An Apple User Tries Ubuntu | Hacker News Reader

An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

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24 pointsrams57 comments

This wasn't a bad article to read, although it doesn't really get anywhere. A reasonably novice Mac user tries out Ubuntu, finds some pros and cons.. the end. Quite well written though but some of his insights don't quite make sense..

> I had heard that Linux users still use a command line. Instead of pointing and clicking, they actually type in obscure commands – a series of numbers, letters, and squiggly things. It’s very Russian spy, black hat, deep nerd.

So do most technically minded OS X users. Admittedly he says he finds the command line quite useful on page 2, but Linux's command line offers no benefits over OS X's.

> My test laptop was using the GNOME desktop interface. On start up, it offered me a choice of interfaces (KDE, GNOME, etc.) The oddness of this struck me: isn’t Ubuntu enough? It appears I still needed to select a separate desktop interface. [...] The Linux desktop needs to eliminate that extra choice if it wants to reach a mass audience.

That's what Ubuntu is attempting to do: enforce a standard. I don't recall Ubuntu asking me this question with a default install. You're never going to be able to eradicate the ability to choose though, because people on both sides of the KDE/GNOME fence are pretty diehard. I can see why, because I "quite like" GNOME and think KDE is a bloated, ugly, block piece of Windows-inspired junk (basically, I respect KDE as much as I respect Comic Sans) and I don't usually take sides on things like this..

I might quibble with the "Linux's command line offers no benefits" line. It's true that the shell is identical. But OS X, out of the box, is lacking huge chunks of what you expect to find out-of-the-box on a typical Linux distribution. That's a problem for anyone who wants to be able to portable scripts, etc... Add that to the fact that the existing package managers for the command line tools are kinda lacking, and I'd honestly put OS X behind even cygwin as a good example of a OS command line environment.

The bit about Gnome vs. KDE is a sore point, alas. Canonical itself is clearly a Gnome shop, and that's what they ship on their core Ubuntu Desktop distribution. But KDE has a huge user base of near-fanatic volunteers, who insist (how dare they!) on maintaining the Kubuntu distribution in parallel. Both desktops work very well, and at this point neither is likely to disappear.

FWIW, I use Gnome and prefer the architecture and API.

The stock OS X box comes with enough of the standard command-line toolbox that if you are actually writing a "portable" script you are not going to have a problem running that script on OS X. The biggest differentiator is probably that OS X is a part of the *BSD lineage and so you will need to do more tweaking of a Linux script to get it bsd-ready than you will need to tweak a standard bsd script to move it from FreeBSD to OS X. While macports is closer to the freebsd port system, it is close enough to apt-get that you should really have no problems switching from one to the other.

It's been a few versions since I paid close attention, but as I remember OS X ships with only the bare POSIX tools, plus a few extras from the FreeBSD userspace. It lacks stuff like perl, python, curl, wget, ssh (maybe: not sure about that one), tcpdump, etc... That's all stuff the poor user is going to have to figure out how to get.

And as mentioned, the existing package systems for OSS software are really primitive. There's just no equivalent for, say, the Ubuntu synaptic tool for new users.

I'm not trying to make this into a flame war: clearly you can achieve a pretty solid command line experience in OS X if you know what you're doing. But you're never going to learn it there without a bunch of headaches if you don't already have that expertise.

I'm running Leopard right now, and I have python, perl, curl, ssh, and tcpdump. I have no idea why wget is left out of the default install, but I just get it with macports, which is just a download and double click install away. Anyone who would be using these tools wouldn't have any problem setting it up. A few revisions of OS X ago things did seem relatively odd to the average Bash user. The shell was tcsh, and being based on BSD everything felt a bit off to someone switching from Linux, but these days it's pretty much all there. You should give it another look if you get a chance.

wget is left out simply for licensing reasons. curl is an MIT license, wget is GPL.

edit: I second guess this now that I think about it. bash is GPL...

That is simply not true. Python is in /System/Library/Frameworks for example. OS X doesn't usually bother to imitate SysV, that's all.

Don't forget the lightweight xubuntu distribution, which uses the xfce window manager. It is nice and fast. It works nicely on older machines with less resources.

I like fluxbuntu better than xubuntu. It's not an official canonical distro, but i have a pretty old pc with only 64 mb of ram and fluxbox runs far better than xfce on it. I think xubuntu is a waste of time anyway, but i can't i8magine using gnome either, im kubuntu till death(mine, or theirs) Viva KDE.

Anyway, a friend of mine can get me a cheap mac(prices are unbearable outside of the us because of shipping and resellers adding up to the price) so I'm going to get pretty close to OS X and i know that its good, but like that guy i might choose to dual boot and have the OS X just there if i need it.

I've been using Fluxbuntu for quite a while now, I second your recommendation, it's pretty impressive and worth a shot for ubuntu linux users interested in an alternative to xubuntu.

He also seems to be stuck in the past on a few features. For example:

[On Ubuntu] First off, immediately, before anything: the rotating desktop. Damn, that is totally cool. You click an icon in the screen’s lower right, and the desktop rotates to a fresh view. Remarkably, you can have up to 16 different desktops.

Apple introduced the same feature (Spaces) with the Leopard release of OS X.

Damn, you beat me to it. I love how this guy is _such_ an apple fan yet he isn't familiar with Spaces.

There's a lot of these ill-informed and vocal mac fans out there that give the rest of us a bad name.

Forgive me, but spaces doesn't have the nifty cube does it? I think he just likes the 'eye candy' that comes with Compiz (which, btw isn't enabled by default).

Actually, the rotating cube effect started with the OS X fast user switching feature and was "borrowed" by a lot of virtual desktop systems like Compiz or the OS X virtual desktop apps "Desktop Manager" and "Virtue Desktops". Since Apple already uses this visual effect for changing users it is not going to use it for switching desktops and therefore went with a different visual effect -- if you really like the effect you can get it with the previously mentioned third-part virtual desktop apps.

OSX had 3d rotating cube fast user switching in 2002? Most likely it was "borrowed" for that from someplace else.

http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/oldnews.php

Like thwarted said, 3D desktop was doing this on Linux back around 2002, before OS X had multiple local users.. You'd zoom out, the cube sat in the middle of the screen, about 75% of your monitor, rotate, then zoom back in. It was a little flickery, but damn cool, and worked on the KDE setup I had at the time.

Actually the cube is a usability trap. I had to disable it because it increased my workspace switching time a lot even when I had increased its rotation speed. It looks cool, but gets in the way unfortunately.

Its a trade off: increased spatial awareness versus a few fractions of a second. Compare most office suites, which now smoothly show when new rows or columns are added to a spreadsheet for the same reason - animation shows you what's happening, and where its happening.

It's a lot easier for people to get the concept that they have another desktop around the corner, than that they have another desktop on an abtract flat plane.

I don't think so. He goes on to describe the enhanced productivity of using multiple workspaces, as if the same cannot be accomplished on a mac.

That's what he's saying though is that he likes 'the cube' as a feature, not the ability to have multiple desktops. That, or I'm misunderstanding. I do know though that when I show people my ubuntu box they go NUTS over the cube so I think that is really what he's trying to show. It's nifty!

> "I thought to myself: this could increase productivity so much. Even with my huge Apple monitor, I'm always needing to move things around when I’m deep in a project."

No really, he doesn't know about Spaces.

Overall, I agree with the article doesn't go anywhere. He likes some things that exist on Mac too, he doesn't like other things (command line) that are on Mac too. He doesn't seem to know enough about what he's talking about to give any interesting insights on his test.

> Linux's command line offers no benefits over OS X's.

Oh cmon. The rarely updated BSD tools versus GNU? Massive amounts of packaged command line software available at the click of a button? Commands available for more stuff, to automate admin tasks? A tabbed terminal out of the box?

Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing wrote a much better article about switching to Linux from a Mac a couple of years ago. GIYF.

I think this is a normal Ubuntu review that's been spiced up by painting the reviewer as an amateur user and Mac fan. I don't believe the last part though.

The amateur user thing just doesn't seem consistent throughout. And the way he talks about his limitations as a user ("I’m not a software engineer; if I can’t grab it off the shelf, I can’t use it.") just strikes me as reciting a persona.

Two other obvservations:

* His experience with OS X must have been a long time ago because there's no mention of Exposé, Spaces, or Spotlight – which are all comparable features to the Ubuntu ones that impressed him. And if he was truly an OS X user all these years he'd know about them because they were the main features touted on the upgrade boxes. (Unless he's never upgraded from OS X 10.1.)

* From my memory and quick research Ubuntu doesn't come with KDE – you have to install it. I'm guessing the journalist read about the Linux war between Gnome and KDE and decided the throw it into his story even though it didn't actually happen to him. (Though it's possible Virginia Tech gave him a customized Ubuntu install to play with.)

> I know Ubuntu is free software, but I don’t care about that. It’s more important that my system be good, not cheap. (And if it was really that great, they’d charge for it, right?).

I wanted to stop reading right there, because the reviewer is ill informed by what it means to be "free," however I stuck it out and he gives a favorable review.

The first 10 paragraphs seem to be intentionally echoing the usual gripes and fears, in an ignorant-sounding tone. The author could have made it more clear, but I think he meant for it to sound flippant or somewhat mocking, then rebut most of it in the rest of the article.

It's a decent Mac-user-tries-Ubuntu anecdote, not so much a review. But he does bring up one good point: Apple spends hojillions on advertising, and Microsoft at least matches that. Word of mouth is great for converting power-users, but there's a reason the advertising industry churns through so much money -- it works.

While the point about advertising is interesting, I think it's a bit of a red herring: Apple and Microsoft are trying to make money by having people use their OS, so naturally they have to convert people, or convince them to not switch to the competition. Linux on the other hand doesn't need to convert people.

Sure, the more users you get, the more potential developers there are, and the better the system will end up being. And of course there are commercial Linux distributions. But in general, Linux doesn't need advertising, because it doesn't need to "win." It just needs to stay alive for those of us who want to use it!

He seems like a real novice Mac user.

Ubuntu is nice, but both Ubuntu and GNU/Linux aren't without flaws that don't exist in the Mac/Windows world (that a novice might not notice).

Examples:

Software. I can grab off the internet or the shelf any piece of "Windows" software and put it on my computer. Likewise, I can do the same with the Mac. I can't say that about GNU/Linux. Why? Because each distribution (and new version of a specific distro) has different dependencies taken care of by a regular install. Distros get around this by providing repositories (and Ubuntu's is excellent), but it's still different than being able to just grab stuff. GNU/Linux is much more in a state of flux which means that it can progress very quickly, but also that software requires more tweaking for each distro.

Proprietary stuff. This has come a long way since I started using Linux in the RedHat 9 days. Ubuntu 8.04 allows for easy installation of proprietary codecs, but things like DeCSS (for DVD playback) is still a pain and flash (becoming more important in the YouTube generation) is absolute crap. Not the fault of GNU/Linux, but it does still lessen my enjoyment of it.

UI stuff. I like GNOME's HIG for the most part, but GTK+ is starting to look old. Look at Adium and Pidgin. Pidgin is a fine piece of software, but it just looks cludgy by comparison. Likewise, there are just somethings that no one seems to want to fix (the minimize animation is crap). More abstractly, none of the desktop environments seem to be hitting what I'll call the Firefox level. Specifically, that nice balance between simplicity and complexity that Firefox seems to hit. GNOME goes for simplicity to a fault while KDE will throw every useless thing into the mix and tell you that you should just be comfortable looking through a cludgy list of a million settings.

GRANTED, there are many thing that are simply superior about GNU/Linux. Examples include software updates that don't require restarts, some of the best multi-tasking I've seen (where Windows and Mac might make other processes hang a bit in responsiveness), and of course being free. It's truly amazing, but there are some annoyances.

If I were to lay out some milestone's in GNU/Linux's future, I'd have to argue that these would be important: like LSB (Linux Standards Base) becoming the norm (which I think will happen when developers start seeing the number of new things they can add decline and they focus on environment stability); getting consumers off proprietary codecs and environments (like flash or DVD - yes, this is out there); and a change in one of the two desktop environment's philosophies to be more Firefox-like in terms of verbosity and the like.

As a Mac user, this article made me cringe.

> And that Safari can’t handle certain Web features, including plenty of videos.

That's not really true, unless he's talking about crappy IE-specific sites. Most videos will play with the appropriate codecs installed (Flip4Mac and Perian cover most)

> ...and some even still use the command line. (The command line? Oh, geez…)

This says much more about your level of experience than your platform of choice (though I imagine the average Linux user uses the command line much more than the average Windows or OS X user). To his credit, it seems he sees the light later in the article.

> First off, immediately, before anything: the rotating desktop. Damn, that is totally cool. You click an icon in the screen’s lower right, and the desktop rotates to a fresh view. Remarkably, you can have up to 16 different desktops.

OS X has that too! Up to 16 different desktops! (it's called "Spaces") Granted they copied it directly from Linux, but it's there, rotation and all (I think OS X may have actually had the rotation effect first, with Fast User Switching)

No, most people only saw the effect first on OSX. http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/ I'm sure it predates that too.

Every so often, I come across some weird "new" effect I swear I saw implemented in Enlightenment, which always seemed to have some cool eye-candy, years ago, but the hardware just wasn't up to it at the time.

Agreed. BTW, multiple desktops were around since before Linux. Unix workstations had them since the late '80s or so.

> It’s not just cool, it’s great for workflow. You can have files and documents open on one desktop – maybe you’ve got four browser windows open, researching something – and a single click takes you to a fresh desktop, with documents and apps open as you like.

The article was written on May 2, 2008, well after the release of Leopard which ships with Spaces.

> The results come up in different colors, which helps you locate things. (I think.)

The article is filled with little nibblets like this that scream novice user.

> And what the heck is ‘KDE’?” The Linux desktop needs to eliminate that extra choice if it wants to reach a mass audience.

Probably the most significant thing in this article: I wholeheartedly agree that for everyone else, it should ship with one desktop interface--likely the more popular one. I imagine that would be Gnome. I agree with him that if someone like my grandmother tried to start up Ubuntu for the first time would see this and think she had done something wrong.

Probably the most significant thing in this article: I wholeheartedly agree that for everyone else, it should ship with one desktop interface...

I don't know if this has changed recently, but when I installed Ubuntu, it did not ask me to choose -- it defaulted to Gnome. If you later wanted KDE, you had to install it separately (or you could have installed the KDE-only Kubuntu in the first place). It makes me suspect that the friend that set up the Ubuntu box went through the additional trouble of installing both environments, so that the author was not playing with a vanilla install:

http://www.watchingthenet.com/switch-between-gnome-and-kde-d...

Actually, it's been a while since I had been on Ubuntu--I can't remember for sure! I was going by what he said.

i tried ubuntu over the weekend (this time for real, not on a VM). I was severely shocked to see that in order to have multiple monitor support, I would have to start editing config files. I'm a tad bit linux savvy (i know what cd is, in other words) but this was just too much hassle. I stuck with vista... :(

Knowing how to change directories isn't really evidence of "linux savvy", considering the command is the same in Linux, Unix, and Windows.

As for multiple-monitor support, your hardware vendor will often have a GUI configurator just like they provide for Windows. ATI's is called Catalyst Control.

Another Mac user here. I gave Ubuntu a spin the other week, running in Virtualbox on my main machine.

I thought it looked slick and was very usable.

Then I tried downloading and installing Firefox 3.

I grabbed it, unarchived it and then.... then what? Where's the bloody installer.

The package manager is Linux's killer app, but new users coming from Windows or OS X don't expect it, don't understand it and don't use it. Blub phenomenon.

(If an open-source program isn't already installed. click the Applications menu, go to Add/Remove, and select the programs you want to install. Any dependencies are taken care of automatically, even for complicated packages like web servers. Click "Apply". You're done. If a free but closed-source program like Skype isn't shown, try adding the Medibuntu repository.)

Another interesting example of death-by-alternatives is the beleaguered Linspire's Click-N-Run initiative:

http://www.cnr.com/

Stillborn? Perhaps. But in theory, CNR should have been an easy way for new converts to download and install programs the way they're most comfortable, and still benefit from the OS's package manager.

ubuntu hardy comes with FF3 installed, and typically you can install most software you need using Synaptic (from the GUI, apt-get from the command line). You might also be able to find a binary version on the site where you downloaded from (look for .deb files).

If that's not an option (which is possible with FF3 if you're using an older version of Ubuntu) then chances are you need to build the software you downloaded from source and this is where it gets more complicated (although not that complicated unless you happen to get errors).

In case anyone is new to Linux and curious here are the typical steps to building a package from source.

  > wget http://example.com/somefile.tar.gz (or you can download with the browser)
  > tar zxvf somefile.tar.gz (or you can extract the archive using your desktop manager)
  > cd somefile
  > ./configure (if you don't see a configure and there is a file called Makefile present you can skip this step)
  > make (this will compile the software)
  > sudo make install (if you didn't get any errors during make you can use this to install the software)

Depending on the specific software you are trying to install you might need to pass configuration options to ./configure, you should typically look for such things in the instructions for the particular software you are trying to install. Also note that on Ubuntu you should install build-essential first (sudo apt-get install build-essential).

Many thanks for the explanation. Much appreciated.

you installed it wrong. on mac os or windows, you download a program from /its/ website and run /its/ installer.

on ubuntu (or pretty much any linux distribution or *bsd), you look to your vendor for pre-compiled packages of this software (linux distributions using dpkg, rpm, whatever, bsds using ports/pkgsrc/packages). so on ubuntu you run whatever package management utility comes with it and tell it you want to install firefox 3. it fetches a package built by another ubuntu user and installs it.

of course, you can manually download/configure/compile/install any of this software, but using pre-compiled packages is usually much easier, faster, and integrates better with your other installed software.

Got it. many thanks.

The Mozilla organization doesn't properly package Firefox, nor do they link to packages for Linux OSs created by other people.

Since there's very little work involved in the latter, AFAICT this is because they suck.

In Ubuntu 8.04, FF3 is installed by default, but if you missed it, look for 'Firefox' in Add/Remove.

The point about the package manager aside, if a program comes without an installer, it is not the fault of the operating system, but of the respective software package.

There is software for Ubuntu that comes with an installer (for example Netbeans), so the responses pointing to Synaptic didn't cover all the bases.

"Granted, I was testing on the campus of Virginia Tech, which has a fire-breathingly fast Net connection. But I’ve often checked out Web page load time while standing in an Apple store – and you know that’s optimized for speed – and it still wasn’t as fast."

Here I stopped reading.

>There’s a reason that Apple has always been the choice of artists and musicians. The machine itself is artful. Yeah, it’s expensive, and it crashes, but it’s artful. And that counts for a whole lot.

What? Apples crash?! Unpossible--Apples are the greatest computers evar!

He tries so hard to look like an Apple user that I hardly believe he really is one.

I'm certain I've read this article before. Given all the anachronisms in the article, that really points to this being an old article. Google didn't turn up anything though :-/

"Eeek! It’s a Command Line! (Run, Hide…)"

If only he knew the power of the CL...

If he could be turned, he would be a powerful ally.

ubuntu-desktop stays true to its name ... an OS for average users only for desktoping

you know a unix OS is broken when you google "how do i compile / patch vim in ubuntu?"

or when you can't ssh to ubuntu-desktop machine

Ubuntu is an OS designed by committee ... it's secure by being weak

The only thing good about ubuntu is its supports for new hardwares; however, quality is questionable.

Well on OS X I googled for "how to rename a file" and "how to copy a file" (OS X file manager doesn't support cut+paste). On the other hand, I just installed vim on Ubuntu the other day with synaptic, no problems whatsoever.

"apt-get install" is not the same as compile from source

you are at the mercy of repositories

"make install" on the other hand, gives you more freedom

vim patching problem was kinda solved by using intrepid repo instead of hardy's ... but also gave birth to other problems

To me, a unix system that is unable to compile from source (only binaries) is on the same level as windows

even on mac, i can use port, it fetches the sources and dependencies, compiles everything, beautiful!

NB: yes i did apt-get dev-compilers & libraries & dependencies

shrug I guess Ubuntu is not there yet

I still don't get how 'Get Info' on a file would be used to change the program it opens with.

And OS X software installs freaked the hell out of me the first time I tried (ran the app from the package dir, and it didn't work properly).

smith-n-wesson the 'original' point and click interface :o)

Safari's video support and general works-well-ness was bad 3 years ago, but it's just fine now.

edit: he doesn't seem to know that macs have a command line

"edit: he doesn't seem to know that macs have a command line"

Yes, I found that bizarre. That, and the part where he writes that Ubuntu "does everything that Windows does".

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