[Cialug] distro for ibook

[Matthew Nuzum]

2009/12/4 Nathan C. Smith <nathan.smith at ipmvs.com>

>  Do infrequent reboots mean you spend more time in MacOS or more time in
> Ubuntu?  ;-D
>
> -Nate
>
>

Depends on the day of the week. I actually made a serious mistake and
installed 64bit Ubuntu. I think if a person is a free software purist they
can be just fine w/ 64 bit but I like numerous external packages (such as
Adobe Air, eclipse and Sun Java) that are not happy. I've had problem after
problem. I finally found that gears is already packaged for 64 bit Ubuntu
which helped but I feel like I'm swimming upstream.

For the last few weeks before Ubuntu 9.10 release I was in Mac OS
exclusively because of these problems. Finally two weeks ago I bought a used
Dell Latitude D430 on e-bay for $290. I've installed Ubuntu on it and been
happily using it since then.

Unfortunately I learned that my woes were related to 64bit Ubuntu because I
installed the same version on the D430. I thought my problems were because
of the Mac hardware but they all came over to the clean install on my Dell
too. But now that I know I've worked around them long enough to be
productive and next week I'll format and go back to 32bit.

By the way, if anyone thinks that Mac OS or Apple is some panacea they are
firmly wrong. The hardware is good - equal to business grade hardware from
Lenovo and Dell (like the thinkpads and latitudes, not the crappy vostros or
Inspirons/etc). Not better and to be honest, the metal case is garbage that
looks good on the shelf but after a few weeks of usage is heavy, cold,
scratches easily and uncomfortable for wresting your wrists on.

The OS is nicer than Windows XP but it is far from bug free. It has about
the same number of glitches and problems as newer versions of Ubuntu. They
have good commercials and ads but people who say that Mac OS is way better
than Linux either haven't used Linux (esp Ubuntu) recently or have drank a
little too much of the koolaid.

The biggest difference (not better necessarily) is the available/reliance on
commercial ISVs. Want a nice unzip program? Pay $10. Want a screencast
program? Pay $99. Want this or that? Pay, pay, pay. The cost of owning Mac
OS goes up after you open the box. However, the screencast program is very
good. Worth $99 imho. And there are other examples where I'd pay for a
similar top-notch program if one existed for Ubuntu.

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter
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