Flirting With Mac OS X (Linux User)

Byte.com ^ | September 23, 2002 | Moshe Bar

[OKSooner]

FYI. Comments?

[rdb3]

Now that's beautiful! But I must admit that I'm rather shocked that Perl wasn't already on the OS. Anyway, that's suh-weet!

[erswts]

If there are no Macs in heaven, there is no heaven.

[rdb3]

The Penguin Ping.

Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!

Got root?

[Right Wing Professor]

I went in the other direction. I'm a long time Mac user who uses Linux for computation. The article agrees completely with my experiences. The horrid third alternative is neither as clean or stable as Linux for number crunching, or as elegant as Mac for word processing or graphics. You'd think, after the investment of so much time, money and resources, it would be the best at something.

[pageonetoo]

I'm glad another pc guy found out about macs... i don't know diddly (bo or otherwise) about computers, tho trained on them for the military. Apple just didn't have the political connections that ibm had in those days. PC's became the standard for business, because of the power of government purchasing (just ask Ross Perot about gov't purchasing)
I bought a fat mac with a 512k rom, and a 5 MEGABYTE hyperdrive (internal HD), and ran a drafting program half an hour after setting up the computer (15 minutes, or so)..
i still don't know about codes, and c> prompts, but i know how to use a mac, and 10.2 just makes it better than ever.. and i still draw plans and make i-movies of my grandboy with my G4 desktop!

[glorgau]

Then, I proceeded to obtain Emacs 21.2.1 and again compiled it locally. The usual ./configure, make, make install worked on the first try for most tools, except procmail and Python. In these two cases, I first had to get missing libraries and compile them locally. Something you will miss when coming from a Linux distribution are tools like apt-get or rpm to easily get and install packages and resolve dependencies.

Even his little quibbles like this are already addressed. See The Fink project.

What it comes down to is that everybody that does Unix/Linux work is gonna want to have a Mac portable. i.e. whoever has a job that will pay for the Mac, will get one.

For the ones without a bunch of money (college students, hackers, etc.) they'll stick with the Intel clone hardware. Also, the Intel clone hardware will always be the choice for large numbers of server deployments on cost basis alone.

[Question_Assumptions]

I've been using Linux since it went 1.0 and Macs for even longer and Mac OSX is, indeed, very nice. This reply is being sent via a terminal window connected to an ISP via SSH using Lynx -- over an Airport connection from an iBook. I recently convinced a sysadmin friend to buy an iBook by talking to him about OSX.

Linux is certainly a nice OS but it is even nicer to have a good looking and functional GUI and be able to run applications like Word, Internet Explorer, Canvas, and Carrara. I'm torn over whether I want to put PPC linux on an old iMac or whether I just want to install Jaguar. The only downside is that OSX uses file extensions to type files. Definitely a step back to the best technology the '70s had to offer thanks to Microsoft.

[billhilly]

I do believe that every newsroom in America uses Mac. I use them myself, and it helps, because I don't know diddly about computers either.

[dheretic]

5.6 is a part of 10.2

[AdA$tra]

You are a full on GEEEEEEK......LOL

[dheretic]

I'm squarely now in the OSX camp. I have RedHat 8 beta (7.3.94) running on my PC (1.7Ghz P4, 256mb of RAM, 6GB boot drive, 56GB hdd for ftp/http/nfs (eventually)) and while it is very slick (new Bluecurve GUI is quite good) I still prefer my Mac (OSX 10.2.1, G3 350 w/ 512MB of RAM and a 40GB 7200RPM hdd). The only thing that I dearly wish would work on OSX right now that doesn't is Mono. However since Mono is even't able to fully build under Linux I can't complain too much. Besides, SSH solves the problem of not being able to use Mono :)

[philetus]

Is there any chance that OSX will ever be adapted for PC?

[rdb3]

5.6 is a part of 10.2

Good. I don't know a single *nix user who doesn't know how to at least do simple scripting in Perl.

Very good.

[rdb3]

Is there any chance that OSX will ever be adapted for PC?

I sure hope so.

[dheretic]

I never got into PERL. I'll give it another shot when Parrot is able to compile in OSX.

[randita]

I am now typing this column on a Mac G4 Powerbook (800 MHz with 512-MB RAM, a combo DVD/CDR and a gorgeous 14.1 inch screen). I am connected to the Net through an AirPort wireless card

Hey. This guy has my system. Been a Mac user for 17 years and an OS X user for 8 months.

Only one complaint with the PowerBook G4 Titanium--the antenna stinks. It has very limited range with an airport. The iBook's antenna is much better.

[dennisw]

MACs are wildly overpriced. 

Here is the core of a build it yourself that will work great with Windows 2000/XP (each a stable O/S) or Linux.

A7V133 board by ASUS                  $45  (overclockable if you like it) 

512MB module of PC133 memory   $29  (So cheap you could buy 2 and have one gig of memory)

Athlon XP 1600+/ 1.40GHz             $53

A7V133 FAQ

 

[randita]

ping