On 17/01/2008, Noah Slater <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 09:55:10PM +0000, Jon Grant wrote: > > Anyone know if it is possible to get a refund for Apple's Mac OS X..? > > I'd love to buy one of their "Air" laptops if there is a way to get it > > pre-loaded with GNU+Linux or a refund... got a USB stick with Kubuntu > > ready to go.. ;)
You'd make major primetime TV network news if you get them to preload GNU+Linux or even get a refund :-) You would probably also send their stock down a few pegs :-) > My advice is don't bother. "Openness is not a cargo cult. Some get it, some don't. Apple doesn't." - http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks > Apple hardware is: > > 1) VERY expensive, > 2) not upgradable/tweekable, > 3) not officially supported by Ubutnu > > The upshot of this is that: 0) It is very thin, 12-24 months before anyone else is selling laptops that thin > 1) you could get a similar spec laptop for WAY under half the price, The Air is pretty under-spec'd, and is expensive; Apple is going to sell millions of these by making them secondary and another value primary: beautiful product design. To me, the free software movement is very clear that _freedom_ is a more important primary value than the others. It always takes longer to get the other values to a similar level as any proprietary alternative while keeping our freedom. > 2) when you want to upgrade or repare you HAVE to use an apple > registered repair shop using official apple parts Laptops are generally more finicky about upgrades though, so I'm not sure how specific this is to Apple. > 3) all manner of subtle things will break with Ubuntu because the > hardware simple doesnt get as tested as regular i368 machines. My experience is that most Apple users run Mac OS X and then run GNU+Linux and Windows virtualised; with paravirtualisation, there is no noticeable loss of speed, and it makes whole-filesystem backups convenient and so on. (A G5 isn't powreful enough to do this though) > To go into further details: > 6) all kinds of problems with the keyboard/mouse (when I say > problems, I really mean differences with what is assumed to be a > standard setup by application designers) will cause you to become > fluent in the likes of `xmodmap' and `xrdb' just to get your > system usable to any standard degree. > 7) you will be frustrated by little hardware tweeks apple have made > to make the thing look nicer while significantly breaking some > fundamental function of you computer. An example would be my Mac's > lack of a CD eject button. (For people who've not owned an Apple computer recently:) The CD eject button is on the keyboard - which is why you can't just plug in a normal USB keyboard. -- Regards, Dave _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
