Mac vs. Linux was New to Linux. I'm not impressed

Noah Roberts

OK. You are enbreastled to your opinion. This Mac iBook meets my needs as a Unixy notebook, but I run Linux for my servers, so we aren't entirely at odds.

Well, technically Linux has no vendor support :-) But seriously: internet resources for Mac OS X are pretty good. And it isn't entirely true that you can't get at the source; there's bsd and linux source will configure quite smoothly on this box.

But again, yes, Linux is obviously better in that regard. If that's important to you, then you should shun Macs. However (and I know that this makes some Linux folk see red), it's a heck of a lot easier for me to just buy an iBook than get Linux running on a notebook. I can't even run Knoppix on my wife's notebook, and the Linux newsgroups are always full of people struggling with something notebook related. Remember, I do run Linux servers here and wouldn't even think about replacing them with Macs. But for my notebook - it's a heck of a lot easier.

And if I ever win the battle of getting my wife off Windows, I suspect it will be with a Mac and not Linux.. I could be wrong, and we're not at the point yet where she's willing to even try either, but my best guess is that she'd accept the Mac before Linux.

A world of Mac desktops and Linux servers is a hell of a lot better than the world most of us live in now, isn't it? But maybe you just don't see it that way - that's OK, too.

-- Tony Lawrence