Registered: Apr 2000
Location: St Petersburg Fla
Posts: 224

Hey, desktop Linux fans: Buy a Mac... or just go away

The PC vs Mac Desktop flame wars are an ongoing legend.

Possible Linux desktop warfront:

Excerpt from http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/fil...0020228,00.html

"If the proponents of desktop Linux are really honest, they will move to a Unix platform that has all the things Linux lacks: a great user interface, a large number of applications, support of a profitable major vendor, an industry guru who's taken extremely seriously, and even the cover of Time magazine.

I'm talking about buying a Macintosh, of course. But running OS X would actually cost these Linux geeks money, and that's something I am not sure any of them are willing to spend. Still, if these people hated all things Microsoft as much as many of them proclaim to, you'd think rallying around Unix-based OS X would be the best way to advance their cause.

But only if they're willing to put some money where their much-too-loud mouths are."

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Posts: 415

i will freely admit that i like linux because it's powerful, yet ahrd to use, so i can feel all smug when i talk to the peasents about "configuring the dns variable in net.conf" and makig "/dev/null" jokes.

but you are right. ever since mac os6, i have disliked the lack of flexability and configurability of the mac os. osx changes all that, and were it not fot the fact that i cant afford one, I would take a tip-top of the line mac over a similarily priced dell.

of course, i am NOT really much of a linux zealot, and so for price and gaming reasons (though to be honest, my favorite game, tacops, has a current mac version as well), i am stuck with my amd tbird 1ghz and gf2mx400


oh yeah, i like being easily able to overclock my hardware to squeeze just that little bit more performance from my stuff, and i dont imagine that's as easy to do on a mac.

.

quote:

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But only if they're willing to put some money where their much-too-loud mouths are.

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-thorin

I have a webcomic. You should read it, or I may do something rash. <b><a href=http://driveby.keenspace.com/>Drive-by Loitering</a></b> is updated every monday, wednesday and friday.

<!img src=http://www.frontfly.com/myrouter/vcsig2.gif alt="Soundsgood is too elite for the punks."><img src=http://www.frontfly.com/vcsig.gif ><!img src=http://www.frontfly.com/myrouter/vcsig2.gif alt="Soundsgood is too elite for the punks.">

Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

Linux is more of a philosophy to quite a few people (and one that a capitalist Apple will never cater to). It's the whole GPL thing.

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-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Registered: Feb 2002
Location: I think I want to live in Germanium when I grow up
Posts: 29

Why is it, there is always someone who claims to know how I should interact with the world?

Varient on the theme:

Why do many people think they know how to spend (or not spend) my money better than I do?


Another varient:

Care to show me how to use the toilet?


Final Comment:

It is the very core of being a Huxlian Monkey that make you unaware of your bashing on the keys hoping something that makes sense will ultimately be produced.

Please try to think on your own before you borrow someone eleses thoughts of what the world should be. For those of us that know how the world really is, we'd really appreciate it.

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Out of my skull, back in five minutes
Posts: 1435

hmp32, would you please get off your high horse?
And for that matter, what's that in your signature that follows "Talk back to" which is causing display problems?

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Registered: Feb 2002
Location: I think I want to live in Germanium when I grow up
Posts: 29

Yorick,

Please refer to my post above.

2nd, you were right, that signature was an accidental cut'n'paste when I set up the visorcentral stuff and has been removed.

Have a nice night.

-henry

Registered: Dec 1999
Location: "Children are a gift from God, they are a reward"
Posts: 1049

I have had Macs, Ataris, Compaqs, Fujitsus, and Dells. Hardware wise only the Compaq sucked. I liked the Mac interface, but when it came time to upgrade they were too expensive, so I tried Windows. I haven't had any complaints with my Dell- My wife uses WinME and is happy. I am using Linux on my other computers (including a partition on the Dell) because I thought it would be fun and I wanted a relatively cheap hobby.

I am happy with my choice and could dare less what a "monkey with a keyboard" writing for zdnet says. I'm sure if someone wanted to they could explain to him a better car, house, lifestyle choice, etc. The guy was just writing that to generate some controversey. It's an old trick of hacks, I mean writers, when they don't know what to write, they insult someone. I assume he really doesn't know why people who choose Linux as an operating system do.

Hey Yorick, every day I leave my house in the morning it's snowing. By the time I drive the 46 miles to Latham the snow is gone, but the temp. is usually lower there! My driveway has had ice sheets on it for months! I'm going insane... please call someone and have them do something about the weather.
Thanks!

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Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

I thought the article was pure flamebait because of those last paragraphs. I hate people lumping Linux users together as cheap just as much as when I hear people dissing the Mac. I should know, as I shrugged off the Mac until I actually used it. I have never used Linux, but I still respect it as an OS.

As someone who moved to the Mac a year ago, I can say that I did it <b>because</b> of its Unix underpinnings. In my other job I support Windows and really wanted to expand my horizons. I wanted to learn *nux but didn't want to have to primarily use the CLI again. I loved it in DOS, but wanted something more. So I bought a Mac just before OS X came out. I couldn't be happier. Of course, I haven't learned that much unix stuff yet because people keep writing Mac apps that do it for me.

BTW Thorin, you can overclock the processor(s) in Macs. People have done it to TiBooks, and I read the otherday about someone getting another 200MHz out of the 1GHz PowerMac.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 638

I must say, I put zdnet (and anyone who actually belives anything they read on it) int he same catagory of TechTV. Sure, they have some great articles and great stories, but they never go into the whole depth, and they always bias towards one product. Now I'm not saying that Linux is great, I personally use Unix, Linux, Windows, OS 9, OS X and Palm OS, so I have a very broad basis of what I like and what I don't. Linux is not my personal favorite, but it does come in close second (what can I say, Mac OSX is amazing), and it is much much better than Microsoft. A great way of backing this up is the support of Sun and IBM in the Linux world (semi support of SUN, I know they have bashed it, but they also support it at other times). Now if a company like IBM is going to support Linux, then you know they must be onto something. On top of that, two of the most intelligent programmers ever are the underpinings of Linux (Alan Cox and Linus Trovaldi, if you don't know who they are, then don't even bother responding to this) and they provide knowledge to the kernal that no body else can. Linux is not the operating system for the cheap user but for the intelligent and intrigued user. In no other operating system can you view the source code and make changes to it like Linux. Maybe the author of the zdnet article should understand this, and apply this to his writing, especially if he wants to describe himself as technically proficient.

BEN

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Out of my skull, back in five minutes
Posts: 1435

Originally posted by hmp32
Yorick,

Please refer to my post above.


Your post above ...

Please try to think on your own before you borrow someone eleses thoughts of what the world should be. For those of us that know how the world really is, we'd really appreciate it.

... seems to indicate that you're referring to the posters before you. If your comments are directed at the author of the article you should have noted such. Don't be rude.

Originally posted by BobbyMike
Hey Yorick, every day I leave my house in the morning it's snowing. By the time I drive the 46 miles to Latham the snow is gone, but the temp. is usually lower there! My driveway has had ice sheets on it for months! I'm going insane... please call someone and have them do something about the weather.
Thanks!

I guess if I say "neener neener neener" it wouldn't help much, would it?
Albany weatherman Bob Kovachick won't return my calls (the lying sonnambulist ... after everything we've been to each other, too ...) so perhaps I'll have to appeal to a higher power. (Is it too late to join the church of Toby?)

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location:
Posts: 3034

quote:

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Originally posted by Yorick
[...] so perhaps I'll have to appeal to a higher power. (Is it too late to join the church of Toby?)

---

Registered: Feb 2002
Location: I think I want to live in Germanium when I grow up
Posts: 29

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Yorick
Originally posted by hmp32
[B]Yorick,

Please refer to my post above.


Yordick,

Lets see.... I address my reply to you personally. How would anyone think I was referring to anyone else?

Who sings the song with the lyerics "Only stupid people are breeding...?"

-henry

Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

quote:

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Originally posted by hmp32
...Lets see.... I address my reply to you personally. How would anyone think I was referring to anyone else?

---

__________________
-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Last edited by dick-richardson on 03-04-2002 at 01:25 AM

Registered: Feb 2002
Location: I think I want to live in Germanium when I grow up
Posts: 29

That is the problem with snide remarks...
They tend to let typo's sneak in....

But, I suppose if you are worried about the color, rather than what something is made of, it doesn't matter anyway.

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Out of my skull, back in five minutes
Posts: 1435

Originally posted by hmp32
Yordick,
That better be a typo.

Lets see.... I address my reply to you personally. How would anyone think I was referring to anyone else?
You tell me to see your post above which seems to be complaining about the posters before that. My estimation of you dropped several hundred points with that comment. Defend yourself with wit, logic or intelligence, not self-reverence.

Originally posted by hmp32
That is the problem with snide remarks...
They tend to let typo's sneak in....
By that logic, almost all of your posts are snide remarks, as almost all of your posts have at least one typo. (I looked.) Including that one.
Couldn't you try to be informative or helpful? That's not to say you haven't been. Just that you're blindly identifying yourself as snide.

But, I suppose if you are worried about the color, rather than what something is made of, it doesn't matter anyway.
What color? What are you trying to say? Yellow journalism? Doodie?

What flavor *nix are you a zealot of, anyway?



edit: corrected coding mistook

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Last edited by Yorick on 03-04-2002 at 03:47 AM

Registered: Feb 2002
Location: I think I want to live in Germanium when I grow up
Posts: 29

Yordick,

I just don't care how much better your English Teacher was than mine.

Give it up.

-henry

damn it, another typo.

Registered: Jan 2000
Location: Twin Cities, MN
Posts: 1683

What's this thread about?

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Registered: Dec 1999
Location: Connecticut USA
Posts: 2682

quote:

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Originally posted by hmp32
damn it, another typo.

---

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God bless America, my home sweet home...

Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Rochester, NY
Posts: 284

I was a DOS/Windows user for 12 years, but only ventured into programming it once. Once the "newness" of programming Windows wore off, I hated every second of it. Ports of things like Perl, etc, to the platform sucked, IMHO, and the constant BSOD's didn't create much confidence that the platform would stay up very long.

I ran Linux for 9 years. Had fewer crashes then Windows, even those crashes were usually because I did something stupid in configuring the box, or trying an experimental kernel. From a programming perspective, it was far superior to DOS/Windows, but the lack of commercial software support kept me from taking full advantage of the platform (required dual booting constantly). The hassle of configuring Linux & X to get it to do what I wanted (in those rare instances when it would) just wasn't worth it to me. I was spending more time configuring the hardware and software then actually doing what I wanted to get done.

Enter Macs & OSX. I bought my first Mac in Feb of last year, and switched to OSX in Sept. Not only do I have access to the commercial software packages I depend on, but I have access to all the programming languages and GNU utilities I had under Linux as well. The only time my machine has been down was when I upgraded/patched OSX (twice now) and one power failure. The OS itself has never crashed. In all, switching to Mac/OSX was one of the best technology decisions I've ever made. As always, IMHO & YMMV.

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It's gotta be weather balloons. It's always weather balloons. Big, fiery, exploding weather balloons.
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Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

quote:

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Originally posted by hmp32
But, I suppose if you are worried about the color, rather than what something is made of, it doesn't matter anyway.

---

__________________
-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Last edited by dick-richardson on 03-05-2002 at 06:46 PM