Linux User Reviews Mac mini

[admin]

Linux User Reviews Mac mini
Monday November 28, 2005

Thomas Driemeyer has written an article entitled "When a Linux user buys Apple's Mac mini." The article details one Linux user's experiences with OS X, and we found it to be an interesting read. "In early 2005, Apple was announcing the Mac mini computer. It was the answer to what I was looking for in a computer, so I bought one. This is a report about the early months with my new Mac, and how it compares to a Linux computer. (I have never owned a Windows computer.) In short, I am now both a Mac and a Linux user - Apple gets GUI simplicity, usability, and coherency right, and Linux everything else.

When switching operating systems, there is a strong tendency to whine about all the things missing in the new OS, or that are done differently and require a change of habits. The advantages become obvious only after some time. I'll do my best to take that into account and present a balanced review. There are a few fundamental problems that I cannot ignore though," Thomas Driemeyer writes for Bitrot.de.



http://www.123macmini.com/news/story/397.html

[idek]

YES! I am also a linux user. I really like my mini. The exterior design is awesome, the interface looks great, it's a sharp package. But if I try to use it as a productivity machine like my linux box, or to be honest, even my windows box, it's shine diminishes.

This guy wrote the essay I've been meaning to write. To be honest, I've been so busy trying to find tools for things like photo editing and most importantly coding that I haven't had time to right about my disappointment.

I really like my mini, but it is quite sad how much better it could have been.

BTW, awesome logo, I might have to make use of that
_________________
1.42 | 1GB | 80GB
20.1 Dell 2001FP
booting from FW 400GB ICY Dock

[castaway]

[resuna]

I don't understand the argument that Mac OS X is somehow missing applications that Linux has. I'm particularly puzzled by the people who insist they need to run Linux as well to run their KDE or Gnome based apps. You have a complete UNIX under the hood, you can run your KDE environment in your X11 window, full screen, and switch back to Mac OS X... so at the very LEAST you get your "dual systems" without a switch box.

The usual response to this is that they want the apps to run in the Mac OS X environment. Hello, they don't do that if you use a switch box or dual monitors either...

The author seems somewhat confused about history, since NetInfo is older than Win32 and the Registry... *and* it avoids the main problem with the registry by remaining a system repository: they don't try and cram user and application configuration in there as well.

NeXT isn't responsible for the poor performance. That can be laid in the lap of Quartz and the massive memory requirements of maintaining all windows (including all scroll buffers) in memory as bitmaps. My NeXTstation with its 68030 running at 40 MHz is very responsive... it's certainly better than any X11 environment on a 486 or first generation Pentium 90.

He also shouldn't be blaming the Finder beachballs on NeXT either. Finder is based on a carbonized version of the old Mac OS Finder. The NeXT file manager is multithreaded and handles resource contention well, and rarely beachballs even under heavy use. Finder is still as messed up as it ever was on OS 9.

[resuna]

Oh god...

They should have used X11. Before you scream, let me explain: Of course I am not talking about exposing arcane APIs like Xlib or Xt, or going anywhere near obsolete junk like Athena or Motif. I am talking about interoperability on a network, based on open standards. The system should not care on which computer a program runs and on which display the windows show. The network is a shared resource on which programs and data should move freely, in the sense of Sun's old battle cry "the network is the computer". And X11 including OpenGL and other more modern developments is the only open standard that can ensure that.

The system they started with supports remote network access at least as well as X11, and is less impacted by latency. If they were interested in providing that kind of remote network access to applications they could have done it with NeXTstep. I don't agree with all their reasons for taking the remote display out, but I strongly suspect that the low bandwidth and high latency you get over the network meant that using OpenGL as extensively as they did would simply have been impossible. Even PCI isn't really fast enough for Quartz.

I've run OS X with Quartz Extreme enabled over a PCI bus, and the bus was so choked with traffic that I had to switch from my 10/100 ethernet card on the PCI bus to the onboard 10 megabit interface... unless you're using a gigabit network with cut-through switching and no routing you just don't have the bandwidth to support the user interface.

OpenGL extensions to X11 let you get some of the same kinds of capabilities for applications that talk OpenGL directly... but can you do it over the network with anything like reasonable performance, if at all?

[kuro]

[resuna]

[Weee]

I've been using SUSE 9 with KDE for the past two years. I'm looking forward to getting a mini and putting my Linux days behind me. To be honest, I've grown tired of the Linux community.

[rosco]

[idek]

There are several reasons why I am still a bit dissapointed with the mac, to elaborate more....

There are small things, like not having any ergonomic keyboards with the mac keys, not a big deal, but for a company that prides itself on such design skills, they missed the boat there.

One of the things I hate most about windows is all the *magic* where stuff happens and you have no idea what it's doing, or how to fix it when it doesn't work. That's what I like about linux, you can get in there and see what's going on, though some times you'd rather not. Well I was hoping to get more of the linux side of things here. But I get folders that show up only in the finder and not the terminal, and other folders that show up in the terminal but not in the finder, WTF!?

I think my biggest problem is that I'm not used to the mac, I'm getting better at it, I think I was just hoping the learning curve would be less steep because of my linux experience.

oh well
_________________
1.42 | 1GB | 80GB
20.1 Dell 2001FP
booting from FW 400GB ICY Dock

[resuna]