On Jan 18, 2008 11:40 PM, Justin Findlay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It is interesting you say this. My experience is exactly opposite. > Linux does all I want and more (in the way I want it to) whereas Macs > aren't as fun/easy to use. The concept of a distro with updates and a > universe of packages seems to be a Linux-only concept even in 2008. > Macs may have updates but you have to pay for them. Besides that, every > time I use a Mac it always feels like (certainly less so than a Windows > machine) I'm being forced into how Apple wants me to use a computer > rather than how I want to use the computer. Linux distros let me do > that. > > It may seem that I have very narrow computing requirements, but part of > the reason for this is that 6 years ago I decided I'd never rely on > proprietary software ever again. That may have temporarily cut down on > my productivity or space of software to choose from but now that I look > back I haven't missed much. I was willing to shift a fundamental > paradigm and it turned out to be educational and very rewarding.
Your second argument kind of trumps your first one. Thanks to the efforts of fink and/or macports, almost every packaged available for linux is available for OSX. A couple that weren't available as binaries work very well compiled from source. Time Machine has saved my bacon a couple of times already, so as far as I'm concerned Leopard was worth the $80 I paid for it. But as a "religious" decision, i.e. "I will never rely on proprietary software again", none of that matters. As a student taking classes that require the use of Visual Studio (bleh), I can't make that kind of decision. Of course, even if I could I wouldn't because my Mac perfectly fits my computing needs. I can run VS in VMWare Fusion, which is _very_ slick. I have yet to find a usage instance where Apple seems to be telling me how to use my computer that I can't change to work the way I want it to. But again, this pre-supposes the lack of a religious decision like "I will never use proprietary software again". -- Alex Esplin /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
