September 24, 2007 9:13 AM PDT
Choosing between a Linux and Mac OS X desktop
OS Weekly ponders a question I never would have thought it would ponder: Linux or Mac OS X on the desktop? I would have thought OS Weekly would have chosen Linux long ago and stopped thinking about the decision, but it appears that the Mac is truly presenting itself as a serious contender for open-source developers.
From the article:
Under the hood, it's basically the same thing, which is a hat tip to Apple. Incredibly secure and simple to use. Personally, the most compelling reason to use this OS would not be for iTunes. It would also be for the fantastic applications designed to make video editing a breeze. Is this something I really want to do on a notebook? If I went MacBook Pro perhaps, but it's really more of a desktop sort of a task for an iMac, I think. I don't know yet, it does seem like OS X is looking better all the time. I can hammer out scripts like I do in Linux fairly easily, and now, thanks to VMWare Fusion, I can even use my beloved Evolution PIM where Entourage is not a great replacement for me. Maybe it's time to upgrade my notebook after all?
In short, the Mac may well give users the best of both worlds: Apple's creativity software and open-source's wealth of applications. I switched back in 2002 and will never look back. I've used Windows. I've used Linux. For me, the Mac is vastly superior to both in enabling the consumer-ish ease of Windows with the under-the-hood hackability of Linux.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
As for the office, I do not pay for it, so I really don't care that much. If the company allowed it, I would use a Mac or a Linux box.
you and Luis were at OSCON- you must have noticed the common areas and the prevalence of Macs there. I've witnessed a gradual but steady trend of growing Mac usage amongst developers at the conferences I've attended over the past 3yrs. Just about every nook at OSCON had someone hovered over a glowing apple icon- I'd say 85% of the laptops I saw there were Macs. The business-centric conferences have the skew in the opposite direction. Most of the developers I know are using OSS technologies and nearly all of them operate on a Mac.
sean