[Gllug] OT: Mac OS X for a linux user

[Richard Jones]

In brief, the good points:

+ Excellent, intuitive software which very rarely fails.

+ The most effortless "just works" configuration of any of the major
operating systems.

+ Expose' feature.

+ Command line, bash, and lots of common unix/GNU tools (eg. ssh, cvs,
gcc, ...)

+ Timely security patches, sensible firewall - seems to be
invulnerable to security/malware problems (so far ...).

+ Great font / i18n support, particularly for Japanese.

+ Battery life on the iBook is > 5 hours.

and the bad points:

- Lack of virtual desktops (apparently to be fixed in the next
release of the OS).

- Low screen resolutions on the iBook series.

- Hardware breaks down frequently and getting the AppleCare cover is
both necessary and expensive.

- Single button mouse (but you can plug your own mouse in).

- OS X 10.4 was IMHO a step backward from 10.3 (addition of a
completely useless search feature which no one ever uses, cannot be
turned off, and consumes loads of power "indexing" everything in
sight).

- No decent packaging system, although to be fair I haven't tried
DarwinPorts yet which people seem to be raving about.

- DVD drive refuses to play or even show blocks from out of region
DVDs, which is completely stupid.

- Available OpenOffice ports are a bit strange and buggy, although
the newest NeoOffice beta is definitely getting there.

- No source.

There's quite a few negatives there, but actually I quite like my
iBook laptop.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com
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