Jamie Zawinski Switches to Mac OS X 1074
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
An XEmacs contributor switches to a more useful system. I love the irony.
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Informative)
jwz [jwz.org] wrote xscreensaver, Lucid Emacs, Netscape Mail and News 2.0 to 3.0 and the original UNIX versions of Netscape Navigator.
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, come on.
And yes, linux is harder than having dedicated hardware and OS intergration - it's also cheaper. But more importantly, that's the price of freedom.
I am sick to the guts of all these whinging losers who expect linux to be "finished now". Go check out apple's
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Informative)
- The dock. What a hideous piece of crap this is. My trash can is on the dock. So are my running applications. So are my non-running applications. But not all of my non-running applications. To get to those, I have to go into the applications folder, which has a nice alias on the desktop that Apple didn't create. Those useful programs that you only use once in a blue moon? Go dig for them... go dig.
Er. Okay. How is this different from any other
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Insightful)
The flaw in your argument is that you are comparing a 5 year-old OS to one built 18 hours ago. Of course it will have better hw support on install.
You're just gonna have to hunt down the windows drivers, it aint that hard. Copy them to the hard drive or cd and be done with it.
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, I can understand his beef with sound on Linux. There's no mucking about with "sound servers" on other mainstream operating systems. ALSA is a good attempt to fix that problem, but it's not quite there yet.
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, there's still issues with Linux audio. But whining and running off to another OS isn't going to fix them.
He complained endlessly about Mozilla too. It seems he does nothing but whine.
-Z
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Insightful)
Well the problem is fixed for him isn't?
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, he should get credit for sticking with it for this long. He's a guy who has work he needs to have done, and Linux wasn't cutting it. More importantly, it wasn't cutting it and the "linux community" refused to accept that it had any failures at all. Well, maybe some token words of acknowledgement, before going off and reinventing the desktop or package manager again.
I like Linux just fine as a server. I wouldn't bother with the desktop at all, and haven't for more than 6 years.
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Funny)
But it does qualify him for demi-god status. When you get to hang with the gods, and have a small cult following of strangely deticated people.... Maybe a shrine or two...
BBH
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because "issues with Linux audio" is the problem of Linux audio developers, not users. His problem was getting sound to work, and switching to Mac OS X solved that.
He's a Prima Donna (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what all you Prima Donnas, (and yes there are a *lot* of Prima Donnas out there). You will never ever get everything you want, something will always be wrong because the problem is not with the world at large, it's with your personality.
HTH
Re:He's a Prima Donna (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree; IMO he's got a legitimate point. From the JWZ blog regarding problems with XMMS hogging all audio output such that no other apps can play audio:
This frustration highlights a failing of the Linux-based desktop platform. Put generally, Linux systems often require the user fuss with (and be aware of!) highly technical system tweaks to satisfy some really basic end-user scenarios. The blog's thread has lots of people going on about ways to fix this particular problem, but frankly I'm on JWZ's side: it's a damn waste of time! At least it is for those whom, the computer is a tool for getting work done, instead of an end in and of itself.
Put another way, I'm all for some degree of tweaking in my day-to-day usage. I find and install new tools, write helpful scripts/plugins/etc., and do other "meta-work" to make myself more productive. This process is kinda fun, too. But having to screw around for hours figuring out what to do just to get more than one app to play audio is insane.
And the real killer is that the solution is probably not to just roll up the ol' sleeves and write some software to "scratch the itch". This isn't a software problem, it's a real world problem of fragmented design and developer effort and a lack of a seamless out-of-box experience for Linux-based systems.
Getting fed up with that is hardly "throwing [your] toys out of the pram" -- it's called cutting your losses.
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Informative)
"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 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:3, Informative)
No, he wasn't responsible for 4.0. And you won't convince me you switched from Netscape 3 Gold to MSIE 3.0 because it "just worked". It didn't.
Re:Who the hell is Jamie Zawinski (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you the core (sole?) developer of a base app included in every desktop distro?
From TFA (Score:5, Funny)
D'oh!
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Funny)
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Funny)
And people wonder why there are so many reposts....
Re:From TFA (Score:5, Informative)
from the don't-worry-jamie-we-won't-post-it dept.
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Funny)
Re:From TFA (Score:4, Funny)
new flash... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:new flash... (Score:5, Funny)
What is this article doing on Slashdot? (Score:3, Funny)
Congratulations, Jamie. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Jamie's mom is way cool! (Score:3)
You mean, like, "has got it going on"?
The reason he switched.. (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds familiar (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like a precondition, not a postcondition.
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:From your previous post. (Score:4, Insightful)
He does correctly point out that the elitist bullshit is exactly that, but he doesn't say that there is only ONE TRUE OS.
Maybe his comments just hit too close to home?
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:5, Insightful)
Can a driver determine the tuner type by querying the card?
If so, then requiring the user to select the tuner type in a config file is completely stupid; the user shouldn't have to tell the computer something about a peripheral if the computer can determine that information itself without the user having to get involved.
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh. Why should I want to waste my time writing and testing such code when I can get a system that works out-of-box?
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:3, Insightful)
And, of course, most people aren't capable of fixing bugs in operating system software.
They just complain their mouse doesn't work, because it doesn't.
D
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:5, Interesting)
Unforutnately, for the rest of us, I have better things to do with my time that mess around with asoundrc files. All I want is for every freakin program to properly output over my SPDIF channel. Is that really too much to ask for? Apparently it is, and I've almost switched back to windows on numerous occasions because of this.
In fact, the ONLY thing keeping me on Linux right now is MythTV. If it wasn't for MythTV, all my servers would probably be OSX by now and my Media box would be Windows.
Bryan
telling (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:telling (Score:4, Insightful)
This is my favorite thing to hear about Linux. Linux will survive on the desktop, on servers, on refrigerators for as long as one person wants to run it there. I have a Linux machine that I use for most things, Windows on my laptop, and an iMac in the bedroom for playing music, movies, and using the web. Everyone wants to get worked up about Linux's survival. It's not survival that matters, it will survive a good long time, it's the advancement of it.
Sheesh.
Re:telling (Score:4, Insightful)
People in high school, college, grad school, or academia have enough time to futz around with this stuff.
People who work on open source code or work in linux day-to-day are paid to futz around or buy a preconfigured system.
But people who are not in the above categories do not generally have the TIME to deal with crap like this. Heck, I put together my own machine a few years ago, and still haven't had time to back it all up and reinstall it, even though I've needed to, for over 3 years. These people would much rather pay for something to work than spend their time trying to make it work. This is the issue. TIME.
Obnoxious screensaver (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Dark Side (Score:3)
Are you referring to Cups?
"We have a sound system that works most (but not all) of the time if you are lucky."
How is this different from OSX or Windows?
"We have power management issues on laptops which Microsoft fixed in 1995."
Agreed, plus suspend is a PITA!
Funny thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sound (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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).
Re:Sound (Score:3, Informative)
There's still some disagreement on whether dmix is the way forward, but hopefully within a year or two software sound mixing will be like fonts are now - pretty much a solved problem.
Re:Sound (Score:3, Informative)
Uhm... let's see:
- GTK 2: fontconfig
- QT 2 and 3: fontconfig
- Mozilla/Firefox: fontconfig
- OpenOffice: fontconfig
The two major toolkits are already using fontconfig, and have been for almost two years now.
What's that you say? "Motif"? "Other toolkits"? Come on, this is 2005. Apps using any other toolkits are... what? 1% of the total number of available applications?
So, where is the problem you're talking about?
Re:Wow only a year or two? (Score:3, Informative)
And sound mixing has worked for me since 2003. I setup Alsa and sound mixing Just Worked(tm), no messing with dmix or whatever.
ALSA must die. (Score:3, Interesting)
How all these Linux distros and desktops got themselves into so many fragmented half baked audio schemes is beyond me.
The Solution -- just mix on multiple opens (Score:5, Interesting)
All sound drivers without exception should work like they do currently on FIRST OPEN, but on second and subsequent opens they should automatically hook in a mixer and mix all inputs together.
The code to do it already exists, but it's just not being structured sensibly as above. It's no surprise that newbies find the one-at-a-time behaviour unhelpful, because it is. This is a multi-user O/S fer crissakes, single-open in sound drivers is just dumb!
Re:Sound (Score:4, Informative)
That's it, I'm switching too! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
he is not completely wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sound under linux requires a card that supports
hardware mixing of multiple audio streams
(SoundBlaster Live or newer is the only one that comes to mind and that I have (1 live, 1 audigy)).
Anything else is mostly unusable because of the lack of kernel (== always works) mixer.
User space mixers are a joke (or at least were last I tried them) because of incompatibility.
Torvalds next OS X user? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Torvalds next OS X user? (Score:5, Funny)
maybe i should submit a story about what OS my neighbour runs, or perhaps his brother and wife
Time for linux to change its focus. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh... (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I myself have had problems with sound in linux, yes, but considering that (as someone who had only ever played about with TCP/IP in Linux and had never touched X or the Linux desktop until a few months ago) I have now switched from Windows to a Linux desktop and got sound working in all apps installed within a few days of switching. That was about four months ago and I still don't use Windows.
I had worked out everything he had worked out in less than two days of having a linux desktop. There are things that should be simpler (cups, sound, etc.) but none of them hindered me for very long and, once properly set up, work much better than my previous OS's incarnations. Yes, it's a pain having to "set things up", but it's hardly worth such a strop.
We all know arts, esd, etc. are a pain in the ass and, yes, we are all waiting for ALSA to "just work". Now that it's in the kernel, we finally have a standardised, working, maintained sound system that supports mixing on EVERY LINUX MACHINE. This should be the turning point.
If a program that plays sound doesn't have an ALSA-compatible option by now, it's not being maintained properly. If it does, it will just work with ALSA and any plugins you might use, e.g. dmix.
As soon as 2.6 distros become the standard, we can work on getting EVERY app to use the same damn sound systems.
I saw his entry on wikipedia and if he's such a great programmer who has made contributions to such important projects as, gosh, XScreensaver, it makes me wonder why the hell he:
a) didn't know this already (not a single XScreensaver that uses sound?).
b) can't work it out for himself.
c) throws a major strop because it's not point-and-click.
It occurs that he's just missed the point. You don't have a Linux desktop to say "I've got a Linux desktop". You don't have one to beat every other desktop into the ground with your technical superiority (real or percieved). You don't have one to complain that it's not like Windows. You don't have one to play iTunes (as he seems to value this as an important feature).
My desktop is Linux because it works, it's fast enough, it does what I want, it doesn't restrict me in any way, it's free, it's Free, it 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".
I can't help feeling that any decent programmer would have been able to overcome the same little roadhumps on the way without so much as a sigh. They might even have bothered to fix the troublesome programs themselves.
Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:Sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Howto: Make linux work properly on the Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Howto: Make linux work properly on the Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Howto: Make linux work properly on the Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)
2. On Linux, the Nvidia hardware is siginifcantly faster than equivalent ATI lines.
3. I'm a Mac OS X fan, but it is significantly cheaper to build a linux box with easy to setup hardware than it is to get a OS X box with equivalent hardware.
Plus, I'm not impressed with Mac performance in gaming. My fairly cheap AMD64 mid-range box smokes my Dual G5 2.5 with a geforce 6800Gt in World of Warcraft.
I'm running WoW on Ce
DMIX and You! (Score:3, Informative)
So this is now a non-problem.
Survey says? Stop running Redhat 5. Old linux=PITA. Get a new user-friendly distro.
Oh, you don't want a dumbed-down OS? Than why are you switching to OS X?
Note: I have a powerbook G4, running Tiger, and two mac minis running Tiger. I also have several linux desktops and 2 linux servers. I've got plenty of experience with both platforms.
But SuSE is almost as easy as OS X, and I can run most of my Windows games on SuSE.
Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
You bet your sweet bippy that was a troll. Do your worst, I've got karma to spare.
*NOW* is the time for Linux to get its collective head out of the sand and really reach out to the common users. You know how on a weekly basis we laugh at Microsoft for announcing yet another feature that will NOT be in Longhorn? Let me just put this one in bold:
Longhorn is going to suck. It's going to be the worst Windows since ME.
Microsoft has no plan for it. They know they have really taken Windows about as far as it can go, and any real changes are going to require years of work. But because of market pressures, they can't really take the time that would need - and yet, due to mismanagement, they're going to spend years wastefully. This is the PERFECT opportunity for Linux to finally rise to the forefront -- but only if the geeks get off their high horses and admit that a good OS has to be usable by common man. AND, right along side that, if they can come to understand criticism is NOT necessarily an attack. Reading responses on this thread, all I can think of is O'Reilly screaming 'Shup up! SHUT UP!' at anyone speaking facts he doesn't want to face.
I gave up on Linux for the same reasons as Zawinski. I want an OS that *works*. I don't want to tweak my sound drivers. I don't want to have my nVidia drivers FRICKING VANISH after a week of working right (after a week of work to get them running). I don't want to have to remember that completely ridiculous program names like "the GIMP" are actually usuable graphics applications and not, as the name would suggest to a normal human being, porn videos.
(yes, I know what the name stands for. That does not change the fact that Granny Average User would never in a million years click on something called a "gimp" looking for a way to take the redeye out of her pictures.)
The Linux community needs to get out of the 90s. There are modern solutions to every major problem with the OS, and within a year, two at max, they could make it REALLY user-friendly. The problem is that user-friendliness isn't sexy to Linux geeks. No one wants to spend time writing a new sound library that actually works when they can just look down their noses at anyone who doesn't know how to properly configure ALSA. And the only thing less sexy than THAT is not writing any actual code at all, but just going through the OS and making sure the user dialogues make some sort of sense to those who don't have PhDs and, as someone else mentioned, will actually fit on a screen resolution of less than 1024x768.
But you know what? Someone has to do it. Because if no one does, Linux will NEVER get past being a hobbyist OS, and whatever horrible things the next Windows introduces to the computing world, we'll be stuck with dealing with them. ('Cause god knows, I just *love* having mailboxes on Linux and Mac machines shut down because Windows-borne virii have filled them with spam. That helps my sense of superiority to no end.)
So this is truly put up and shut up time. There has never been a better opportunity for Linux to really make some inroads in the home market - but only if the contributors are willing to make some compromises and give the other 90% of users some reason to switch. So all I ask is, if you contribute to OSS, and you EVER spend any time online complaining about how Linux could be great if only it could get into the mainstream - use that time to tweak Linux's usability instead. Fixing bad error messages doesn't even require much programming skill at all. Make Linux usable for common people, and it can succeed. Period.
Tired of Futzing (Score:5, Insightful)
When one first acquires a new tool, whether it is hardware, software or a woodworking plane, the very act of learning how use the tool itself works is highly engaging. Just futzing about figuring out how the new tool works is an end in itself.
However, after one has spent 20+ years learning the ends and out of each season's new tools the joy fades. One becomes progressively less interested in the tools itself and more interested in product you want to use the tool to make. The time spent futzing with the tool is not engaging but frustrating and wasteful. You want to get the primary work done not spend all your time adjusting your tools.
How many times over the years has Zawinski wrestled with a problem similar to his Linux sound issue? The thrill of solving such a problem is long gone, baby.
The Linux community is dominated by people who enjoy the process of learning and using the tool itself. They are the kind of people who take the toaster apart to see how it works. The vast majority of desktop users, however, just want to make toast.
People like Zawinski, who have taken apart their fair share of toasters, also now just want to make toast. At present, Linux doesn't let him do that.
Years from now, people will ask each other... (Score:3, Funny)
They'll nod solemnly, and in reverent tones, tell with precise detail where they were when they learned that Jamie Zawinski had switched to OS X.
He's Right: Linux Needs To Be Better (Score:3, Insightful)
We should be able to plug a mouse into a port on a Linux machine and expect it to work. We shouldn't need to troll the net looking for guidance on how to configure the damn thing. If it needs a driver and it needs to be configured, we deserve a GUI that handles the congifuring. A mouse is a tool that's used to manipulate a GUI; it's lame and lazy to build a driver and then slump off the configuration into an X ASCII config file.
Ditto sound. Linux doesn't do it right. And, what's with that stupid business of distributions shipping muted ALSA drivers? That makes no sense at all. Can anyone even imgaine Microsoft or Apple doing something so gratuitously user hostile as shipping boxes with the sound turned off by default?
Re:He's Right: Linux Needs To Be Better (Score:3, Insightful)
Your right about Fedora, It deserves credit for paying attention to real people.
However, I bought a Mac a few weeks back. After close to a decade with Linux -- Slackware, then Fedora after Patrick dropped Gnome -- I was rather weary of all the annoying noise that surrounds Linux: the seemingly not-quite-finished status of a lot of Linux software, perpetual dependency issues, th
To the naysayers (Score:4, Insightful)
- learn yet another new config format
- having to constantly recompile a kernel or a kmod
- compile anything
Just to get a camera hooked to your PC or try out some new piece of software.
It just gets really fucking old, eventually.
This is why I see OS X as a bigger threat to Linux than Windows. A lot of Windows users actually LIKE Windows; the way its laid out, the interface design, etc. They usually don't like OS X's interface.
Re:To the naysayers (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to play sysadmin and cut your teeth on the "unix way" go ahead. Its a great learning tool.
As you say, if you've got more important things to do, like oh, lets say *get some work done*, OS/X would definately be the way to go.
If Ubuntu doesn't work as a decent hassle free Desktop for me over the next few months, I'm jumping ship to MacOS myself (for desktop, my servers will remain bsd/
From the blog of George W Bush (Score:5, Funny)
Dear CNN: please don't report this. Screw you guys.
Bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Also, he doesn't really care what the Linux crowd thinks, which is why he posted the remark about Slashdot.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Both of us have a significant amount of experience with SGI workstations. SGI, like Apple today, was a Unix that "just works". It had pretty fonts and a very nice designer look and feel. It was also elegant and a snap to administrate.
I, like JWZ, also used Linux workstations. But they were clunky compared to SGI and I always came back to the better design and more attractive display SGI had.
I also had a MacOS computer, which I used for video editing and running commercial software such as Photoshop. I liked it a lot, but was wedded to emacs for text editing and SGI or Linux for web serving. So as a result I needed to have two computers on my desk, a Mac for graphics and a SGI for Unix stuff.
Then MacOS X came out. It was a lot like SGI - it was like a designer Unix, with even more slickness. As a result, I gradually switched away from SGI, especially when it became clear that SGI was not updating their GUI to be competitive with what Apple has. I shed a tear for SGI, because their stuff was the best at the time. I wish they'd been able to make a more elegant transition to the world of cheaper computers.
For me, MacOS X truly combines the best of the open source and proprietary worlds. I can use a slick and stable GUI, running all the slickest proprietary applications such as Final Cut Pro and Photoshop. On the same machine I can also run all the open source web software I could ever want. And I can even copy that software and have it run fine on a Linux server without missing a beat.
So I know exactly where JWZ's coming from, and it's interesting that we followed such a similar path. I joined Apple before he did probably mainly due to my need for proprietary software like Final Cut and Photoshop.
I can say from my own experience that I've never been happier with my computing environment than I am now. We'll see how the more cynical JWZ does. No doubt he'll find much to hate and much to love.
D
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
I had to try three 802.11 USB sticks before I found one that actually worked on Windows. I have been through four Bluetooth USB devices, and none of them work correctly.
Macintosh is even worse: most of the USB hardware I have doesn't even have drivers for Macintosh, so it won't work at all. For supposedly supported hardware, the track record is not much better than on Windows.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Who's spreading FUD?
True, Macs work best with Apple hardware... which makes sense, since that means they've been validated to work together from day one.
Since most Macs sold today
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Same in Linux.
As for third-party USB hardware, I've not had a problem. My Macs have lots of USB accessories:
All of that hardware works with Windows and Linux as well.
Open source UNIX-alikes will never gain much market-share
Open source UNIX-alikes already have a larger market share than Macintosh.
True, Macs work best with Apple hardware... which makes sense, since that means they've been validated to work together from day one.
And the same is true for Linux and Windows: buy hardware that is supported by, and tested with, the OS, and you are going to be fine on any OS. Macintosh is no better than Linux in this regard.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Well apparently you are. The grandparent was pointing out that all platforms - including Windows and OSX - sometimes have problems working with various pieces of hardware. Your response is to start spouting techno bibblety-babble about how many accessories you own.
Here's one for you. I've got a Mac here which doesn't support a PCI TV Tuner card or a USB TV Tuner dongle. Both pieces work in Windows XP and in Linux (Debian). Now if I was to do a JWZ (JWZ being a verb for having
Re:Motivation? (Score:4, Interesting)
jwz is responsible for many significant *NIX applications [jwz.org].
Re:Whoop-De-Do (Score:4, Insightful)
It might, but that's not what I was pointing out. I was pointing out that part of the reason that Linux on the desktop is still sucking in many different ways is that people don't consider it interesting to go off and fix the suckiness, they instead go and start another browser project, or MySQL web interface, or whatever. This is both the strength of open source software, and it's weakness. It's like living in a town where everyone's jobs focused on what they wanted to do instead of what needs doing. Who'd pick up the garbage? Who'd dig the ditches and lay pipe in the rain? Who'd really be a plumber (literally working in other people's excrement) if there wasn't that large hourly rate? Same thing with open source. This is where M$ and others whom you pay money to do have an advantage becuase they can point to the crapwork that needs doing and tell someone working there to fix it or find another job. So it gets fixed.
Thinking of the authors of software as interchangeable is unrealistic
I never said that, or for that matter suggested that they switch projects. I just pointed it out as a glaring weakness in the OSS model. You said it yourself: People work on the projects that interest them.
Re:I Find Jamie's Lack of Faith Disturbing (Score:3, Interesting)
To be honest, I'm still waiting for a feature from BeOS to hit the "modern desktop operating system" scene: volume bars in the mixer for each different program that's using sound. So if I want to listen to music and play a game with obnoxious sound that can't be disabled (this happens with Java and Flash games mostly), I don't have to listen to the obnoxious sound.
I could probably create a user account, not put it in the "sound" group, and r
Re:Sounds like a hardware problem to me... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Sounds like a hardware problem to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
You couldn't be more wrong about OS X.
As a Mac user, the idea of a computer being unable to play an essentially unlimited number of simultaneous sounds is just foreign to me. I don't even think about it. I expect that I can leave iTunes playing music while playing a game that makes all sorts of noises and still hear alerts from iChat when I get an IM. There's nothing to configure, it just plain works.
The only time I've been amazed by sound on OS X was when I first played with Soundtrack. This program lets you create professional-quality music by mixing up to 99 tracks of layered audio. Not only does it mix them in realtime, but it can apply advanced audio effects in realtime as well.
Not once in the process do you have to care about audio hardware setup. Whatever you have plugged in -- analog speakers, USB speakers, S/PDIF -- the appropriate audio comes out of it.
Meanwhile, you need to spend an afternoon to get open-source UNIX to reliably make a sine-wave beep.
Perhaps you might want to review Apple's overview of OS X 10.4's Core Audio functionality [apple.com]?
Re:Fix Setup! (Score:4, Insightful)
These things are very obvious problems, at least to the users. But the developers have convinced themselves that these aren't problems so they just move on to adding new features and forget about these small issues. But its the details that are important to the users. I don't care if gnome supports SVG graphics or whatever, but I do want to be able to get my photos off my digital camera easily. I want to scan in something and print a copy. Why is that so hard?
This is the major flaw with open source software. Most of the developers are volunteering their time so they care about what interests them. Thats fine, no one should tell them what they should be spending their own time doing. But until Open Source "grows up" and starts listening to its users it will never be popular and shouldn't expect to be.
Re:Fix Setup! (Score:3, Interesting)
However, when someone has a problem, it seems like the solution is always the same: if you spent as much time coding a solution as you did bitching about it, it'd be fixed right now. To me as an end-user, that seems like a cop-out. To me as a programmer,
Multiple issues with that ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What "worry"? Linux is very easy to install and run
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".
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.
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.
I also don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
So instead of purchasing a $10 audio card (which will work on Linux) he gets an iMac.
There is a huge double-standard going on when it's about Linux and MacOSX:
Both Linux and MacOSX will run fine on supported hardware but Linux supports a lot more hardware. How exactly does that make MacOSX better?
Re:I also don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of the difference in definitions of the word "supported". In MacOS, that word usually means "auto-detected, driver already present or on companion CD-ROM, plug-and-play". In Linux, it can mean exactly the same, or it can mean "look online, read config file comments, experiment, deal with lack of meaningful error messages" and more.
In the end, whether you value time or money more is entirely your own decision, and the people who find the Mac "better" probably value their time more. You don't have to agree, but it probably helps to understand why.
Re:Earth to Jamie - Linux is NOT FINISHED (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Earth to Jamie - Linux is NOT FINISHED (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither is OS X or Windows. MacOS 9 is, and nobody's using it. OSsen are moving targets.
That said, "IT'S NOT FINSIHED!!!!" is no excuse, and the FOSS community's inability to take completely valid criticism and do something about it is one of the reasons it isn't "finished".
Re:Dark Side?!?! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's as if you can't open a menu without a "BUY ITUNES MUSIC" or "BUY GARAGEBAND ACCESSORIES" options being thrust in your face. You can't move for invitations to pay stump up more cash for
Re:Why is this bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you can configure it that way. Yes, perhaps he should know better.
However, if there's a solution out there that *just works*, and provides basically everything that you get with a Linux desktop and more as far as *desktop* functionality goes - what sane person wouldn't switch, if what they want is a usable desktop?
You shouldn't NEED to have a system administator background in order to con
Re:Zealots chase away yet more developers from Lin (Score:4, Insightful)
I was talking about people ragging on Jamie Zawinski for his decision to switch to the mac.
Does this decision all of a sudden make his past contributions less valuable? Ingrates, the lot of you.