[thelist] Switching to Mac

Martin martin at members.evolt.org
Mon May 20 09:32:01 CDT 2002


Mike wrote:

> 1 - Linux is much more reliable and stable than the likes of MS,

For client machines, 2k/XP is not bad.

Although right now, my OSX box has not had any unscheduled downtime
since 1st December (when I moved to OSX). Every restart has been
intentional to upgrade the OS (yes, that's not ideal and I know Linux
doesn't require it) or the hardware.

> 2 - The memory management under Linux is actually 32-bit written by
> those
> who seem to know what they do,

OSX *is* a bit heavy on the memory front. I think it's Aqua that's
causing it, and understand that Jaguar (the next evolution in the
summer) will be very much better.

> 3 - You MUST recieve the complete source code
> for the OS (that's Open Source in action),

Fine rhetoric, but unless you're able to *do* something with it, it's
not that useful.

> 4 - If a problem DOES occur, you
> have roughly 20,000 usersdevelopers worldwide to send out an SOS, and;
> finally,

How often does that happen? As I said, on my OSX box, it's not been
necessary

> 5 - You don't need to re-purchase any computer equipment.  Linux
> can run on any thing from a 386 up to (and including) some mainframes -
> not
> that you might wish to purchase a not-so-new 370 from IBM.

Depends on what you want it to do - sure the base OS will run, but what
are the dependencies above that?
fwiw my OSX box is a 2 1/2 year old 300 MHz G3, which is about the limit
for OSX.

> Also, should you
> go and REALLY get a Mac (iMac, PowerPC, etc), MkLinux can run on that
> machine, making a cross compatibility unparalleled  from any standpoint.

I don't think it's the hardware that's in question here.

My x-platform network (OSX, WinXP, Win2k and Linux) works wonderfully
together.

> I don't know what you write; however, with most ALL of the
> distributions of
> Linux, you get: PHP 4.0.?,
Got
> Perl v5.??,
Got
> GCC (the GNU Compiler Collection including - C/C++/OOP/JAVA),
Got
> Python,
Got
> Lisp,
Got
> Curses (a library of pop-up windowing functions),
Don't need
>  the gmake utiloity,
Got
> along
> with the ability to read/write almost any floppy/hard disk on the
> planet.
Which Macs had a looooong time ago.

I also have Zope, Apache, MySQL etc etc etc

Apple is now the world's largest seller of Unix systems...

> Installation is fairly easy.    Depending on the distribution, you can
> deal
> with a neat screen-handling GUI or a series of pop-up windows based on
> the
> Curses library.

I seem to remember my OSX install went:
"Insert CD"

Cheers
Martin
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