Fox
Dec 20th, 2007, 01:16 PM
I have been playing with Linux for two months now on my iMac and my Mini, and I thought I would share my experience with it and ask others about theirs. I like the way I can download different distros and just install them on the virtual software (Parallels on iMac, VMware on Mini) without any impact on my Mac operation. Each distro I've tried (Ubuntu/Kubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, SuSE) has some pluses and minuses relative to the others, and the same can be said for Gnome and KDE. With Gnome, I like the logical layout of the main menu, whereas the KDE menu seems not very well thought out. On the other hand, I like the overall look and feel of KDE better, and am now trying to learn it better.
Each distro seems to have a different problem getting the virtualizer tools installed, and playing with that helped me become more familiar with the inner workings of an operating system in a way I never did with the Mac. Of the ones I tried, Ubuntu/Kubuntu seems to be the fastest and I could get the current version of it working with the tools of both Parallels and VMware, so I'm now concentrating my learning effort on this one.
While I really like the freedom to customize Linux, playing with it has made me appreciate what you are paying for when you buy Mac, or even Windows operating systems. For example, when I install software on the Mac, I never have any problem locating the application and starting it up. With Linux, it will sometimes put the new software on a menu where you can easily start it or move it onto a dock, but some apps never show up on a dock and you can't just go to an Applications folder to locate your program. (Very frustrating when this happens, even if you can start it up from a command line.) Having last tried Linux years ago (SuSE 6.4), I can see that it has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go before the average user is comfortable with it. Nevertheless, there are some very nice things about it, and playing with it teaches me more about the computer than operating a user-friendly system like the Mac. For this reason, I will continue to learn it and perhaps start using it for some functions that I currently do on the Mac. The ones I am investigating most closely are statistical applications, which is one area where the Mac is particularly deficient. Ironically, the most interesting piece of free statistical software I found that runs on Linux (called PAST - for paleontology and ecology in particular), is made for Windows but runs well in Wine (a Windows emulator for Linux, so that's two levels of emulation/virtualization on a Mac).
I'd be interested to hear other Mac users experience with Linux. What distros work best for you and why? Have you found any applications that are superior to their Mac equivalents?
Each distro seems to have a different problem getting the virtualizer tools installed, and playing with that helped me become more familiar with the inner workings of an operating system in a way I never did with the Mac. Of the ones I tried, Ubuntu/Kubuntu seems to be the fastest and I could get the current version of it working with the tools of both Parallels and VMware, so I'm now concentrating my learning effort on this one.
While I really like the freedom to customize Linux, playing with it has made me appreciate what you are paying for when you buy Mac, or even Windows operating systems. For example, when I install software on the Mac, I never have any problem locating the application and starting it up. With Linux, it will sometimes put the new software on a menu where you can easily start it or move it onto a dock, but some apps never show up on a dock and you can't just go to an Applications folder to locate your program. (Very frustrating when this happens, even if you can start it up from a command line.) Having last tried Linux years ago (SuSE 6.4), I can see that it has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go before the average user is comfortable with it. Nevertheless, there are some very nice things about it, and playing with it teaches me more about the computer than operating a user-friendly system like the Mac. For this reason, I will continue to learn it and perhaps start using it for some functions that I currently do on the Mac. The ones I am investigating most closely are statistical applications, which is one area where the Mac is particularly deficient. Ironically, the most interesting piece of free statistical software I found that runs on Linux (called PAST - for paleontology and ecology in particular), is made for Windows but runs well in Wine (a Windows emulator for Linux, so that's two levels of emulation/virtualization on a Mac).
I'd be interested to hear other Mac users experience with Linux. What distros work best for you and why? Have you found any applications that are superior to their Mac equivalents?