[Tfug] 2 weeks of Hackintosh fun..

Shawn Nock nock at fastmail.fm
Sat Nov 8 18:12:27 MST 2008


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Jim Secan wrote:
> Windoze gets its share of mention in these discussions and it's certainly
> not free.

You've made a valid point about how MacOS : Windows :: Pepsi : Coke when
the metric is Free Unix.

> The
> fact that Bowie, I, and lots of other ex-Linuxers, are switching to OS X
> for their desktop says a lot about Linux and it's failure to provide a
> quality desktop interface.

I simply do not buy this argument, despite it being often invoked.
Having a preference for "fancy 3d desktop animations of a certain brand"
is simply not the same thing as "failure to provide a quality desktop".

There are many choices in the FOSS desktop environment. Most all of them
are pretty and stable; all of them may be made better and modified to
suit your needs.

I do wish that people would separate preference from fact and stop
blaming FOSS developers in an attempt to ameliorate their guilt about
have said preference.

You can like like MacOS without blaming FOSS. Heck, my mother loves
MacOS; It helps her get her tasks done.

To my mind, the thing that keeps Linux out of the 'mainstream' is the
lack of proprietary application support. The most common argument that I
hear is "I can't live without X", where X is a proprietary software
package that doesn't yet have Linux support.

Change is difficult and people are unlikely to jump headlong into it.
MacOS is functionally identical to Windows (especially with respect to
vendor support). A Windows person can boot MacOS for the first time and
think "Why is the start menu shaped like that? Oh well, there's the MS
Word logo next to Photoshop Icon".

As for Linux users moving to MacOS, well... there's no accounting for
taste, is there?

Shawn

- --
Shawn Nock (OpenPGP: 0x4E549994)
nock at fastmail dot fm
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