigaOS (Score:5, Insightful)
Your funny statement notwithstanding, impossible things are by their very definition impossible on any OS in any situation.
Re:MacOS (Score:2, Insightful)
Another one liner (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and just the other day, a quick SSH from my Powerbook to one of my remote desktop clients running Linux revealed that it was only the GUI that had frozen.
Re:Amazing Apple XCode was not highlighted !?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
To start:
This is fine and dandy in theory, as long as that is the only operation you perform. To refute, you can do two floating point multiplies on a P4 with HT in a single cpu. Thus that single CPU is doing two floating point operations that are much more complex than your FMADD. None of this is really how a flop should be determined anyways.
Secondly, Visual Studio has had edit and continue functionality for quite some time. At least version 6, which was back before 1998. The way it is implimented in XCode is possibly more complex, but it does the same thing.
Now let's talk about that cluster... It's a nice cluster, yes, but it was also very expensive. From the reports they had to pay full price. If we use the false logic for a flop from earlier, we can deduce that two $1200 PCs and a $2999 Mac can perform the same math calculations.
PCI-Xpress... With all those cards available.... Next year.
I personally have a DVD+R writer. It's 4x and I've had it since ~February. They go for about $180 now at the local stores. Anyone can have a fast DVD burner who wants one now.
In short, I agree that XCode is good, but the rest of what you say has little ground.
However, a lot of developers might want to move.. (Score:3, Insightful)
It is my opinion that an OS that makes developers comfortable is going to be a successful OS, so full credits to Apple on this one. I would really never have considered buying a mac before OSX (come on, they didn't even have a command line!) but now I have, and it just let's me get on with doing what I love, writing software...
Re:to sum it up... (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is great for computer "gearheads". The equivalent of some guy 1983 whose only car was some beater that he constantly had jacked up to tweak the motor. On the other hand, if you have a regular 9-to-5 job, you can't afford to have your car not working every morning at 8 AM. One solution is to get another car. Another is to get rid of the beater for a reliable car, stop tinkering with it, and actually have some free time when you get back from work.
Some people like tinkering with their cars or computers all the time. I'd rather move on and tinker with something else instead.
Re:Amazing Apple XCode was not highlighted !?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux people never remember that because it wasn't a rip-off of Minix. Linux was developed from scratch. In the early days, you needed to compile the kernel using GCC running on Minix - but that doesn't mean it's a rip-off of Minix any more than a program compiled with a compiler running on Windows is a ripoff of Windows.
Linux is not a rip-off of GNU either. GNU runs on Linux. That's why it's called GNU/Linux: it's the Linux kernel with the GNU userland. That's no different to, say, taking the OpenBSD kernel and packaging it up with the GNU userland. Or indeed, taking a Mac and installing the GNU userland.
Re:Good to see some non biased coverage (Score:2, Insightful)
Runs much faster (Score:2, Insightful)
10.3 is suddenly MUCH MUCH faster and actually usable..
Re:What makes MacOS X better... (Score:2, Insightful)
Safari. The fastest and easiest to use web browser.
Did anyone else find it hilarious that Linux doesn't have any high quality applications when Safari is built on KDE technology? No, linux applications are truly horrible... But they are good enough for you to build your web browser with right? Wake up... Each OS has something going for it. Macs aren't the beginning and end of the universe. Neither is Linux or Windows for that matter.
Re:MacOS (Score:3, Insightful)
OS X make easy things non-existant! It does them for you, and this is the big benefit of using a mac. Imagine if every little chore you had to do on your linix box that made you sigh or groan just wasn't there anymore. How much more productive or happy would you be using your computer? Considering 80% of my time is spent doing simple stuff, 19% is spent doing hard stuff, and 1% doing impossible stuff, an OS that takes out the easy things and leaves the impossible is a great benefit to me. Of course, your percentages may vary.
Clean GUI (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a TiBook. I'm typing on it now. The NeXTStep interface was cleaner than the MacOS Classic interface. The only thing that "dirties" the MacOSX interface is the "classic" look of apps that insist on drawing windows with their own application-specific goofy widgets that are designed to look good taking up all of a blurry 14" CRT screen.
Also, more time in the "lickable" Aqua world, and you will be instantly conscious of the mood altering effects of being surrounded by soft edges and clean surfaces with rich (but understated) textures when you switch back to the cold-hard Classic. It's easy to say "it's all just flash !*blink* *blink*", but you haven't really tasted both samples.
I've used MSWindows 3.0,3.1,95,XP; NextStep; BeOS FVWM, OpenLook, CDE, WindowMaker, AfterStep, Enlightenment, KDE, Sawfish, Black Box; etc.. I prefer the OS-X (still using Jaguar) interface. Keys include a cohesive window-management scheme, and *working* VFS. Also there's transparent terminals that use QuartzExtreme so that I can put a window with documentation under a Terminal.app window and type what I want based on the slightly blurred text underneath. Cocoa's message-passing for loose-types makes for a somewhat bloat-y experience, but it isn't something that scales with hardware. It runs nearly as well on a Grape G3 iMac as it does on my TiBook at twice the clock speed plus AltiVec and 32MB GPU.
That said, MacOSX is a logical continuation of NeXTStep. It is a leap from MacOS Classic. Let me say one thing: it is much less of a leap from Classic to OSX than it is from Classic to MSWindowsXP.
You can continue to run your old Classic apps in MacOS Classic if you like. I invite you to try EBay for an old NeXT cube/slab with some software on it. OSX has definitely met Classic users halfway. If you are so reactionary that you can't bear to part with your good-ol' key combo shortcuts and learn a new style, then you don't deserve to run new software that demands it. That's great if you're a "my own little world" style user who just needs Adobe apps and doesn't need UTF-8 international character support...
The bottom line is that you can hold out and save your money for a compelling personal reason to switch, but if you really want your old OS, the old interface guidelines, etc. it ain't gonna happen. Translating your comments in light of that makes your position sound more like "There are those of us who will never upgrade. Long Live Classic!" Whatever...
The enemy of my enemy... (Score:5, Insightful)
OSX and Linux can help each other by breaking the monoculture. There have been a few stories recently about the Linux user base being set to overtake that of OSX in the next few years. These stories are invariably followed by choruses of "Apple is dying." but consider: An (corporate) IT environment which welcomes Linux on the desktop and in the server room is a) more likely to consider alternate platforms and b) an extremely friendly environment (from a protocol standpoint) in which to deploy OSX boxes.
Unlike MS OSes, which expend a great deal of their energies in locking out other platforms, both Linux and OSX are commited to open standards; they are playing by the same rules and will always play well together. A world with (let's say) 85% Windows 10% Linux and 5% OSX on the desktop is a world where more attention and emaphasis will be given to open standards, where OSX will have less resistance to grow its share in many different market spaces, and (perhaps most importantly) a world where the barrier to entry for some theoretical new-and-better OS is much lower.
To look at this another way: As PCs become more commoditized, and as they move more toward being plug-in-and-use appliances, the OS must fade further and further into the background; it must become transperant to the user. The day will come when end users neither know nor care what OS they are using (some would argue that's always been true
The future is not a world where Linux (or MacOSX) has replaced windows on the desktop, but rather one where we have a burgeoning number of choices, and can pick amongst many tools to get the job done right. (I hope....)
-alex
Linux users won't Switch? Where has he been? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it at every PERL and PHP developers conference I attend, I see more and more carrying iBooks and Powerbooks? There are a few running Linux on a DELL or other PC notebook, but there were many Linux users that abandoned Linux on their desktop for OSX. Most "switchers" I know were from Linux to Mac, not Win to Mac.
I am one of them. I was tired of Windows crashing, even with 2000 and now XP being much better in that regaurds, and it was consent problem of not having drivers for the hardware I already had and what to consider in the future.
OSX came out and I waited until 10.1 for Apple to get the major bugs out of the software and when it came time to buy a new laptop, I chose an iBook. Why? I still have MySQL, PERL and PHP along with BBEdit now to code in and test in a *iux platform on my laptop. Plus, I can still communicate with the rest of the business world with MS Office, plus programs like Photoshop, QuarkXpress, GoLive, Dreamweaver, Flash, Quicktime, iLife, etc..
Apple beat Linux in the desktop market hands down. Truefully, the smaller businesses I deal with don't have the resources or the need for a dedicated IT person on staff. That want products that have a 1-800 number they can call for support or if they do need to hire someone to come fix something, that they at least know what they hell the program is.
Now, several SMB's I have delt with in the past six months have switched from Windows to Mac, and most have been perfectly happy because their systems don't crash, its easy to use. Some use it as a Point-of-Sale system with a CC reader. USB barcode scanner and USB cash drawer without any problems. Others just need MS Office, email, and Quickbooks. The biggest complaint I have heard was one manger loved the productivy, easy of use, and stablity of their Macs, but complained that the Mac didn't have solitare.
Until we see commercial vendors, the Adobe's and Macromedia's of the world, produce native Linux products, the platform in the US won't be takening off in the business world.
Part of the reason has to do with the Dot communism mystique of the OSS community. While businesses know that the deployment costs of Linux on the desktop is a hell of a lot lower, TCO may or may not be. I have only had one client switch his office over to mostly Linux. Their accounting and shipping units still use PC's because of their software needs. There was nothing there in OSS land that would have proved cost effective to switch too, and their PR department (2 people) are using Macs for page layouts and the like. However, this was a medium sized company with 40 employees including 5 IT guys that had been running Linux on servers for close to three years and played with the system at home.
I will place my own predictions: Linux users will continue to switch to OSX. Maybe not in droves, but proably more than one would think.
Re:Here are the applications... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mozilla, GIMP, Blender, Open Office and I guess many of the others run on OS X too, at least with the same quality (X11 GUI) as on Linux.
Re:Good to see some non biased coverage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What makes MacOS X better... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Linux users won't Switch? Where has he been? (Score:3, Insightful)
Although, first let me tell you that I stopped using Linux all together last year finally switching the last of our servers to FreeBSD or OpenBSD. Frankly I find the orgainzation of the *BSD software and communities much better and more organized. Linux has always seemed more hodgepodge. I once heard AOL described as "training wheels for the internet" and I feel the same way about Linux...its training wheels for many students and others into the world of Unix. Its what I learned on, but once I got the hang of it, I found many time saving admin features in BSD, especially the ports tree.
Most of the Linux users that switch to Mac OS were not macfanbots. Most, like myself, hated 'Classic" and still do. What apple did was give the world an affordable Unix, and I said UNIX because as many linux users are quick to point out - LINUX IS NOT UNIX ITS UNIX-LIKE, platform that is:
1) Easy to use for the average joe that want's something easy to use
2) If you are a power user, the tools are there and you can use them
3) Aka, best of the OSS support & those 'evil' close source people.
At leas with OS X I have the choice of easy to use interface and not having to worry about it, or opening up terminal/shell and going hardcore when I want.
Moreover, I no longer have the time to "play around" with an OS no matter what it is. I work as an SMB consultant primarily in technology. In fact I am proably wasting 15 minutes I could be charging someone about $50 for by writing this post. I don't have time to toy around with something that might or might not work.
great example is our accounting software. I looked at NOLA, liked the package a lot, but decided on Quickbooks for Mac. Why? Our CPA supports Quickbooks and gives us a discount for using it because it makes her job easier, plus it took about 15 minutes to install and another two hours to set up. It would have taken at least that long to get Nola up and running, let along configured. Furthermore, our sectary was already familar with the software which saved a lot of time for us in training. TCO was a hell of a lot cheaper than NOLA for our business. Now that's not the case with everyone.
Boils down to right tool for the job. Linux has its place, like running application spefic taks such as Kiosks and on embeded chips. I like Linux's flexablities in that regaurd, but the average user just wants something that is easy to use and works. They don't have the time nor the desire to mess with problems.
Re:linux may be great... (Score:1, Insightful)
With Linux, it's always "yeah it's easy, just do this, bring up an xterm and type this, oh and make sure you have this module compiled for your kernel and you're gonna want this package from your distro... then do this... blah blah blah." Easy for you and me, absolutely incomprehensible to "normal" people.
Which is better? Well, ideally a solution that caters to both crowds without doing it half assed for either one. Nobody's quite there yet, but Apple's closer. Personally, I don't use iPhoto. I have mine set to open up Image Capture, which downloads all the JPGs to a directory of my choosing, then I run a gimp-perl script I wrote to resize them for the web, make thumbnails, and generate an html template that I then edit in vi. I could use iPhoto, but my way is exactly how I want it done, down to the smallest detail.
Grandma doesn't care about that and certainly doesn't want to even begin to wrap her brain around that. She's very intelligent, but this is simply not her thing, and she didn't grow up with computers like many of us, so they never will be intuitive to her at those levels. Right now, Apple does the best job of approaching the user's needs at both ends of the spectrum without sacrificing much at either end. Both Grandma and I are happy using the same machine. Hopefully they'll continue to get better at both ends.
Problems with Desktop Linux (Score:1, Insightful)
-There is no system wide address book that I can sync with my phone
-all of those little apps have such goofy names, I can't figure out what does what without looking it up first
-I can't buy a linux box for my parents without expecting to do full-time tech support
-system preferences are not centralized (no, they're not)
-poor color calibration tools
-poor type support
-an overall lacking of GUI polish
-poor third-party hardware support (a printer that prints isn't worthwhile to me without all the features being available)
I think that most of these issues from Linux people developing for other Linux people, rather than for other professionals. It will be decades before designers have all the color, type, printing options on Linux that have existed on the Mac since the classic days. Hell, Microsoft can't even get it right and they now have a sizable share of the publishing industry. And the publishing industry is only getting bigger.