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?

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!

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.

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.

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”.

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.