Ask YC: Has anyone switched from OS X to Ubuntu? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Has anyone switched from OS X to Ubuntu?

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I'm considering switching from OS X to Ubuntu full-time for both personal and development work. One of the reasons (although not the only) is that since I run Ubuntu on my server, I'll be able to develop on the same platform my apps will be running on. Before anyone mentions it, I do know I can run Parallels/VMware on OS X with Ubuntu virtualized, but I'd like to see if anyone has made the switch completely and if they either regret it or love it.

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I had two of them running side-by-side for several months now: I've been struggling to make a decision between MBP+OSX vs Thinkpad+Ubuntu and ended up with both.

Over time I find myself glued to Linux more and more: the software I like tends to be native on Linux and somewhat foreign on OS X, and yes - I know about Macports and I don't like it: too limited and too awkward compared to apt. All in all, OS X just isn't particularly hacker friendly: it always took me longer to do something on a Mac, the recent case was Python/Pylons stack with some libs: I was done under a minute on Ubuntu while Mac took some googling and IRC'ing to accomplish the same task.

Moreover, I keep hitting OSX limitations on less exotic stuff all the time: the terminal is retarded by default, Finder doesn't really do FTP properly (in 2008! WTF??), windows are resizable only by bottom-right corner, font rendering is worse than Ubuntu is capable of, Mac "spaces" are dumbed down version of Gnome workspaces - the list goes on and on. The only area where OSX destroys competition is their window management: I find myself Alt-tabbing a lot less on the Mac.

Also OSX is too commercialized: people are selling freaking screensavers for god's sake... So I am on Ubuntu most of the time now, the only thing that I am envious of is nearly instant ruspend/resume on my macbook and, as mentioned above, Macs window management.

But hardware plays an important role too. MBP+OSX wins head down against an average disposable Dell/HP/Whatever, even Ubuntu powers can't help that junk, so Thinkpads rule.

Totally agree but:

>But hardware plays an important role too. MBP+OSX wins head >Down against an average disposable Dell/HP/Whatever, even >Ubuntu powers can't help that junk, so Thinkpads rule.

Running linux on a mac is fantastic, the hardware is well supported, only caveat is the one-button touchpad. And it totally pisses of Apple Freaks!

If only that were as true today as it was 5 years ago. But I bought 5 Mac Pros and had 4 HDs fail. Our HP 6910 laptops work great.

So does Linux not support the scrolling trackpad?

It does, but middle or right clicking is rather awkward (2/3 finger taps, awkward key combinations)

Strange; I find it easier. To right-click, I just put down my right finger, the one I use for right-clicking with a mouse, and which is otherwise unused. With separate physical buttons, I have to move my thumb to an uncomfortable angle.

Well, I have a Unix experience with more then 10 years and I can tell you that OS X (Darwin) is not less functional or harder to use then any other Unix system. I bet you haven't tried SunOS...

Agreed. I had been running FreeBSD exclusively for well over 5 years before I switched to OS X. I can't say that I miss FreeBSD much. Still love it though, always will!

That's what confuses me a lot. What is the reason to get Mac with Darwin and purchase a secondary laptop with any type of Linux on it? Come on, you are shredding your money away. ;) But this is a pretty common behavior and frequently asked question over here. Is it a try to look more "geeky"?

A lot of people motivate that Linux has got an apt and this makes it a hacker friendly platform. I've started using FreeBSD from 2-RELEASE (sorry, don't remember the numbers). The ports sucked there so much, that you can't even imagine now. But it still was a great platform to develop and to use.

The Darwin' port system is a very nice tool. They're really similar to BSD ports and they are powerful enough. You just never learned how to use it. Do you still miss apt? Get Fink (http://www.finkproject.org). What can be easier?

People, don't get me wrong, I'm not about a holy war. But I'm really confused why guys over here want to have two laptops running Unix at the same time. ;)

It's not to look more 'geeky.' The difference between apt on ubuntu and fink on mac is not in their interface -- it's the number of packages that are available. I find that just about every package I need is available in ubuntu's repositories, whereas only the very major packages are available on Mac. As mentioned in the original comment by tx, the process of installing a set of libraries/programs on Mac often involves a lot of googling and getting other help, whereas just about everything I've tried on Ubuntu "just works." This is true even for programs that are not in either repository; compiling by hand also usually "just works" on Ubuntu, and I've never had it be that easy on Mac (some weird compile or link error always comes up, which then requires extensive google-fu to fix).

Another problem I find is that there seems to be a 'Mac' way of doing things which is different from both linux and unix/bsd methods (e.g. binaries often go into /Library/Framework/... instead of the usual /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, etc.) which causes problems when interfacing with other *nix tools.

Finally, an unrelated thing (but one that affects me a lot) is the complete lack of the /proc filesystem. I think BSD/Unix doesn't have this either, so perhaps with your background you won't miss this in any case -- but I grew up on Linux and find /proc to be invaluable. It allows for easy programmatic access to processes using only file I/O, as well as allowing for awesome helper programs like htop.

Well, you are particularly right and if you do such an extensive development for Linux platform, you should use it. As for the things, you can always do it in the way like you want to. ;)

>> the terminal is retarded by default, Finder doesn't really do FTP properly (in 2008! WTF??)

What's wrong with Terminal.app? I find only 2 complaints for the Leopard version: the inability to change ANSI colors and in second, no support for 256-color rendering.

As for ftp, have you tried 'ftp' from the commandline? if you want a GUI, give cyberduck or transmit a try.

>> But hardware plays an important role too. MBP+OSX wins head down against an average disposable Dell/HP/Whatever, even Ubuntu powers can't help that junk, so Thinkpads rule.

Macbooks are manufactured by Asus and Foxconn, or at least the components. Granted though, they may require more quality components than Dell/HP/etc such as higher quality PCB, capacitors etc...

Regarding FTP I would say: FTP? WTF? It's 2008, isn't it?

What do you use? Linux supports SSH in the command line/gui also...

To give you a switch in the other direction story: I was a long time linux user, always very happy and quick to defend it. However, I found myself being ground down by hardware support and the pain it took to get basic things to work. I migrated from redhat to debian to gentoo and was always ultimately frustrated by the effort it took to get anything working. (Sound was always a big source of fun.)

So a friend got a mac, purely on the grounds it was less hassle than a linux pc, and frankly, after looking at all the amazing things he could do (wow, he can plug in a vga cable and have the monitor work without restarting X) I was seriously feeling won over. I finally bought a powerbook and was instantly chuffed by the fact I could do real work and not waste time mucking about with hardware. Honestly, my productivity increased by an order of magnitude. I realised how much it was really my ego vs the machine when it came to getting things working.

These days I don't faff about with macports or fink (they just don't work well enough) but instead I run ubuntu in a vmware instance. To top it off, my vmware ubuntu with 512MB of RAM runs faster than my dual core, 4GB ubuntu desktop. Go figure.

Putting aside hardware support, it's the software I love. Mac software authors have a wonderful sense of design and detail, which I always find lacking on linux or windows.

I develop using python and deploy on a combination of redhat, debian and windows boxes and the only real platform related pain I've experienced is the repeated stupidities redhat enterprise inflicts upon people. (You know it's enterprisey when they only give you five packages, forcing you to use random, untested rpm repositories around the world.)

Ok, maybe the hardware support is the biggest reason after all, just this week my linux co-workers were high-fiving over undocking their laptops without having to reboot them. Most of the time.

I've switched from OS X to Ubuntu, and would never go back. I'm not really a developer, but I do some coding every now and then. Perhaps what I like most about Ubuntu is that I can customize it to fix all those little annoyances that I couldn't do anything about on OS X. It's also trivial to install programs thanks to a real package manager (Fink doesn't count in OS X). GNOME is also the only GUI I've found that lets you type the whole filename to jump to a file/folder rather than jumping to the filenames that start with the last letter you typed.

I suppose my biggest annoyance with OS X is that it doesn't let you actually have control. A perfect example is that I have SAMBA turned on in OS X to share some files to other computers on my network. For security, I have a separate user account for the share. I can't configure the shares and permissions in the GUI because it's not a "simple" setup, so I have to use the config file for samba. Every single OS update I get overwrites this file, so I have to re-create it every time. Furthermore, as of 10.5, permissions seem to just spontaneously change. I can no longer get group permissions to inherit.

Another time, I needed to quickly use TFTP. Trying to get this setup in OS X is a nightmare, and after spending a couple hours on it, I just gave up. It's installed and there, but it for some reason its configuration is just non-standard.

It's just these little things that make me glad I switched to Ubunutu, and I would never even consider using OS X again.

I prefer the OS X method of application "installation"... drag and drop to your applications folder. That way (as long as the app isn't sneaky) I know exactly where everything is location: the main application is in /Applications, the preferences are in ~/Library/Preferences, and various data is in ~/Library/Application Support.

This is true, but a lot of OS X programs now require an installer as well, and offer no way for easy removal. The simplest examples I can think of are Microsoft Office and the various Adobe products.

Certainly many applications can just be dropped in the Applications folder, and I admit this is a great feature. But I still have to go out and get updates to those programs, and not all can be installed or removed as easily as moving the application folder. With a package manager, it auto-updates every program for security updates and sometimes bug fixes. If I add the repository for that particular application, it automatically gives me new versions when they come out. Everything is in one place. Furthermore, I can search for software that does a particular task and be presented with several choices that are just a click away.

I'm glad OS X works best for you, but for my needs and uses, Ubuntu is a far superior choice.

> With a package manager, it auto-updates every program for security updates and sometimes bug fixes.

Yes. That and dependency management are the towering wins of package management. Installing an app when you first get it is generally the easy part of managing it.

There's a program called AppFresh for OS X that checks all your application's versions against the latest known version.

office has an uninstaller

I don't trust Microsoft. ;-)

...while in Ubuntu you can install/uninstall Office and Adobe products via apt-get. Oh wait...

Package management is so poorly grasped by folks who've never spent some time with the real thing, that they often think that what they're used to (an absolute lack of the capability--Mac OS X has, effectively, no package management, merely package installation, by a very loose definition of "package" and "installation") is superior in every way.

My point is really there no need for package management on Mac OS X because most Mac OS X applications don't require 30 dependencies.

A package management solution is probably better for server environments, but I don't really think it should be necessary for desktops.

I have nothing else to add, as what I said above continues to apply to this comment.

Package management goes way beyond installing and uninstalling stuff. A good package manager, like apt or yum, will help your computer self-update (not only the core OS but every program you installed in your computer, through the same interface). It also shines where you don't want to know from where you download a given package - you just ask for the package manager to install it. The good package managers will also deal with dependencies and conflicts between packages, which is something that may not appear when you deal with applications but happens all the time with libraries.

You insist there is no need for package management because you never had real package management. The Macintosh method is very simple (much better than the Windows way) but it fails miserably when what you are installing is not an application.

I have used "real" package management, both on Linux and Mac OS X, and for native Mac OS X applications it's largely unnecessary. I rarely run into OS X apps that require I install a bunch of dependencies, and most OS X applications these days check for updates on their own. For those that don't there's AppFresh: http://metaquark.de/appfresh/

However, I do agree the method "fails miserably when what you are installing is not an application." MacPorts and Fink are decent solutions, though I admit they could be much better.

I really don't think that duplicating libraries (a requirement for OSX-like .App bundles with no external dependencies) or apps checking and self-updating by app-specific methods is a good solution either.

For every duplicated library, you introduce the security and stability problems of that specific version, each will have to be addressed by the application provider, who may or may not be interested in the latest developments in the libraries it uses, instead of the original software developer. This thing can grow nasty in no time.

"GNOME is also the only GUI I've found that lets you type the whole filename to jump to a file/folder rather than jumping to the filenames that start with the last letter you typed."

Mac OS X's Finder does the exact same thing.

"It's also trivial to install programs thanks to a real package manager"

I find installing programs to be trivial in OS X since it requires nothing but dragging them to anywhere on my computer.

"I suppose my biggest annoyance with OS X is that it doesn't let you actually have control."

OS X gives you plenty of control, it just hides most of it in the terminal. For almost every use case, this is great, because for the 1 or 2 things you actually want to do, Apple has made it drop dead simple. The rest of the time, if you really need to do something complex, there's usually a way to do it via the terminal.

It sounds to me like you're main complaint is that OS X doesn't work like linux. This is true. If what you're looking for is a better linux, OS X is not that. Linux is all about being ultra customizable. OS X is about getting out of your way. In my opinion, Linux sacrifices usability and simplicity for customization, and for me (and I suspect most people) the trade off isn't worth it.

"OS X gives you plenty of control, it just hides most of it in the terminal. For almost every use case, this is great, because for the 1 or 2 things you actually want to do, Apple has made it drop dead simple. The rest of the time, if you really need to do something complex, there's usually a way to do it via the terminal."

I agree that for some tasks, OS X is drop dead simple. The problem is that the other complex tasks don't involve just using the terminal. I have no problem using the terminal, and in fact usually prefer it to the GUI. It isn't that OS X is different from Linux, but that it's different from the Unix way. Program configuration files aren't in the places they're supposed to be, and in some cases the programs don't respect what's in those configuration files. The example I can think of off the top of my head is TFTP.

I first learned Unix on OS X. In the earlier versions, it was great. Panther was very much like a traditional Unix but with a nice GUI. Tiger went a little further away, but was still OK. Leopard, however, is where I really started having problems, and is what caused me to move to Linux.

You should clarify what you mean when you say leopard moved away from the unix way moreso than tiger, it is apparently UNIX 03 compliant.

What is quite clear is that Apple isn't trying to make just another Unix, it is clearly their own operating system, it just happens to conform to the Unix 03 spec. It's also quite clear they are willing to break from the Unix way to accomplish something they want to do.

You could argue that in many cases they have actively tried to improve the UNIX way of doing things, which hasn't really taken hold with anyone outside of Apple (for example, launchd).

You could also argue that launchd, specifically, is a divorce from the UNIX way of doing things. init starts processes based on system events, xinetd starts processes based on network requests and cron starts processes based on time. launchd is a monolithic solution that is decidedly unUNIXy, however cool and attractive a centralized solution may be. It would be nice if these different programs had a common file format, but their file formats are reasonably optimized for the kinds of things they handling. One could stick a unified "edit process starting/stopping" GUI on top of init, cron, xinetd, etc and you'd end up with some of that attractiveness.

I actually just switched in the other direction. I ran Ubuntu for 2.5 years both at work and play and loved it.

However, the hardware, GUI, and software offerings of a MBP were too much for me to bare. I made the switch a few months ago and have never been happier.

Sure Terminal.app sucks but iTerm fixes that. OS X has a few killer apps that Ubuntu can't compete with. Quicksilver, Skitch, and Textmate to name a few.

Many thanks! I looked for alternatives to Terminal.app but eventually gave up. iTerm looks awesome.

What's the big deal with Terminal.app? I honestly don't see it--maybe I'm not power user enough, but it's fine for me.

The big deal is to have tabs. One terminal window means one process. Although a process can be send to the background, it is at least my habit not to do that (most of the time). Tabs avoid the clutter of many terminal windows. Thats it. And it is even easier than using screen.

Leopard's Terminal.app has tabs. Until Leopard I've been using iTerm, but now I've com back to Terminal.app as it uses less memory & cpu and has tabs. I don't need anything more.

Beat me to the punch. Tabs is all I would have missed (I switched to OS X at Leopard).

Ah, good. I still use OS 10.4

Linux can't compete with Textmate? You must be kidding me. I could make fun of Textmate and 37 signals who popularized it, but I really don't want to start flamewars. Come on... Unix is the king when it comes to text editors for programmers: vim&emacs rule.

Besides, there is simply co much to look at when it comes to pedestrian text editing (Textmate style): netbeans, komodo, eclipse+plugins, aptana - all built for Linux first, OS X - second.

I was born and raised on vim. I love it. I use it exclusively from any CLI I come across. I agree with you, it rules.

From my Leopard desktop I can use Textmate and vim simultaneously. And I do. All day. I can't do that in Ubuntu.

My favorite editors are BBedit and Textwrangler. I can tell that there is NO alternative on Linux.

Vi(m) and Emacs are great and powerful editors, but they have a completely different philosophy than BBedit (or Textmate, or SubEthaEdit). If you are looking for something similar on linux, you are stuck with JEdit. Although JEdit is also a first class editor after years of using it I am bored and want an alternative.

There is Nedit, Kate and this stuff. Not usable if you compare them feature wise with JEdit or BBedit.

From my perspective, its the other way round: Mac editors rule and linux is editing desert.

I used Ubuntu at work fulltime for over a year. I kept OS X at home though. What type of development are you doing?

Ubuntu is good but I would say that as far as unix like desktops go it still has a long way to go to match OS X.

edit

Just read through your posts and it looks like you're a webdev in which case except for the lame PHP build OS X comes with by default(just replace it) you shouldn't notice any difference that would make it worth switching over to Ubuntu for except if you just generally perfer Ubuntu. It won't make your work easier though.

I'm running Ubuntu at work and OS X at home. For a workstation Ubuntu is fine, but I'm not going to give up OS X. I develop on both and the experience is similar, but the OS X gui is just what I prefer.

It does come down almost entirely to personal preference in the end.

Because of window shading, tabbing together groups of windows, focus on mouse and vastly better terminal support (including Yakuake, a terminal that behaves like the doom console) I am roughly twice as productive on Linux as on OS X.

That is before you add in apt-get, but honestly if I had to put up with Fink on Ubuntu I still wouldn't switch because of the interface limitations.

Completely agree that it is a matter of personal preference.

Could you explain what you mean by tabbing together groups of windows, and focus on mouse? I definitely prefer macports to fink and apt to both.

Window tabbing started out in (I think) Fluxbox, where you can group a bunch of application windows together and switch between them with Firefox-like tabs. So you can have, say, all your windows related to one task grouped together. Support for this is now in Compiz or as bolt ons for several window managers.

There is a video of Compiz Group Tab here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nK4_cH5sbM&feature=relat...

Focus on mouse comes in several flavours, the best seems to be sloppy focus with raise-on-focus disabled. When you mouse over a window it goes active so you can type in it. Because it doesn't come to the front unless you click on it you can leave your IM window/IDE/whatever half under a browser window and still type into it. Truly a killer feature, especially on laptops where space is limited.

Would multiple desktops in ubuntu/spaces in leopard be comparable to the window tabbing?

The Focus on mouse software sounds very cool though. When you first said it I thought you were implying Ubuntu developers had more of a focus on mouse actions which was why I didn't just google it. :)

Say you are working on a pair of spreadsheets, both of which require the same supporting data from a variety of places. That is when window tabbing becomes really outstanding, since you can tab together the two spreadsheets.

The advantage over just bringing forward the work sheet you want each time is that as you move one around and resize it (to cater for fitting the source data on the screen), the one you aren't currently working on changes with it saving you some clicks. It sounds like a stupid little thing but taking a frequent minor irritation out of your environment can be surprisingly beneficial.

I don't understand why "focus on mouse" is any better than Windows' ALT-Tab (to rapidly switch between windows)? It will switch between the two most recently-used windows, or, if you hold ALT, it will let you switch among all windows.

The best way to do window focus, tho, is, I think, to have you machine's camera notice where you are looking, and automatically raise that window - iris tracking and window raising.

Alt-Tab always brings the selected to the front, which is annoying. Sometimes you just want to type into the bit of the window you can already see, without reordering the stack.

I use Ubuntu at work, OSX at home. I've customized Ubuntu with Avant Window Navigator to make it a little more Mac-like (once you start using a Dock, it's hard to give it up).

I've gotta say I agree with people who say it's easier to develop on Ubuntu. E.g., to do Django development on my Mac with Postgres, I needed to install an alternate, MacPorts version of Python (which ends up in /opt/local/bin/python2.4, not in /usr/bin/python), get the Postgres driver from MacPorts, then do all of my Django development with the alternate python installation. Yecch. The Postgres driver wouldn't compile otherwise.

On Ubuntu, I just apt-get'd the packages and started developing.

And don't even get me started on Java development in the two environments (yeah, I know, I'm a loser Java developer). The state of the JDK on OSX has never been very clear (OpenJDK FreeBSD Based Java 6? Apple's Java 5?)

Anyway, just use what you like. If it were up to me, Ubuntu wins for hacking and development, OSX wins for usability and commercial polish, but either environment will handle both functions well enough to get you by.

I finally made the move from PowerPC Mac to Intel Mac and I'm trying out Parallels Desktop 3, and I must say it's pretty freakin awesome.

Coherence mode for Windows is very cool. Basically it lets you run Windows apps alongside you Mac OS X apps. XP + OS X is pretty ugly, but Vista + OS X actually looks ok. Coherence mode doesn't work for Linux, but windowed or fullscreen works well.

Here's a screenshot of Mac OS X, Vista, and Ubuntu coexisting peacefully (it's rather cluttered just because I wanted to show all 3):

http://tlrobinson.net/misc/parallels.png (480KB)

This is an excellent environment for any sort of cross platform work. For example, I regularly need to use PowerPoint on Windows, test on IE in Windows, test in Firefox on Linux and Windows, etc, but I'm most productive developing in OS X.

I'm currently using OSX at work and Vista at home. Over the years I've tried many OSs, including various flavors of Linux and BSD. I think I can answer your question very simply: they all suck, and you have to find which one sucks the least for you.

For me, OSX is mostly eye candy any keyboard junkie should steer clear of. Also, it tends to be sluggish and not as responsive as other OSs I've tried. The spinning beach ball (I call it the pizza of boredom) is a very common sight.

Linux is about plug and pray. Maybe, hopefully, if you're lucky, things work out well on your computer. I mean come on, Ubuntu, in 2008, made a big fuss about the new (yes new) screen manager that lets you visually control multi-monitor setups. Whoopie. Welcome to the '90s.

Vista is rubbish. SP1 made it better but it's still annoying. If it weren't for the hassle, I'd switch back to XP. More than OSX, the eye candy is very distracting and useless.

XP is old but darn good, kinda like an old pair of jeans. It has flaws but they're familiar and known-enough to be fixable.

So should you switch from OSX->Ubuntu? Is your software Ubuntu ready? Are you ready to drop to the command line fairly regularly? Are you ready for a different GUI? It's certainly doable, and perhaps easy, but it's a lot of "easy" steps to be taken. That may be too much work for you.

Good luck.

Pierre

> For me, OSX is mostly eye candy any keyboard junkie should steer clear of.

Actually, when I got my Mac, one of the things that really surprised me was how many other Mac people use keyboard shortcuts for everything. I think that, contrary to what one might expect, having a particularly mouse-intensive environment actually induces people to learn keyboard shortcuts more, to become more efficient.

You're right, and I should have given an example of what exactly I mean: the menus. Using Excel under Windows, I'm the master, knowing how to get to every menu item starting with Alt-(menu shortcut). I don't even have to look and it gets done. With other software, I'm not as good, but still better than average.

On Macs you can't drive menus like that. That's a serious productivity hit for me.

One question I would love to have an answer for: is this fixable using some kind of hack or installation of a program or something? That would be awesome.

You probably already know this, but in case anyone doesn't...

Ctrl+F2 highlights the Menu Bar and lets you arrow-key around. It's a cumbersome key combination, but I use it often when I can't remember a keyboard shortcut.

Rather than using the arrow keys to highlight menu options I tend to type the first few letters of the menu item. Eg, Window zooming in Camino would be done by hitting Ctrl+F2, w, <enter>, z, <enter>.

Pierre... From what you say, it is glaringly obvious you never spent any time either with a Mac or with a modern Linux. True the monitors stuff is not mature, but multi-monitor machines are just now becoming more common. As for OSX being sluggish... What have you been using? a G3?

And I find that dropping to the command line is fairly common with me because I am a programmer. My son uses my computer from time to time and he has no idea there is such a thing as a command line. Maybe your sample is skewed by a number of programmers using Linux more than any limitation of the graphical environment.

I only agree with you about the Vista thing. It is the lousiest OS I have ever seen being pushed out the door. It's even worse than Windows Me.

"it is glaringly obvious you never spent any time either with a Mac" Don't tell that to my boss - our company's IT system is all Mac :) Seriously, I've been a Mac user for 18 months, and now helping the company test Leopard for roll-out. I'm using a Macbook (the white variety) with a dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM. Yes it's still sluggish and I don't have any background software running.

As for modern Linux, I follow the release cycle of the majors. Every six months, I download and test Mandriva and Ubuntu, and sometimes others like Fedora, PC-BSD, and Mint (my pile of test CDs is getting silly). This week, I want to play with SymphonyOne 2008.1 (just released) because the interface is intriguing me. Invariably, on my laptop which is 2+ years old, something is broken.

None of them ever figure out my screen res (1280x800) natively. It's an ATI card, so my hopes are high now that AMD has opensourced the drivers.

Vista vs ME. Hmm, never thought of that but I think I agree with you!

Your Macbook must have some serious problem. May be some overheat condition that clocks it down. My wife's Macbook (white, Core Duo) is not sluggish no matter what I throw at it.

The ATI thing may explain your driver problems, but on my last notebooks, Linux was even able to figure out my Broadcom wireless, which is quite an accomplishment. For the last two years, I have little to no driver problems, but, then, I won't buy a notebook with an ATI video subsystem and I do prefer units with hardware that is known to work under Linux (the Vaios are very compatible, as are most HPs and Dells).

I have an OS X system that I use occasionally, but it's never been my primary desktop.

Personally, I just prefer the way the Ubuntu desktop feels -- but everyone's different. If you feel really at home with all the aspects of the Mac desktop, Ubuntu's not going to feel right -- which is how I feel on a Mac desktop. There's nothing wrong with the Mac desktop (other than that virtual desktops were a bit borked, last time I checked), it's just a question of what feels more comfortable to you.

Also note that Linux gives you a wider choice of desktops, ranging from Gnome and KDE at the polished end to lightweight desktops like IceWM to funky tiling desktop managers like ratpoison and xmonad. But again, if what you really like is OS X's desktop, at best you can customize a desktop into a second-tier knockoff of it.

The other consideration is what apps you care about, of course. My main apps are Emacs, Firefox, and a terminal window, and switching those is pretty easy. Personally, I like Open Office, InkScape, Gimp, and other Linux productivity apps just fine, and I greatly prefer Amarok to iTunes. However, everyone is different, so you may find something you can't live without from OS X. And if you're wedded to something like Cubase or Final Cut Pro, I doubt you'll be satisfied with the alternatives.

Hmm. I'd suggest you try dual-booting (if you aren't already). If you think you might want to switch completely but aren't sure, you could try using most of your disk for Ubuntu but keeping a partition just large enough to hold OS X just in case you change your mind.

Like many have said it is all a personal preference. You will get reasons from Mac users why OSX is better and you will get reasons from Linux users why Ubuntu is better......both are great Operating Systems, but in the end it is just a personal preference.

And like others have also said I think the best way to figure out which you like better is to dual boot. Try both the GNOME and KDE environments too.

I personally have been using Linux/Ubuntu for the last 2 years and have not found anything that I can not do that I absolutely need. I love the ability to customize everything.

In the end the reason I prefer Linux/Ubuntu is because I like the FOSS ideology and the people/community behind it. I can find a free Open Source application for almost everything, and if I have an issue I have thousands of Linux users who have probably already come across it and know how to solve it. The community has also put together a great idea-brainstorming site called Ubuntu Brainstorm to better improve the OS for the users. Oh and Ubuntu 8.04 comes out in just a few days!

From a developer's perspective, what's the appeal of all the glossiness of OSX and default WMs on popular Linux distros?

Is everyone here more design/graphics oriented?

Between firefox tabs, emacs buffers, and GNU screen, I hardly make use of the window manager at all.

When I do solely server work I like to boot my mac into Gentoo linux, but I am considering to switch to Brownix because I'm starting to think that Ubuntu is what I want to run the servers on as they grow more plentiful. I run the wmii X11 window manager, and it's fantastic for my productivity. Totally get's out of the way.

When booting OS X I still have most of the terminals in wmii on the crappy Xorg that comes with leopard. I still have to have a few iTerms because it's a pita to copy and paste to Xorg. Periodically I do a lot of graphics work and then I need to be in OSX. Working with large number of files in for example web projects are great to do in TextMate too.

I'm making this switch right now... I was getting ready to buy a macbook pro to replace my macbook, and made the realization that I use OS X to run *nix applications; so why not jump directly over to linux?

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread =D

I think in extremes:

If you're a computer and software user, OSX is the way to go.

If you're a hacker, you can code in more than 10 programming languages, and you've been writing code for more than 10 years, then you'll be way better off with Ubuntu.

If you're somewhere in between, stick with OSX.

Forget about Windows for now. But don't be surprised if they come out with something truly wonderful some day.

I think both are very productive platforms. I use both, but for me Mac OS X is better.

The big reason for me is that there are apps I rely on that run only on Mac OS X. Keynote and OmniGraffle are the two biggies. Also, I find things "just work" on OS X.

I spent an entire morning configuring my dual monitor setup on Ubuntu, for OS X there was no setup. Also the instant sleep is a killer feature for OS X.

I use OSX, Ubuntu and OpenBSD OSX for my SMS needs (probably can be done in ubuntu) Ubuntu for mouse-related programs (GIMP, Firefox) OpenBSD for devel and servers (~90% of my time)

Try OpenBSD, ... after a while, u will feel that Ubuntu is lacking

Ubuntu does not have FTP, SSH servers installed by default (must apt-get things) ... in OpenBSD, it's just an edit to config away (ftp is installed but not running)

Ubuntu's FTP client is crippled (mget/msend broken), No feedback on how % file's transferred, freeze a lot too

apt-get is complicated (universe, stable, unstable and what not). OpenBSD just uses pkg_add (tgz files) and PKG_PATH set to an FTP server ... really simple

Ubuntu is pretty secure; by being weak, it can't do a lot of damage. OpenBSD is very secure ... and dangerous if u need the power

To me, Ubuntu feels like that it's designed for mass by a committee - the devs themselves may not use it

Of course, I downloaded the Ubuntu DESKTOP (not the server version) ... and use it as such (desktop, i don't care if it's weak) and comparing desktop vs server OS is like comparing apple to orange, right? I'm sorry for ignoring Ubuntu server OS

NB: it's not a bashing against Ubuntu, I in fact use it, mainly for new hardwares (bluetooth, etc) where OpenBSD lack drivers

I ran linux on the desktop for a long time, switched to osx for the wireless support, went back to linux (ubuntu at the time), & pined for osx again.

Linux is a fabulous server os & is better than windows on the desktop anyday, but osx on the desktop is much nicer to work in (once you install all the unix/server-ish tools you need).

They're both good systems. The OS environment you use has tweaks that you're likely to love or hate that will influence the decision, but it's not longer particularly relevant what OS you run on your desktop so long as you have a solid web browser and can virtualise windows to deal with Office stuff when you have to.

Mark Pilgrim did. Read "When the bough breaks" and other stories at http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-b...

I just use linux on my servers and OS X on my desktop. Works very well for me and I'm sure it also does for other people.

I must be missing something. Is this still a question? The time for linux is well here.

Mark Pilgrim (of Dive Into Python fame):

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-b...

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/26/essentials-2006

Cory Doctorow (of Mac tattoo on bicep fame):

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/06/29/mark-pilgrims-list-o.ht...

Both of them switched for political reasons, for what it's worth. If you use and enjoy commercial Mac software, your politics are already somewhat desync'd from theirs.

Cory Doctorow jumped on the bandwagon of what he thought was a movement away from Apple, and in reality, these are basically the only two people who left. I doubt many at Apple were sad to see him leave.

It's a bandwagon he was destined to jump on -- he's an activist for openness, for heaven's sake, so moving to an open platform is hardly shocking. One might wonder what took him so long.

I wouldn't call wanting to be able to get at your own data a "political" reason.

It's possible to use OS X without locking any of your data into their horrible apps, I do it every day. That's a reason to switch away from Apple apps, not a reason to switch off of the platform.

Then again, if you don't use any of their apps, it's kind of a strike against the whole "it just works" thing that's supposed to be central to why one would use a Mac, don't you think?

the hardware just works. My computer never crashes. Ever. Sleep and hibernate work without any tweaking, which I don't think is possible on linux (IME with, literally, dozens of distros on laptops).

That's why I like my mac.

I think it's hard to come up with real examples of where Apple applications really hijack your data, and next to impossible to find examples where they made it harder to get to for no good reason.

Here's an interesting 1-year post-mortem from Mark Pilgrim on the benefits of Linux regarding package management.

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/06/02/one-year-with-li...

Yes, and in it, he claims it's easier to keep Ubuntu up to date than it is to keep a Mac up to date. To hell with empirical evidence, look at how simple that command line is! No way is my mom's MacBook that up-to-date!

Personally, I keep Ubuntu up to date by waiting for the little icon to pop in my tray that says I have updates, and I don't need the command line to do any part of it. It still updates all the packages I have without having to worry about looking for updates for various programs separately. I personally consider this a huge improvement over updating software by going to various websites or having several different updaters running in the background (or simply not updating your software), but perhaps you don't have non-Apple programs that need to be updated, or perhaps you don't consider this a disadvantage. Whatever works for you, works for you.

BTW, I'm fond of the command line for getting some kinds of things done, but even if you don't feel comfortable at a command line, it's a highly efficient way to tell someone how to accomplish a task (as opposed to something like Step 1: Go to the System menu, drop down the menu, expand the item labeled Administration, and click on the item labeled "Synaptic Package Manager." Step 2: click on the Search icon..., etc.). For a task that can be accomplished in one or two commands, it is often the case that there might be 10 steps involved in explaining how to navigate a GUI.

That's awesome. I keep my Mac up to date by... wait, how do I keep it up to date? Let me check, am I up to date? Well, shit, I am! How'd that happen?

Glad you have neat buttons and elegant command line tools to do it over in Ubuntu-land. Sounds like a fun project.

> That's awesome. I keep my Mac up to date by... wait, how do I keep it up to date? Let me check, am I up to date? Well, shit, I am! How'd that happen?

Cool. Did it just update itself from Tiger to Leopard too? That's pretty awesome!

It was actually a matter of putting the cd in, starting the installer, and choosing the "update" option.

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