Comments on: Review: Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon vs. Mac OS X Leopard http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/ Open Source, Open Standards Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:11:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.0.11 by: pmpope http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-1080 Thu, 15 May 2008 21:54:10 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-1080 You can't sell fashionistas freedom. I tried outside the Apple store in SF. One hepster chickadee wanted to do a 'trade up' {which is a consumeristic social experiment} for a piece of machinery that only runs on a Windows-like environment (i.e. Windows or Mac). Though I was willing to 'trade up' free software that I had burned to CDs she couldn't get to the idea that what I was offering for her status symbol was actual freedom ['...there are three different Linux Operating Systems in this bundle of free CDs] Though I was willing to lower myself by accepting her proprietary cookies crumbs all she could think of was a pricetag to define freedom 'How much is it worth... In dollars?' I finally set the whole kit-n-kaboodle up against the Windows of the MAC store and headed back through town. The reason for this story is I'm kinda done with trying to talk people into doing things that are good for them. The whole GNU/Linux is the best thing that could possibly happen for the modern computer realm and the World. The European community, various Asian communities, the Central and South American communities know this to be true. Come on, folks. Put your egos away and apt-get yourself some individualistic freedom today. You can’t sell fashionistas freedom. I tried outside the Apple store in SF. One hepster chickadee wanted to do a ‘trade up’ {which is a consumeristic social experiment} for a piece of machinery that only runs on a Windows-like environment (i.e. Windows or Mac). Though I was willing to ‘trade up’ free software that I had burned to CDs she couldn’t get to the idea that what I was offering for her status symbol was actual freedom [’…there are three different Linux Operating Systems in this bundle of free CDs] Though I was willing to lower myself by accepting her proprietary cookies crumbs all she could think of was a pricetag to define freedom ‘How much is it worth… In dollars?’
I finally set the whole kit-n-kaboodle up against the Windows of the MAC store and headed back through town.

The reason for this story is I’m kinda done with trying to talk people into doing things that are good for them. The whole GNU/Linux is the best thing that could possibly happen for the modern computer realm and the World. The European community, various Asian communities, the Central and South American communities know this to be true. Come on, folks. Put your egos away and apt-get yourself some individualistic freedom today.

]]> by: orangemoose http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-1079 Thu, 15 May 2008 17:34:08 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-1079 Give me a break about the Ubuntu commumity. Half the time your post languishes with no response and the other half someone emails you an unintelligle mish-mash of sudo commands. Give me a break about the Ubuntu commumity. Half the time your post languishes with no response and the other half someone emails you an unintelligle mish-mash of sudo commands.

]]> by: progon http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-739 Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:29:02 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-739 The Macintosh operating system cannot be compared to other operating systems. It fills a computing niche that has long since disappeared. The reason that Apple moved to FreeBSD, with the operative word being Free, was because Apple could not extend its own code base into a modern networked programming world any more than the old Windows before NT core came along. The old, old Windows crap was single user to the core and had to be replaced with NT core, which is a heavy duty server core OS designed to take on the Network big boys at Sun and IBM. In order to deal with a fully wired and networked world Microsoft went with NT core to replace all its old code base and to make sure that their OS would stay modern. The old Windows core died with windows ME and nobody cried at all since with its death went all the single user problems that had been hammered into the code base over ten years. Apple went to FreeBSD as its core since the BSD license said that they could use it in any way they wanted to use it Apple got a fully functioning core OS from the FreeBSD open source programmers and the open source programmers fixed all of Apple's core OS problems for them. So ask yourself this, when Novell and other groups are done putting a pretty face on Unix how well is Apple going to look then? Until recently, the Compiz/Beryl groups were working at odds but now they are united and Ubuntu and all the other linux variants are putting in the Compiz-Fusion which is now out there and maturing at a blazing pace. Check back next summer or next year at this time and tell me what you see then? Right now, the movement to a much better presentation foundation for Linux is just starting. KDE 4 may or may not be worth writing home about when it comes out but it will be one of over a dozen different graphical front ends that will run on any hardware out there. Windows won the OS wars because it did not do Vendor hardware lock down like all Microsoft's competitors did. Leopard is locked down to the hardware from Apple and in spite of moving to an intel core base Apple can't make money selling Leopard at all as an OS all by itself so in order to use Leopard you have to have all the vendor lock down from Apple instead of the freedom to have whatever hardware you want to run. The reason that Apple can't make money selling its OS in a free and open market is because Apple would then have to do what Microsoft and now Linux did, which is get hardware agnostic and it would take about twenty times the money already spent on Leopard to make it totally hardware agnostic. In the hardware agnostic world we don't have smoothly integrated hardware and software from a single vendor and yet both Vista and Linux are superb general purpose workstations that anyone can go buy or install for free. You mentioned at least ten odd ball things you did not like in Leopard and you probably will never get fixes for those things in the proprietary world of Apple, ever. Apple seldom, if ever, listens to its customers and its designers don't seem to be in sync with their customer base at all. Apple is not to be admired but dumped. It is everything the Linux world is against and is the last of the hard core vendor lock down computer companies left for the Penguin to eat up. That time is not too far away. Right now, I can run any version of Unix or Linux on my Vista box as a virtual machine and I have my XP copy running on Ubuntu in VMWare virtual machine. You can do the same thing on the Mac, use virtual machines to run other operating systems but the problem is that nobody can run the Mac software without having a Mac. The really sad part is that the Mac would not be there if it were not for all the work done in the open source world for them. The older, single user core Macs were horrible. Why did it take Apple so long to get a winner here? They have had only one architecture to work with at a time. Is Apple just hardware churning to get business? Of course they are. Their OS is no more intuitive than any of the Linux front ends out there and in fact the Linux front ends are pretty easy to learn and use on a daily basis. Gnome is rather odd to me and I definitely agree that the Gnome front end in OpenSuse should be adopted in all the Gnomes. The KDE front end in OpenSuse I do not like, though. The usability studies done by Microsoft for Vista showed that the OpenSuse Gnome front end was a winner and this design and practices is in Vista. Vista also moved the most likely to be used elements int the Vista start button and organized the file system around the same elements of usability that Novell did with Gnome. In usability studies done a long time ago and in the present Vista wins hands down in ease of use and for new users. Microsoft pretty much owns the notions of making windows useful and once you run one Windows program you pretty much have them all learned was by design at Microsoft and not accidental at all. The usability guidelines for Windows developers are ancient and still with us. Vista can and will take user front ends into a more web like user experience using the Expression tools for Vista. The era of desktops being the reason for computers is long over. The winners in the modern era are still going to be the operating systems that can be used on any hardware and the operating systems that make it possible to do workstation tasks will continue to win here in the future. Linux ate up all the old school unix vendors like Sun and even IBM because it is free and better on all measurements than their very rich cousins in the main frame world. This was done by volunteers who are, even on a bad day, far more responsive to end users than Apple or any of the old vendor lock down pros ever were. Microsoft, though, is equally smart and a hard competitor. The Mac is the computing world's weak sister and deserves derision instead of praise. Open up the Mac and make it work on all hardware and lets see how well Apple does as a competitor on just any old box like Microsoft or Linux does. The code base in the Mac should be working a whole lot better than it does considering they have no cost for the core OS and are using off the shelf hardware what happened? Why are there still problems with the Mac? Well, their code base is why. In order to churn hardware they have had to constantly re-work and re-do their software and their software base has been shown to be very buggy. Vista had about twelve critical issues last year but Apple averaged ten a month. This means that if you want a secure and problem free computing experience you have to go with the workstation pros at Microsoft. Linux software is also constantly being monitored and updates fly fast and furious but Apple is the one that lies about its competitors and lies about how buggy its code base really is. But they were caught out in their lies about Vista since Vista is much better for day to day work and Vista and all the Linuxes run on damn near any hardware you can imagine and still works better and is more bug free than a single architecture OS like the Mac the Mac users should just dump their Macs and go with either a commodity Windows box at half to one third the cost of a Mac and get far better performance out of them. I have Vista on a core two duo but it runs like a raped ape. I also have it on a single procesor with just a gig of ram and it also runs well. I add in an extra meg of memory stick ram and it runs even better. So explain to me why I can get world class performance out of XP class boxes using XP, Vista 32 or Linux and explain to me why the Mac look and feel some how trumps the power of the operating systems you are dissing here? Now, take the Mac OS and run it on the same low end hardware you ran Ubuntu on and tell me who wins? What, you can't get Leopard to run on anything other than Apple hardware? It seems to me that if you are going to compare these OSes the least you can do is run them all on the same hardware. If you run Vista on the Mac using boot camp you will find it not only runs faster but is far more dependable and has a much larger software base at over 100,000 plus applications for Windows. Linux also runs over 30,000 applications and the Mac, even using FreeBSD software, only has 20,000 applications written for it. If you take out the open source software for the Mac you will find you are down to roughly five thousand native Mac applications. You did mention this weakness in Windows and in Linux, the over abundance of software and choices. These choices can mean the difference between your company succeeding and failing or your kids succeeding or failing in school. The Linux and Windows world allows for right sizing and if you don't have money then you can easily get the free software you need or the very lost cost Windows software you need if you do have enough money to pay for software. But if you go out today and check you will see that you can buy your family three computers for the cost of a single Leopard equipped computer and if you go with open source you can even go with 50,000 software tools and suites in the Linux world. You can certainly compare Apples and oranges but all you are going to get is that they are both round. FreeBSD is quite ugly and needs a face lift but Linux is getting that face lift now and this time next year you will probably be wondering why you thought the Leopard crap was so cool after you realize how much of it was stolen directly from the open source world it will make you wonder why anyone can support Apple for any reason. The Macintosh operating system cannot be compared to other operating systems. It fills a computing niche that has long since disappeared. The reason that Apple moved to FreeBSD, with the operative word being Free, was because Apple could not extend its own code base into a modern networked programming world any more than the old Windows before NT core came along. The old, old Windows crap was single user to the core and had to be replaced with NT core, which is a heavy duty server core OS designed to take on the Network big boys at Sun and IBM.

In order to deal with a fully wired and networked world Microsoft went with NT core to replace all its old code base and to make sure that their OS would stay modern. The old Windows core died with windows ME and nobody cried at all since with its death went all the single user problems that had been hammered into the code base over ten years. Apple went to FreeBSD as its core since the BSD license said that they could use it in any way they wanted to use it Apple got a fully functioning core OS from the FreeBSD open source programmers and the open source programmers fixed all of Apple’s core OS problems for them. So ask yourself this, when Novell and other groups are done putting a pretty face on Unix how well is Apple going to look then? Until recently, the Compiz/Beryl groups were working at odds but now they are united and Ubuntu and all the other linux variants are putting in the Compiz-Fusion which is now out there and maturing at a blazing pace. Check back next summer or next year at this time and tell me what you see then? Right now, the movement to a much better presentation foundation for Linux is just starting. KDE 4 may or may not be worth writing home about when it comes out but it will be one of over a dozen different graphical front ends that will run on any hardware out there.

Windows won the OS wars because it did not do Vendor hardware lock down like all Microsoft’s competitors did. Leopard is locked down to the hardware from Apple and in spite of moving to an intel core base Apple can’t make money selling Leopard at all as an OS all by itself so in order to use Leopard you have to have all the vendor lock down from Apple instead of the freedom to have whatever hardware you want to run. The reason that Apple can’t make money selling its OS in a free and open market is because Apple would then have to do what Microsoft and now Linux did, which is get hardware agnostic and it would take about twenty times the money already spent on Leopard to make it totally hardware agnostic.

In the hardware agnostic world we don’t have smoothly integrated hardware and software from a single vendor and yet both Vista and Linux are superb general purpose workstations that anyone can go buy or install for free. You mentioned at least ten odd ball things you did not like in Leopard and you probably will never get fixes for those things in the proprietary world of Apple, ever. Apple seldom, if ever, listens to its customers and its designers don’t seem to be in sync with their customer base at all.

Apple is not to be admired but dumped. It is everything the Linux world is against and is the last of the hard core vendor lock down computer companies left for the Penguin to eat up. That time is not too far away. Right now, I can run any version of Unix or Linux on my Vista box as a virtual machine and I have my XP copy running on Ubuntu in VMWare virtual machine.

You can do the same thing on the Mac, use virtual machines to run other operating systems but the problem is that nobody can run the Mac software without having a Mac. The really sad part is that the Mac would not be there if it were not for all the work done in the open source world for them. The older, single user core Macs were horrible. Why did it take Apple so long to get a winner here? They have had only one architecture to work with at a time. Is Apple just hardware churning to get business? Of course they are. Their OS is no more intuitive than any of the Linux front ends out there and in fact the Linux front ends are pretty easy to learn and use on a daily basis.

Gnome is rather odd to me and I definitely agree that the Gnome front end in OpenSuse should be adopted in all the Gnomes. The KDE front end in OpenSuse I do not like, though. The usability studies done by Microsoft for Vista showed that the OpenSuse Gnome front end was a winner and this design and practices is in Vista. Vista also moved the most likely to be used elements int the Vista start button and organized the file system around the same elements of usability that Novell did with Gnome.

In usability studies done a long time ago and in the present Vista wins hands down in ease of use and for new users. Microsoft pretty much owns the notions of making windows useful and once you run one Windows program you pretty much have them all learned was by design at Microsoft and not accidental at all. The usability guidelines for Windows developers are ancient and still with us. Vista can and will take user front ends into a more web like user experience using the Expression tools for Vista.

The era of desktops being the reason for computers is long over. The winners in the modern era are still going to be the operating systems that can be used on any hardware and the operating systems that make it possible to do workstation tasks will continue to win here in the future. Linux ate up all the old school unix vendors like Sun and even IBM because it is free and better on all measurements than their very rich cousins in the main frame world. This was done by volunteers who are, even on a bad day, far more responsive to end users than Apple or any of the old vendor lock down pros ever were.

Microsoft, though, is equally smart and a hard competitor. The Mac is the computing world’s weak sister and deserves derision instead of praise. Open up the Mac and make it work on all hardware and lets see how well Apple does as a competitor on just any old box like Microsoft or Linux does. The code base in the Mac should be working a whole lot better than it does considering they have no cost for the core OS and are using off the shelf hardware what happened? Why are there still problems with the Mac? Well, their code base is why. In order to churn hardware they have had to constantly re-work and re-do their software and their software base has been shown to be very buggy. Vista had about twelve critical issues last year but Apple averaged ten a month. This means that if you want a secure and problem free computing experience you have to go with the workstation pros at Microsoft. Linux software is also constantly being monitored and updates fly fast and furious but Apple is the one that lies about its competitors and lies about how buggy its code base really is. But they were caught out in their lies about Vista since Vista is much better for day to day work and Vista and all the Linuxes run on damn near any hardware you can imagine and still works better and is more bug free than a single architecture OS like the Mac the Mac users should just dump their Macs and go with either a commodity Windows box at half to one third the cost of a Mac and get far better performance out of them.

I have Vista on a core two duo but it runs like a raped ape. I also have it on a single procesor with just a gig of ram and it also runs well. I add in an extra meg of memory stick ram and it runs even better. So explain to me why I can get world class performance out of XP class boxes using XP, Vista 32 or Linux and explain to me why the Mac look and feel some how trumps the power of the operating systems you are dissing here? Now, take the Mac OS and run it on the same low end hardware you ran Ubuntu on and tell me who wins? What, you can’t get Leopard to run on anything other than Apple hardware? It seems to me that if you are going to compare these OSes the least you can do is run them all on the same hardware. If you run Vista on the Mac using boot camp you will find it not only runs faster but is far more dependable and has a much larger software base at over 100,000 plus applications for Windows. Linux also runs over 30,000 applications and the Mac, even using FreeBSD software, only has 20,000 applications written for it. If you take out the open source software for the Mac you will find you are down to roughly five thousand native Mac applications.

You did mention this weakness in Windows and in Linux, the over abundance of software and choices. These choices can mean the difference between your company succeeding and failing or your kids succeeding or failing in school. The Linux and Windows world allows for right sizing and if you don’t have money then you can easily get the free software you need or the very lost cost Windows software you need if you do have enough money to pay for software. But if you go out today and check you will see that you can buy your family three computers for the cost of a single Leopard equipped computer and if you go with open source you can even go with 50,000 software tools and suites in the Linux world. You can certainly compare Apples and oranges but all you are going to get is that they are both round. FreeBSD is quite ugly and needs a face lift but Linux is getting that face lift now and this time next year you will probably be wondering why you thought the Leopard crap was so cool after you realize how much of it was stolen directly from the open source world it will make you wonder why anyone can support Apple for any reason.

]]> by: richlion http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-738 Fri, 28 Dec 2007 18:22:29 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-738 Hi, I think the article is quite good, because I myself never had a chance to have a good look at a MAC OS. I just don't have the money to buy a MAC, not to mention pay for an operating system when I can find that it does not suit my needs. I cannot afford to buy aomething I will not like to use. As we can see, it's really hard to find a perfect operating system, even MACs are not perfect. There also a lot of things that will improve in Linuxes and there so many things now working out of the box, that I simly don't see any other operating system offering so much flexibility. To me it doesn't matter if the Ubuntu was taken as an example. I used Mandriva for many years and now I have a Gentoo/Sabayon installation, this for sure is not a very easy to use system for a newbie, so I can understand why Ubuntu was taken as an example. I did have a look at Ubuntu thanks to a few live CD's. As for me, personally I would not choose Ubuntu. I also tested PCLinuxOS. What I see is that Linuxes are making really huge steps ahead in easy installations, setups, etc. I recently started a wireless connection in not time, where as on a Windows XP belonging to one of my collegues - it took me two hours of browsing through documents to get things started. What I like about Linuxes is the way I can easly configure a Linux environment (I use only KDE). I can configure virtually everythhing - fonts, colours, schemes, buttons. When I look at Konqueror, this has become my absolute favourite. I can set up everyting, change the icons, add menu items. Konqueror gives me access to every part of the system without any hassle - it's a tool almost for everything. I have easy access to folders, home location, system folder, medias, web pages, just one click on the right sidebar.... Moving my files - absolutely all is there what I need, browsing pictures, videos. And this just one tool has improved a lot in the recent few versions. Amarok - I cannot find any other tool that suits my needs, easy access to all my files, 500 radio stations. And what I like is that this program does not try to think what I would like to do, instead let's me do it by myself. I think the article is a nice peace of collected information. If I would have to choose to pay for a stable system I guess maybe a MAC OS would be the first system I would try to look at, but after reading this article - I know I am going to stay with Gentoo/Linux for quite a while. MAC OS? Not thanks... I also know what is the benefit of a Linux disto. We have so many distros, which may cause confusion, but there is a positive point of using an Open Source operating system. All distos try to take advantage of all the good ideas from each other. When I saw the OpenSUSE meny I could only say - brilliant. So in the end a MAC or Widnows OS - thay lack the flexibility and are all a closed product, so we have to wait ages to have any new ideas implemented, where as in Linux all we have to do is wait 3-6 months and we can expect a lot of new features not available in other OS within a short time. Regards, Richard Hi,
I think the article is quite good, because I myself never had a chance to have a good look at a MAC OS. I just don’t have the money to buy a MAC, not to mention pay for an operating system when I can find that it does not suit my needs. I cannot afford to buy aomething I will not like to use. As we can see, it’s really hard to find a perfect operating system, even MACs are not perfect. There also a lot of things that will improve in Linuxes and there so many things now working out of the box, that I simly don’t see any other operating system offering so much flexibility.
To me it doesn’t matter if the Ubuntu was taken as an example. I used Mandriva for many years and now I have a Gentoo/Sabayon installation, this for sure is not a very easy to use system for a newbie, so I can understand why Ubuntu was taken as an example. I did have a look at Ubuntu thanks to a few live CD’s. As for me, personally I would not choose Ubuntu. I also tested PCLinuxOS. What I see is that Linuxes are making really huge steps ahead in easy installations, setups, etc. I recently started a wireless connection in not time, where as on a Windows XP belonging to one of my collegues - it took me two hours of browsing through documents to get things started.
What I like about Linuxes is the way I can easly configure a Linux environment (I use only KDE). I can configure virtually everythhing - fonts, colours, schemes, buttons. When I look at Konqueror, this has become my absolute favourite. I can set up everyting, change the icons, add menu items. Konqueror gives me access to every part of the system without any hassle - it’s a tool almost for everything. I have easy access to folders, home location, system folder, medias, web pages, just one click on the right sidebar…. Moving my files - absolutely all is there what I need, browsing pictures, videos. And this just one tool has improved a lot in the recent few versions.
Amarok - I cannot find any other tool that suits my needs, easy access to all my files, 500 radio stations. And what I like is that this program does not try to think what I would like to do, instead let’s me do it by myself.
I think the article is a nice peace of collected information. If I would have to choose to pay for a stable system I guess maybe a MAC OS would be the first system I would try to look at, but after reading this article - I know I am going to stay with Gentoo/Linux for quite a while. MAC OS? Not thanks…
I also know what is the benefit of a Linux disto. We have so many distros, which may cause confusion, but there is a positive point of using an Open Source operating system. All distos try to take advantage of all the good ideas from each other. When I saw the OpenSUSE meny I could only say - brilliant. So in the end a MAC or Widnows OS - thay lack the flexibility and are all a closed product, so we have to wait ages to have any new ideas implemented, where as in Linux all we have to do is wait 3-6 months and we can expect a lot of new features not available in other OS within a short time.

Regards,
Richard

]]> by: anotherusername http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-731 Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:54:33 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-731 You were on the right way to say "You can install Leopard on any computer made by Dell, HP, Lenovo, or..." but you get scared and said "just kidding!". Why people on the web is scared to say "Yes you CAN or maybe you MUST install Leopard on your home PC"? Don't mislead the readers!!! Teorically you must not install any Mac OS X on your business PC as some audit to your office may rise legal consequences. However the license agreement that is bundled with Mac OS X just request to be installed on a "Single Apple-labeled computer" at a time. The license use does not state a requirement for an official Apple label with an Apple Hardware Serial number, so again don't mislead the readers!!! Then what means a "Single Apple-labeled computer"? It will only be defined by layers if you are issued by Apple. So maybe you can avoid be issued if you apply an Apple sticker to the external case of the PC and argue that you are meeting the usage clause. Even if this is not legal, is not probable that Apple go to your home to audit your home PC (don't be a bad boy so cops don't go to your home). The only disadvantage is that the installation process can be a little tricky and newbies may not successfully install it and obviously not all the hardware is compatible. You were on the right way to say “You can install Leopard on any computer made by Dell, HP, Lenovo, or…” but you get scared and said “just kidding!”.
Why people on the web is scared to say “Yes you CAN or maybe you MUST install Leopard on your home PC”?

Don’t mislead the readers!!! Teorically you must not install any Mac OS X on your business PC as some audit to your office may rise legal consequences. However the license agreement that is bundled with Mac OS X just request to be installed on a “Single Apple-labeled computer” at a time. The license use does not state a requirement for an official Apple label with an Apple Hardware Serial number, so again don’t mislead the readers!!!

Then what means a “Single Apple-labeled computer”? It will only be defined by layers if you are issued by Apple. So maybe you can avoid be issued if you apply an Apple sticker to the external case of the PC and argue that you are meeting the usage clause.

Even if this is not legal, is not probable that Apple go to your home to audit your home PC (don’t be a bad boy so cops don’t go to your home). The only disadvantage is that the installation process can be a little tricky and newbies may not successfully install it and obviously not all the hardware is compatible.

]]> by: gragnar http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-710 Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:02:02 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-710 I have found the Mac OS a nice and stable system. All my close family members use Macs, most on my recommendation. My older (15) daughter is starting to complain about the MacOS straight jacket and does for example not use iPhoto. The younger(9) uses VLC to play videos on the Mac. Both of them use my Linux system without comment. I use free software but find the integration to the Mac desktop is problematic. Also I find that opening a web page to download an application and returning to that page to upgrade not functional. Add/Remove Applications and Synaptic give me access to a huge selection of software. With the Mac you have versiontracker.com As a network administrator I found the Mac versions of many tools out of date. I moved back to linux to get access to the newest and up to date tools. Apple does not like to credit free software. They do what they can to NOT use or promote the concepts of freedom and the GPL. On www.apple.com you find the words "free software" mostly used for updated you do not pay for. Apple would like us to call it freeware. Apple would like to sell you the free software they are using but do not show the respect to credit the free software community. So the support for free software is limited. They could so easily provide or support an install/update service for a large selection of free software and so become a active members of the community. So why not? Apple probably thinks this is dangerous. But the danger from free software does not go away by not supporting it. In fact, the large selection of integrated free software in Linux is what makes it better for me. Better support for free software on the Mac would be good for Apple. I have found the Mac OS a nice and stable system.

All my close family members use Macs, most on my recommendation. My older (15) daughter is starting to complain about the MacOS straight jacket and does for example not use iPhoto. The younger(9) uses VLC to play videos on the Mac. Both of them use my Linux system without comment.

I use free software but find the integration to the Mac desktop is problematic. Also I find that opening a web page to download an application and returning to that page to upgrade not functional.

Add/Remove Applications and Synaptic give me access to a huge selection of software. With the Mac you have versiontracker.com

As a network administrator I found the Mac versions of many tools out of date. I moved back to linux to get access to the newest and up to date tools.

Apple does not like to credit free software. They do what they can to NOT use or promote the concepts of freedom and the GPL. On www.apple.com you find the words “free software” mostly used for updated you do not pay for. Apple would like us to call it freeware. Apple would like to sell you the free software they are using but do not show the respect to credit the free software community.

So the support for free software is limited. They could so easily provide or support an install/update service for a large selection of free software and so become a active members of the community. So why not?

Apple probably thinks this is dangerous.
But the danger from free software does not go away by not supporting it. In fact, the large selection of integrated free software in Linux is what makes it better for me.

Better support for free software on the Mac would be good for Apple.

]]> by: theseea http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-706 Mon, 17 Dec 2007 09:35:30 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-706 I don't know too much about Mac because I had not the opportunity to meet it in Romania where I am from. About Ubuntu I must say the following in march 2007 I just started a CISCO academy curse and my PC with 384 RAM get a deadly virus on windows so.. knowing nothing about linux I was forced to tried it. I got and try the following distributions Fedora suse mandriva slakwhere and last choice ubuntu. As a newbie ubuntu was built in a way that made me learn it in 1 week how to configure it as network printer not listed as known an all main utilities. Since then I cant let it go. I works very well for my needs an it seems to be the perfect tool. More I want to tell ypu that it has a IRC client already configured to enter on unbutu help area and there are a number of permanently people that can be asked anything abt ubuntu. There i got fast, helpful and straigh answers for my problems. in the others distributions i had only to read helps and search on net abt what i need. conclusions... be my guest to make them. I don’t know too much about Mac because I had not the opportunity to meet it in Romania where I am from. About Ubuntu I must say the following in march 2007 I just started a CISCO academy curse and my PC with 384 RAM get a deadly virus on windows so.. knowing nothing about linux I was forced to tried it. I got and try the following distributions Fedora suse mandriva slakwhere and last choice ubuntu. As a newbie ubuntu was built in a way that made me learn it in 1 week how to configure it as network printer not listed as known an all main utilities. Since then I cant let it go. I works very well for my needs an it seems to be the perfect tool. More I want to tell ypu that it has a IRC client already configured to enter on unbutu help area and there are a number of permanently people that can be asked anything abt ubuntu. There i got fast, helpful and straigh answers for my problems. in the others distributions i had only to read helps and search on net abt what i need.

conclusions… be my guest to make them.

]]> by: mark76 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-703 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:14:07 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-703 "Kubuntu provides the full-featured and powerful Konsole, while Ubuntu has the anemic Terminal." You are aware that you can install Konsole in Ubuntu from the Synaptic Package Manager, right? That's the beauty of Linux: you don't have to settle for what you're given out of the box. Whether or not it functions fully outside its native environment, I have no idea. “Kubuntu provides the full-featured and powerful Konsole, while Ubuntu has the anemic Terminal.”

You are aware that you can install Konsole in Ubuntu from the Synaptic Package Manager, right? That’s the beauty of Linux: you don’t have to settle for what you’re given out of the box.

Whether or not it functions fully outside its native environment, I have no idea.

]]> by: jerky http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-702 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:13:57 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-702 To pick nits with the whole "unix-based" comment, Linux wouldn't qualify for the label of Unix-based. It's a clean implementation to be UNIX-LIKE. Unix-based would imply there is some code lineage carried over from SysV or BSD, which was the crux of SCO's argument that there was some cross-pollination(or more appropriately contamination) of copyrighted "UNIX" code. I think Apple was riding on a technicality with the previous usage of UNIX-based in the past. IIRC NeXTSTEP which is the basic for Mac OS X, has some roots in the original BSD tapes. Mac OS X 10.5 on Intel machines is now an official card carrying certified UNIX and their site has dropped reference to the "UNIX-based" and states it plainly as UNIX. In all fairness though, I don't think it would be much of a stretch for Linux to pass the UNIX certification process but there isn't any one to cough up the funds for the certification process itself since every distro would have to probably pay and certify separately. I'm sure someone like CentOS would't be able to ride RedHat's coatails if RH certified RHEL with the Open Group. To pick nits with the whole “unix-based” comment, Linux wouldn’t qualify for the label of Unix-based. It’s a clean implementation to be UNIX-LIKE. Unix-based would imply there is some code lineage carried over from SysV or BSD, which was the crux of SCO’s argument that there was some cross-pollination(or more appropriately contamination) of copyrighted “UNIX” code. I think Apple was riding on a technicality with the previous usage of UNIX-based in the past. IIRC NeXTSTEP which is the basic for Mac OS X, has some roots in the original BSD tapes. Mac OS X 10.5 on Intel machines is now an official card carrying certified UNIX and their site has dropped reference to the “UNIX-based” and states it plainly as UNIX. In all fairness though, I don’t think it would be much of a stretch for Linux to pass the UNIX certification process but there isn’t any one to cough up the funds for the certification process itself since every distro would have to probably pay and certify separately. I’m sure someone like CentOS would’t be able to ride RedHat’s coatails if RH certified RHEL with the Open Group.

]]> by: amcguire http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-701 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 03:53:28 +0000 http://www.linux-mag.com/id/4641/#comment-701 Several here have forgotten that the comparison was suppose to be "out of the box" systems. What my mom would get if she did it herself or had the guys at the computer shop did it for her. Great review. Have not spent too much time with Ubuntu but he is spot on with the Mac and I have a hard time finding needed accessories that are more useful than flashy. Several here have forgotten that the comparison was suppose to be “out of the box” systems. What my mom would get if she did it herself or had the guys at the computer shop did it for her.

Great review. Have not spent too much time with Ubuntu but he is spot on with the Mac and I have a hard time finding needed accessories that are more useful than flashy.

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