5 Things Linux does better than Mac OS X
I’ve been using Mac OS X alongside Debian since 2007 now, and I think I have a fairly good picture of how things work in both operating systems. In the end, the only feeling I got of Mac OS X is as if I were playing with Linux’ retarded little brother. Here are a few reasons why.
Mac fans, don’t hate me yet, I’ll be doing a reverse post in the next few days so stay tuned and then comment – I’d especially like to hear where I got it wrong!
Software Installation
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the most common installation methods on the Mac – there are two ways. Either you get an archive and you drag and drop the file onto your hard disk. The other way is an .exe-like installation package. I’m sorry Mac guys, but having to do this instead of just clicking the desired software in Synaptic or a simple apt-get is not easier. It’s just illogical. Oh, and try finding the settings, if you want to clean them off the computer after you “easily” uninstalled the app (you drag it into the Trash bin). I swear, this stuff is a bigger mess than the Windows 98 registry.
File Management
Yeah, I had to find an external program to see hidden files. With the Mac, if you erase a file on your thumb drive, it creates a hidden Trash file on it, with the erased files in it… as if grandmother will be able to remember that each partition has its own Trash. Finder is the worst file manager ever. And Cover Flow is useless. Mac OS X is probably the only platform where you have to pay to get decent software for advanced file management. I admit Nautilus isn’t the most descriptive name for a file manager in the history of computing, but who names a file manager ‘Finder’? That’s like naming a web browser “Writer”. It’s confusing!
Themeing and Window Management
I know you could switch the theme in Tiger, but in Leopard you cannot. So maybe it looks great, but don’t you get tired of not having choice? By the way, I hate not being able to maximize my window – some of us don’t need it “maximized just enough to show all content” because we have a shiny, distracting wallpaper. And we all know you can theme the pants off any Linux distro running X. But the funniest thing is probably the fact that Leopard is the first version that has virtual desktops. Welcome to advanced window management! Maybe maximizing is planned for Snow Leopard?
It’s has no themeing capabilities whatsoever compared to Gnome.
Plus, I still haven’t figured out how to open two instances of a program from the Dock. If you have to search Google to find that out…
The terminal/console/text thingy
Whatever you call it, you must admit that by incorporating it into your everyday work and not hiding/crippling it like on Apple’s OS, the terminal increases your productivity. Sometimes it’s just faster to type a simple command than to abuse your left-click finger. The terminal is a powerful productivity tool and if Windows doesn’t hide the command line, Mac OS X shouldn’t hide theirs. If they like to copy Linux so much, why not copy the terminal?
Security
I heard on a podcast that there isa Remote Desktop Application that simply uses root access without your knowledge. What’s up with that? I suppose there is a multitude of other apps that do that too. I mean it’s not necessary to actually make the user aware that there is a root user, but at least make him enter his password. That’s why you ask him for it in the install, right? It also prevents viruses to take over a Unix-like machine.
And why use the computer user’s full name in iChat? Not safe.
In conclusion, it’s true that Mac OS X tries hard to make everything easier for the users, but some quirks are plain illogical – there are a lot of cases where security or system stability is sacrificed in order to hide some technical part of the system. Currently it works, but if they continue going in that direction, It’ll be Apple’s Vista. At grandma’s, it can’t beat a good Linux setup.
[...] Apple news by Greg [...]
The way file managers handle FTP and other connections. Nautilus makes it seem that the remote website is almost real – you can move around, download, upload, rename files just like you’d do them if they were on your own comp.
http://www.ubuntuproductivity.com/journal/ubuntu-vs-mac-os-scorecard/
That’s a big harsh, comparing it to Win98…As for “maximizing”, that’s the way Mac does things, increasing the size to something that fits the contents of the window. The theming point is moot, as you’re actually paying Apple for their “visionary UI” (whether you believe in that or not, is another point)”With the Mac, if you erase a file on your thumb drive, it creates a hidden Trash file on it, with the erased files in it..” a lot of thumb drives do this, even if under Mac, Windows or Linux. The (often hidden) Trash folder serves a temporary storage….of sorts. The terminal point is up for personal choice. Some people just don’t feel comfortable using terminal, same way some people like pistachio ice cream and some like vanilla ice cream
Those are all good points, except for the first one.
Its true that having a software repository is great, but trying to install software that isn’t as trivial. For example, installing VMWare is a tedious task, no where near the simplicity of installing it on a Mac or Windows.
Your example of theming is some different GNOME colours? Try KDE for theming perhaps. In fact, try KDE for productivity, it lets you do stuff rather than telling you what you’ll do (isn’t that so Windows-ish? and Apple and Gnome users like that??)
If what you saying is true (why wouldn’t it be?) then I don’t know why people like it that much.
I prefer a package manager linked to some good repo’s to install stuff, but I could life with the drag to applications thing.
Having to use third party (non free) to see hidden files.
For crying out loud. For that reason alone I wouldn’t use osx.
Sure the theme looks nice, but I tried a replica on Ubuntu once (looked exactly like it) and got tired of the look in a week. Especially the dock would get on my nerves.
But the biggest shock for me is that applications can have root access without you having to enter your password.
This is mind boggling. That means OSX is a really, really, really unsecure OS. They now have a bigger market share than ever (in the US), so the spyware/virus horror stories on OSX will be common place in a few years.
lefty.crupps:
Not the old gnome vs kde stuff again.
I agree the different metacity colours is a bad example use here, but you know you can theme gnome much more.
Sure kde has more options, but at the expense of user friendlyness.
The “try kde for productivy” is not valid. You work the fastest with the DE or WM you know best.
I use fluxbox and because of various reasons, this helps me get stuff done the fastest.
@Bill – A replica of the theme is nothing without the bar. Often imitated…but it’s not the same. Hate it or love it…the closest thing that comes to it is a theme hack which moves the toolbar up there, but not the same :-/
On the installation of apps: I think that both the package management systems and the drag-and-drop-app system have their advantages and best purposes. The PMSes are best for updates of the operating system, vital apps and those packages which are already in the repository, while the drag-and-drop method is best for when one wants to find an app that is not available in the repo because, say, it is a beta app that the devs need someone to try out and reply with suggestions and bugs.
Such apps like the latter exist, especially on Launchpad and Sourceforge. And I think that, with the rise in popularity of desktop distributions which share the same PMS and package format, there will be a growing dissonance between the PMS/repository model and the list of developers who, say, will not just develop exclusively for GNU/Linux, but will also develop exclusively for a particular desktop-centric distro like Ubuntu. I think that, at that point, they’ll want to go for a software distribution method that will go straight to the user rather than go through the repository middleman.
I’m not saying that the repository and PMS isn’t necessary (it’s best for the retaining of software that is already vetted for stability and security by the repo maintainers), just that it will have a separate purpose from the software that hasn’t been vetted for stability or security or is being vetted for such (aka the bleeding edge stuff), and thus can’t be accepted into the repository and, thus, the PMS.
On the other points, I think that OS X sacrifices alot of Unix norms (theming, terminal, etc.) in order to give the people who use it a sense of “empowerment”, as if they have found all that the computer is useful for. I can’t say that this is a bad thing for them, but it is a bad thing for those who are used to mucking within the internals of the software in order to gain more out of it.
So I guess one’s mileage may vary with either system, depending on how far and in which direction one wants to go with them. I personally come from a Windows+Firefox background, and when I first tried using a Mac mini at my tech school, I thought it felt crippled compared to the Windows UI; however, I can still respect the OS X interface a bit better than the GNOME/KDE way, at least since it places much more emphasis on the GUI than do KDE or GNOME. Or at least it cuts out the non-GUI stuff as much as possible (unless, in the case of the OS X terminal, it is crucial in some way to the functionality of the OS).
This seems to be a really common theme this week. I was putting a list together, and there’s another one on Digg.
WRT DnD installation — A lot of Linux programs distributed as binaries can do it, too. You just double-click on the .tar.gz, drag the application folder to your (I use ~/bin) and double-click on the binary. These are not, however, system-wide installations. For that, you’d want to become root and move them to /opt. Same idea, though.
The hidden files part of your complaint has confused me a bit. You do not need to use an external program to see hidden files. With one quick google you will find a command that will show hidden files in finder.
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
To hide them again change TRUE to false. As for your complaints about command line input as I have just said Mac does have a unix terminal. Just type terminal into spotlight and it should be the top hit. I’m no terminal expert but as far as I know it incorporates the same functionality as any unix terminal.
Keiran, you just proved his point. Why should you have to “Google” for something that is BASIC functionality. I can understand searching for something that is out of the ordinary, but out-of-the-box, LINUX’s file management allows much more flexibility.
Kieran’s point would still stand that you don’t need an external program. You don’t buy a mac to fiddle around with it’s internal workings. You buy it for an easy to use out-of-the-box experience.
Remote Desktop Application? Which one? To do what? A little documentation would be nice. You heard on a podcast? Doesn’t cut the mustard.
As for the terminal, I use it every day on Leopard, it does everything I expect it to do? How is it crippled? Just because you have to go find it ONCE and then drag a link into Quickbar? Or because the root user is disabled by default and it uses sudo to give you permisions?
Give me a break.
Ken, I understand your point but any user without computing experience would need help (from another user or Google) to find out how to do something like show/hide files. A problem that I have with the command on Linux (at least the distros I’ve used (Gnome based) is that in the file manager show/hide files is simple menu command. Most novice linux users would be able therefore to view my hidden files. On windows it is a little hard to do making my files more secure and on mac os x it is quite difficult to do making my hidden files pretty secure from co-workers/family members snooping around my system. What I mean is that in Linux the show/hide files functionality is too visible rendering it almost useless.
> Kieran Says:
> Ken, I understand your point but any user without
> computing experience would need help (from another
> user or Google) to find out how to do something like
> show/hide files.
It sounds like you’re relying on ‘security through obscurity’ which is not any security at all, Kieran.
To lefty.crupps
It sounds like you have no reading comprehension. What does any of that have to do with security?
Could not disagree more about the terminal. I use the OS X terminal every day, it works swimmingly for me. I love the tabs. I started with xterm in 1987, if it matters. I’ve been running debian since 1998 or 99.
You don’t have to hunt for the terminal. Click on the spotlight icon and type the ‘t’ character. I find spotlight tremendously useful. It’s painful to watch colleagues hunting for files in the windows explorer. If I need to search the entire disk, find(1) and locate(1) come installed with OS X.
[...] 5 Things Linux does better than Mac OS X I’ve been using Mac OS X alongside Debian since 2007 now, and I think I have a fairly good picture of how things work in both operating systems. In the end, the only feeling I got of Mac OS X is as if I were playing with Linux’ retarded little brother. Here are a few reasons why. [...]
Did you know that OS X.0 shipped with a local root exploit that some users accidentally got into? Also, the first version of Safari by default would run any shell scripts inside archives that you downloaded.
In this context, the Debian SSL problem is pretty tame
I’ve recently taken advantage of Gnome’s theming abilities to actually give me a productivity advantage; rather than have big thick title bars and lots of whitespace in between the widgets, I’m currently using a Metacity theme that removes the titlebar, and a GTK theme that removes a lot of extraneous whitespace. It leaves much more room for text and other window contents. And it looks 1337 too
I haven’t done a Google search, but I believe it’s impossible to remove title bars on OS X.
@Daeng Bo
He’s depending on his little ‘hidden files’ to prevent people from seeing stuff he doesn’t want them to see. When really, he should be encrypting those files or setting up a different user account for the people using his computer. That’s what it has to do with security.
I think your the one that needs to work on his reading comprehension.
Thanks for explaining my point bjb_nyj101. And yes I do encrypt my files but I was just talking about minimum security. I would never hide anything important and asume it was safe.
I have to agree with you. I’ve been running Kubuntu for about eighteen months, and have also been using Ubuntu on another computer for a while, and I recently bought a MacBook, and I found many of the same issues. The bash shell seems to be crippled compared to its Linux counterpart – you can’t seem to launch applications from the command line the way you can in Linux (for instance, enter firefox http://www.google.com to open Google in Firefox), which is incredibly handy if you’re using a minimal window manager as these often allow you to use text files to define your own keyboard shortcuts. And I find the installer is very fiddly – apt-get is FAR superior.
As for file managers, I can think of two awesome ones – Konqueror rules, and Krusader is pretty good too, but I have yet to find one I link in OS X.
I’d also add that I can’t find a terminal emulator I like in OS X. I don’t like iTerm. Yakuake is great in KDE, and I like Konsole too, or ROXTerm for minimal window managers.
All in all, to me OS X does feel like a crippled Linux distro, but slower. I recently tried running Gentoo in VirtualBox on my MacBook and on my Philips running Ubuntu (both computers have similar processors and amounts of RAM), and the Philips was a LOT faster. And I find I can get a lot more done in Linux as Katapult and Gnome Do seem to be a lot more flexible and powerful than Spotlight, and Quicksilver seems very fiddly in comparison.
Amen brother. I’m dual booting Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and OS X 10.5.4
I have to agree with you. OS X is definitely a crippled linux distro; and it’s true – to get the full potentialout of my MacBook Pro, one has to run a different OS. That’s a joke on Jobs for sure.
Ha!
The thing that really gets me is that people are porting FOSS for Mac, but then charging money for it. Take for example Macgimp – GIMP is great under linux, a pain in the ass to install on OS X, but the bastards who ported it charge for Macgimp! I’m not exactly sure how that isn’t violating the GNU licence, actually…
Two gripes you didn’t mention: Ever notice that copying a folder onto another folder with the same name doesn’t merge, but replaces? What other (common) OS does that?
Ever try to ‘move’ files instead of copying and then deleting them?
Regarding security (maybe other people don’t get this): When a program is asking for access to my key chain, often if I hit ‘deny’, it keeps popping up requests over and over again! So in order to escape the infinite pop ups, you are forced to press ‘accept!’ If that’s not a security flaw, I don’t know what is. Why give you the option if you don’t have a choice?
Regarding the terminal: Crippled in this way- all .bash_profiles .bashrc .profiles need to be written from scratch, and it doesn’t natively include any common program locations besides /bin/
*no gcc compiler seems to be installed out of the box, so compiling packages such as ‘wget’ for instance fails
*no man or program for looking at manuals
*it isn’t a color terminal so programs like ls can’t easily and clearly tell you file types, etc.
I’m sure there are others I’m not thinking of right now, but the main point is that without a package manager such as aptitude or synaptic, these files are spread all over the internet, and the basic suite from any linux distro takes up only a few MB, so why not include them for those of us who DO actually need to do things on their computers instead of play with the pretty mac graphics?
One last note: Whatever they were trying to achieve with ‘spaces’ or the new visual effects have been already perfected by Linux. Look at compiz, for instance- if that isn’t a testiment to FOSS I don’t know what is.
Cheers!
It’s not against the GNU license to charge, but you have to make the source code available
Mac OS X sometimes is *tidier* than Linux.
Unless you’re using GoboLinux, Linux file hierarchy quite cluttered like traditional UNIX.
there are usr,bin,usr/bin,usr/share,etc,opt,usr/local/bin, etc.
Newbies easily got lost.
Mac OS X meanwhile hide those file hierarchy (yes, they’re still exist) and use the one based on NeXTStep, which the file hierarchy is different (and also tidy).
If you don’t use ‘sudo apt-get purge’, you still left those messy configuration files.
In Linux and Mac OS X, you can delete your hidden confs
in your Home folder (files and folders beginning with ‘.’)
Why don’t they have more 3d effects?
“But the biggest shock for me is that applications can have root access without you having to enter your password”
Umm, it will prompt you for a password whenever it does something as root (or tries to). Once you’ve entered it it’ll not ask you again for 10 minutes (unless you set it up to request it always, which can be annoying). Apps don’t have root access unless you let them, that’s simply untrue. Tell me of a situation that is repeatable that proves your point, because I know of none.
@Nicholas
Never a truer word spake.
This post is just FUD. Theme? Can you really compare a macosx look n feel with all the broken/damaged/badly or poorly designed Gnome themes? Are kidding me?
The installation is harder? Really? is it really? Have you tried installing/configuring skype on Ubuntu lately? I’m talking about Ubuntu because OpenSUSE with KDE for instance is practically so bugged up that turns up into something unusable.
The ._trash folders you mention, are being erased from you system as soon as you “empty you trash”.
Now what I’m looking for is a program for Gnome that does what spotlight does on MacOSX: Search for text inside the files not only indexing the filenames…
anyway. Linux is far and away from being comparable to OSX.
Panagiotis Atmatzidis,
That was quite a rant. Fire up Ubuntu and hit ALT-F3 to get the search you want. Go to the Skype site and install according to the site’s directions. Open the configuration dialog and check that it’s all working.
[...] 5 Things Linux does better than Mac OS X [...]
I think generally it’s just that apple does things differently. I agree that skinning os x is near impossible, but everything else is a point of perspective. OS x was designed for total newbies and thus they try to make things as easy as possible. But if you know what you’re looking for you can dig much deeper. Just about everything you can do in another operating system there is a way to do in OS X. It’s just different from how you would normally do it. That is something that would annoy us users who’ve used and gotten used to other operating systems first but for people who get a mac and stay with a mac then there is no issue. As for hidden files, simple terminal command will reveal them. you can use a program like app delete or something similar to delete all files related to a certain program on your hard drive. Honestly there really is no argument its just a matter of preference.
This happened to me today!
A plug-in of Safari was rendered incompatible because of the recent security update of Safari. A message about this pops up every time I start Safari. I searched the name of the plug-in in Spotlight so know where to remove it, without luck (it only listed the downloaded installer packages and the decompressed directory in my Download directory). I then googled to the website of the plug-in to check a updated version and was told that this plug-in is no longer necessary since Safari has got the feature built in. It suggests me to remove a bundle in a specific directory. Wait, but I already searched that name in Spotlight without luck.
So I searched the base name again in Spotlight, still no good. Then I searched it in Finder search box and tried pressing all possible combination of buttons in the search toolbar, still nothing.
Ok! I entered the ‘find’ command with a somewhat vague name in terminal! Yet, it’s there, with other similar named file or directories. I guess it will be faster to copy the full directory name from the ‘find’ output and paste it after the ‘rm -Rf’ command. Yet, I somehow selected the wrong line and copy/paste a different directory name in the ‘rm -Rf’ command and gone a printer driver.
I can’t believe it. Both the intended plug-in bundle and the deleted printer driver reside in the ‘/Library/Application Support/’ directory and I didn’t prefix the ‘rm’ command with ‘sudo’ (I intentionally run the ‘rm’ command without sudo to make sure I got the corret path; I expected to get an error message about permission denied).
How can I delete a system level directory without ‘sudo-ing’?
So I checked the access mode of the ‘/Library/Application Support/’ directory and found the owning group ‘Admin’ has write permission to it and I’m of cause a member of ‘Admin’.
What this means? You can wipe out most of everything in the ‘/Library/’ or ‘/Application/’ directory without sudo-ing. Am I running a BSD Unix based OS?
Haters gonna hate
Can anybody explain the advantage of having the menu options for various applications always be on the very top of the desktop instead of the top of whatever window the application is in? Is this only counter-intuitive to me because I am used to it being the other way, or does this just suck completely. I am inclined to believe it’s just retarded.
Thank goodness someone else hates the finder.
Here is my list of UNFORGIVABLE finder behavior:
(note this is for tiger 10.4)
* when you rename a file (or create a new folder) it often dissappears from under your mouse and you’ve got to go find it again. (I think this is why it’s called finder)
* click on a file when the finder window is too small and the file pane slides leftward and all you see in the finder is the preview pane. (this happens in column view) It is REALLY annoying when an application moves contents under your mouse.
*hangs when network is unresponsive.
*no refresh button
*when you set a file type to “always open with..” you are utterly ignored.
*if you have detailed list view with file size and other file attributes showing, you sometimes have to scroll right to see them, and the file name scrolls off the pane and by the time you see the attribute the file name is no longer visible.
* AND THE NUMBER ONE PROBLEM: IN ORDER TO MOVE A FILE CONVENIENTLY, A FILE MANAGER MUST BE ABLE TO SHOW ANY TWO FOLDERS IN THE FILE HIERARCHY AT THE SAME TIME. FINDER CANNOT DO THIS! WTF???!
If you have two folders that are deep in different places on your system, it’s almost impossible to easily transfer files between them within a single finder window. I know there are ways to do it but they are ALL incredibly stupid. Nautilus and Windows Explorer are both WAY easier to use in this respect. Both are able to do a one to many folder transfer without any scrolling. Every time I have to open two finder windows I feel a deep throbbing resentment !!#$@#$
There are more but I’m tired. None of these is terrible by themselves but together they turn file management into tedious work. UNFORGIVABLE B&*(S^&T
@Ryan – It’s about uniformity. Yes, it does bug the hell out of some people, but I know that to get to any application’s preference pane, all I have to do is press Command+tab to switch to it, and press Command+, Also, apps built on Cocoa will often let you integrate with core parts of OSX, as well as functionality built into other Cocoa apps. I can send stuff to and from apps, such as email data, this or that file, etc
@tom – The first is clearly a Tiger issue, as it doesn’t happen in Leopard >.> The second, the windows switches in whatever distance you move in Leopard, and resizing resizes to match the contents. Hanging when network is unresponsive is something that doesn’t happen to me, and I have probably the crappiest wireless of my neighborhood. No refresh button, true, but any changed files show automatically. Overall, power users do move away from Finder’s limited offering and use apps such as Path Finder or Forklift. If you want to remain consistent across platforms, you might want to try the excellent muCommander: http://www.mucommander.com/
@Ryan: I was thinking about it the other day. I came to the conclusion that it was a design decision of uniformity & not distracting the person (like, ‘Oh, no! multiple toolbars on the screen! how can anyone ever get about’), and to reduce productivity – ie, want to see the toolbar for the other app? focus it first!
@ Ryan: Fitts’s law. The idea is that, the larger something is, the easier it is to aim for, and thus the faster you can be with the mouse. For smaller things, if you move the mouse too fast you’ll overshoot, so you have to approach it more slowly.
Since the mouse stops moving at the edge of the screen, you can move the mouse as fast as you want without missing something, since your mouse will be right on it when it stops at the edge of the screen. This means that things placed on the edge of the screen effectively have infinite width, so in order to build an efficient UI, you should place as many important things on the edge of the screen as you can.
Thus, the menus show up on the top on a Mac.
http://asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
Here’s a great article on it, read up if you want.
8 months already with mac (windows / linux user before).
No complains to date.
Mac have a lot of incredible features I never found on windows or linux.
@tom:
“when you rename a file (or create a new folder) it often dissappears from under your mouse and you’ve got to go find it again. (I think this is why it’s called finder)”
About the “copy-paste-delete” thing, you can “MOVE” files to any drive pressing the “command key” while dragging.
I just in love with this marvelous system

· I have never saw such thing.
“*no refresh button”
· I have never see a use to that… refresh what? the desktop? its not windows dude.
If you have multiple windows of the file manager open, sometimes you can do something in one window, but it won’t show in the other. Likewise, you can create a new file using an application, but it won’t show up in the already open file manager window sometimes. Hence, you have a “Refresh” button rather than force it to update by navigating away then navigating back to that folder.
Modern file managers are good enough at refreshing themselves, so this button isn’t really needed anymore, at least not enough to make it appear in the toolbar in my opinion. Though it at least should be an option for those who like it there.
As well, some users simply have OCD and it bothers them not to have an option they’re used to always seeing, even if they never use it. I’m this way myself with certain things, though not with the refresh button in Thunar…
OS X is inferior to Linux. Just because the Linux interface isn’t great (Not really true. GNOME and Xfce beat the OS X interface and no one can convince me otherwise.)
Under the hood? Linux beats the snot out of OS X because OS X is (Barely) build off of (Obsolete) BSD. Linux is 100% its own thing, not really derived from anything, just based off of a concept that most Mac and Windows users sadly fail to grasp because they think that’s how operating systems are supposed to work. You Mac users depend way too much on GUIs, I swear. CLIs can run circles around GUIs, learning curve is irrelevant, too bad Apple cripples BASH in OS X, you’d be surprised what I can do in BASH on Linux that I can’t in OS X.
Of course Apple just takes from FOSS and doesn’t give back, like CUPS, BASH, or even its own damn kernel.
Of course, most Mac users are too dense to know what UNIX is anyways, so I probably wasted my time typing in “BSD” didn’t I?
I can see there are some Linux talibans here. I once was one.
There is no point in saying Mac is an obsolette BSD, and you don’t seem to have any evidence of that.
About the terminal and its (large) capabilities, normal users pray for not having to mess with a terminal in their lives. Why should mac go against that if it tries to make it all easy?
I have been a Fedora, Slackware and Ubuntu user and I’ve made test with my parents and my girlfriend, who always ended telling me to install windows again. With the mac os x that is not happening… they do notlook back because it gives what they need.
I’m a programmer and I’m also pleased with it, although I confirm that at first you have to get used to it, because it’s just different.
Installations in mac are no way near the win32 registry, in fact, they are more like the opossite. In applications there are “files” those files contain inside them all the needed extra files (called dependencies). It’s like a boundle of autonom applications (like eclipse ide, just the same).
I once used the linux themes that simulate tha mac interface (with the bar also) and I now can say that they are so different, that can’t be compared at all…
Good luck to the blind people who flames so much, you’r just that: blind.
Linux is good for its flexibility and stability.
Mac is what any commercial OS should be… a really good & complete OS.
I’m a programmer too. Sounds like you’re trying to appeal to authority, a logical fallacy.
OS X is complete. Sure. Good? I don’t think so. I used it for one week and I couldn’t stand it, and I really gave it a shot.
The problem is its BSD underpinnings. BSD has become irrelevant except to companies like Apple and Microsoft (Who mostly just want to exploit its code rather than actually contribute upstream. The only reason BSD is around is because of its way-too-permissive license gives software companies an incentive to steal code with no accountability.) because Linux matured and obsoleted it. It’s a harsh thing to say about BSD, but it’s not alone in being obsoleted by Linux.
It’s become replaced on the Internet for the same reason IBM is phasing out AIX or Bell Labs is actually developing Plan 9 to replace UNIX: It’s obsolete.
I think the only reason Apple didn’t make OS X a Linux was the GPL. They didn’t want to make their entire system distribution open, which most Linux software is GPL while most BSD software is BSD.
Now, before I start sounding like I’m amongst those anti-Apple crew, and spout untrue nonsense about Apple not recontributing altogether, I’m AWARE of its maintainership of things like CUPS and libxml2. I do fault them for being extremely choosy about what free software they actually implement while still claiming to be open. LINUX is open, OS X just happens to have FOSS in its toolchain.
If I *really* had to be against a company, it’d easily be Microsoft, because not only do they contribute nothing but to their own stuff, they’re also extremely aggressive and, since 1998, have taken an anti-FOSS stance.
I have totally changed my mind about Mac OS X. While I still love linux, now I have actually used Mac OS X.
Smokes.
You linux users who havent used it DO SO!
“I have totally changed my mind about Mac OS X. While I still love linux, now I have actually used Mac OS X.
Smokes.
You linux users who havent used it DO SO!”
Already have. Didn’t like it. Linux for me.
I enjoyed your sense of humor, I’m not a mac user, so nothing to say for now, except thanks for the effort.
Macs are the sh-it. linux can suck one
“Macs are the sh-it. linux can suck one”
More eloquent words coming from the Cult of Steve Jobs.
Guess what, Linux can do a lot more than OS X can. This list was the hell of a lot more conservative than most pointing out just how pathetic Mac OS X is.
Okay, I challenge you Mac fanboys to name me one thing OS X can do that Linux cannot do. Not Mac SOFTWARE. OS X. Assuming you morons can tell the difference between iTunes and OS X, which I doubt, since most Mac users can’t tell the difference between a widget toolkit and a device driver anyway.
Oops, you can’t.
Dude, I am typing this on a linux box, but still I disagree with almost every point.
1) Whether a centralized package manager is an advantage or not is a highly subjective opinion. Advantages of package management are obvious, no redundant libraries, update warnings, etc; disadvantages are library conflicts, “package hell” and other headaches distro maintainers must contend with. Your point is an opinion, not really a fact.
2) Moving something to trash in a GNOME desktop also creates a hidden folder with the trash inside(.trash), and so does windows. Every desktop does this apparently, not only Finder. Linux DEs can be changed, but by your same argument (grandma’s lack of tech savvy), grandma wouldn’t have a clue of how to enable this in linux (most howto’s entail “command line”-fu, or installing ubuntu tweak, something not in the repository (AFAIK). All DE’s do this, so this is what sucks about the rest of them as well.
3) I thought the whole point of the Aqua desktop was to give you a theme so ridiculously beautiful, you wouldn’t want to change it? I dunno, it just wouldn’t be Mac OS without the default theme. This is again an opinion, and not really a fact.
4) Like the heading, this whole point was rather vague and wishy washy. Any facts on what program exactly has this horrible flaw? Any figures on how many other programs do this? No, just theories… And please be aware that OS X is derived from BSD Unix, which has a much longer lineage and pedigree than Linux, if you want to bring up who copies who. Another pertinent fact to keep in mind is that the GNOME desktop was formed to emulate the Mac OS desktop, much like KDE emulates Windows. While there is nothing wrong with this, claiming the opposite is just plain wrong.
While I use linux because I support FOSS on the desktop, I would switch to a BSD in a heartbeat if they worked better on laptops. It’s just a subjective opinion of mine, but I think linux users complain about Windows and Mac users acting like asses to them because their OS’s are more popular, then turn around and behave exactly the same way towards BSD users (“BSD? Whats that?”, “You use BSD? You and three other people”.
Someone up in the comments chain claimed linux has obsoleted BSD. While linux does attract more mind-share and more developers than BSD, and I admit BSD (well, FreeBSD that I know of) has a lot of cruft they keep around for historical reasons (weird kernel defaults and command sematics), I wouldn’t go so far as to say they have obsoleted it.
Linux and other strong copyleft GPL’d software tends to be developed by for-profit companies and grassroots projects, which is to say people developing an asset that they want to share without losing out. BSD Unix, the LLVM, the Apache web server and other open source projects using weak copyleft licenses are typically developed by alliances of major industry players (Apache), or by research groups at universities (BSD, LLVM), these groups tend not to care about other developers using their code and not sharing improvements because of the assumption that they have so much resources, and are working on something so esoteric, that code thieves could not keep up with improvements to the code base.\
One generalization that seems to hold up between Linux and the BSDs is that Linux is designed by engineers, what works and works reliably are much valued. The BSDs are mostly designed by researchers. A fully functional production OS is not the main priority (DragonflyBSD, NetBSD), exciting new features, elegant device drivers, and new concepts (that all soon flow downstream into linux) are.
Well i get what you’re talking about, but most of those issues you seem to have found are only relevant for geeks like you (hope this doesn’t offend you).
The truth is, for me and a lot of people, Macintosh is the best computer you could ever get, because it’s perfect for life,it’s simple and it does what you want, how you want it to be done, easily!
When you work with linux you waste a lot of time finding out how to reinvent the wheel, when you could be using that time working on something that matters…
I would like to correct this thread.
1. Installing apps is very is easy on a mac, yes. Download. Double-click/Drag/Whatever. Done. Maybe a restart, one in while. But nothing more. Uninstalling is easy too, as you said. But comparing it to windows’ reg is completely idiotic. The registry is the worst stinking auto-corrupting piece of shit of computer history. The only thing that stays on your mac after you delete software is library / pref files, which do not take hd space at all and makes it easy to get back to the same point in a further reinstall. There are many handy apps to clean your mac up, or you could just do it yourself, in minutes, if it’s absolutely necessary. Plus, these out-of-package files (because apps on a mac are a bunch of standalone packages that work by themselves) are stored in a way you can easily access, share or edit them. They are separated in convenient Library folders, one main and one user-related. Ditto with what marko said.
2. It is not true that you can’t change the theming in leopard. Ever heard of Magnifique ? And that is if you want some covenient program for you to do it ; Aqua resides is in big graphic library files that are easily editable and swapable.
3. You’re all wrong on Security. OS X is FreeBSD. OS X is UNIX. Remote Desktop is an admin network utility which you can allow permanent root access for the time of a session, matter of practicality. Everytime you modify a system file or anything that can harm your mac, it asks for an admin password ; having a lock/unlock feature is IMO handy. OS X is SALTED, and as ingenious in matter of security that linux.
4. What’s the POINT of showing hidden files if you’re as much a newb to not know
$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
‘Linux’ users pretend ‘Linux’ is the best, but what really are you all talking about ? What’s so powerful and NICE about Linux ? I own a mac since three years and it has never failed. No kernel panics, no broken parts either, no viruses, no loss of data, no speed reductions, … and never done a fresh install since three years. A Mac runs better on the long run. And Snow Leopard is really fast. Checkout the benchmarks. Of course you sometimes have to clean it up. That’s part of life, and every os too. There are tons of mac apps out there to fill all of my needs. If windows is the more popular os, it still doesn’t have half as much practical and powerful apps than on x. And who runs Linux, really. Hey, I can run gcc nativly too ! Actually, it has been easier to compile source code downloads on os x than on Fedora. When you write for os x, you reach a whole bunch of people. The more people get the hands on your project, the more tested it is and the more people tend to contribute. Many of the gnu projects ported to mac can be obtained via terminal with the help of a simple utility called MacPorts. Fixes all dependencies by itself and does make install clean the thing for you. There is nothing CONVENIENT Linux can do on a regular basis forme. OF course it could possibly do everything I need, too. But does it ? Do I have all of this time to waste on figuring out how everything works ? Developing an interface for mac is piece of cake. And the core of os x is far more advanced than what many linux users think. What do you end with ? Easy to use and powerful apps. What’s with the hate ? I don’t hate linux. The penguin can offer me some things nothing else can. Even windows has its exclusives (think of cell phone utilities and else). But the good thing is : I can run both of these os on my mac. I can dual/triple boot them and share files between them. Still with I get to accomplish 99,9 % of my needs running iTunes / Safari / Pages / Adium / Azureus, Vuze / CyberDuck / Soulseek / VLC / Toast / Photoshop / iWeb / Xcode on mac.
@r4nard I think you are just another mac fan who never used Linux. all arguments apart, my feeling about these 2 things: linux and Mac can be summarized as follows:
Linux is meant for intelligent chunk of human species
Mac is meant for common man with relatively lower IQ
I once asked a “mac-fan” to show me if he could boot his mac book pro in init 3 mode (@macusers it means to boot directly into terminal like environment without X) and he couldn’t and later googled and still couldn’t….and then it was easy for me to decide that I would never buy a mac or use mac os or whatever
cheers!
Looks like I’m going to have to unsubscribe from these comments. Good work keeping this going for 2 years. Has it really been 2 years? Wow, it’s been 2 years since I ‘met’ you on identi.ca and IRC, Gregor!
Anyway
@Aamir:
Command+S bring you into a text-only environment as root.
Command+C boots from a CD, which can be used to boot into a Linux livecd or the OSX CDs if you want to do a complete wipe and reinstall.
So yes, it can be done rather easily. Your ‘mac-fan’ friend could indeed have been ‘common folk’ as you so say in that haughty way. For most mac ‘users’ entering into a console is a waste of time, as the real strength is in the apps. I recently read about Lightworks being ‘open sourced’ (though no word on licensing yet). If Lightworks were available under a good license in Linux, I could see myself replacing FCP. As it stands, there’s nothing ‘free’ on Linux that gives that level of video editing. As for audio, I’ve tried most apps, and most don’t compare (yet) either. I have hopes for Jokosher being a good substitute for GarageBand in the future, but I’d also like something with a bit more powerful than that. I can’t find it on Linux. I’ve even used Lilypond and suggested it to friends for musical notation, but most find Finale to be much, much easier to use.
If you want some sort of server, then yes, Linux is the way to go. If you want a simple desktop, Linux is also the way to go (I’m torrenting Ubuntu 10.04 as we speak) but there’s just a few things it can’t do right yet. There’s nothing wrong with people preferring something that works in that area. Doing so doesn’t make them any less ‘smart’ than you. Grandma wouldn’t know how to do half the stuff you and I do on Linux, including booting init3 on her Ubuntu desktop, so why should that be a measure of the ‘smartness’ of the average mac grandma?