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"You all suck and I'm better than you." - Jesse Phillips |
I didn't start the os war, no I didn't cause it but I'm trying to fight it. I have written this, not in response to, but because of The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment. I should start by say that I run a Debian Linux system as my primary OS and have been for the last three years. These comments are based on experience of running several distributions including: Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, and Windows machines. Attempts of some distributions failed to install correctly and I would rather attribute those to having little Linux experience when they were attempted. I have not run OSX, but hear about it from friends that do. My major is in the Computer Science. With that said I would like to try and run through whatever it is I will be saying.
I run Linux, love it, and realize it has problems. I don't see Microsoft as a monopoly (they just have the market share). I have nothing against them other than their product being crap. Vista I think has been a vast improvement for Windows, the problem is that they improved it. They took great ideas from both Mac and Linux, but are all things users don't see. Apple is becoming less monopolistic and becoming much more full of themselves, and are the evil company that people think Microsoft is. OSX is good because it is Unix.
Microsoft Windows Vista has been the greatest improvements since the switch to NT, oh right its been the only desktop release since then too :). And yet it makes things worst for the user. Microsoft is making progressions to what Linux has been doing forever, a home directory. However few, though increasing, third party applications use this. Symbolic links have come, but they are half-ass'd and aren't used. It has made separating user and admin possible, still shitty and not default.
The problem with Vista is their attempts to keep backwards compatibility and their failure to do so. They didn't convert all the drivers for third party hardware, so now people upgrading have to buy all new stuff. They also wanted to make sure that old software would work on it, but that brings about security risk and thus to help security we get more annoying popups, complications with having to run programs as an admin (which people are not use to). And there is the fact Vista is a resource hog, many say this is the reason you have to upgrade your systems hardware, but it is simply not true, the fact that the hardware is not likely to be supported is the reason. Even so the hog on resources is still annoying.
The lovely Apple OSX machine. I will start off my complaints that the problem here is that Apple users are dumb. I should clarify this by saying that when I say Apple users I mean users of Apple computers are dumb. Now that, that is out of the way let me continue. Apple filed a lawsuit against the Big Apple. Ok so I can't find anywhere that this is completely true, but it still remains that Apple thinks they are so high and mighty. Apple has had closer monopolies than Microsoft ever has. Microsoft has been attacked for integrating their product (Internet Explorer) into their operating system (Windows 95) yet Apple can run around being the only ones to sell and manufacture hardware for their system, require iTunes for your iPod running on your iMachine with your iBall hanging out onto your iDesk. And frankly I don't care their OS is too simple and just not that great of a development environment, I'm a developer remember. As for the Apple users are dumb, it kept you reading didn't it? See my People are Stupid. Also Windows is not a PC.
So why is Mac taking off and such a good system to run now? The system is solid because it runs on Unix, it only runs on specific hardware and nothing else, so we don't get complicated driver management and conflicts. Switching to a Mac is becoming more and more like upgrading your distribution of Windows. When you do an upgrade you need to buy a whole new system and probably peripherals, however companies have been increasing their support for years now and so you just might be able to keep your printer. Not only that but Mac has this large company that can handle tech support on the system that you just paid a great deal of money for. It also looks so 'cool.'
What makes Mac so great for general public is that you don't have choice. You don't have to worry about choosing good hardware there is only 'one.' You don't have to worry about choosing software because your choices only come from those Linux programmers that have been coding cross platform. And who cares about Mac games, you already played them 10 years ago on the PC. And just to throw in the, who stole what from whom, OSX anyone?
So I thought I might be able to write up something that just bashed Linux, but this turned out to be false. The reason for this is that it was much harder to not give reasons for one thing or another. For this reason, along with my bringing up comparisons with the OS's above, I have placed my Linux bashing onto it's own page.
References:
Content Consumer The Great Ubuntu-Girlfriend Experiment
RVB Mac Gamer
Hilary Potkewitz Crabby Apple bites Big Apple over TM