Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux - factual please
On Thursday, February 14, 2002, at 03:16 AM, Andrei Raevsky wrote: Hi guys, Thanks for all your comments which, while very interesting, do not quite answer my maybe poorly formulated question. So I will re-phrase it: do you know of any comparisons between MAC OS X and Linux which would look at aspects such as connectivity, multi-tasking, multi-user capability, telnet (how many simultaneous sessions), file system comparison (journalling), crash recovery, users and group administration, etc. Rather than a philosophical comparison with praise or blame I would simply seek an objective technical/factual comparison of the compare and contrast type. Many thanks in advance, Andrei Ok to save you some time the only differences are in the file system. Linux can use the ext2, ext3, JFS, ResierFS or XFS file systems. All except ext2 are journaling. Mac OS X can use the HFS+ (which is the recommended one) or the BSD UFS filesystem. At the moment there are no journaling capabilities available under OS X although FreeBSD's SoftUpdates are under consideration. As for the rest I'll run it down item by item Connectivity? What do you mean by that? Multi-tasking: Both Linux and Mac OS X have pre-emptive multitasking. Multi-user: Both OS's can have multiple users logged in at any one time. Telnet: Thats a setting that can be changed on either OS. Suffice it to say under normal circumstances no one will reach the limit on either OS. Crash recovery: What do you mean by this? It crashes, you reboot. You can use backup software/hardware with either OS. User and group administration: In addition to the normal Unix users and groups, you can use NIS on both OS's. OS X on its own has a unique Netinfo Domain Database system that can be used to admin networks consisting of clients of any OS. Additionaly SAMBA (SMB) can be installed and used on both to replicate Windows networking capabilities (PDC's BDC's...etc). Mac OS X is closely related to FreeBSD Unix (www.freebsd.org). The core of OS X (Darwin) inherited a lot of technology/features from FreeBSD. Since FreeBSD and Linux were already very similar (although not identical) the differences the user would see were already very little. This remains so on OS X. By comparing Mac OS X to Linux you're really just comparing one Unix to another, like Solaris to AIX or HP-UX to Tru64. What sets Mac OS X apart from other Unix's is its ability to run regular applications in addition to Unix apps. Things like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Freehand, Internet Explorer, Quicken, and video games such as Quake, Doom, StarCraft, WarCraftetc that are all native to the platform. And no I don't know of any sites that have an exact comparison, if anyone else does please post a link to it! It really would be redundant though since more or less *NIX is *NIX. -- Blonde Klingons: Because it was a good day to dye! -- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux - factual please
Thanks for the info. This answers my question very well. Cheers, Andrei Ok to save you some time the only differences are in the file system. Linux can use the ext2, ext3, JFS, ResierFS or XFS file systems. All except ext2 are journaling. Mac OS X can use the HFS+ (which is the recommended one) or the BSD UFS filesystem. At the moment there are no journaling capabilities available under OS X although FreeBSD's SoftUpdates are under consideration. As for the rest I'll run it down item by item Connectivity? What do you mean by that? Multi-tasking: Both Linux and Mac OS X have pre-emptive multitasking. Multi-user: Both OS's can have multiple users logged in at any one time. Telnet: Thats a setting that can be changed on either OS. Suffice it to say under normal circumstances no one will reach the limit on either OS. Crash recovery: What do you mean by this? It crashes, you reboot. You can use backup software/hardware with either OS. User and group administration: In addition to the normal Unix users and groups, you can use NIS on both OS's. OS X on its own has a unique Netinfo Domain Database system that can be used to admin networks consisting of clients of any OS. Additionaly SAMBA (SMB) can be installed and used on both to replicate Windows networking capabilities (PDC's BDC's...etc). Mac OS X is closely related to FreeBSD Unix (www.freebsd.org). The core of OS X (Darwin) inherited a lot of technology/features from FreeBSD. Since FreeBSD and Linux were already very similar (although not identical) the differences the user would see were already very little. This remains so on OS X. By comparing Mac OS X to Linux you're really just comparing one Unix to another, like Solaris to AIX or HP-UX to Tru64. What sets Mac OS X apart from other Unix's is its ability to run regular applications in addition to Unix apps. Things like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Freehand, Internet Explorer, Quicken, and video games such as Quake, Doom, StarCraft, WarCraftetc that are all native to the platform. And no I don't know of any sites that have an exact comparison, if anyone else does please post a link to it! It really would be redundant though since more or less *NIX is *NIX. -- Blonde Klingons: Because it was a good day to dye! -- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux - factual please
On Thursday, February 14, 2002, at 03:16 AM, Andrei Raevsky wrote: Hi guys, Thanks for all your comments which, while very interesting, do not quite answer my maybe poorly formulated question. So I will re-phrase it: do you know of any comparisons between MAC OS X and Linux which would look at aspects such as connectivity, multi-tasking, multi-user capability, telnet (how many simultaneous sessions), file system comparison (journalling), crash recovery, users and group administration, etc. Rather than a philosophical comparison with praise or blame I would simply seek an objective technical/factual comparison of the compare and contrast type. Many thanks in advance, Andrei I have not seen my post, so I repost : The best article to me is this one : http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=421 Tales of the BeOS refugee I is written by a famous BeOS power-user. This is more a BeOS / MacOS X comparision, than a Linux / MacOS X one. However, this is quite complete : it compares BeOS/MacOSX/Linux/Windows. Enjoy. Nyco Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux - factual please
i DID see that post, i checked out the article you recommend, and it was PHENOMENAL !!! thought *slightly* slanted toward BeOS, it was one of the most informative comparison of operating systems I've seen ... thanks for the suggestion. kennM | | I have not seen my post, so I repost : | | The best article to me is this one : | http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=421 | Tales of the BeOS refugee | | I is written by a famous BeOS power-user. | This is more a BeOS / MacOS X comparision, | than a Linux / MacOS X one. | However, this is quite complete : | it compares BeOS/MacOSX/Linux/Windows. | | Enjoy. | Nyco | | | | Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? | Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com | _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux - factual please
Hello! Hi guys, Thanks for all your comments which, while very interesting, do not quite answer my maybe poorly formulated question. So I will re-phrase it: do you know of any comparisons between MAC OS X and Linux which would look at aspects such as connectivity, multi-tasking, multi-user capability, telnet (how many simultaneous sessions), file system comparison (journalling), crash recovery, users and group administration, etc. Rather than a philosophical comparison with praise or blame I would simply seek an objective technical/factual comparison of the compare and May I remind you that the first philosophical comparison with praise / blame etc... came from you? Are expressions like I don't think, I don't trust objective / technical / factual for you? For a very simple reason: I don't think that proprietary software is a good thing. Neither do I trust that Mac suddenly coming into Unices and even open source with their next OS is anything but opportunism born out of dire need. As for their OS - look at Linus T's comments about it in his book. _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com I would simply seek an objective technical/factual comparison of the compare and ontrast type. Many thanks in advance, Andrei Pascal Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
okay, i'm curious .. WHICH linus t book? Just for fun cheers, _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
2002 2? 13 ??? 13:40??: Id depends on what you want. For most of the people of this list (including me), Mandraje provides everything for the daily use. As for my frustrations: - No consistent cut paste; This can be frustrating if you use different toolkits. The select-and-middle-click method works in most places, though. Most of the places doesn't mean all the places. I know that the middle button has a higher success likelyhood, and that's why I use it all the time. But what I am saying is that some applications use ctrl-c / ctrl-v and some other don't. Just imagine: you're a new user coming from MacOSX (where cutpaste is a key feature) and you land in an OS without this feature. What do you do then? You buy another Mac. Note that I am not saying that Linux is bad, otherwise I would not use it and not even bother writing here. Linux improves constantly. Among the distribs I have used, Mandrake is the most advanced in terms of user-friendness, and I am really looking foreward to more consistency which will make it an unbeatable office machine. So to summarize what I mean by non-consistent cutpaste: Most of the applics work with select-middle button. - some fair consistency. Some accept ctrl-c / x / v, some don't some other use a different key combination - the general case is no consistent cutpaste. If you want to add more consistency, then remove the ctrll-c / x/ v from all the applications that support it and replace that with select / middle button or do the opposite. I am aware that this cannot be solved by Mandrake. At least not Mandrake alone. - No way to reassign the shortcuts consistently to mimick Mac's behaviour. At least not in KDE, and the changes don't apply consistently everywhere. Have you looked for alternatives? If KDE doesn't suit your needs, then try something else. Have you looked at GNOME and/or WindowMaker? KDE isn't the whole world, you know. I know. But I was replying to a person who wants to convince a Mac addict to switch to Linux, Mandrake or other. Just imagine the guy who buys the CDs or downloads them. Since he doesn't know anything about Linux, he just chooses the default options. As you may know, KDE is the default of Mandrake (I mean, if you press enter to all the questions you don't know during installation, you will end up with a KDE environment). As a new user, you don't know the difference between KDE and Gnome, do you? And as an average user who does not want to bother reading the docs (90% of the users, including me), you just try an see. So to summarize the situation, as a default config (in KDE), you are not able to configure the keys. At least it does not work consistently, system-wide. If you want system-wide settings, I guess you have to provide these settings at some level earlier than the window manager, be it gnome or kde. I don't know if this can be done by environment variables, but something like that may work. export LINUX_COPY_KEY=ctrl-C export LINUX_PASTE_KEY=ctrl-V (or the same configs with alt) etc... and all the window managers should refer to the same settings. I am not saying it's simple or even feasible with the current OS status... - Fonts / encoding problems as soon as you don't use an english platform. I am still unable, for instance, to send a message that contains French AND Japanese in the same page. Either the accents or the kanjis are unsuported. Internationalisation suport in GNU/Linux is supposed to be very good. Is supposed, yes, once you manage to configure it properly, which is (I think) beyond beginner's capabilities. Again, have you tried different apps to see if one suited your needs? I hear that Pango (the GNOME2 internationalisation library, used by GNOME2 apps) handles this sort of thing quite well. Also, make sure you're using Unicode fonts. Again, if you think as a new user would, you just take all the defaults. Here is my Mandrake 8.1 experience: - I clean installed 8.1 with Japanese option from the installer; - Everything went pretty well until the installation finishes. A few messages came out in English, which may bring some trouble for the non-english speakers, but the localization ratio is very good. - At reboot time, I had no fonts at all (this means no menus or at best a few garbage characters) - I had to choose fonts blindly (fortunately there were some icons). After a few restarts of KDE, I got the menus working. Now I opened kmail. As it was the first time I used the mail, I think the app could have taken the font parameters I had setup for kde, but no, I had to configure fonts for kmail as well. Now, my config works rather well. Both the OS and me have made a step towards each other (I got a more or less working config, and I have adapted myself to what I cannot configure). At one point after receiving 8,1, I sent quite a lot of reports to the i18n group, and I hope 8.2 will have made some fixes. But there are still things that don't work.
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?! (OT)
its unfortunate but linux still has a ways to go before its idiot friendly enough to become a mainstream desktop. why do i say this? my understandingof the mac is that the os goes down on the mac and the hardware is identified and drivers installed: painless windows is somewhat similar but u may have to fiddle around with drivers and search for them. mandrake linux is getting there (a friend of mine spent a week installing suse 2/3 years back .. i gave him lm8.1 and now he only talks about mandrake as the install only took 2 hours) and yet there are problems. mainly hardware, then education ..the howto's are there but they arent that simple to follow .. what if the howto's talk of a directory which isnt where its supposed to be? instead of being aaa/bbb/ccc/xxx/yyy/zzz its actually in aaa/zzz. the user might not know how to search for it. what i am trying to say is mandrake is on the correct path to this 100% idiot friendly installation and use. they should implement lsb1.0 and li18nux1.1 as quickly as possible and then build up from there. take a step to the side so to speak and build up on the ease of use in other areas. there are lots of things that could be said but for the moment .. lm is "ishta"-creme de la creme of the linux world for me "salam" - peace - Original Message - From: Andrei Raevsky To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 6:12 PM Subject: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?! Hi, I am looking for a good, thourough and detailed, technical comparison of Mac OS X versus Linux. A friend of mine is a really "religious" Mac user and it will take a lot to make him try Linux. I would like to help him with this. Please send me any good articles (or links) you have. Thanks, Andrei --- Registered Linux user 226850 Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
Sridhar, I am very new to Linux. I found your comments very well written and informative. Thank you, Gary Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
Andrei Raevsky wrote: Hi, I am looking for a good, thourough and detailed, technical comparison of Mac OS X versus Linux. A friend of mine is a really religious Mac user and it will take a lot to make him try Linux. I would like to help him with this. Please send me any good articles (or links) you have. Thanks, Andrei The best document I've ever read is Tales of the BeOS refugee. This compares not only MacOS X and Linux, but also Win and BeOS. In fact, it is a comparison of BeOS and MacOS X, with a look at Linux and Win. The point of view is : the power-user. Really a reference document to me ! http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=421 You can also read comments, there is a feedback version of this doc somewhere, but I can't find it... Enjoy ! Nyco Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
Title: Message Now, I ask: Have you ever come across a Mac user whom is not religious about it? I am getting that way about (Mandrake) Linux... Also, thanks to all the people who replied to "Speed... or lack of?" post, I added 256MB of RAM, and I hardly notice any slow down. I read about updating my kernel, I don't know if I need to just yet. Thanks again! -Original Message-From: Andrei Raevsky [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 11:13 AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?! Hi, I am looking for a good, thourough and detailed, technical comparison of Mac OS X versus Linux. A friend of mine is a really "religious" Mac user and it will take a lot to make him try Linux. I would like to help him with this. Please send me any good articles (or links) you have. Thanks, Andrei --- Registered Linux user 226850 Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com.
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
On Tuesday, February 12, 2002, at 11:12 AM, Andrei Raevsky wrote: Hi, I am looking for a good, thourough and detailed, technical comparison of Mac OS X versus Linux. A friend of mine is a really "religious" Mac user and it will take a lot to make him try Linux. I would like to help him with this. Please send me any good articles (or links) you have. Thanks, Andrei I use both Mac OS X and Mandrake Linux. Either one is fine for desktop usage. Let him stick to what he has, there really is no need for you to convince him to switch. Mac OS X is an excellent Unix by the way. There isn't much you can do with one that you can't do with the other. -- Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Mandrake Linux and Windows XP Pro are my OS's. I am GEEK, hear me roar. --
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
On Tuesday, February 12, 2002, at 11:12 AM, Andrei Raevsky wrote: Hi, I am looking for a good, thourough and detailed, technical comparison of Mac OS X versus Linux. A friend of mine is a really "religious" Mac user and it will take a lot to make him try Linux. I would like to help him with this. Please send me any good articles (or links) you have. Thanks, Andrei Sorry, I forgot to ask this in my first reply but why do you feel the need to convert your friend to Linux if he is happy with Mac OS X? -- Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. --
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
Sorry, I forgot to ask this in my first reply but why do you feel the need to convert your friend to Linux if he is happy with Mac OS X? For a very simple reason: I don't think that proprietary software is a good thing. Neither do I trust that Mac suddenly coming into Unices and even open source with their next OS is anything but opportunism born out of dire need. As for their OS - look at Linus T's comments about it in his book. Cheers, Andrei _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
okay, i'm curious .. WHICH linus t book? - Original Message - From: Andrei Raevsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 1:38 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?! | | | Sorry, I forgot to ask this in my first reply but why do you feel the need | to convert your friend to Linux if he is happy with Mac OS X? | | For a very simple reason: I don't think that proprietary software is a good | thing. Neither do I trust that Mac suddenly coming into Unices and even | open source with their next OS is anything but opportunism born out of dire | need. As for their OS - look at Linus T's comments about it in his book. | | Cheers, | | Andrei | | _ | Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. | | | | Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? | Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com | _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 17:04:56 -0500, NDPTAL85 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Meanwhile ArsDigita has closed up shop and months ago the company that housed the original PostgreSQL developers shut down. Oh yeah Loki shut down too. When these companies shut down, the software doesn't die because its GPL, but thats really no consolation. If they can't afford to work on it any longer then the software really doesn't go anywhere. It just lingers and gets more and more out of date. None of these companies wrote GPL software as their main product (if at all). Most of Loki's offerings were closed source. These died with Loki. Other pieces of software live or die according to their license. PostgreSQL will not die any time soon -- there are far too many companies and individuals using it for that to happen. Red Hat have their own database software based on PostgreSQL. If there is enough interest in the product, the software will live. Just look at Nautilus: Eazel failed last year but Nautilus development is alive and well. The original developers don't have to be there; the GPL makes it simple enough for anybody to take over if necessary. I have seen this happen time and time again with GPL projects. The beauty of the GPL and some other open source licenses is that they are almost totally divorced from business cycles. Sure, some corporte input can be a bonus, but it is hardly necessary. GPL software only really began to be noticed by corporations in 1998, but they had been in active development since 1984. In that time, a complete operating system had been written, complete with a developer tools and a multitude of applications. -- Sridhar Dhanapalan Life does not end at 2.4.0. Think of it more as a no more excuses release. -- Linus Torvalds Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 17:04:56 -0500, NDPTAL85 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Meanwhile ArsDigita has closed up shop http://www.arsdigita.com/ All the links seem to work. Maybe you meant ADUniversity? The ACS is still open source and still available, though it's been converted from TCL to Java. - C Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
Hello, Sorry, I forgot to ask this in my first reply but why do you feel the need to convert your friend to Linux if he is happy with Mac OS X? For a very simple reason: I don't think that proprietary software is a good thing. Neither do I trust that Mac suddenly coming into Unices and even open source with their next OS is anything but opportunism born out of dire need. As for their OS - look at Linus T's comments about it in his book. Id depends on what you want. For most of the people of this list (including me), Mandraje provides everything for the daily use. As for my frustrations: - No consistent cut paste; - No way to reassign the shortcuts consistently to mimick Mac's behaviour. At least not in KDE, and the changes don't apply consistently everywhere. - Fonts / encoding problems as soon as you don't use an english platform. I am still unable, for instance, to send a message that contains French AND Japanese in the same page. Either the accents or the kanjis are unsuported. We (on this list) can cope with this, but as for a person coming from MacOSX world where the 3 points above work perfectly, I guess it is not easy and for them, Mac is still the only solution that works out of the box, without any other config. Pascal Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 17:04:56 -0500, NDPTAL85 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Meanwhile ArsDigita has closed up shop http://www.arsdigita.com/ All the links seem to work. Maybe you meant ADUniversity? The ACS is still open source and still available, though it's been converted from TCL to Java. Yeah its closed. Went out of business. It was announced on Slashdot last week. There's OpenACS too but who knows where that will lead. -- Computers come in two styles - prototype and obsolete! -- Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] Mac OS X versus Linux?!
On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 12:47:57 +0900, Pascal Goguey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, Sorry, I forgot to ask this in my first reply but why do you feel the need to convert your friend to Linux if he is happy with Mac OS X? For a very simple reason: I don't think that proprietary software is a good thing. Neither do I trust that Mac suddenly coming into Unices and even open source with their next OS is anything but opportunism born out of dire need. As for their OS - look at Linus T's comments about it in his book. Id depends on what you want. For most of the people of this list (including me), Mandraje provides everything for the daily use. As for my frustrations: - No consistent cut paste; This can be frustrating if you use different toolkits. The select-and-middle-click method works in most places, though. - No way to reassign the shortcuts consistently to mimick Mac's behaviour. At least not in KDE, and the changes don't apply consistently everywhere. Have you looked for alternatives? If KDE doesn't suit your needs, then try something else. Have you looked at GNOME and/or WindowMaker? KDE isn't the whole world, you know. - Fonts / encoding problems as soon as you don't use an english platform. I am still unable, for instance, to send a message that contains French AND Japanese in the same page. Either the accents or the kanjis are unsuported. Internationalisation suport in GNU/Linux is supposed to be very good. Again, have you tried different apps to see if one suited your needs? I hear that Pango (the GNOME2 internationalisation library, used by GNOME2 apps) handles this sort of thing quite well. Also, make sure you're using Unicode fonts. We (on this list) can cope with this, but as for a person coming from MacOSX world where the 3 points above work perfectly, I guess it is not easy and for them, Mac is still the only solution that works out of the box, without any other config. That's true. I'm sure free software will get there; it'll just take some time :) -- Sridhar Dhanapalan De gustibus non disputandum. -- Linus Torvalds Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
