An Apple User Tries Ubuntu • Hacker News Board

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#11

Post by evgen » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:26 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #4

petercooper wrote: post #3

This wasn't a bad article to read, although it doesn't really get anywhere. A reasonably novice Mac user tries out Ubuntu, finds some pros and cons.. the end. Quite well written though but some of his insights don't quite make sense.. > I had heard that Linux users still use a command line. Instead of pointing and clicking, they actually type in obscure commands – a series of numbers, letters, and squiggly things. It…

I might quibble with the "Linux's command line offers no benefits" line. It's true that the shell is identical. But OS X, out of the box, is lacking huge chunks of what you expect to find out-of-the-box on a typical Linux distribution. That's a problem for anyone who wants to be able to portable scripts, etc... Add that to the fact that the existing package managers for the command line tools are kinda lacking, and I…

The stock OS X box comes with enough of the standard command-line toolbox that if you are actually writing a "portable" script you are not going to have a problem running that script on OS X. The biggest differentiator is probably that OS X is a part of the *BSD lineage and so you will need to do more tweaking of a Linux script to get it bsd-ready than you will need to tweak a standard bsd script to move it from FreeBSD to OS X. While macports is closer to the freebsd port system, it is close enough to apt-get that you should really have no problems switching from one to the other.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#12

Post by crescendo » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:26 PM UTC

tialys wrote: post #10

CulperRing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, you beat me to it. I love how this guy is _such_ an apple fan yet he isn't familiar with Spaces. There's a lot of these ill-informed and vocal mac fans out there that give the rest of us a bad name.

Forgive me, but spaces doesn't have the nifty cube does it? I think he just likes the 'eye candy' that comes with Compiz (which, btw isn't enabled by default).

I don't think so. He goes on to describe the enhanced productivity of using multiple workspaces, as if the same cannot be accomplished on a mac.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#13

Post by evgen » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:30 PM UTC

tialys wrote: post #10

CulperRing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, you beat me to it. I love how this guy is _such_ an apple fan yet he isn't familiar with Spaces. There's a lot of these ill-informed and vocal mac fans out there that give the rest of us a bad name.

Forgive me, but spaces doesn't have the nifty cube does it? I think he just likes the 'eye candy' that comes with Compiz (which, btw isn't enabled by default).

Actually, the rotating cube effect started with the OS X fast user switching feature and was "borrowed" by a lot of virtual desktop systems like Compiz or the OS X virtual desktop apps "Desktop Manager" and "Virtue Desktops". Since Apple already uses this visual effect for changing users it is not going to use it for switching desktops and therefore went with a different visual effect -- if you really like the effect you can get it with the previously mentioned third-part virtual desktop apps.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#14

Post by tialys » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:32 PM UTC

crescendo wrote: post #12

tialys wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, but spaces doesn't have the nifty cube does it? I think he just likes the 'eye candy' that comes with Compiz (which, btw isn't enabled by default).

I don't think so. He goes on to describe the enhanced productivity of using multiple workspaces, as if the same cannot be accomplished on a mac.

That's what he's saying though is that he likes 'the cube' as a feature, not the ability to have multiple desktops. That, or I'm misunderstanding. I do know though that when I show people my ubuntu box they go NUTS over the cube so I think that is really what he's trying to show. It's nifty!

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#15

Post by lpgauth » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:33 PM UTC

"Eeek! It’s a Command Line! (Run, Hide…)"

If only he knew the power of the CL...

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#16

Post by cstejerean » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:47 PM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #8

Another Mac user here. I gave Ubuntu a spin the other week, running in Virtualbox on my main machine. I thought it looked slick and was very usable. Then I tried downloading and installing Firefox 3. I grabbed it, unarchived it and then.... then what? Where's the bloody installer.

ubuntu hardy comes with FF3 installed, and typically you can install most software you need using Synaptic (from the GUI, apt-get from the command line). You might also be able to find a binary version on the site where you downloaded from (look for .deb files).

If that's not an option (which is possible with FF3 if you're using an older version of Ubuntu) then chances are you need to build the software you downloaded from source and this is where it gets more complicated (although not that complicated unless you happen to get errors).

In case anyone is new to Linux and curious here are the typical steps to building a package from source.

  > wget http://example.com/somefile.tar.gz (or you can download with the browser)
  > tar zxvf somefile.tar.gz (or you can extract the archive using your desktop manager)
  > cd somefile
  > ./configure (if you don't see a configure and there is a file called Makefile present you can skip this step)
  > make (this will compile the software)
  > sudo make install (if you didn't get any errors during make you can use this to install the software)

Depending on the specific software you are trying to install you might need to pass configuration options to ./configure, you should typically look for such things in the instructions for the particular software you are trying to install. Also note that on Ubuntu you should install build-essential first (sudo apt-get install build-essential).

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#17

Post by bouncingsoul » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:51 PM UTC

I think this is a normal Ubuntu review that's been spiced up by painting the reviewer as an amateur user and Mac fan. I don't believe the last part though.

The amateur user thing just doesn't seem consistent throughout. And the way he talks about his limitations as a user ("I’m not a software engineer; if I can’t grab it off the shelf, I can’t use it.") just strikes me as reciting a persona.

Two other obvservations:

* His experience with OS X must have been a long time ago because there's no mention of Exposé, Spaces, or Spotlight – which are all comparable features to the Ubuntu ones that impressed him. And if he was truly an OS X user all these years he'd know about them because they were the main features touted on the upgrade boxes. (Unless he's never upgraded from OS X 10.1.)

* From my memory and quick research Ubuntu doesn't come with KDE – you have to install it. I'm guessing the journalist read about the Linux war between Gnome and KDE and decided the throw it into his story even though it didn't actually happen to him. (Though it's possible Virginia Tech gave him a customized Ubuntu install to play with.)

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#18

Post by there » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:52 PM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #8

Another Mac user here. I gave Ubuntu a spin the other week, running in Virtualbox on my main machine. I thought it looked slick and was very usable. Then I tried downloading and installing Firefox 3. I grabbed it, unarchived it and then.... then what? Where's the bloody installer.

you installed it wrong. on mac os or windows, you download a program from /its/ website and run /its/ installer.

on ubuntu (or pretty much any linux distribution or *bsd), you look to your vendor for pre-compiled packages of this software (linux distributions using dpkg, rpm, whatever, bsds using ports/pkgsrc/packages). so on ubuntu you run whatever package management utility comes with it and tell it you want to install firefox 3. it fetches a package built by another ubuntu user and installs it.

of course, you can manually download/configure/compile/install any of this software, but using pre-compiled packages is usually much easier, faster, and integrates better with your other installed software.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#19

Post by ajross » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 6:57 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #11

ajross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might quibble with the "Linux's command line offers no benefits" line. It's true that the shell is identical. But OS X, out of the box, is lacking huge chunks of what you expect to find out-of-the-box on a typical Linux distribution. That's a problem for anyone who wants to be able to portable scripts, etc... Add that to the fact that the existing package managers for the command line tools are kinda lacking, and I…

The stock OS X box comes with enough of the standard command-line toolbox that if you are actually writing a "portable" script you are not going to have a problem running that script on OS X. The biggest differentiator is probably that OS X is a part of the *BSD lineage and so you will need to do more tweaking of a Linux script to get it bsd-ready than you will need to tweak a standard bsd script to move it from Free…

It's been a few versions since I paid close attention, but as I remember OS X ships with only the bare POSIX tools, plus a few extras from the FreeBSD userspace. It lacks stuff like perl, python, curl, wget, ssh (maybe: not sure about that one), tcpdump, etc... That's all stuff the poor user is going to have to figure out how to get.

And as mentioned, the existing package systems for OSS software are really primitive. There's just no equivalent for, say, the Ubuntu synaptic tool for new users.

I'm not trying to make this into a flame war: clearly you can achieve a pretty solid command line experience in OS X if you know what you're doing. But you're never going to learn it there without a bunch of headaches if you don't already have that expertise.

Re: An Apple User Tries Ubuntu

#20

Post by ashu » Mon, Jul 07, 2008, 7:05 PM UTC

tialys wrote: post #10

CulperRing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, you beat me to it. I love how this guy is _such_ an apple fan yet he isn't familiar with Spaces. There's a lot of these ill-informed and vocal mac fans out there that give the rest of us a bad name.

Forgive me, but spaces doesn't have the nifty cube does it? I think he just likes the 'eye candy' that comes with Compiz (which, btw isn't enabled by default).

Actually the cube is a usability trap. I had to disable it because it increased my workspace switching time a lot even when I had increased its rotation speed. It looks cool, but gets in the way unfortunately.