XPost: comp.sys.mac.advocacy, alt.os.linux.mandrake, comp.os.linux.advocacy   
   XPost: alt.os.linux.redhat   
   From: NoWay@NoWhere.com   
      
   Steve Hodgson wrote:   
      
   > I'm by no means a Linux expert but I have run a number of distributions   
   > over the years in my quest to get away from Windows. I have run BeOS,   
   > Linux, FreeBSD and now MacOS and I would backup Jøhnny's view. Linux feels   
   > great but can be just too much work and too complicated unless one is   
   > prepared to put the hours in to learn about it.   
   >   
   > I guess on modern hardware and with the latest distros this is less of a   
   > problem but is never going to be as easy as MacOS. One thing about   
   > dependency hell - my experience of this is quite old now but I only ever   
   > really had problems with Red Hat based distros, Debian is a delight by   
   > comparison.   
      
   Linux works on a lot of hardware. OS X works only on selected hardware. It   
   also has Apple making deals with OEMs to write drivers. Linux has no such   
   deals. Of course, Mac OS X will work easier with its hardware.   
      
   You can install Apt, which is what Debian uses, on just about any distro, as   
   long as there are supporting repositories for it. Mandrake uses URPMI,   
   which is excellent, too.   
      
   > At the end of the day one is always going to have to get down and dirty   
   > with Linux. Whether it be hacking around in configuration files to turn   
   > down the volume on a dial-up modem or just trying to understand where   
   > everything lives.   
      
   That's just because you got culture shock. The directory structure in   
   Linux/Unix has a reason, and you just have to learn about it, much the same   
   way you learned about the Windows structure. Certain distros keep your   
   applications in /opt, while most keep them in /usr. Your rc files are kept   
   in your /home folder, hidden (can't tell you the last time I had to   
   configure something in one of those). Your log files are kept in /var/log.   
   That's basically all you'll need to know. It's like properly filing your   
   papers (Unix/Linux) vs. dumping them all in one file (Windows).   
      
   > One very important point is that MacOS gives you the best of all worlds.   
   > It is (nearly) as much fun as BeOS, as stable as Linux, easy to configure   
   > and you can run all that Linux stuff via X11.   
      
   Only if it's been ported (recompiled) to OS X. Not everything has.   
      
      
   --   
      
   Registered Linux user #378193   
      
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