[OT] Re: Is Ubuntu safe to try

[Larry Grover]

Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 12:57:30PM +0800, Senectus . wrote:
> 
>>I'm currently administering a site with almost totally WinXP
>>desktops.. but there are 3 Apple OSX G4 Laptops that get used.. Now
>>I HATE having to work on these.. they make me feel like I'm crippled
>>or something.. *shudder* but the users love them. Having said that,
>>they can't figure out on their own how to do almost anything on them..
>>and are constantly asking me to help... and even though I see the
>>users productivity dropping on these devices the users still LOVE
>>using them..
> 
> 
> Huh. That's very interesting to me, and is quite counter to
> the experiences that most of my users have had. If you feel
> up to it, I'd love to hear what it is that people find
> difficult to do under OS X.

OK, this is off topic, but since you asked:

(1) Set up printing to use a CUPS printer on a linux box.  This was 
absolutely impossible for me to accomplish under OS X.  I finally got 
it working by copying the config files over to OS X from a linux 
(Ubuntu) system.  Setting up Ubuntu to use the CUPS printer was a 
breeze, by comparison.

(2) Burn a data CD I can easily read on a linux system.  OS X defaults 
to burning data CDs with an HFS+ file system.  While it's not 
impossible to burn an ISO9660 data CD, it's not obvious how to do it, 
and it cost me several coasters before I figured out how.

(3) Reliably connect to a linux NFS share.

(4) Adjust mouse tracking (independently adjust speed and acceration) 
so that the GUI is usable.  I've found this impossible to do on OS X 
without a 3rd party app (extra $$).  In contract, for every linux 
system I've ever sat in front of, the default behavior of the mouse in 
X has always been usable.

(5) Ditto for the trackpad on my iBook (except that I've never been 
able to make it usable; if I want to use OS X, I have to attach an 
external mouse).

(6) Customize the GUI so that the window control widgets (maximize, 
minimize, close buttons) are on the same side of the window as the 
scroll bar:  where they belong.  As far as I know, this is impossible 
to do in OS X.

(7) Find truly useful information on-line.  I guess I'm spoiled by the 
ease of finding on-line solutions for linux problems.  It's been quite 
an unpleasant surprise for me to find out that the same is not true 
for OS X.

I could go on and on, but in general, the problems I have with OS X 
boil down to:  (1) poor OS X interoperability with linux  (to be fair, 
I think Apple only cares about interoperability with windows, but 
that's of absolutely no use to me), (2) OS X "just works", but only if 
you want to do exactly what Apple thinks you should do and do it in 
exactly the way Apple wants; if you don't, then prepare for big 
frustrations.

Regards,
Larry