Linux -> Mac?

[Christopher Browne]

On 4/22/07, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 22, 2007 at 09:45:16PM -0400, Pavel Zaitsev wrote:
> > William Park(opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org)@Sun, Apr 22, 2007 at 08:43:56PM -0400:
> > > Just a question for those of you with Mac...
> > >
> > > - Why do you (supposedly Linux guys) have Mac?
> > > - How does Mac help you in a way that Linux doesn't?
> > > - Do you use Mac for your Linux/Unix related tasks?
> > > - After using them both, have you given up on Mac?  Or, Linux?
> > >
> > > In other word, convince me to buy a Mac for myself, and not just as
> > > present. :-)
> >
> > new macbooks are fast, they run linux and os x and windows
>
> Which Linux distro installs onto iMac/Macbook?

Evidently, Debian does:
http://wiki.debian.org/MacBook

I've also heard report of Ubuntu and Slackware possibly working.

There's a VM-ware-like system called "Parallels" which is up to the
task of running Windows, so I expect pretty well any Intel Linux could
function there.

> My main interest at this point is...  I hear/read that there is BSD
> underneath.  But, how useable is Mac as Unix machine?  I hear that Mac
> OS running on top of BSD is not the same as KDE/Gnome running on top
> of Linux/Xorg.

There's an X package, so you can certainly run X stuff.

But the "native" Mac software does not use X, so yes, it's loosely
true that "MacOS" is not the same as running GNOME or KDE applications
on Linux.

Mind you, numerous GNOME and KDE applications can be run either
'natively' (e.g.- via the Cocoa API) or via X.  And describing that in
sufficient detail to properly characterize it would get us into the
realm of being fairly much kernel-agnostic in that such things as X,
GNOME, and KDE run just as well (or badly) on various non-Linux OSes
as they do on Linux.

If you look at the major sorts of "desktop applications," there are
nice ports of many of them to MacOS.  I find NeoOffice (the
"Cocoa-ized" version of OpenOffice.org) faster to load and run on
MacOS than it seems to be on Linux/X.

Between Darwin and Ports, a whole lot of the apps that run on Linux
and/or BSD will run more or less nicely on MacOS.  Characterizing
things as either better or worse is *very* much in the eye of the
beholder: one man's meat may be another man's poison, which goes in
all directions.

> > when you need to. they all things you need a computer to do
> > while taking the least possible amount of your worthwhile time
> > straightening out library versions, kernel patches and
> > wireless firmware versions. some people live by fildding with
> > things, some people need a reliable "office tool" and unix buddy.
> > so it just works.
> >
> > also it looks very nice and has good battery lifetime. macbook, is
> > better then pro, because it is plastic and does wireless whole lot
> > better. plus it doesn't rust.

One less-obvious "Mac merit" is that it comes with a functioning Java
environment, which is not true for any flavour of Linux.
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