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Linux or Mac: Which is the better alternative to Windows?

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Darwin:
I *think* what Gothic is driving at is the fact OSX can only be run on Apple hardware. That's my primary objection anyway, irrespective how nice their hardware might actually be. I'm sure he's also contrasting an open source OS and close sourced OS's such as Windows and OSX, but have already put enough words into his mouth/this thread  ;)

EDIT: to clarify/add to the above point about Apple hardware - as nice as their hardware is, I'd have difficulty justifying the expense (on the open market) relative to a PC, given that I can get a non-Apple notebook for at least 25% less than the price of an equivalent (when looking at CPU, graphics card, and screensize) Apple NB but that comes with double the RAM and a larger harddrive. So, nice as they are, Apple notebooks are only really compelling if my goal is to run OSX. As I like but do not love OSX, there is little point in buying one as I'd have to upgrade the RAM and the harddrive AND purchase a copy of Windows, which only serves to make the cost of buying an Apple notebook astronomical, rather than merely scandalous!

zridling:
[nontroppo]: I *love* Apple's superior typography support....
________________________________________________
One of the big negatives I've found to many GNU/Linux distros is font rendering. Red Hat's Fedora 7 looks great; Ubuntu and its variants do not on my systems. Typographers cost a fortune for good reason. I spend 95% of my computer time reading in some fashion — web pages, code, menus, dialogs, etc. — and to see how big a difference this makes, just turn off ClearTweak for a day. Yet, with two of the "licensed" distros I've used like SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, the fonts are just as clear as those in Vista. I figure they pay to license something, even though the fonts are the same.

Gothi[c], for the average user (repeat that three times), I presume they could care less about open source, if they even know what FLOSS is. I figured they say, just give me a reliable system that's reasonably fast and they're happy. The OS should be transparent, but it's not. You, on the other hand, are probably not just looking for FLOSS software, but the best technology, best coding, best managed, etc.

I use my neighbor as an example. He just wants to know, "Can I do this, that, and that?" Yes? Then he's happy, whether it's Apple, Microsoft, or PCLinuxOS. I can't argue with that, although I can ask him questions and offer alternatives.

icekin:
nontroppo, I agree that OS X may be tweakable with its unix base, but tweaking out of the box for a regular user with no knowledge of the underlying UNIX is still hard. This problem is there on Linux too. On Windows, all you need is a copy of X-Setup Pro and XP Smoker.

The freeware scene for Mac might be active, but it still lacks several decent applications : A flac enabled music player with audioscrobbler support for one. In my opinion, Windows is preferred not because of the OS itself, but the wealth of programs that run on it, most of which are not even written by Microsoft. Mac and Linux might reach this point several years into the future as their user base grows.

Once the need for OS X is gone, there is no point buying a mac, since Windows and Linux can run on generic computers as well.

f0dder:
The kernel of the OS is open-source, and currently there is none of the horrible DRM system that Vista is built on. So freedom means what in practical terms?
-nontroppo
--- End quote ---
Hummm, afaik only part of the Kernel is open, and you ned some non-open key in order to have everything working - and apple have gone to great lengths to make sure you can't just dump that key from a working&running system.

And then there's of course all the rest of OSX that isn't open at all.

IMHO OSX is a better/more realistc alternative to windows than linux is, but I'm not sure I'd like to switch from one proprietary system to another; if I was to switch from windows, it'd have to be to something more open. Especially considering that Apple has always tended to be worse at lock-in than Microsoft.

urlwolf:

For me, the perfect world would be windows + linux in something like parallels, so that i could take the best of both worlds.
-jgpaiva (August 11, 2007, 09:27 AM)
--- End quote ---

You have VMware et al.
I guess you could run windows and a linux installation on a virtual machine; correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't parallels just a virtual machine?

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