Greetings from not-so-afar

[Bill Campbell]

On Thu, Dec 12, 2013, Leon Goldstein wrote:
>Matthew Carpenter wrote:
>
>>On Tuesday, November 26, 2013 08:44:39 Lonni J Friedman wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 8:30 AM, Leon Goldstein <metapsych at earthlink.net> > 
>>>Still here.  I'm dabbling with some more current releases, e.g. SuSE,
>>>    
>>>
>>>>but still using 10+ year-old Libranet 3.
>>>>I'm still hovering over making the switch to a Mac.  I'd like to hear
>>>>about dual booting a Mac with Linux.
>>>>      
>>>>
>>>Unless you've already used OSX often, and like it, I'd strongly
>>>discourage that transition.  My new employer gives (forces?) a Macbook
>>>on all new employees, so I found myself having to use OSX as a primary
>>>OS for the first time ever.  Its been a rather painful transition.
>>>I'd say my biggest gripes are the lack of sloppy-focus for the mouse
>>>(focus follows mouse), and the obscene instability of the OS.  Without
>>>exaggeration, I'm experiencing kernel panics at least once/week.  I've
>>>informally polled my coworkers, and they experience the same
>>>instability.  We're not doing anything crazy, just (mostly) normal
>>>desktop usage scenarios (web browser, multi-tabbed terminals connected
>>>to other systems).  I don't get how anyone tolerates this crap.  Its
>>>horrible.  Beyond that, the performance is truly terrible compared to
>>>Linux.  If I run a few 'brew' package builds, the interactivity takes
>>>a nose dive.  The mouse literally stutters its way across the desktop
>>>(and this is with the SSD disk and 8GB RAM).  At home, I've got an
>>>assortment of macbooks from 2010 all the way up to the most recent
>>>2013 retina model, all with Fedora on them, and they are rock solid,
>>>stable & performant.  So its definitely the OS that is at fault for
>>>the instability and performance problems.
>>>
>>>
>>>So if you like OSX then i guess go for it. But if you haven't used it
>>>much, I'd recommend that you think long & hard before making the
>>>transition.  I can't help much about dual boot.  All of my home Macs
>>>are single OS (Fedora), and my work Mac is OSX only.
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>My experience was much the same.  I gave OSX over 3 months to win me, then 
>>that MBP became the best Kubuntu box I've yet run.
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>Hmm... I guess this is why guys with old Mac towers with dual G5's are 
>hanging onto them.
>My feeble G4 Power Book seems to run OS X just fine.  I guess OS X did 
>not quite make the leap to Intel procs.

I've been running Macs as my primary desktop since 2001 or so,
currently a mid 2009 15in Macbook Pro, and don't think I've ever
seen a kernel panic.  I'm currently running Lion, and haven't done
Mountain Lion or Mavericks yet.

Typically I have at least 20 xterms open with ssh connections to
various Linux systems.  I missed the focus follows mouse
initially as that was what I was used to, but don't miss it.

All of our servers are running various flavors of Linux, some as
ancient as SuSE Enterprise 9, most on CentOS (even a couple
running SuSE 9.0 Pro under VMware where we need to run SCO COFF
binaries :-).

Bill
-- 
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