Apple promotes OS X as the way to get the stability of Unix with the
beautiful GUI of the Macintosh platform, and I have believed that for a
very long time.
However, recently, while I was in a chat room where I moderate, I
was talking to a man who was discussing how that was irrelevant, and
how desktop Linux was a very popular idea. I had read two of David
Coursey's articles on desktop Linux and how his "Linux Challenge" had
gone.
I became sparked to see how Linux compared not to Windows, but to
the Mac OS. Coursey had written his opinions from a mostly Windows
standpoint, but after my two week experience with Linux, I have an even
greater respect for Apple's ability to make Mac OS X what it
is.
Installation: Would you like a swap file with that?
I decided on RedHat on a Celeron 500 MHz machine for my tests. I
figured that no-one would go out and buy a Mac new just to put Linux on
it, so a low cost x86 machine seemed reasonable for a desktop user to
do Internet, word processing, and email on. This is where one of
Linux's points shines in my tests: Linux is free to download.
The installation went pretty smoothly, complete with little screens
to entertain you (much like ones at movie theaters that come on before
previews), but the installation takes a very long time - almost 3
hours. Compare that to the one hour installation that Mac OS X
took on my
bottom-of-the-line G3.
However, I guess that desktop Linux assumes that Linux will already
be installed on the machine....
Setup/Configuration: What the heck is Xconfigurator?
Installation on my computer went really well. However, I booted into
Linux and noticed one of Linux's flaws: It takes a extremely long time
to start up.
After that, I chose the KDE desktop and went on with my business.
KDE gave me an option of what I wanted my desktop to feel like, so I
clicked "Mac OS" and went on my way. I finished booting into the KDE
and saw the Mac OS X-esqe desktop background.
I decided that I would like to import some of my MP3s to listen to
while testing, and I needed to change my desktop resolution. This is
where Linux took me aback; I found that the KDE control center was
not at all like the System Preferences in OS X. In fact,
KDE Control Center does little except perform like a System Profiler,
with no options to change anything.
I found out later that I have to change my system preferences from
command line apps, and that the KDE/Gnome Environments are like the
Desktop in Win 3.1 - they just help get around but still do most of
everything configuration-wise in DOS. Not very user friendly.
Installation of software?./make, ./compile ./confused!
I decided to preview some of the software that the Open Source
community is always raging about, and GIMP was already installed, so I
decided to head up with OpenOffice, the free alternative to Microsoft
Office/StarOffice. I downloaded it and LimeWire, the file sharing
client for X/Linux. It turns out that a lot of the software on Linux
uses Java, so that the software can be written once for all the Linux
distros/platforms/Window Managers.
However, installing Java wasn't easy. I eventually had to build my
own software from source. Editing through vi (something I learned in
OS X) and using gcc. I learned that the Open Source Community is
trying to move to the RPM installation standard (an installation
standard that makes installation easy) but my use found that installing
software in Linux is hit and miss.
Conclusion
I've been using Linux for two weeks, and I miss my Mac.
I fail to see how some of the key advantages of Linux pan out in the
long run, especially for desktop use. Setup is a pain, almost making me
wish I could pay for a piece of software to do what I just did, but the
boxed Linux distros are just the download on the CD.
Linux has high system requirements to do anything GUI based, and
although you can run a server through a command line on a 486,
configuration is still tough - definitely not as easy as Mac OS X
Server.
Linux's bounds of free software are hard to install, and if you
aren't using the version of Linux the developer is, your most often
OOL.
Does Linux work as a desktop OS? No.
Does it have advantages in theory? Yes.
So how do you put these advantages to work? Use Mac OS X.
Apple has put almost all of the advantages of Linux in Mac
OS X, but they also made it better. Apple's window manager is
light years ahead of X11, and it isn't a shell - it's a fully
integrated part of the operating system that allows GUI controls, not
command line ones.
Most of the free software can be ported to the Mac with not much
hassle at all, and then the user gets the hardware/software matching
that only Apple can provide.
In the end, I respect Linux and its users. I think that Linux has
great advantages, but none of these port over well for desktop
users.
I also have respect for Apple - they aren't just throwing marketing
at us. They really have put a great front end on a great core:
Unix!
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
