[NTLUG:Discuss] Mac v. Linux

[Burton Strauss]

At the very least it will be an interesting coming out party for Open
Source...

Think about it - 

You can buy your own tools and lumber etc. and build your own house.

Or you can pay somebody to build one for you.

Alternative #1 gives you exactly what you want, Alternative #2 is very
attractive because there's somebody paid to make sure it's done right and
the rough edges are sanded smooth, etc.




-----Burton

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org] On Behalf
Of brian at pongonova.net
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 2:02 PM
To: NTLUG Discussion List
Subject: Re: [NTLUG:Discuss] Mac v. Linux

On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 02:29:58PM -0500, Jim Goode wrote:
> I offer the following opinion to this discussion. I have used many 
> types of hardware and software (IBM mainframe, Sun OS and Sun Solaris, 
> Mac, Windows, AIX, HP, DEC, and Linux) in my career and always found 
> the Mac OS to be the most intuitive for non-geek users (my own 
> immediate family included).

> People who like command line processing, or who really like digging 
> into the internals of an OS, generally choose non-Mac systems.

This is the very reasons why I'm doing a slow migration away from Linux and
towards OS X (in fact, the only job my Linux box does now is duty as a mail
server).  I enjoy working from the command line, but I also want a rich GUI
environment that is performance-oriented and works without a lot of arcane
magic.  I swore off KDE and Gnome many moons ago in favor of lightweight WMs
such as XFCE, but none hold a
candle to the OS X GUI.   

I've been using and programming on Linux boxes for over 10 years now, so I'm
not exactly a newbie...the decision I've made to migrate to the OS X
platform isn't something I came up with overnight in a dream, or listening
to one of Jobs' pieces of propaganda.  After 10 years of having to muck with
Linux internals, I've simply grown tired of it.
Building the kernel the first time is fun; after twenty or thirty times it's
just drudgery.  Likewise with building from source:  I can't tell you how
many times I've built KDE, XFCE and other WMs.
It's been a learning experience, but I'm at a point in my life where I just
want my computers to *work*.  

On a side note, ten years of Linux in the house was not enough to convince
my family to switch...the G4 I bought two years ago was an instant hit, and
we haven't looked back at Windows (or, to a lesser extent, Linux) since
then.

Just my 0.02 from someone who's been there and done all that...

  --Brian

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