Os X

[danieldk]

I have a Mac Mini now. This means that I can run OS X besides GNU/Linux and the usual BSD suspects. (For the uninitiated: OS X uses the Mach microkernel with a partial FreeBSD-based kernel on top of it.)

I'll be blogging my experiences at the usual place ;).

[fos]

If it is not too much trouble, echo your blog posts here. I am very interested in your experience.

fos

[danieldk]

I think my last blog post pretty much sums it all up. The hardware is terrific, but OS X kinda sucks. I have removed it, and replaced it by GNU/Linux. I believe that the user-friendly Linux distros are at a point that they are more user-friendly than OS X. Except if you want to run specific software like the expensive Adobe packages.


I have to get my usual opensource *nix-ish tools running to do my daily work. There are basically three options: MacPorts, Fink, and pkgsrc. All three projects provide a ports-like system. Yesterday, I gave all three of them a shot. Fink was quickly dismissed, because some of the ports that I'd require are at fairly old versions. Many packages didn't compile well with pkgsrc. I am fairly familiar with pkgsrc, and I really love it, and it has always worked great for me on NetBSD and also pretty well on Linux. Unfortunately, I currently do not have the time to fix all packages that do not compile. MacPorts worked fairly well. One package failed to build, because the original site for the package was down temporarily (manually downloading the tarball from another site did the trick). Some other packages failed, because there were overlapping files between ports/packages. Installing with force did the trick there.

So far, MacPorts seems to be an excellent choice for running UNIXish applications on OS X. Unfortunately, it has the downsides inherent with a port collection: compile time. E.g. compiling Inkscape and all its dependencies required a few hours. An additional problem is that the X11 applications don't integrate well with OS X: the GTK+ applications have their native themes (though, a Aqua/Leopard styled theme engine would probably solve that). Besides that the performance of X11 applications seems to be subpar. E.g. rotating images in Inkscape gives very noticable flickering. As said in my previous post: this all seems to be a huge step back from APT/yum, where applications can be installed very easily, within a snap.

To look further than OS X I decided to install a Linux distribution as well (my most favorite system since ~1994). There is a small problem though, after booting a GNU/Linux with rEFIt, the keyboard can not be used at the ISOLinux prompt. Most distributions require the user to (at the very least) press enter to continue the booting process. Ubuntu is one of the exceptions: the live CD boots automatically after 30 seconds (IIRC, some other distributions like SUSE also do this, but none of the distributions that I normally use). Ubuntu seemed very snappy, even from the live CD. Post-install this Mac Mini seems to run Ubuntu faster than my other Core 2 Duo machine, maybe partly due to the excellent Intel-sponsored video drivers. An additional surprise was power management: the Mac Mini seems to use about 23 Watt of power when it is mostly idle (which is about the same as on idle OS X).

I slowly start to believe that Ubuntu is more user-friendly than OS X. I am not the typical desktop user. But OS X seems to be great if you use the i* applications or Adobe software, and the integration between various components of the desktop is very good. But if you want automatic (security) updates for all your software, look beyond the small set of Apple and third-party applications, let alone run non-Apple hardware, Ubuntu seems to be much closer to the holy grail of desktops. Especially if you would like to keep vendor choice (both of your hardware and OS).

Am I disappointed? No! OS X is a nice system, and I would like to explore it further. But apart from that: it's hard to get better hardware at that price, with only a fraction of the power use of a normal desktop machine. So, even if I end up running Linux on it only, the hardware is a good deal!

Maybe I should try Vista to complete my comparison ;). (No thanks!)

[bluesdog]

Maybe I should try Vista to complete my comparisonDon't bother, my friend.
Vista sucks worse than any OS I've ever tried.
It easily exceeded my worst expectations :biggrin: