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mac and linux suck?


New Horizon

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I don't know jack about Macs, but I use Linux daily. I've used it for over half a decade now. Does it have short-comings? Heck yeah! Does it suck? nah. I can understand why people would feel that it does suck though. When I have to compile my NVidia drivers from the CLI because the ones shipped with the distro don't support my hardware, I get kinda annoyed. When I have to change the environment variable for the compiler or else the installer takes a dump, I get even more annoyed.

 

There are things I really like about Linux though. I can spread tasks out. If I have lots of file operations to do, or I'm recording something, I can either move it to another physical desktop or just start the process from the command line. The advantage of this is that it is completely OUT OF MY WAY. How many times have you accidentally clicked a cancel button during a file copy in Windows after a careless alt+tab? How many times have you accidentally closed a window you were leaving open for some reason? This happened to me a lot in Windows but never happens now. I also love things like for loops and the find command for manipulating large amounts of files.

 

When there's a job I have to do, like cut a multi-hour wav file into twenty minute chunks, or normalize tuns of music files, or split huge files and merge them later, there is always a free utility that gets the job done. It doesn't nag me for registrations. It doesn't install toolbars on the system. It doesn't try and shoehorn auto-loading services into the startup folder. It just gets the job done.

 

The one thing I absolutely CAN'T stand are the people who try and get everyone to adopt PulseAudio. These folks may be even worse than the people who try and get everyone to adopt Steam. PA caused tuns of trouble for many users. Text-to-speech would start stuttering and popping until someone "fixed" the tts software, and audio lag in games was unbearable.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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It's no myth. I tested and retested. TDM on Linux always outperformed the windows counterpart on the same PC. Regardless of what windows version of the drivers I was using, be it an older version or the newest version...the linux install consistently performed better.

 

I take it this is with an nVidia graphics card? The performance of AMD's attempt at closed-source drivers on Linux is just miserable, not to mention their "fix one bug, introduce 3 more" development process. I just gave up eventually and decided to reboot into Windows if I want to play games.

 

Maybe in a few years the open-source drivers will have evolved to the point where it is possible to play TDM with good performance, but for now I just can't be bothered with the Linux gaming fail.

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Mac is a lot less proprietary than it used to be, at lease in my opinion. It can be run on many basic PC setups now. I installed it on my HP laptop and it ran quite well after swapping a few kexts. For my i3 processor though, I had to recompile the kernel with a small fix so the OS used both cores of the CPU. There were a few easier ways to do it, but for me that was the cleanest way.

 

That I even had the option to recompile the kernel is a very good thing in my mind. :) There was a time not long ago when Mac OSX and PC's were incompatible due to Mac requiring the PPC architecture. We're rather fortunate to have so many great choices.

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Mac is a lot less proprietary than it used to be, at lease in my opinion. It can be run on many basic PC setups now.

 

It's totally illegal, as for Apple EULA that user agree installing OSX:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSx86

 

=>

"The Mac OS X EULA forbids installations of Mac OS X on a "non-Apple-branded computer".[2] On July 3, 2008, Apple filed a lawsuit against Psystar Corporation[12] for violating this restriction, among other claims.[13] Apple claimed Psystar "violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by dodging copy-protection technologies Apple uses to protect Mac OS X. "Apple employs technological protection measures that effectively control access to Apple's copyrighted works [...] Defendant has illegally circumvented Apple's technological copyright-protection measures."
>>

 

Have you seen what's happed to Psystar?

 

http://en.wikipedia....tar_Corporation

 

=> Puff, disintegrated:

"As of August, 2010, Psystar's web site, store, and content delivery network are unreachable."

 

And if anyone uses OSX in that way, it's like to modding PSX, o XBox, or massive push via piracy some Software: that make a system more used, create a massive user base for that PROPRIETARY platform. And it's all calculated, like piracy, that it's more or less tolerated because of that effect (make a proprietary platform, a standard over user base)

 

I absolutely not defend these choices of Apple proprietary shits (i'm TOTALLY against the philosophy of this, for me, bad marketing company), but I think it's more coherent for me to not use (and/or boicott) a product that I don't buy because it's too expansive and or closed (and that's the real true, otherwise MacClones never existed), rather then use it in a illegal way, that push his platform and distribution over user base, so this company will be over over legitimate to be more expansive and more closed.

 

Of course, as always, only my 0,02 :-D

Edited by Ladro
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I know that...but regardless, I still bought my copy of OSX 10.6.3...and it works. It's my hackintosh, and I love. ;)

 

Ok that's sure :-D

But only to say that if you use your copy of OSX (an OS built over the BSD kernel... A kernel and a lot of software opensource made for free by contributors, *LOCKED* and closed - read STEALED - by Apple to sell it), it's *not* because of Apple.

 

Apple it's totally *against* your choice, if Apple know about your copy of OSX, used with an direct infrigment of their (disgusting, IMHO) EULA, they theorically can suit you and *win* like the Psystar affair.

 

So it's not a so *open* company as you said, just to say that.

Edited by Ladro
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But only to say that if you use your copy of OSX (an OS built over the BSD kernel... A kernel and a lot of software opensource made for free by contributors, *LOCKED* and closed - read STEALED - by Apple to sell it

What are you on about? The darwin (BSD based) core OS is still open source, and OSX was developed wholly by Apple. Are you seriously claiming that by making their own OS development proprietary this is stealing?

 

I use all three popular OS's (Windows 7, OSX and Ubuntu Linux) and I like them all. Yes, they all have different ideologies behind them but we live in a world where people have to make money. Ubuntu probably wouldn't exist if not for some of the money brought in through support contracts. Can't we just appreciate the choice in technology that we have instead of degenerating into a quasi-religious nerd-gasm every time someone mentions a particular OS?

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But only to say that if you use your copy of OSX (an OS built over the BSD kernel... A kernel and a lot of software opensource made for free by contributors, *LOCKED* and closed - read STEALED - by Apple to sell it), it's *not* because of Apple.

When someone gives you the permission to sell something you have obtained legally, under a different license - it is not stealing. When someone writes a book and publishes it as a public domain document (in counties that accept 'public domain' as a concept, i.e not the US) - does he then go and claim someone printing is is a thief? no, the author expected and accepted that.

 

They have all the rights, given by the authors to use the code in the way they do. If you were the author and decided to license it under a restrictive license (like the GPL), would you then be upset if someone else wrote something to have the same functionality and licensed it under the BSD/MIT license? oh noes people will be able to use it - and I'll miss out on...

 

Would you rather that they use only GPLv2 licensed code then abusing dynamic linking, avoid releasing their code? Or would you rather they use proprietary code written from scratch which no one else will ever benefit from?

 

And while there is I'm sure some GPL code within the userland (or maybe it's all replaced now), they comply with the license and send their modifications upstream.

 

Apple it's totally *against* your choice, if Apple know about your copy of OSX, used with an direct infrigment of their (disgusting, IMHO) EULA, they theorically can suit you and *win* like the Psystar affair.

If you actually knew what was happening with the lawsuit, you would understand just how silly this train of thought is.

Should you make a product which contains proprietary or protected (read copywrite inclusive, since they employ the authors of their modifications) content without the provision for working around this, would you not expect to take someone to court for selling your product with the premise that it will work in an unintended manner, circumventing your license when the end user installs it?

It's like saying that selling products specifically designed to prevent speed cameras from triggering - you're not the end user and not guilty of anything criminal(in some places), but is it the right thing to do?

 

I'm going to go off and sell some laptops with Windows Starter edition and include a free DVD with a crack and version changer - I mean, it's the same thing right? Then that's ok the law simply doesn't apply to me. Maybe my next motherboard will include the option to apply the old activation bios changes for me?

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Apple it's totally *against* your choice, if Apple know about your copy of OSX, used with an direct infrigment of their (disgusting, IMHO) EULA, they theorically can suit you and *win* like the Psystar affair.

 

The difference being, I'm not building hackintoshes and selling them. This company was essentially selling knock off macs. Perhaps if they had approached apple they could have tried to work out an agreement. If they were really interested in making Open Systems, they could have gone with an open source OS....rather than OSX.

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I personally have no interest in running Mac OS on any PC. It isn't worth the technical fight.

 

It's really not that much of a struggle to get it running these days. My friend installed it on her intel core 2 duo based laptop and pretty much everything worked right out of the box. Laptops are definitely harder, but if you custom build your PC with compatible hardware...it's really a piece of cake.

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Yeah it pains me that NVidia is the only one competent when it comes to graphics on Linux. That really limits my choices in video cards. The last time I used the fglrx drivers, they were a joke and the company drops support for cards in under three years. They say "we're transitioning these cards to the open source drivers". This translates to, "don't bother upgrading your operating system. If you do, your game performance will be terrible due to lack of proprietary drivers. Perhaps you would like to buy a shiny new card now?"

 

Meanwhile my Geforce 6200 that I got for free still works on the latest distros.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Yep, ATARI! The most sophisticated and powerful home computer system of the late 80ies, vastly superior to those C= toys labeled "AMIGA" which essentially served as a substitute for a real girlfriend for those poor fellas who happened to buy one.

 

I guess I was trying to point out that these system wars are a phenomenon

, because nowadays we can change our system by a simple reboot when needed. It is no longer an exclusive decision you have to make before you buy.

 

Yeah it pains me that NVidia is the only one competent when it comes to graphics on Linux.

Used to be true for years, but things changed. I am having the issue of a randomly freezing system which is caused by the proprietary nvidia driver. While there are bug reports all over the usual places I haven't seen a fix for it over a year now. It happens not that often, maybe once every two months -- but a complete lockup on a linux system is something that is not supposed to happen at all unless your hardware fails.

 

My next video card will be AMD. They did change their linux policy over the last years, so I do have some hopes at least and kernel based modesetting is a nice thing to have. Let alone Fermi's ridicoulous high power comsumption...

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Yep.

 

The modular expansion industry (cough Graphics market) essentially rebuilt the old Amiga\Atari computing model from the outside in. (And continues to do so... AMD are betting the farm on OpenCL). We now all have aggregate collections of different DSP's, CPU's and other specialized processors in our "PC" Desktop platforms (even if only the meek stuff on the motherboard). The sad thing is all the hardware inefficiency of all that modularity combined with all the specification overhead in the hardware and API overhead in the OS. If it were designed to like Amiga\Atari to begin with, we would have much more processing muscle at our disposal.

 

All that said, I am looking forward to the "Haiku OS" project's completion and it's razor sharp focus on Desktop experience and performance. Ubuntu was a hopeful candidate for a truly great Open Source Desktop but they have lost their way and have moved priorities towards their Server business (and Shuttleworth's fickle GUI preferences.).

Edited by nbohr1more

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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Know what drives me batty? I needed to print an invoice on someone else's computer because I have no printer. I didn't want to sign into my account on their Windows machine because of fear of malware/keyloggers stealing my credentials. So, I produced a .ps file on my Linux machine to be printed on theirs. Of course their Windows does not know HOW TO OPEN THESE FILES.

 

Hey MS, this is 2011. We should be beyond the point where a given OS doesn't know what to do with a file type. Please, stop re-organizing your GUI and use those programmer resources to add as many file types as possible to your product. Stop with the political crap and support ogg too while you're at it. Even your own games use ogg and it has been around for a decade.

 

Thanks.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Know what drives me batty? I needed to print an invoice on someone else's computer because I have no printer. I didn't want to sign into my account on their Windows machine because of fear of malware/keyloggers stealing my credentials. So, I produced a .ps file on my Linux machine to be printed on theirs. Of course their Windows does not know HOW TO OPEN THESE FILES.

You're welcome!

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So, I produced a .ps file on my Linux machine to be printed on theirs. Of course their Windows does not know HOW TO OPEN THESE FILES.

Hey MS, this is 2011. We should be beyond the point where a given OS doesn't know what to do with a file type. Please, stop re-organizing your GUI and use those programmer resources to add as many file types as possible to your product.

 

Microsoft have to be careful here though, adding support for filetypes that are generally handled by third-party tools is likely to get them sued for abuse of monopoly.

 

The independent computer retailers could install the necessary software, but there is probably little customer demand for it. A lot of people just wipe and re-install Windows as soon as they get the machine in order to get rid of all of the bundled crapware.

 

Stop with the political crap and support ogg too while you're at it.

 

Really, Media Player doesn't support OGG?

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