[LAU] Kim did the switch to Linux (Warning - going OT!)

James Stone jamesmstone at gmail.com
Thu Aug 6 06:43:08 EDT 2009


Thomas Vecchione wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 3:19 AM, James Stone <jamesmstone at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jamesmstone at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>      The Mac fanboi backlash is by turns amusing and irritating but
>     always unsurprising.
> 
> 
> I wonder if I fall into this category nowadays?
> 
> I guess its a bit funny if I do;)
> 

Sorry to disappoint you, but you don't! (at least as far as I can tell 
from the comments you made) :p

The people who really fall into this camp (in my opinion) are those who 
resort to personal insult when faced with alternating views to their own 
(i.e. daring to suggest that something about OS X or the Mac philosophy 
in general is not 100% perfect). I bought my first Mac (a Powerbook G4 I 
think) about 4-5 years ago now, to great excitement - the feeling I 
would be able to break away from the Windows world for my work, the fact 
it has a BSD kernel, and Bash installed by default etc. But overall, my 
experience has been one of disappointment - performance issues, 
compatibility issues, the feeling that I am being forced to do something 
against my will because it's the "Mac way" - a small example being that 
there is no way to show/hide hidden files in the finder by pressing a 
button - you need some arcane command line to show them, then they are 
always there until you reverse it from command line... On the British KB 
there is not even a # key printed - you have to know that you get it 
from pressing alt-3. Also, there is a culture of releasing most 
home-grown software as shareware (to a much greater extent than in the 
MS camp it seems to me). The only reason the laptop still has OSX 
installed at all is that I need it for Endnote for my writing of 
papers.. otherwise I would have switched to Debian ages ago. Pretty much 
everything else I use on it now is open source. It is certainly going to 
be the last Mac I buy. I would even prefer Windows given that the 
horrible proprietary software I am forced to use by my work works better 
on that system - I'm hoping for an open source refman/endnote solution 
that really works tho before I am forced to upgrade and then it will be 
Linux all the way!

I think Macs are possibly very good for no-nonsense no-fuss audio work, 
and image manipulation... . Personally, I find the freedom, and 
"interesting" workflow of Linux much more stimulating.

>     then get off this list and leave us to our playthings. or better yet,
>     spend time critiquing the current state of the "out of the box"
>     experience with the people who **actually provide**  the out of the
>     box experience.
> 
> Well technically this list did, not to long ago, scare away someone that 
> was impactful in those sorts of decisions;)

I missed this.. what happened?? Sounds bad.

> 
>     Control what? The source code of an application? Or the kernel? I
>     have very limited skills in programming languages - I'm just an old
>     school music artist and multimedia designer. On OS X I have full
>     control over my personal creative workflow. But Linux was
>     controlling me in a way that I have to take care of lot admin tasks
>     and bugs. Yes the bugs and workarounds on Linux controlling me and
>     I'm to stupid to fix them all plus write my dream apps. I'm one of
>     the guys, going into a music store and buy a guitar and not one of
>     the guy who'd like to build a own. My handcraft is music, not wood.
> 
> 
> Control your workflow.  I am on OS X now for most of my work, however I 
> can't set up the same workflow I could on Linux, and what I can do is 
> not nearly as easy or quick on OS X.  I could control my desktop and 
> applications much smoother and faster with some simple customizations on 
> Linux than I ever could on OS X.  I could tweak the visual aspects much 
> more easily to that I was happier looking at my screen(Yes I do have a 
> soft spot for eyecandy, and OS X doesn't come close to filling it).
> 

Totally agree!

James



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