[Cialug] ah, aH, AH...UBUNTU, (excuse me) was, OT: mac-mini?

[D. Joe Anderson]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 06:51:13PM -0500, Stuart Thiessen wrote:

[lots of mac-is-good-enough talk]

> I'm a fan of Linux in a server environment, but I'm not yet sold on  
> Linux for the desktop. :) I will be happy to be convinced some day  
> otherwise. :)

One word:  Ubuntu.

Lots more words:  I was skeptical when they announced their
plans for releases every 6 months, as the record shows:

 http://zgp.org/pipermail/linux-elitists/2004-December/010710.html

but they've stuck to their schedule now for a year, with two
follow-ups to their initial release on schedule, each one better
than the last.  What pain there is using it almost all stems
from codec non-freeness that restricts what they can distribute,
and there are fairly clear instructions on their non-official
wiki site on how to remedy even that, pulling packages from
third-party repositories, assuming one has few moral qualms
about non-freeness (which, I think, seems to be well-established
for the Mac fans here).

Granted, I come to Ubuntu, just as Ubuntu comes to the world,
with a bit of experience of Debian-derived systems, so that may
make it easier for me, but seriously, compiling my own kernel
just so feature FOO would work got old for me N years ago, and
so I appreciate a relatively straightforward, Just Works install
as much as the next person.

Without Debian, there would be no Ubuntu, and Debian's breadth
and depth and thoroughness of approach remains unparalled, so I
remain a Debian man at heart, but dang if me and my barely
4-month-old laptop don't like us some Ubuntu.  Got it running on
some G4 machines, too (them what don't need wifi support for
routine use, sort of like many minis).

I run lots of OS X, too, for ${DAY_JOB} and despite the price
premium, a lot of the best parts of that job have less to do
with OS X and more to do with the burgeoning array of free
software that folks (carrying Apple's water for them) port to
the Mac, like inkscape, GIMP, NeoOffice (which is a pee eye gee
PIG, but what office suite isn't?), PyMOL, xdrawchem, bioperl,
joe (yay! editor war starts HERE ;-) etc. etc.  

The downside are all kernel/OS/interface related--eg, lately the
downside sits at the feet of the proprietary parts, like when I
walk into the room and half the machines are hoofies up, with
their dual G5 cooling fans making like supersonic wind tunnels
because of kernel panics, or we get this weird login window
stuff going.  This Does Not Happen to my Linux machines (well,
OK, every once in a very, very great while).

Eh, it's like Dave says, if it makes you and yours happy to buy
proprietary software (and I don't care what Bryan says, it is
proprietary: I know he's clicking on those EULAs like a madman
at every Quicktime or iThing or security patch update like the
rest of the MacOS kool-aide imbibing world), then bully for you. 
But, yeah, it's an L in there, not an M (and just HOPE i don't
get started on saying it should be G/L instead of just L ;-)

-- 
Joe