Dragaera

Brust weblog entry

Sun Feb 8 12:10:54 PST 2004

On Sun, Feb 08, 2004 at 11:40:32AM -0600, Matthew Klahn <mklahn at mac.com> wrote:
> On Feb 7, 2004, at 17:40 , Matthew Hunter wrote:
> >I've been trying to keep my nose out of this, but UNIX can run on
> >PCs.  A "PC" is a hardware platform, or more accurately, a
> >widely-produced, mostly-compatible hardware platform based on the
> >x86 architecture and IBM's original thrown-together "personal
> >computer".
> 
> Been there, done that. Running Linux was my bread & butter for years, 
> and in fact, I had to fight to run Linux instead of Win NT 4.0 at a job 
> where I was doing UNIX programming for a living, go figure. I've 
> matured to the point where I know all the low-level crap that I want to 
> about UNIX, and have long passed the point where I care to muck around 
> with UNIX internals on a weekly basis. I _can_ do that if I want to on 
> Mac OS X, but I don't _have_ to, which is a major improvement. 

Running Debian, I don't have to either.  I used to run RedHat, 
back when they were first getting started; it's a management 
nightmare.  Not Debian.

> >Don't sneer at PC users; the hardware platform wasn't exactly a
> >miracle of original design, but these days it isn't bad at all,
> >and the price is hard to beat.  There are hardware platforms I
> >would want more -- I think the PowerPC processors are better
> >designed -- but I'm not willing to pay more in order to be locked
> >into the Mac operating system.
> 
> Price is hard to beat, but I use my computer to make money, not to make 
> the computer work. In fact, I now (because of Linux) HATE mucking 
> around with endless configuration files to tweak something just so it 
> will work. One benefit of Mac OS X (and Windows) is that the 
> environment is rather standard (for Windows, I mean for a given 
> flavor), so I don't have to recompile a bunch of stuff just so it will 
> work properly. Installing software via drag & drop is so much nicer 
> than any mechanism in any Linux distro (RPM, dpkg, tgz) or having "DLL 
> Hell" and registry problems on Windows.

No argument about DLL hell, but I like apt-get a hell of a lot 
more than drag and drop.  One command, and the software is there 
-- including any dependencies.  Debian really does not have 
management problems.

> >Sneer at Microsoft users all you want; they deserve it.
> >
> >I will also note for the record that I have used Macs, both
> >before and after OS X, and don't like using either.  Their user
> >interface always makes an effort to get in my way.  I can see how
> >people whose business is not working with computers like them,
> >but I can hardly stand to use one for more than a few minutes.
> >I feel pretty much the same about windows.
> 
> My buisness is not only working with computers, but also helping other 
> people work with computers. Of course there are annoyances; you will 
> find them on any platform. For me, the annoyances in Mac OS X are just 
> that: annoyances. On Windows they were crippling and on Linux were 
> merely tedious to the point of disgusting. And, most of the features of 
> Mac OS X are configurable, since a lot of people like to customize 
> their machines to the nth degree. You just need to do a little research 
> on the platform, or buy an O'Reilly book or two (Mac OS X Hacks, for 
> example, though all of this info is available for free on the web, if 
> you want to do a little legwork). And don't try to argue that you 
> wouldn't have to do any research on another UNIX system to do the same 
> amount of customization: you're right. You'd have to do a lot more 
> research through much worse documentation and be told "read the source 
> code" a couple of dozen times if you have any questions.

Strangely enough, there's no mainstream problem I've had on Linux 
where "reading the source code" was the only way to get the 
answer.  And while some problems do require research, that 
shouldn't surprise anyone -- it is, after all, like any other 
kind of learning.  

Like I said in my original post, I could make the effort to learn 
all about the tricks and customizations of the Mac interface.  I 
might or might not find a way to fix the things that bug me.  I 
don't choose to spend my time doing that, because I already have 
a system that I know about as close to inside and out as it gets.
There's no return potential involved in exploring MacOS; it's 
just wasted time.  Not because it's necessarily bad, but because 
there's already a better match.

In addition, after my experience with the Amiga, I'll be damned 
if I'll ever use a proprietary operating system again, given the 
choice.  This is a political issue for me as well as a matter of 
taste.

> >Strangely enough, I'm one of those users for whom UNIX
> >(specifically, Linux) gets the interface *right*.  If someone
> >would get their act together and release an open-hardware,
> >PowerPC based system optimized for Linux, I'd be there in a
> >heartbeat.
> 
> Well, you do have roughly seventy gajillion interfaces to choose from, 
> so I guess you've got me there. After messing around with the 30th 
> interface that STILL doesn't work the way you want to, it gets 
> tiresome... I, myself, progressed this way: WindowMaker -> 
> Enlightenment -> IceWM -> BlackBox -> WindowMaker -> Sawfish -> Fluxbox 
> -> WindowMaker; even though WM didn't do everything I wanted, it was 
> good enough. Anyway, all this to say that while choice is good, if most 
> of the choices are worse than getting poked in the forehead with a 
> sharp stick, it's not good anymore.

I've tried almost all of those, and settled on sawfish + gnome.  
Works just fine, looks fairly good.  Enlightenment has too much eye 
candy; IceWM isn't bad but sawfish does everything it does 
better; blackbox is too minimal; WindowMaker just annoyed me.  

-- 
Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org)
Public Key: http://matthew.infodancer.org/public_key.txt
Homepage: http://matthew.infodancer.org/index.jsp
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