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On Sun, Apr 09, 2006 at 11:33:03PM +0100, Ben wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-04-09 at 20:32 +0100, Benjamin A'Lee wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 09, 2006 at 06:57:10PM +0100, Tom Brough wrote:
> > > Will we all end up being GNU/ Linux users on Apple hardware ?
> >
> > Is there any particular reason to use Apple hardware anymore, now it's
> > not PowerPC based?
>
> Yes, it's staggeringly fast, extremely pretty, compact, reliable,
> ergonomic and it runs OS X. No standard PC has yet been got to run
> Apple's commercial, packaged version of OS X, and one of the reasons I
> use Linux is because it's the closest equivalent to OS X.
Well, I've never thought "it's pretty" is a good reason to buy hardware,
personally, though there are lots of people who disgree (and my wiring isn't
tidy enough for a transparent case to be a good idea :).
I didn't take into account the ability to run OSX, since the question was about
GNU/Linux on a Mac. However, I get the feeling I'd get annoyed at it and
install Debian on it before long, anyway. Surely *BSD is closer to OSX than
GNU/Linux is, though?
And as Neil says, "compact" isn't necessarily a good thing; I find laptop
keyboards hard to type on as it is, and the 12" iBook looks to be torture.
Fast and reliable aren't unique to Apple, though I haven't compared prices to
see how well Apple's x86 machines compare to anyone else's x86 machines.
One thing that does worry me about developing for OSX is that their method for
remaining compatible across architectures appears to be "stick three binaries
together and distribute that" - "Universal" binaries consist of 32- and 64-bit
PPC and x86 machine code, combined into one executable. What's wrong with "use
this if you have an Intel-based Mac, this if you have a 64-bit G5, and this for
anything else?"
Ben
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