To the comment about multiple desktops, it’s BSD and that was there the whole time! Job’s uses this as a marketing tool; Intel + PPC OS X anyone? When you understand Apple and you start to see this pattern, even on the iPhone. Similar to Microsoft’s pattern of monkey see monkey do…

I’ve been using open source since day one starting with Slackware and it’s always been a chore – BeOS was better IMO and it was cheap compared to Windows and Mac. I recently moved from Linux for my day to day system at home for many reasons. I got tired of constantly fixing crap, setting up hardware manually, and not being able to use some really good commercial softwares, and dealing with the limitations in some of the open software I used.

The OS has become trivial to me over the years anyway and while I would likely use Linux in my job (RedHat) over the expensive alternatives, it doesn’t really fit well with the typical home user or home commercial market place. Home users want games (Windows) or ease of use (OS X) with the ability to impulse buy at the local software store. Remember, most home users at this point are not computer geeks! As for impulse buying, I think the AppStore proves my point…

Operating Systems being treated as God to this tribe mentality is just so tiresome! Grow up people, would you poke fun at me if I told you I drive a Jeep Wrangler? Wrangler drivers all wave to each other like we are a tribe, but I don’t argue with Toyota drivers on the internet because they are not Wrangler drivers.

If people running Linux enjoy freedom then let people have the freedom to use or like what they wish. I know many Linux users who run OS X for software and others who run Windows for gaming – it’s all choice and each OS has it’s strengths, weaknesses, and philosophies so get over yourself and your tribes and use what makes you happy or productive…

and honestly, stop making people in the media gods! Do we need articles like this? I could care less what Linus thinks about OS X, I like it just like there are movies I like that some critics hate. Let’s recall something our parents likely told us once, “if your friends jumped off a bridge would you follow?”

All succeed and fail because of there strongest points I feel.

For that reason Linux, BSD, and other such systems when equipped with xwindow and decent window managers are the only sensible way to do things. For people in science, engineering, and mathematics it seems ridiculous to throw away money to translate Unix programs to run under anything not POSIX compliant. Apple, to their credit, makes it fairly easy to migrate Unix programs to their system, and has x available.

It should be obvious that for an operating system to be able to do anything it needs lots of commands, and text based commands are far simpler to use than moving (explicatives deleted) mouses around the screen for complex operations. Having one’s computer screen covered with icons so that it looks like a church after a tornado is not a user friendly thing to do either!

It is also highly unsatisfactory to have to do everything from command lines. Thus a x with a good window manager with a POSIX operating system underneath with a good shell is the only thing that makes sense to people who use computers for serious purposes.

Mr Martin I disagree with you when you say most computer users are stupid, rather than they just aren’t informed or educated on the options available to them. It is an attitude such as this that keeps a lot of people who otherwise would have tried Linux from doing so. Why would someone want help from you or use your OS after you just insulted them. Those who have knowledge and experience should share it rather than criticize those who don’t have it. I repair and build computers from my home and I take the time to try to help those who I have the opportunity to do work for with issues that maybe will teach them how to do it themselves rather than pay someone to do it for them. If it were that all people were like Mr martin I would never have learned a thing about computers for his insults would have prevented me from even asking for help. Those of us who know something have to have humility and remain humble because we aren’t the omes who invented the stuff we know, it was given to us by someone willing to help us and a lot of our own hard work…RAZ

I have Mac OS X Leopard here and Windows. They just cannot do the things Linux can. This idea that Linux people are fanboys is stupid, it is the Mac people that are fanboys and cannot see the flaws that are staring them in the face when they use it. Here is a list of some flaws in the recent OS X:

- upgrading from Tiger to Leopard results in a slower system (that is why Snow Leopard is aimed at performance issues–bad engineering there).

- X11 under Leopard is partially/fully broken (it worked in Tiger–Linux has the latest and greatest version).

- Java was screwed up in Leopard and only recently is starting to catch up with Linux and Windows–works perfectly under Linux.

- Spaces in Leopard is garbage. Talk about a ripoff idea from X11 window managers, that have provided virtual desktops for over 10 years;under Linux it works flawlessly, under any desktop manager, not just the one that Apple provides–catch up Apple.

You might also want to check the fact that Apple took some of their basic software from KDE (Safari, Mail, and some others).

The reason Linux is not more popular is not because there is something wrong with it, it is because most computer users are stupid and do not see the difference between the computer and operating system. They go to a computer store and buy whatever is there expecting it all to be set up for them, thus they get the pre-installed Windows crap every time because of MS bundling policies with hardware manufacturers and then expect to get it always.

And just because Ubuntu does not do exactly what you want does not mean the many other distros out there cannot. Try Mandriva, OpenSuse, Fedora, and so on.