To be honest I dont know how to use linux all that well, I wish i did b/c I would use it all the time

Don't get me wrong I am as newbie as it gets, but I think that, in order to use it u have to learn it. The same holds true with Windows and with Macs OSes.
It's not harder it is just different.

true, vary true.........lol I just noticed you have about as many posts as I do

Yeah I have seen that movie. Wasn't it supposed to be somewhat based on him or something? I kind of wondered how much information they could collect on you if they wanted when you were running windows. Good thing I am on linux.

I guess you just have to be the kind of person who enjoys working on and fixing a computer. In my experiences, I could make it do what I want after much trial and tribulation and even then, it wouldn't work 100%. I guess it comes down to it being open source. I personally enjoy nothing breaking and everything working without any setup on my part. I left the PC for that reason. For some reason though, linux still has an allure that I can never seem to resist. I must admit though, it has come very far and the leaps and bounds it has taken due to the countless people that work on it for sheer enjoyment are quite amazing. I was also impressed with how much the driver base has expanded. Either way, it's going to get really good, really soon. It's come this far, that's the only way it can go.

I was fiddling around with my partitions earlier today and ended up killing both Winbloze and Debian. After two reboots and a lot of changing the 8 CDs, I now have Woody working better than it was before (with a little less useless junk that seemed like a good idea at the time). Linux can read all my FAT partitions without trouble, but Winbloze spouts out random characters in the directory entries.

I have a backup of my Winbloze stuff, but it's very difficult to recover it. DOS 7 (Win95/98) doesn't have native support for long file names, CD or networking, and as I don't have a floppy, it's really difficult to actually recover the data with Winbloze. I'll end up having to use Linux for it.

<<< The reason society hasn't gone Mac? Marketing. >>>

Price, contempt for the consumer, rapacious policy re:software and OS, orphaned software, proprietary and expensive hardware are just some of the reasons society has not and will not go Mac.

<<< Really, the reason that I made the mac post is because under the hood, it IS open source. >>>

No, it is not open source. Has never been open source. Will never be open source. GPL'd software is open source. Mac/BSD is not GPL'd software.

<<< Price, contempt for the consumer, rapacious policy re:software and OS, orphaned software, proprietary and expensive hardware are just some of the reasons society has not and will not go Mac. >>>

<<< No, it is not open source. Has never been open source. Will never be open source. GPL'd software is open source. Mac/BSD is not GPL'd software. >>>


It is open source. Here's the page with a link to the source code to prove it. http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

Contempt for the consumer? Contempt- The feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn. I've used an Apple for over a year now. Not once have I felt inferior or scorned. In fact they have the best customer service I've ever encountered. A business cannot run for twenty years if they have contempt for those who buy their products.

Rapacious policy? Rapacious - Taking by force; plundering. Greedy; ravenous. What part of their policy fits those definitions? In that one of their products is flawed when bought off the shelf, they will replace it free of charge and sometimes will give free upgrades. They give a generous warranty on all of their products even though they're not likely to break. Please tell me how they're greedy and plundering, I would like to know.

Orphaned software? I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this so I'm going to assume you mean a lack of software for the operating system. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Surely as a linux user you would appreciate that it can now run unix software as well as thousands of linux apps available through X11 the OS X version of the X Window system. Also, more and more mainstream software titles are being made available for the mac.

Proprietary and expensive hardware? Usually it can support the same hardware as the PC, with no gripe upon installation. It uses the same RAM as any other computer. It uses the same video cards as any other computer. It uses the same sound cards as any other computer. I can go on and on and back up these claims but will not do so here due the the already ridiculous length of this post.

Expensive? It depends on what you want. If you're looking for wads of power, it's usually a little more expensive. However, you can get an iMac for $1300 Dollars or an eMac for $800. While not as powerful, they are still quite fast and quite affordable. My 12 inch powerbook cost $400 less than the Sony VIAO ultralight notebook, and the VIAO doesn't have half of what the PowerBook has. If you do pay for more power, though, you truly get what you pay for.

The reason society hasn't gone to mac is because of ignorance. They simply don't know better. They think windows is all there is and most people are too afraid to look outside of what they know. I was a PC user for ten years, but I switched in one month to the mac. Surely there must be something to it.

<<< The reason society hasn't gone to mac is because of ignorance. They simply don't know better. They think windows is all there is. >>>

Same argument Linux has been using.

<<< Expensive? It depends on what you want. If you're looking for wads of power, it's usually a little more expensive. However, you can get an iMac for $1300 >>>

As compared to a $500 - $600 P4 w/256MB DDR ram, Burner, and 128 MB video. I would say it is expensive.

<<< Proprietary and expensive hardware? Usually it can support the same hardware as the PC, with no gripe upon installation. It uses the same RAM as any other computer. >>>

Haven't worked on them much, have you?

<<< Orphaned software? I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this so I'm going to assume you mean a lack of software for the operating system. >>>

In a sense. Apple is not exactly known for legacy support.

<<< Rapacious policy? Rapacious - Taking by force; plundering. Greedy; ravenous. What part of their policy fits those definitions? >>>

How about pricing? If you don't mind paying near full price for minor upgrade I guess it is OK. Not for me. Not much better off than with SPARC, ALPHA, or ARM. We don't have to compete because we are better type of attitude. Fine. Don't compete. 95% of users will continue to use other products.

<<< Contempt for the consumer? Contempt- The feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn. I've used an Apple for over a year now. Not once have I felt inferior or scorned. >>>

Lot longer than a year here. And Apple's attitude toward the customer is no better than MS.

<<< It is open source. Here's the page with a link to the source code to prove it. >>>

NOT GPL. License is restrictive. Read GPL and compare. The differences are important and substantial. I reiterate that Apple never has and probably never will release GPL'd code.

I really don't understand the fluffy bunny feelings people seem to get for Apple just because they wedged a BSD knockoff between proprietary hardware and a proprietary collection of eyecandy. If anything, that should make them more despised in the *nix community, rather than less.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Microsoft + Incompetent Business (approximately) = Apple. If Apple had the power of MS they would be worse than Microsoft. OS X is really ridiculous. In the spectrum of systems, Apple was at the *opposite* end of *nix. MS was in the middle. DOS and Linux have a hell of a lot more in common than any frigging Mac. These are the people who brought you a solid wall of graphics and a system with no command line that was operated with *one* frigging button pressed over and over. Who charged a fortune for the machinery. Who thought about it and then decided, no, Apple clones wouldn't be good, and crushed them to preserve their lockin. Who sued MS over *having* a GUI at all, in essence. Who switched to BSD knockoffs to help out the bottom line, sucker naive open source supporters, and ride the general wave of anti-MS that should *include* Apple and bury them *with* MS.

Bravo, ricdave.

Actually, Apple is the most WIDELY USED graphical computer to date. 99.9% of your movies with ANY SORT of blue screen or computer graphics are produced on Apple Machines. I wouldn't call that inferior.

Infact, most of your graphical business' use Apple's simply for teh fact of virus' for online safety when networking computers. Having a different OS is TONS BETTER than any kinda crap firewall. The worm may get to the comp, but it won't execute...well, most of them. People with Linux and Mac NEVER complain about virus' and crashes...why? It's a more refined and stable platform. Mac never had as OS crash during a press release...LOL, that happenned to MS....

Bottom line? Macs aren't inferior. They're geared towards a more specific niche of people. Almost ALL your artists will use a Mac, as will your designers for productions, but use a Windows based amchine at home because of ease of software and ease of availability.....

ricdave, your point is well said and you're an excellent debator.

digiot, you statements are blatant and sound like they are based on nothing.

oicdn, you're right in what you say.

And as previously mentioned, the macs are geared toward graphics people who don't ever want to have a problem with their computer. They do get the better end of the deal, though. The OS is so advanced and has so many features that linux and windows will never have. Expose, rendezvous, the ability to video conference full screen with no grainyness at 30 fps, the ability to never need to defrag or run a disk check, being able to improperly shutdown and not have the OS wig out on the next startup. Everything just moves fast and smooth and it always looks great. Nothing is ever grainy on the mac, small text shows clean and clear. It's always pleasing to the eye. It's like a luxury computer. They were built for graphics and they can easily handle a graphicly intense OS without slowing down. For those who try the new macs, they understand why they are better. For those who refuse to, I feel sorry for them as they will never know that they can have the best of all worlds.

However what is the point of a graphic artist arguing with a bunch of linux heads. We're comparing apples to bananas.

I like my OS.

You like your OS.

None of us use windows, and that's all that matters. =)

I think that there is nothing which suggest superiority in the final product either, for example, what would be the difference between some artwork generated with Photoshop on a Mac as opposed to the same artwork generated on a Windows machine?
I know that there are lots of claims on performance and/or reliability, but in my experience a Mac can crash as grandiously as a Windows machine.
In my opinion there is a good deal of inertia involved when it comes to switch between operating systems, if that is true for people using Windows and refusing using other OS-es, why should the other way round be not true?

If I may, I think you should not use so many absoultes here.
There are viruses for Mac system as well as for *nix, very few indeed.
But consider this, the purposes of virii is to create havoc and satisfy the programmer's ego, now if you were to write a virus would you not hit the dominat OS, and become "elite"?
The statement "<insert here your OS> is secure" is true only if you don't become complacent.
About crashes I would say that NEVER is a bit too far fetched, a simple search of this forum will show you that people do get crashes even on Linux.

Although I agree with you with regards to the wrongness of allegation of inferiority, I must admit I find a bit difficult to accept your statement that all artists use Macs. It is simply not true, I happen to know artists who do not use Macs as well as "commoners" who use Macs.
Also, I am not sure that Apple's policy is that of restricting sales to a very defined niche, consider all the "occult" ads you get in movies and tv series; you would think that they actually want to target the wide audience.
As for software (un)availability, this is another old myth, there is plenty of software for both platforms in terms of games, office applications as well as antivirus software and utilities.
The bottom line? I beleive that the choice of OS is like the choice of food; if a culture is not used to eat... dogs for example, I think that statistically you will find that little people from that culture would be adventruous enough and taste the poor dog's meat.
Mental inertia is extremely powerful and shapes a lot of our everyday life.

quote:

Actually, Apple is the most WIDELY USED graphical computer to date. 99.9% of your movies with ANY SORT of blue screen or computer graphics are produced on Apple Machines. I wouldn't call that inferior.


tsk tsk tsk.... SGI baby, SGI =)
plz don't make it sound like there's only linux mac and windoze heh

p.s.: i still pick my "blue toast box" w/ irix over that powerpc anyday. especially when it comes to graphics.