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 With the Mac you have versiontracker.com As a network administrator I found the Mac versions of many tools out of date.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. »