SBLinux.org

This summary is generated after 1 year with MEPIS 7 as my primary OS at home, and 11 months with Mac OSX as my primary OS at home with my old MEPIS machine running full time for the MEPIS Torrent Team and data acquisition.

First things first, you'll shell out a lot more money for a Mac than you will for a comparably powered PC, with or without Windows, probably 30% more.

Simplicity: Mac OSX is simpler to use. I do not mean to say that one can use it in a responsible fashion without thinking, but just that one can use it without thinking. A user can open the box, get on the web using Safari, download software, music, and surf YouTube without ever thinking about it – ever. The OS will run, the hardware will respond, downloaded software will run with few, if any, conflicts, and the unthinking user will be happy. That covers >90% of the computer using world, so it's no wonder that Mac and OSX are popular.

Easier setup: Mac OSX is much easier to set up than Linux. This is often attributed to the smaller pool of hardware which needs to be beta tested with Macintosh. Installation goes off without a hitch, every time. Headaches common in Linux such as getting sound cards and wireless cards to work don't exist. If your hardware doesn't work, it's broken. It's not the installation or setup. Multimedia generally runs without difficulty (with the exception of proprietary Windows formats which require loading special drivers). Suspend works automatically. USB devices are recognized flawlessly. CPU frequency multipliers and voltages are regulated well.

I run virtual machines with VMWare. I had to pay $60 USD for the Mac version, but it saved me hours of Linux setup headaches (including learning how to do it), and it runs flawlessly. In my opinion, the only reason VM Ware is free (as in beer) in Linux is that VM Ware wants to keep its corporate foot in the Linux door in case they figure out a way to make it profitable.

Eye candy: This is debatable. Mac comes with some snappy little effects, like the “Genie effect” used to minimize windows. Compiz, Beryl, and now KDE4 have their own effects. I'm not going to rate these, because I'm not interested enough to have an opinion. I like a plain interface that responds instantaneously. I can't figure out why this hasn't improved at all over the last 10 years despite exponential improvements in processor speed.

Cool things: This will annoy Linux users, but it is my opinion that Mac has introduced far more nifty features over its history than Windows or Linux. From the new face recognition in iPhoto to two and three finger scrolling, pinching/spreading two fingers to zoom, widgets, I could go on for a very long time. Some of their innovations are dogs, like the round, hockey puck mice that came out a few years ago, but overall, they have produced a lot to imitate.

Power: Do you like being omnipotent at the *nix CLI? Want to wipe out the MBR and partition table on your system drive? Mac has all the *nix commands.

“You will do it our way, and you will like it:” This one cuts two ways: Mac OSX and its programs do a lot of really cool things, and those programs allow users to get started without with minimal preparation. This can get a user into trouble, but most often it doesn't. Linux could learn (and has learned) a lot from Mac, but not enough. Linux pre-selects its users by accepting only those who are willing to spend hours reading about any number of issues from fstab to udev, just to get their computers to run smoothly. On Mac, these are no brainers.

On the other hand, Mac programs can be very rigid in what they allow you to do. iPhoto for example will download images from your digital camera without blinking. It stores them all in one giant file in a proprietary format of unspecified image quality. If you want a good old fashioned jpeg (like you had from the start in you camera), you can export it, but you have to dig around to find anything resembling jpeg quality settings. The defaults is “medium,” despite that you may have been saving them as lossless jpegs on your camera. Pictures are exported with file date and time reflecting the export, not when they were taken. But if you want to export a picture to your Facebook page, it's a snap. Mac contains a nifty little program called “Photo Booth” that lets you take pictures with the iSite camera at the top of the monitor. I tried the other day to take a picture of a work ID badge to send in to my cell phone company to receive a corporate discount. I discovered that it takes photos in MIRROR IMAGES, and doesn't allow you to mirror them back to normal. I can guess only that they do this so the user will see him/herself as he/she is used to in the mirror, and won't be horrified by unfamiliar facial asymmetry when not seen in mirror view. I had to save this to a flash drive, take it to my Linux machine, and flip it back to normal with GIMP.

Proprietary: As I previously alluded, much of what Mac OSX does is proprietary. iPhoto stores pictures in a proprietary format. Even the standard text editor, “TextEdit,” argues if you try to save in plain text format. If you want to copy an optical disc, you have one choice, .dmg, although if you dig around long enough you can find a way to read an .iso file hidden in the “Disk Utility.” The list goes on.

Stability: This is a tie. I've locked up both Linux and Mac OSX, although rarely, and always after extensive setup and tweaking.

Security: There is the single persuasive anecdote from the March 2008 “Pwn to Own” contest where a Macbook Air was compromised through the Safari browser in 2 minutes (with about a week of preparation), a Windows Vista machine was brought down in 2 days (the hackers expected an earlier software release when preparing), and the Linux machine stayed up for a week (with some vulnerabilities discovered, but no one wanted to put the time into the code required to exploit them). There's also the general consensus of the hacker community that Macs are easier to crack due to systematic delays at Apple in updating code in OSX. To date, there are no wild viruses attacking Macs. For the time being, zero equals zero.

Sustainablilty: Macintosh OSX will be supported only as long as Apple can make it profitable. Just before the iPod and iTunes came out, this didn't look like it would be very long at all. Linux enthusiasts don't like to think this way, but I believe that much of the Linux ecosystem is non-sustainable. Ubuntu and SUSE, for example, will be supported only until the companies that finance them give up on turning a profit. Maybe that day will never come. Maybe it will never come because they become profitable. If they become profitable, however, it will likely be because they are no longer free in one way or another. If they are completely free, then any competitor is free to undercut the profit. Even my personal favorite, MEPIS, is dependent on it's founder to donate insane amounts of time and other personal resources. Distos which are supported completely by their communities like Debian and Slackware have a chance of sustainability, but each has its own problems. Debian suffers from continuous internal political turmoil, and it's not clear what would happen to Slackware should it lose its “benevolent dictator.”

Communities: The Mac Community tends to be fairly superficial. “You got a Mac? Cool, so do I!” and “Hey, come look at the cool background I made for my Apple 30-inch display!” (OK, I'm exaggerating a little.) The Linux community is widely varied. Many distros forums are filled with “RTFM” comments, which serve only to bolster the egos of the people writing them. Some, like MEPIS, are very supportive of newcomers and very friendly. Most expect a level of computer literacy that is uncommon in the Mac (and Windows) world.

This brings me full circle: I think the personal computer today in many ways is like the automobile was 80 years ago. Anyone could drive one, but you could go a lot farther if you understood it and knew how to fix it when it broke down. Linux users universally like to poke around under the hood. The Linux operating system pre-selects these users, mostly by intimidating and refusing to run acceptably for anyone else. Macintosh runs well for the casual user, so long as that user pays his/her mechanics in Cupertino well, stays on the main roads, and doesn't hit a pot hole.

-Occam (Bruce)

Hello Occam
I enjoyed reading your post. While I think you may have overstated the case for Mac, I have to admit that I am not familiar enough with it to offer any intelligent rebuttal. I am, however, quite familiar with Linux. Your assertion that Linux "pre-selects these users, mostly by intimidating and refusing to run acceptably for anyone else" was a valid argument ten years ago when I was first introduced to Linux. Things have changed, however, since that time. With well over three-hundred distributions to choose from, there is something in Linux for everyone from beginner to technical genius. Some, as you imply, are for the more advanced user while others are, to borrow a phrase, essentially plug-n-play --- just install it and you're off to the races. Mepis 8x, for example, is great with hardware detection as is sidux (not for beginners), PC Linux, and others. There is a learning curve, of course, just as there is with Mac or Windows or anything else. In fact, one of the obstacles to learning Linux, and to a lesser extent Mac, is sometimes the inability to unlearn Windows. The freedom and potential that Linux offers is unsurpassed. Neither, however, is without their own set of problems. In fact, as I have visited several Mac forums after reading your post, I find Mac users voicing essentially the same kinds of problems and issues that you find on Linux or Windows forums. Admittedly, Linux is at its best on the server level but its migration to the desktop is far more advanced than you seem to be willing to credit. However, you are probably just expressing your opinion (as am I) to which you are certainly entitled. Thanks for sharing it, though. I did enjoy reading the post and may have even learned something.

Hi morux,

Thanks for the reply, and more important, thanks for taking my post as it was intended. I should start by saying that I am incredibly grateful to the MEPIS community for freeing me from Windows. I have no interest in returning to Windows full time. I have to run Windows in virtual machines for work, to complete my taxes, and to run a topographical mapping package that I like, but virtualization is a lot safer than the full Monty.

I have mixed feelings about both OSs -- both have strengths and weaknesses. I run Mac OSX as my primary OS mostly because it automatically takes care of more of the nagging little loose ends than does MEPIS. On my Macbook Pro, sound, wireless networking, power regulation, suspend, and USB device recognition would require scores of hours to figure out with MEPIS. Once I did, I might have a better OS, but I would lose time with my daughter. On the other hand, I now understand fstab well enough to reconfigure it without a reference, and setting up my network printers is easier in MEPIS than in any other OS.

The software that I use everyday, Opera, Open Office, Thunderbird, and VMWare is available on both platforms, so that's a toss up. I'm growing to dislike just about anything whose name begins in a lower case "i" due to the lack of flexibility, the proprietary file formats, and the rank commercialism, but that just means that I don't use it on either OS.

As far as the 10 year argument goes, I think it's hard to say which has changed more, the Linux OS itself (though it certainly has changed a great deal), or the knowledge of the users who have stuck with it. My experience is focused in the last 2 years, because the prior 12 years of dabbling got me nowhere near usability, given my time constraints. My wife has observed that I spend a lot less time messing with the computer since I switched to Mac OSX, and I think that's true. While I like to poke around under the hood of the computer, the quality of life benefits I have received by switching to Mac OSX are invaluable.

Hello Occam,
I understand the importance of family time and I applaud your sense of priority. Interestingly enough, that's one of the reasons I chose to use Mepis years ago. I can accomplish more in less time with Mepis than with any other OS I have ever used. I use other Linux distributions, as well, but always run to Mepis when it's time to get things done. I have never owned a Mac but have friends who would never part with theirs. Perhaps, someday, I'll go and see what all the fuss is about. Cheers.