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Comment by mrks_ | Hacker News Reader

I think calling Ubuntu on par with OS X is a stretch. Not that it's that far, but I've had many more stability issues with the LTS versions of Ubuntu than with Mavericks or even Yosemite.

I agree, though, that sticking to Ubuntu or Fedora for new users is a great idea. They are both excellent operating systems with regard to simplicity.

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>I've had many more stability issues with the LTS versions of Ubuntu than with Mavericks or even Yosemite.

By any chance are you running OS X on Apple hardware? If we took OS X and installed it on an Ubuntu Certified Dell PC we may find that it has the stability issues, so if you are comparing it to OS X running on Apple hardware it's not a very fair comparison, as it's being run under ideal circumstances and Linux is not.

that may be "theoretically" the fair comparison. but in practice, most people run osx on apple hardware and linux on any hardware. So to get an actual comparison of the user experience, it is fair to compare them on different hardware.

So OS X is unusably more expensive.

I think it would be much fairer to compare OSX on Apple hardware, to Ubuntu on hardware where it's certified by Canonical. Meaning that the hardware works and you're using the version of Ubuntu it was certified with [1]. An example of this would be the Dell XPS developer laptops, which are certified, and an image is created that by Canonical with the correct drivers in it.

In those circumstances you shouldn't have any "stability" issues because it's a like for like set of engineering - basically.

In general, in terms of your other comparison with "any" hardware on the Ubuntu side - the two most likely causes of problems are hardware drivers and user fiddling (ie mixing repos and kernels). Lack of engineering support from manufacturers for client hardware is a big issue that's outside the Linux distros control. Nonetheless, if you use common supported hardware and standard installs then you shouldn't be having stability issues.

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/

So OS X is unusably more expensive.

is there a reason you decided to repost this?

Funny, because my memories of using OSX feature kernel panics, memory leaks and all kinds of broken behaviors. Even running Fedora on a macbook pro was significantly more stable, and Fedora's not known for its stability. Maybe my experience is unusual.

Not at all unusual. I find OSX to be genuinely dreadful for stability and a 3rd class unix at best in its userspace.

Well I've had more stability issues in OSX (two personal laptops, a work laptop, and a work iMac), than my goto personal setup... Debian Unstable.

Personally Debian Sid is my top choice, Arch being close second, and SlackWare being third for sentimental value.

Ubuntu always breaks on me after a while. Mint destroyed two separate and different installations with its full disk encryption. Gentoo is too much work. Fedora... I just cant bring myself to use something called yum. The Mandrakes, Mandrivas, PureOS's, et. al. and the derivative distros just feel like crutches to me. In my opinion nothing come close to the simplicity and straightforwardness of Debian.

>Fedora... I just cant bring myself to use something called yum.

They use dnf now.

Damn. That is even worse. To me DNF means either Duke Nukem Forever or Did Not Finish. I'd rather not chuckle every time I mean to update a package... :)

I find Mint (Ubuntu minus Unity) to be much more usable than OS X. OS X has some really bad behaviors by default. One example is the Alt-Tab key which is split into two different keys which make no sense in my workflow. The concept of "App" is an implementation detail but OS X brings it to the forefront.

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