[OT] Re: Is Ubuntu safe to try

[Larry Grover]

Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 09:03:00AM -0400, Larry Grover wrote:
> 
>>(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.
> 
> 
> Interesting. I've always had better luck getting CUPS
> printing to work under OS X. It mostly "just works," though
> I suppose I'm mostly trying to print to printers that are on
> other OS X machines.

I would expect OS X systems to get along well with each other (though 
I don't have much experience here).


>>(3) Reliably connect to a linux NFS share.
> 
> 
> Hm. I've had no trouble with (3). What sort of difficulties
> do you encounter? Quite often you need to configure the
> Linux side of the NFS share to allow connections from
> unprivileged ports. Other than that, NFS under OS X has
> never been more or less difficult for me than NFS under
> Linux.

Yeah, I already stubbed my toe on the unpriviledged ports thing (and 
was able to find the way around it pretty quickly).  I was never able 
to get my OS X systems to mount an NFS share exported from a Slackware 
system (maybe a kernel thing? that was with 2.4.x kernels).  With 
Ubuntu (2.6.x kernel), I can mount NFS shares on OS X, and it works, 
sort of, but not reliably when I use anonuid, anongid, all_squash, etc 
options.  If you're curious, I'll be glad to send you details, but 
off-list (since it's way off topic for this list).


>>(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.
> 
> 
> I've never tried to do this under OS X, oddly (it is odd,
> because I configure these right away under Linux and
> Windows). I'll check with my OS X-head friends and see if
> they have any OS X-native ways of doing it.

I spent a long time trying to find out how to do this, and came to the 
conclusion that it's just not possible (but I'll be really interested 
to know how, if it is).

> 
>>(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.
> 
> 
> Maybe so, but would you agree that this isn't something that
> most users will be concerned about? 

Well, I don't know most users. ;)
But I'd guess most people don't think about this.

It does contribute a fair amount of inefficiency to use of the GUI, by 
increasing the amount of mousing a user has to do.  It may seem 
trivial at first, but after several hours of working on the system, it 
adds up.  I know this is one of the reasons why I am less productive 
when I work on an OS X system.


 > Granted, I asked you for
> difficulties that you yourself had, and I'm glad you
> answered so thoroughly. But I'm mostly looking out here for
> features that new users will care about -- since they're
> really the market that distros like Ubuntu are focused on.

There area a few features that linux desktops get right by default and 
which greatly increase desktop productivity: 
middle-mouse-click-to-paste and multiple virtual desktops are two I 
can think of off the top of my head.  I've found that new users 
generally don't know about or don't initially use these features, but 
once they learn them, they end up wondering why other OS/desktop 
systems don't have them.


> Thanks for chiming in with your OS X woes.

My pleasure. ;)

Regards,
Larry