Re: [PLUG] Tis the season for computer buying?

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On 31 Dec, 2004, at 08:33, Jason Costomiris wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 23:12:32 -0500, Geoff Rivell <grivell@comcast.net> 
> wrote:
> > I hate MacOSX's interface :)  Pretty, yes.  But too limitted for what 
> > I use
> > the computer for.  Not a bad OS for grandparents though.  Which is 
> > why I am
> > eyeing this desktop myself :-)
>
> I'd be curious to know what these "limitations" are..  I've been using
> OS X for quite some time now, as well as Linux since the good ole days
> (how's 0.99pl15 grab you?), and I don't find OS X the least bit
> limiting.
>
> Different? Certainly.  Limiting?  Not a chance.

The Mac OS X interface is no worse than either Gnome or KDE.
Personally, I prefer MOTIF ... but then I also am also a KSH fan. :)

At the command line, OSX is nothing more than Unix. Granted, it's 
FreeBSD and not Linux. But for those of us who believe what Linus 
claims -- "Linux is not Unix" and who prefer BSD, it's fine, we're 
right at home.

If you want an X11 interface, simply launch Apple's X11 interface (it's 
standard with OS X) and run all your X-apps. The nice side benefit of 
Apple's integration of X11 is that you can cut and past between Aqua 
apps, and not only X11 apps.

If you really want Something else, simply wipe OSX and install FreeBSD 
or one of the PPC Linux distros.

I've recently acquired a pair of Alpha XP100s and have switched from 
SuSE and RH to FreeBSD -- the difference is incredible. Again from my 
point of view, files are where they belong, code works the way one 
expects Unix to behave and in general FreeBSD is a much better 
environment than any Linux distro I've played with.

The primary difference between OS X and FreeBSD, but in common with 
Tru64 Unix (aka Digital Unix, aka OSF/1) is that OSX is a Mach kernel 
and FreeBSD is not.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 [Rev A motherboard - 300 MHz 768 Meg] OS X 10.2.8
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) [800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg] OS X 10.3.7
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg] Tru64 5.1a
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-3 (EV6) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-A (EV 6.7) - 384 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com
whmagill@gmail.com


___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug