Linux user's thoughts on OS X/iBook
Yeechang Lee
who've seen it before.]
Over the Christmas holidays, while visiting family, I recently helped
my youngest brother choose to buy a new iBook G4 800MHz 12" as he is
applying to law school. My background: 100% Linux user at home for
eight years this month. Numerous years' experience with PCs of all
types, plus lots of Mac experience back in the System 7.5.x days in a
part-time job all through college. His background: Typical MS
Word-and-Web-browser-on-PC stuff, though he did have an account on my
Linux box for the usual word processor-and-browser uses during high
school.
I would never, ever have advised him to buy a Mac before OS X. My
experience from working for my college's IT group was that Apples'
hardware is always nice (and expensive), but that Mac OS 7.5.x was
just as unreliable as Windows 95/98, and with the latter users had a
(slightly) better shot at killing an errant application without
destabilizing the entire system. Obviously, OS X's Unix heritage
completely changes the equation here, and in fact I've been
semi-seriously eyeing a Powerbook 12" or 15" myself, probably to run
Gentoo Linux and Mac-On-Linux for OS X apps.
My brother needed a relatively inexpensive, rugged machine; he did not
need a 1400x1200 widescreen screen (not that such things are available
on Macs) or a DVD burner. An iBook G4 12" fit the bill nicely; he got
a $100 discount as a student at the campus bookstore.
POSITIVES:
* Well designed hardware. Nice screen. Over three hours of battery
life while using 802.11g is still impressive.
* AirPort extreme card was easy to install (except snapping back that
darn metal wire bracket); it's nice not having to deal with an
external stub or antenna.
* Command line! Not that he cared, but *I* certainly relished having a
real bash shell, seeing postfix listed under top, and running emacs
21 and OpenSSH.
* Nice DVD player software.
* He wanted to set up an unprivileged account for his roommates, and
was impressed by how simple it was to create one with a simple
Finder and a fixed list of permitted applications.
* Unexpected bonus: Although it should've been obvious in retrospect,
neither he (an iPod owner) nor I thought of iTunes as an
advantage. He's been happily ripping CDs and adding tunes to iTunes'
library.
NEGATIVES:
* Speakers are pretty tinny, as we discovered while watching DVDs;
admittedly we didn't buy the machine for its sound, but there are
other laptops with better sound out there.
* Show stopper: After three days the system started behaving
peculiarly, with each of the following occurring randomly:
Applications crashing randomly, the black warning box advising
Restart popping up, and logins going straight to a black full screen
Darwin console. Hardware Test revealed error messages from both the
built-in and stock expansion 128MB DIMMs. I advised him to take it
to the campus bookstore's repair shop, which is Apple authorized;
hopefully he can get it back soon. (I gave my brother some
perspective: Over the past 20 years, *every single one* of my
computers (Commodore VIC-20 and C64, Tandy 1000 SL, a 386SX clone, a
Micron Pentium 133 MHz, and my own Pogo Linux Athlon 1400MHz),
except one, has suffered serious faults that has disabled the
machine for extended periods of time. So the iBook is following in a
grand tradition of sorts.)
--
Read my Deep Thoughts @ <URL:http://www.ylee.org/blog/> PERTH ----> *
19:04:01 up 13 days, 19:26, 18 users, load average: 2.32, 2.63, 2.55
179 processes: 172 sleeping, 6 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 42.8% user 7.9% system 49.2% nice 0.0% iowait 0.0% idle
Jeff S
I started off from the other direction: As a big Mac fan who migrated to Linux. But I've continued to do sys admin work in Mac offices until very recently. Here's what I've found:
If you stick with apps especially designed for OS X, life is good. I'd definitely recommend a Mac for someone who wants an attractive computer and who likes what the iLife apps have to offer, but who plans to stay within certain boundaries such as apps especially designed for OS X. At it's best, installing a new OS X app is simply a matter of clicking and dragging-love that! And if you think of OS X in terms of a complete package, to be updated annually by spending $130 for a shrinkwrapped CD, all's good. And how wonderful to unpack a new notebook and have the GUI, sound, power management, Wifi and DVD playback working right away.
On the other hand, if you are the sort to download and compile the latest source code for generic Unix-like OSes, I felt it was much more of a mixed bag: A fair amount of the software I tried did compile properly, but getting things to work smoothly was sometimes a bear, and online help often minimal versus doing the same thing with Red Hat, SuSE or Debian on Intel: I tore my hair out for at least a few weeks trying to get a news-grabbing php script to work properly under 10.1, found zero info about it online, finally got it working by upgrading to 10.2, which then broke my public ftp server :-( (fortunately THAT problem was well-documented). Don't get me started about using the Analog web stats software under OS X. There are times I swore that Apple must've deliberately made certain things difficult, in hopes of selling OS X Server! (but I didn't want to buy it).
Yes, I think I could be happy with a Mac, but for me, the trick is to use it like a Mac, not like a generic Unix/Linux machine. In other words, I like it for what it is, but acknowledge that it's not going to be my favorite tool for all computing situations. For servers, give me Debian Linux on x86 hardware.
Jeff
PS: Actually, Mac OS 6.08-7.6.1 were some of my favorites! Most of the functionality of a modern GUI was there, and the software was still fairly lean and fast. Sure it crashed sometimes, but there was no registry to corrupt as there is under W95/98, and even if you did somehow manage to corrupt the OS, you didn't have to reinstall all of your apps too.
On 6 Jan 2004 03:10:21 GMT
Gnarlodious
Entity Yeechang Lee spoke thus:
> My background: 100% Linux user at home for
> eight years this month.
The average Unix user probably doesn't realize how sought after their
knowledge is right now. For example, the Applescript list is about 80% "do
shell script" discussion. Applescript users are having a field day with the
shell, and raiding all possible sources to do new tricks.
> Obviously, OS X's Unix heritage
> completely changes the equation here
It's the best thing that ever happened to computers.
Tim McNamara
> If you stick with apps especially designed for OS X, life is good.
<snip>
> On the other hand, if you are the sort to download and compile the
> latest source code for generic Unix-like OSes, I felt it was much
> more of a mixed bag:
I think that Mac OS X is indeed intended to be used as a *Macintosh*
and not as a Linux substitute. X11 is available and works well, and
most X11 apps will compile properly *if* you install Apple's
Developer Tools (now called XCode). Be forewarned that without it,
compiling Unix apps is all but doomed to failure as lots of headers
and other includes are missing in the default distribution. Use
Apple's gcc as well, as it is modified to deal with Apple's linker
and some of the other oddities of the filesystem.
I haven't used Darwin per se, but I would expect that it is closer to
s standard BSD distribution, and would function much better as a
POSIX type environment.
> Don't get me started about using the Analog web stats software under
> OS X. There are times I swore that Apple must've deliberately made
> certain things difficult, in hopes of selling OS X Server! (but I
> didn't want to buy it).
Apple does seem to have made things unnecessarily difficult on the
Unix side of the coin, don't they. I've e-mailed them about several
things and the reply is "we've had the tech department look very
carefully at your suggestion, and we like the way we do things- so
there!"
Go to www.versiontracker.com, plug in "analog" in the search field,
and download a much easier-to-use version. Edit your .conf file and
it runs like a champ: 3MB http logs in under 2 seconds (unless you do
IP lookups- I killed it after it ran that log for 24 hours and
reported reading 3,000,000,000+ lines of code. Only do IP lookups if
the log file is small).
> Yes, I think I could be happy with a Mac, but for me, the trick is
> to use it like a Mac, not like a generic Unix/Linux machine.
I think that sums it up well. The modifications to BSD to make it
support the Aqua interface create problems in Unix-land sometimes.
However, I love the Emacs 21.3.50.1 I compiled to run under X11.
Bless them, Apple even included Xaw3d in the standard distro!
Tim McNamara
> Thanks for an intelligent review.
>
> Entity Yeechang Lee spoke thus:
>
>> Obviously, OS X's Unix heritage completely changes the equation
>> here
>
> It's the best thing that ever happened to computers.
Isn't the irony of that delicious? 20 years ago, during the Super
Bowl, Apple announced "the computer for the rest of us." The rest of
us who couldn't/didn't want to use Unix, that was!
Peter Hayes
In 20 years time DOS in all its abberative forms, MacOS and all other
non Unix-like OSs will be seen as evolutionary dead ends.
But we'll still have /etc /lib /usr and so on.
--
Peter
Jeremy Nixon
> I think that Mac OS X is indeed intended to be used as a *Macintosh*
> and not as a Linux substitute.
It really works fine as both. That's what's so great about it. :)
> X11 is available and works well, and most X11 apps will compile properly
> *if* you install Apple's Developer Tools (now called XCode). Be
> forewarned that without it, compiling Unix apps is all but doomed to
> failure as lots of headers and other includes are missing in the default
> distribution.
You can't compile *anything* without the Developer Tools installed. One
significant reason is that you won't have a compiler.
> I haven't used Darwin per se, but I would expect that it is closer to
> s standard BSD distribution, and would function much better as a
> POSIX type environment.
It'll function about the same; "Darwin" is a subset of OS X, not something
different.
> Apple does seem to have made things unnecessarily difficult on the
> Unix side of the coin, don't they.
It's really no more different from other versions of Unix than, say,
FreeBSD is from Solaris.
> I think that sums it up well. The modifications to BSD to make it
> support the Aqua interface create problems in Unix-land sometimes.
Like what?
--
Jeremy | jer...@exit109.com
Steve Lidie
> Tim McNamara <tim...@bitstream.net> wrote:
>
>> I think that Mac OS X is indeed intended to be used as a *Macintosh*
>> and not as a Linux substitute.
>
> It really works fine as both. That's what's so great about it. :)
Agreed. I've been using Linux for years, both at home and at work. At work
it's a great server platform. At home, as soon as OS X 10.0.0.0.0 + XDarwin
were available, I left Linux and have never looked back, not for one second.
Add to that Fink and I can do essentially anything Linux. The reverse cannot
be said.
>
>> X11 is available and works well, and most X11 apps will compile properly
>> *if* you install Apple's Developer Tools (now called XCode). Be
>> forewarned that without it, compiling Unix apps is all but doomed to
>> failure as lots of headers and other includes are missing in the default
>> distribution.
>
> You can't compile *anything* without the Developer Tools installed. One
> significant reason is that you won't have a compiler.
;) Of course, for X11 development one needs the X11 SDK too, but the compiler
is the show-stopper.
>
>> I haven't used Darwin per se, but I would expect that it is closer to
>> s standard BSD distribution, and would function much better as a
>> POSIX type environment.
>
> It'll function about the same; "Darwin" is a subset of OS X, not something
> different.
>
>> Apple does seem to have made things unnecessarily difficult on the
>> Unix side of the coin, don't they.
>
> It's really no more different from other versions of Unix than, say,
> FreeBSD is from Solaris.
Agreed. Once you've gotten used to the first 5 or 10 different flavors
they all begin to taste the same.
>
>> I think that sums it up well. The modifications to BSD to make it
>> support the Aqua interface create problems in Unix-land sometimes.
>
> Like what?
>
Think different(ly). We all moaned at AIX's ODM in the beginning too!
Matthew Russotto
Tim McNamara <tim...@bitstream.net> wrote:
>
>Isn't the irony of that delicious? 20 years ago, during the Super
>Bowl, Apple announced "the computer for the rest of us." The rest of
>us who couldn't/didn't want to use Unix, that was!
The rest of us who couldn't/didn't want to use MS-DOS, that was.
--
Matthew T. Russotto mrus...@speakeasy.net
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit
of justice is no virtue." But extreme restriction of liberty in pursuit of
a modicum of security is a very expensive vice.
Tim Smith
Twilight wrote:
> And that's the real beauty of OSX: Those who don't want to bother with
> Unix intricacies don't have to (I'd wager that 99% of OSX users never see
> a single command line), yet they still get all the benefits of it; whereas
> those who want to really get into Unix can do so.
It's too bad, though, they had to flail around so long to get back to that.
I had all that from Apple in 1994 with A/UX. Unix OS with System 7 as the
UI.
--
--Tim Smith
silverdr
Yup. They needed to come to the edge of bankruptcy to get rid of all
that BS they were doing between System 7.1 and 10 and hire Jobs back ;-)
I quit after 7.6 and went to GNU/Linux and NetBSD. Needed to wait until
10.2 to get persuaded it is really worth coming back.
BTW. Is that A/UX still available somewhere to look at?
Tim McNamara
> Tim Smith wrote:
>
>> In article <060120040103286472%n...@spam.invalid>, Keeper of the
>> Purple
>> Twilight wrote:
>>
>>>And that's the real beauty of OSX: Those who don't want to bother
>>>with Unix intricacies don't have to (I'd wager that 99% of OSX
>>>users never see a single command line), yet they still get all the
>>>benefits of it; whereas those who want to really get into Unix can
>>>do so.
>>
>> It's too bad, though, they had to flail around so long to get back
>> to that. I had all that from Apple in 1994 with A/UX. Unix OS
>> with System 7 as the UI.
>>
>
> Yup. They needed to come to the edge of bankruptcy to get rid of all
> that BS they were doing between System 7.1 and 10 and hire Jobs back
> ;-)
Whereas Microsoft has had Bill Gates at the helm, so the operational
vision has been consistent at the top. Apple didn't do this and
instead thought a guy who ran a soda pop company could somehow
effectively captain a high-tech industry leader. Idiots. They wewre
just about captained into the grave.
> I quit after 7.6 and went to GNU/Linux and NetBSD. Needed to wait
> until 10.2 to get persuaded it is really worth coming back.
I was going that way and had set up an old Quadra 700 with NetBSD,
out of frustration with OS 8 and OS 9. OS X is the only reason I
still run an Apple OS.
> BTW. Is that A/UX still available somewhere to look at?
Hunt around on the Web. There are a number of Web sites; I don't
know if you'll be able to find a downlodable copy of it, however, as
Apple has apparently not made this legal. I think System 6 is the
most recent freely downloadable Mac OS, other than Darwin.
Robert
> Bowl, Apple announced "the computer for the rest of us." The rest of
> us who couldn't/didn't want to use Unix, that was!
They were referring to the IBM PC and DOS.
DOS didn't have the functionality of the Unix CLI at the time.
While Unix command line interface is very functional, it's still
criptic to me. Copying over files without warning. Deleting
directories without warning by default. Criptic command names. You
get used to these things.
Robert
Joe Heimann
System 7.5.3 is also available as a free download from Apple. That
was due to a decision made by Jobs predecessor Gil Amelio as that
version includes all of the networking support. That was enough to
get most older Macs out at the time onto the Internet. At the time
7.1 was released, the Mac OS was split into pro and consumer lines.
So some distributions included networking, others had to pay extra
to get it added. An updater gets 7.5.3 up to 7.5.5 and supports
using either Open Transport networking or the previous "Classic"
networking.
Joe Heimann
Tim McNamara
> System 7.5.3 is also available as a free download from Apple. That
> was due to a decision made by Jobs predecessor Gil Amelio as that
> version includes all of the networking support. That was enough to
> get most older Macs out at the time onto the Internet. At the time
> 7.1 was released, the Mac OS was split into pro and consumer lines.
> So some distributions included networking, others had to pay extra
> to get it added. An updater gets 7.5.3 up to 7.5.5 and supports
> using either Open Transport networking or the previous "Classic"
> networking.
Good to know!
David Steuber
> While Unix command line interface is very functional, it's still
> criptic to me. Copying over files without warning. Deleting
> directories without warning by default. Criptic command names. You
> get used to these things.
The shell, like The C Programming Language, trusts you to say what
you mean. That can lead to unfortunate things if you don't mean what
you say.
There are actually some things that are much easier to do in the
command line than in a GUI. The CLI is also more like talking to the
computer than pointing and clicking like a spastic child. Yes, the
words can be weird. They are meant to be understood by a primitive
interpreter, not a human.
If you turn on the speech recognition of OS X and speak your commands
then you are interacting with your computer more like a CLI than a
GUI. Perhaps at some point soon, speech recognition will be good
enough that you can do that faster than typing cryptic commands even
if you know them cold. I wouldn't want to work in an office full of
people chatting at their computers though.
--
One Emacs to rule them all. One Emacs to find them,
One Emacs to take commands and to the keystrokes bind them,
All other programming languages wish they were Lisp.
Art Werschulz
David Steuber <david....@verizon.net> writes:
> The shell, like The C Programming Language, trusts you to say what
> you mean. That can lead to unfortunate things if you don't mean what
> you say.
I've often heard it expressed as follows. A GUI is WYSIWYG, whereas a
CLI is YAFIYGI ("you asked for it, you got it", from a Toyota ad
campaign).
> There are actually some things that are much easier to do in the
> command line than in a GUI.
To give a simple example, suppose I have a folder with many files, and
that I would like to delete all the files whose filenames either
(*) end in a tilde, or
(*) begin and end with a pound sign.
In a GUI, I'd have to do a lot of hunting and clicking. Using the
shell, I'd simply place myself in said directory, and then issue the
command
rm #*# #~
BTW, such files are created by emacs. The ones beginning and ending
with pound signs are auto-save files, whereas the ones with the tildes
at the end are backup files.
--
Art Werschulz (a...@comcast.net)
207 Stoughton Ave Cranford NJ 07016
(908) 272-1146
Chris Brown
Art Werschulz <a...@comcast.net> wrote:
David Steuber <david....@verizon.net> writes:
>
>> There are actually some things that are much easier to do in the
>> command line than in a GUI.
>
>To give a simple example, suppose I have a folder with many files, and
>that I would like to delete all the files whose filenames either
>(*) end in a tilde, or
>(*) begin and end with a pound sign.
One I do a fair bit is to rename all files in a directory such that capital
letters are replaced with lower case letters. I like to do this because the
way the FAT filesystem on my Microdrive gets mounted MAKES THE FILENAMES
SHOUT AT ME.
The following comes in handy:
for i in *; do mv "$i" "`echo $i | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`"; done
And Bob's your uncle.
Sean Burke
Tim McNamara <tim...@bitstream.net> writes:
> silverdr <silv...@inet.remove.it.pl> writes:
>
> > Tim Smith wrote:
> >
> > I quit after 7.6 and went to GNU/Linux and NetBSD. Needed to wait
> > until 10.2 to get persuaded it is really worth coming back.
>
> I was going that way and had set up an old Quadra 700 with NetBSD,
> out of frustration with OS 8 and OS 9. OS X is the only reason I
> still run an Apple OS.
I bought a refurbed 7200 so I could dual-boot it to MkLinux,
and later Linux-PPC. But I doubt that I would have bought the
G4 or iBook without OSX.
-SEan
David Magda
> I bought a refurbed 7200 so I could dual-boot it to MkLinux, and
> later Linux-PPC. But I doubt that I would have bought the G4 or
> iBook without OSX.
As a side note, someone started with BeOS, tried W2K and Linux, and
ended up with OS X. Kind of dated (Dec. 2001), but still interesting:
http://www.birdhouse.org/macos/beos_osx/
--
David Magda <dmagda at ee.ryerson.ca>, http://www.magda.ca/
Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under
the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well
under the new. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, _The Prince_, Chapter VI