Which is better? OSX or Ubuntu?

[Sasha Tsykin]

Eric Dunbar wrote:

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>2.)     Overall ease of use – User-Friendly
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>Depending on your computer experience, roughly the same. Mac OS X will
>win in the polished department but Ubuntu offers you more GUI
>configurability.
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I find Ubuntu much easier to use than OSX.

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>>3.)     Ease of installing additional hardware (Post OS Install)
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>If it's not a bargain basement discount peripheral, Mac OS X! No
>contest. If it's bargain basement, Ubuntu may include drivers.
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Since when? Ubuntu offers drivers for high end parts as well. Here you 
are just wrng. I would out-of-the-box driver support is about the same 
in both.

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>>4.)     Ease of uninstalling no longer used hardware (Without OS Re-Install)
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>There shouldn't be any difference. You should be able to simply unplug at will.
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In OSX you would still have the drivers working though (I think). In 
Ubuntu hotplug should make sure that you don't.

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>>5.)     Ease of installing new software/games/etc.
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>Depends:
>Purely open source software that's available in the repositories:
>Ubuntu (hands down) because there is an interface to install open
>source stuff
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>EVERYTHING ELSE, including open source software that's been packaged
>by others: Mac OS X. The driving philosophy behind Mac software
>installation/removal is drag-and-drop. You shouldn't need uninstallers
>to remove an app (if you do, you should be asking what it's
>installing).
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Probably Ubuntu normally, because in Linux you would likely find 
yourself using non-free software only very rarely. And almost any free 
software you would want is available from the repositories.

>>6.)     Ease of uninstalling no longer used software/games/etc.
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>Slight advantage to Mac OS X. Drag and drop to the trash! Most Mac
>applications come as a single "file" (it's actually a directory
>(package) that's packaged into a single icon) so, to install them you
>simply copy them to <insert favourite destination>. To delete, you
>highlight the original icon (not an alias) and delete. Oftentimes I
>have apps sitting on the desktop so when I'm done they simply go into
>the trash.
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I would say Ubuntu, because Synaptic is no harder to use.

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>>7.)     Overall security and resistance to Viruses, Trojans, etc.
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>No difference AFAIK.
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>>8.)     Ease of removal of Viruses, Trojans, etc.
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>Not applicable. No known viruses or trojans for Mac OS X. Presumably
>the same for Ubuntu.
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There are a couple of viruses and trojans available for Linux, also for 
Mac OSX (I think) but it is so rare to get infected that it is a piece 
of exceptionally bad luc for it to happen, and you really don't have to 
worry about it with either.

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>>9.)     Availability of GOOD software/games/etc.
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>Define good. There's lots of good OSS (open source software), but, you
>may be disappointed. Many bits and pieces are quite rough around the
>edges.
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Many bits are not. The biggest problem is the availability of games, for 
both. For Ubuntu, you can only use games which have linux ports, 
notably, all games by Id software, Neverwinter Nights, and several 
others. Go to www.tuxgames.com for a complete list. While there are OSS 
games available, they are often quite hard to install on any non-x86 
platform. And there are not many good 3d games available in the 
repositories, a very rare weak point.

Mac OSX does have many games available for it, but they are expensive 
and hard to find. There are also the OSS games, which might install 
better there (haven't tried, don't know).

>The commercial gaming actually exists on Mac OS X vs. virtually
>non-existent on Ubuntu, and, given that you only have 128 (or 256) MB
>of RAM and a 400 MHz G3 pretty much everything you're going to be able
>to play you can buy for $5 on eBay anyway (Marathon, Diablo II,
>etc.)!!
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OSS games, as above.

>Caveats:
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>1. Given the speed of your machine and the amount of RAM, you will
>find that Ubuntu will perform better for many things! If all you're
>planning on doing is basic work (web browsing, e-mailing, word
>processing), Ubuntu is your better choice.
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true

>If you're doing multi-media stuff or need things like Flash you're
>definitely better off with Mac OS X... most (decent) open source
>multimedia packages are available for Mac OS X and in a few cases
>people have gone to the trouble of actually building a decent GUI for
>them (usually for $$).
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also true. In particular there is not shockwave player for linux, and 
gplflash is the only flash player that would work on a mac. It is 
unstable, and only supports up to flash 5, so not a great choice.

>2. Your machine has USB 1.1, NOT 2.0. This means that your 120 GB HD
>will transfer files at a glacial pace (about 1 MB/sec MAX) compared to
>USB 2.0 or Firewire. If you can use Firewire (IEEE 1391) do so -- it's
>faster than USB 2.0 in real world situations (technically USB 2.0 is
>480 Mbps and Firewire is 400 Mbps but Firewire is a more robust
>protocol, better able to sustain data transfers).
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I like USB 2.0 better, I suppose just personal preference. It gives me 
better results.

>3. You can easily set up a dual-boot situation. I would advise at
>least 3 GB for Ubuntu and the rest for OS X. For ease of installation,
>install OS X first and partition the drive using the OS X installer to
>have 3 GB (partition 1) and 7 GB (partition 2). Make sure that Ubuntu
>gets installed onto the first logical partition. This way you can
>sample both and see the advantages to both.
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I would suggest 3GB is not nearly enough for Ubuntu. I tried to install 
it on a 4GB hard drive once and there was less than 50MB left by the 
time I finished. 10GB is a good starting point, in general.

>Just some pre-emptive information for you to keep in mind about
>dual-booting a Mac:
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>(a) The Ubuntu install sets Ubuntu to boot by default. You can change
>that to boot OS X by default editing /etc/yaboot.conf ... sudo gedit
>/etc/yaboot.conf (type man yaboot from the command line for more info)
>(b) If you set a startup disk using Startup Disk preferences pane in
>OS X or control panel in Mac OS 9 you will lose yaboot (your Linux
>bootloader). You can regain yaboot by booting with the Ubuntu
>installer CD and doing some magic (never had to do so), or resetting
>PRAM by holding down command-option-P-R when the Mac chimes (it will
>chime a second time if you had the keys down at the right time),
>provided you have installed Ubuntu on the first partition and OS X on
>the second partition (the "bios" (Open Firmware) will search for
>bootable partitions starting with the first logical partition if it
>isn't told what partition to use)
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>4. Regardless of what you do, upgrade your RAM. It takes PC-100
>(cheap) RAM, has 2 slots and you can go up to 1 GB IIRC (check to see
>what size DIMMs it needs to go to 1 GB... sometimes these Macs need
>"low profile" DIMMs). 128 MB simply isn't enough for either Ubuntu or
>OS X. You'll find that Ubuntu works a bit better than OS X in 128 MB,
>but, the difference will start to diminish as you move up to 256 MB
>and beyond.
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I disagree, it will be slow in both, but it will run.

>5. Don't expect a speed demon (by today's standards) either way. The
>Tangerine iMac 400 MHz wasn't zippy to begin with.
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>6. If you run into problems, feel free to ask. There are lots of dual
>Mac OS X-Ubuntu users out there (it's a natural fit given that OS X is
>Unix-based (they no-longer say Unix-like) and Ubuntu is Unix-like, and
>both are open source (one more so than the other ;-)).
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Mac OSX is not opes source. It is closed source. And just because it is 
Unix based makes no difference. The interface, package management, etc. 
is all quite different. Incidentally, there are a lot more 
Ubuntu-Windows dual booters than Ubuntu-Mac OS X

>Eric.
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Sasha