The Many Flavors of Linux

[Faster Master St. Pastor]

Ah, makes sense.  I've had those kind of experiences before.

[ryos]

I just didn't like it.  *shrugs*  I just didn't give it a chance really, saw it and was like, meh, and changed it.

This describes my entire experience with Linux. I've had to use it for some things for my classes, and have yet to be very impressed. The one thing I saw that was pretty elegant and cool were the various package managers. However, IMO the fact that these things are necessary is a mark against the system.

[Miyabi]

Package managers are by no means necessary  You can do it from downloading .deb file, downloading .tar files, or even from command prompt, so long as your remember to not try to invoke super cow powers.

I didn't like it at first either, but after I learned how to use it well I've come to really like it.

[ryos]

I know that you can do what the package managers do manually; I think they're "necessary" because it's a pain, especially when dependencies are involved. I'm a Mac user. I believe software installation should be as simple as dragging one icon onto another. If your platform makes it harder, your platform is doing it wrong.

[Miyabi]

I love Mac and I can't wait to get one.

[Renoard]

If you prefer Mac you might be better off with BSD Unix instead of Linux.  The latest from FreeBSD is pretty nice, as long as you are willing to use the Gnu interface, which incidentally is patterned after the Mac Desktop.  Though the finder equivalent is a little less nice.  XFCE 4 is far more Mac clonish but takes a very light bit of tinkering to get it working.  If you tinker enough to put afterstep or gnustep in as the desktop but keep XFCE as the window manager and taskbar etc.  you have a very close clone of Mac with a much more current kernel.  Mac uses FreeBSD 4.5 and the latest is something like 7.2 I think.

You don't get some of the buzzers and gimcracks that you get with Linux, and it's probably not the best gaming platform but it works well for business, graphics and multimedia.  And you can always run Windows in a vm or if you are desperate for tinkerage you can hack Wine till it almost works most of the time.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

OS X's BSD layer was synchronized with FreeBSD 5 with 10.3, and 10.4 made it 64-bit. It doesn't exactly use FreeBSD; it draws from it and combines it with other stuff. The Darwin kernel is updated with every OS X revision.

[Renoard]

Yeah they have a bunch of code that serves as an API for cocoa and the Mac OS thunking layer, as well as their own boot manager which I assume is far different from the FORTH machine that boots the FreeBSD kernel. ;P

On the other hand FreeBSD has kernel support for loading and executing .net console apps. . .

Oh and I didn't mean to suggest FreeBSD over Mac, just over Linux for those who are not looking for a game console and can't afford Mac yet.  Cause FreeBSD is MORE free than gnu, being subsidized as it is by the U of Cal Berkley Comp Sci dept.

[ryos]

To be perfectly honest, I think Linux really shines best as a server OS. Is there a compelling reason to choose FreeBSD over Linux for that application?

[Renoard]

Well actually BSD is a real titan of servers.  But we were talking workstation I think.