Article:  |
Why Install Linux on Your Mac? | |
| Subject: | Separation point | |
| Date: | 2004-12-02 14:55:17 | |
| From: | trantorvega | |
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In the previous posts I've seen people talking of speed, freedom, simplicity, reliability, hardware compatibility, even laziness as strong points of oe system or the other. Personally, I'm a x86 Linux user and I've only occasionally seen or used Apple computers or OS X, but I am, as many of you are, fascinated by the style and the quality of the hardware. Quality obtained at the price of proprietary hardware made mostly by Apple, coming often with equally proprietary drivers. OS X is undoubtedly a great operating system that fused a solid kernel with the stylish and simple look&feel that has always characterized Mac computers, but the GUI is almost completely - again - proprietary, even if X11 can be installed and used, though in the end I think that most non-geek users ( or at least the part with little knowledge of the *nix world ) rely on this proprietary - and more old-Mac-style-like - section of the User Interface. Nowadays GUIs are important and in many cases necessary, but I also think that a system relying deeply on GUIs deprives users of a good knowledge of how the machine works. Then again if you don't care and prefer that someone (or something) else do the job in your place learning and gaining nothing, it's your choice. If you want Linux to become a sort of point&click system, I certainly hope that day never comes. The fact that Linux requires (not always) to manually adjust some configuration files or whatever is fine for me. A little bit of chaos or disorder can only means the system is alive and growing. Complete order is often a symptom of death. Many people also don't seem care if the system or the software they are using is free (as in freedom) or not. My opinion is that life and society put enough restraints and ties on us to add some more thanks to the software we use and moreover I don't like much the idea of someone more telling me what I must or must not do with my computer. In the very end, if you want to learn something using your computer, if you want to use a modern os with thousands of developers and users working on it with passion, if you want to do almost anything you can imagine and mess up from the GUI down to the kernel without restraints of any sort and feel free, or if you want great performances, use Linux or many other open source system, like OpenDarwin (that, as someone pointed out, is like using MacOS X without Aqua, Cocoa and many others closed components), FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc.; if you don't care about the inner working of your system, if you are too lazy or too busy, if you want a powerful and solid system that is also extremely easy to use, with also a great style, than OS X is a very good choice. Still, as the Hacker Culture claims, Knowledge is Power. |
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