Strange. I spent years switching back and forth between Linux and
Windows. I'd go to Linux because it was easy to develop on, software
is always being updated, so no waiting for the "next version, coming
real soon now". Would have fun and tweak my system to my heart's
content, wasting mucho time in the process.

Then next there was always a nagging feeling. Somehow there weren't
enough apps. I mean things you could just use without hassling over
the details like font hinting in freetype and their bloody patented
algorithm. Or downloading Bitstream Vera so that I could get a good
quality font experience. Am not typical at all. I never use word
processors, spreadsheets and the like. Rarely, maybe a letter, or a
presentation. Rarely. Very rarely.

A good web browser is now standard. Ditto email. Ditto chat. Many
choices. Most more than capable. So what do you really get on Linux
then? You have full control. And applications that feel like they are
not yet quite done, but are a work forever in progress. Wine comes to
mind immediately.

After a while of this, I would reformat and install Windows and get
all the little, tiny plenty applications that I could have. It's fine
for a day or so. Then it just starts getting slow. Annoying things
always want to popup. The computer always wants to "help" me. You
never feel right because you wonder if you have been hacked, even with
all your layers of voodoo defense. You realize that the applications
have all these little annoyance. Everytime you want to save or open a
file you have to go through some really shitty dialog box that doesn't
really do anything but get in your way and offer too many ways to do
things, that you have to waste time even deciding. Or stupid little
repetitive actions such as keep on clicking until you get to where you
want to. It makes no sense, because it is Frankenstein, stitched
together by an army of drones deep inside the Borg colony. Eventually,
I get disgusted and reformat to move to a nice clean fast stable
Linux.

Switching to OS X ended all of these problems for me. I have the
decent, polished (better than Windows applications overall)
applications and end user experience. Things just work. No endless
tweaking. With a full Unix underneath, a few quirks here and there,
but not command.com, we have bash, we have unix userland, we have a
ports collection similar to BSD. There's X if you want it, but no one
really likes it compared to the native apps.

More people will switch as Linux gets better, but for now, OS X is
very far ahead in terms of the user experience. Now, if only we could
have OS X running on top of the Linux kernel, all would be perfect.
The Solaris kernel and userland, that could be even better, maybe more
interesting since Solaris has waaaaay more features than Linux.

But last is what's the need and point of switching when you can wait a
few months, or even buy the right hardware now and run all these
systems under a hypervisor? Virtualization is here. Why switch any
longer? You can have it all ...

So the way I understand it is they are just making a statement, going
on an adventure and they will be gone for a long while. If OS X gets
enough better, they will surely switch back. If Linux gets enough
better, I'll probably switch again ...

-- G.

On 7/4/06, Paul Bagyenda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/06/ubuntu_linux_a_threat_to_mac_o.html

"If I were Apple, I'd be worried about this. Two lifelong Mac fans are
switching away from Macs to PCs running Ubuntu Linux"

---




So what do the Ubuntu users on this list have to say?
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