This e-mail came out kind of long... sorry folks. It's interesting to note that when I first started using Linux it was not for ideological reasons. My friend helped me build my own computer for cheap the summer before I left for college, and he gave me a dual boot of Red Hat 7.2 alongside Windows 2000, which I thought was cool because it was fun to tinker with, just like building my own computer was a great tinkering project. It was through Linux that I discovered the free software movement, which led to me discovering the rest of free culture. So Linux caused me to become an activist, it wasn't something I installed as part of my activism.
I used Linux exclusively for about 2-3 years in college (roughly 2002-2005), after slowly weaning myself off of Windows + Windows gaming (I was a Warcraft 3 addict). My main frustration with Linux at the time was its tendency to suffer from "bitrot"... I would install a new flavor of Linux, and everything would work perfectly, but gradually as I installed more packages that didn't come by default, or updated existing packages, the computer would start to malfunction. This was true of Red Hat, Knoppix, Gentoo and SuSE at least... I gave up before I could give any other distros a shot. Towards the end I was running Knoppix off the CD so that it couldn't possibly suffer from bitrot, only giving it access to my hard drive for swapspace and a place to save my work. The death knell for Linux was when I decided I wanted a camcorder, and I wanted to edit video. At the time, the only serious video editing application appeared to be Cinelerra, and I couldn't even successfully install it, let alone use it. That was when I broke down and bought my first Mac, a Powerbook G4. What did I like about OS X at the time? * Easy to install software - just drop the application bundle into the Applications folder, and the software is installed. This was a dramatic improvement over RPM dependency hell and compiling things from source in 2005. * Easy to _uninstall_ software - I hated how hard it was to get rid of Internet Explorer in Windows. When I wanted to delete Internet Explorer 5 from my Mac, I just dragged it into the trash, and I never heard from it again. By 2005 Firefox existed and I didn't need another browser (before Firefox I used Opera on Linux). * Software only did one thing, and did it well - I was very happy to find that I could use Thunderbird for my e-mail and just delete Mail.app, while simultaneously enjoying the OS X Address Book. On Windows I would have to open Outlook and see all of the calendaring and e-mail functions if I wanted to use the Outlook address book, and every time I did that it would want to become my default mail client etc. * FOSS on Mac looked beautiful - While there was FOSS on Windows and of course on Linux, almost none of it looked pretty. FOSS projects like Adium on Mac looked gorgeous, especially compared to the butt-ugly kludge that was Gaim. I was also a fan of Colloquy for IRC, Cyberduck for FTP, Smultron for text-editing, and many other good-looking FOSS programs. * Many essential creative tools shipped by default on OS X - I bought OS X for video editing, and it came with iMovie. iMovie was all you needed to make great movies, or at least to do justice to my consumer-grade camcorder. None of the software in iLife had equivalents in Linux at the time as far as I can remember. iPhoto? F-spot seems like a good piece of software, I'm enjoying using it, but the earliest version listed in their version history is from Jan 2006, I don't think it existed when I switched to Mac: <http://f-spot.org/News>. iDVD? I'm not sure there is a good DVD-creation tool for Linux even today, although DVDs are slowly going out of style anyway. There sure wasn't one then. Garageband? Jokosher seems like it might be an equivalent, although I haven't tried it myself, but that also saw its first release in July 2006: <http://www.jokosher.org/2006/07/26/jokosher-01-released/>. Ardour was released in early 2005: <http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7796> Not sure if Ardour is a respectable Garageband replacement... Audacity sure isn't, although it is a very useful little program in its own right. While Linux might be able to compete with iLife today, it was hopelessly outclassed in 2005. Today I own two Powerbook G4's: one has a broken monitor, the other one has been running Ubuntu Linux exclusively for the past 5 months. I also own a Macbook Pro which is my primary computer and primarily runs OS X, although it triple-boots Windows Vista and Ubuntu. Today I find that most of the problems that I had with Linux in 2005 have disappeared (thanks to Ubuntu?). The Ubuntu system I set up 5 months ago operates as flawlessly as it did then, and I've been installing and updating software constantly since then. Bitrot is dead! So is RPM dependency hell and everything else that made it difficult to install software in 2005... the Ubuntu package manager works like a charm, and standalone packages don't seem to break the computer. Many wonderful applications are mature today which didn't exist except as alpha software in 2005. With Compiz Fusion I can make windows burn up and explode when I close them, things are starting to look pretty. What is keeping me on OS X today? (1) A handful of killer apps that I have yet to replace. - Still can't find good Linux video editing software, although that's not as important today as it was before some bastard stole my camcorder from my dorm room. iChat is a great video chat client which doesn't seem to have a parallel in Linux yet, but since I am no longer in a long-distance relationship that's not as important as it once was. I rely heavily on a GTD-compliant to-do app called Things, which I haven't found a Linux replacement for. I manage my personal finances with a silly app called Cha-Ching, but I haven't found financial management software that I enjoy using in Linux yet. I have this display for my calendar called iCalViewer which puts my calendar on my desktop or over my screensaver etc. which I am in love with that I'd like to clone for Linux, but there is currently no equivalent. Aside from those programs, I'm basically ready to switch to Linux. (2) Data portability - Once I do switch back to Linux, I will have to re-enter my to-do lists and financial data into the new programs, probably by hand. Most of my other data should transfer fine, though. (3) Sheer force of habit - I have to relearn how to do everything on Linux, but since I've had Ubuntu running on my secondary computer for the past 5 months, I'm pretty far along in that process. The main problem is that since my secondary computer is a PowerPC, there are a number of programs where I can't install the latest version because nobody has compiled a binary for it, and when I try to compile it myself I run into errors b/c the PPC platform isn't well-supported. I'll just have to learn those last few programs on my main computer. I anticipate switching to Ubuntu as my primary operating system within the next year or so, and the next computer I buy may ship with Ubuntu pre-installed. Peace, ~Nelson~ On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 8:57 AM, christopher bdnk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 1:45 AM, Kevin Driscoll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > wrote: >> >> Apple is in the appliance game. As a whole, it doesn't seem >> particularly interested in the kind of free-wheeling, all-purpose >> computing that would fit FC peeps. So what gives? > > I'm really glad you forked this conversation for a bunch of reasons. > > I use a Mac laptop and Ubuntu/XP on my desktop, and like Dean I use my Mac > for video editing (FCP, there isn't anything else I can use with a few > cameras). > > It seems to me that any non-moral freedom is one that you should be able to > give away, but that the real debate should be over what you get in return > and your ability to hold the freedom-receiving entity (person, corporation, > idea, whichever) accountable to some degree for an equitable exchange. For > me, Apple complicates and multiplies possible meanings and experiences > through Leopard, I think it's really well-done and I save a lot of time and > make things I couldn't otherwise by using it. Plus, it is sitting on Darwin > (BSD + NeXT) and a lot of the software I use on Leopard is free and oss > software. > > I'm interested in where this will go! > > see ya > christopher > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
