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Mac OS X vs. Windows XP vs. Linux


jlc
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Is this OSX bias?  

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  1. 1. Is this OSX bias?

    • Yes
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    • No
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    • Did you mean BIOS? ;-)
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http://thetechnozone.com/smartbuyersguide/...ootout-2003.htm

 

This is an article I read off of OsNews.com what do you think?

 

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4249&entry=1

 

I'm about on the 63 comment, but I think this is a little ignorant, there comapring bought and sent box's of M$ & OSX and a download of Mandrake, treating it like it setups nothing compared to the other two.

 

A little OSX bias? Maybe.

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Guest dardack

In the article is totally bias'd:

 

Play DVDs

 

yes; however, some features on DVDs such as The Matrix, Shrek, Star Wars, etc. do not work.) Performance and reliability is poor, compared to Windows-based players.

 

yes, via Windows Media Player; decoder codec (usually supplied with system or available separately) must be installed. WinDVD and PowerDVD are the most popular DVD decoders supplied with drives. Optionally, Videolan or a similar third-party player may be used.

 

Varies, according to distro. Many titles don't play correctly. Videolan is the most capable app.

 

One lets see they put a green yes (meaning best) for apple but it doesn't work correctly, and red for linux (worst) however with ogle those titles they listed work fine with mine, yea you might have to intall it yourself but it wasn't a premade box.

 

Another example:

Disk Defrag they put not an issue but didn't put green or anything

 

Another and this kills me:

Automatic (serverless) network configuration: Green in apple yes, no but no red in windows, and a red no in linux, um yea windows isn't red but same reply. hmmmm

 

Network Bridge

user configured NAT, easy GUI configuration

yes; limited configuration options

yes, complicated config.

windows gets a green yes, but linux gets a red yes, hmmm not as robust but it's ok cause it's easy

 

Compatibility mode for legacy applications

yes (Mac OS 9.2.2 "Classic" included with most Macs)

yes (DOS, Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, not included)

 

Wine (Windows), dosemu (DOS), Basilisk II (68k Mac), etc.

They put wine in red, well um you didn't include windows under mac, i mean clasic would be an old kernel to me, and as far as i know XP and 2000 don't let you use old dos apps, infact some of my old games won't run at all (risk, ea sports triple play 2001, some others), totally biasd there

 

Unified DVD playback

dedicated player

yes (codec supplied with most DVD drives must be installed)

varies according to distro, quality is generally poor

 

Poor my a$$ , ogle has excently quality, i play it to my tv and can't tell the diff between that and my dedicated or my xp box.

 

 

MP3 playback

yes

yes

varies (in red)

last i check MK9.1 played mp3's perfectly sigh

 

Also at the bottom they just discuss Mac's, i don't see a discussion of windows or linus, basically all mac info. what is the world coming too where an os review is biasd. (sarcasm)

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The whole article shows a gross ignorance of what makes an os, and what is included in an os. For some reason, only linux is claimed to have added programs to do tasks, vs the other two which are "included". We all know that just because a program is "included" does not mean it is not its own program. Ignorant propaganda against open source and for proprietory software.

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I read the original article today after a colleague (and mac user) sent it to me; the same points as above came to mind, as did this:

 

the article is written by someone who has clearly taken a closer look to different linux distros, but not in-depth enough, like when talking about zeroconf, it fails to mention that Mandrake actually has that.

 

Also, they used the Mdk free download version, but only 2 cd's.

Talk about bias, they just leave out 1/3rd of what makes the download edition; if anyone can get the first 2 cds they can get the third.

 

What I don't get is why try to make MacOSX look positive compared to linux? Or windows? if you're biased...

 

And what is really most annoying is that they write from a strong background in one OS (mac in this case, could have been windows too) then point out what other OSes lack, without knowing what lacks in their OS since they never used any feature in depth from another OS that their OS doesn't have....

To clarify: sure, you can switch users in XP en OSX nowadays, even in a flashier way, but in XP for instance there is no guarantee that all your apps will still be there when you get back etc.

Listing VNC and telnet as remote stuff and leaving out ssh indicates very superficial research, just as mentioning videolan instead of xine, mplayer and ogle.... talk about clueless (no offence to videolan coders btw).

It is known far and wide that mplayer is the most robust players out there, and it will play for instance partially downloaded files etc, whereas on XP you need the special preview stuff..

And mplayer and xine are really simple to setup for dvd playback via nanardon.

Other than that, xine and mplayer really deliver the best quality, a friend of mine had trouble since windows wouldn't play 80% of his 'asian' discs, I got him hooked on mdk and he told me right away that now all his discs play, and that he found the image quality clearly better too. And this is just one example.

 

Yes, linux is not trivial to config for a new user. This guy should have followed (for instance) my site config indications, and it would not have been hard either.... and has he ever done that on an xp machine without knowing anything about the system? Or a mac?

 

How is setting up NAT on mdk not completely easy? 3clicks or so...

 

 

Really, I can go on and on, this guy is trying to be on the level, but clearly he's biased and just wants to show osx is the best.

 

Sorry, but if you are into comparing OSes, you can't get away from comparing the development; and at this moment, linux has the steepest development curve; for me, today, it is more usable than windows (and has been for some time) due to the configurable window managers, cli, scripting, stability, configurability etcetc. I didn't know, but apparently osx lacks virtual desktops, in which case you will have to pay me dearly to ever really work with one....

For others linux may not be as usable yet, but that population is getting smaller and smaller at a very fast rate...

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Guest zgwortz

Is this thread Linux bias? Yes. :)

 

I've been programming for over 25 years, on everything ranging from a SWTPC 6800 running FLEX, to a CDC Cyber (in assembly language, no less...) to numerous versions of DOS, UNIX, Windows, Mac, Mac OS X and Linux. I currently own Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, and work on Windows and Macs for a living.

 

Admittedly, I'm not as familiar with Linux as I am with the others -- I installed Red Hat a few years back and used it for a few months on an old machine, and am suffering through a new Mandrake installation right now (which is why I'm here and spotted this thread...). And I couldn't let this thread go by without comment.

 

Let me rate the same trio of operating systems based on my own criteria, for which I've judged OSes for a very long time: Setup, Ease of Use, Features, and Programmability.

 

Setup

====

 

Mac OS X wins this one hands down. Installing a new OS or doing a major upgrade for an old one consists of booting a CD, selecting a language, agreeing to a license, selecting a drive, and letting it rip. When it finishes, you register (and may have to setup a user for a new install, or setup a LAN if you're not using DHCP), and you're done. Everything just works. Even seed releases of new OS versions just work.

 

Windows comes in second place here -- it prompts you for much more information, takes longer, and invariably needs additional device drivers. But it tends to be fairly straightforward if you have those drivers.

 

Linux loses bigtime in this category -- I've spent nearly 50 hours of my time trying to get this machine setup (The Windows install on the same machine was done in 2) and I *still* haven't got it. I'm fairly certain I need to rebuild the kernel (and figure out why my first attempt to do so failed miserably...) to get a useful base to work with so I can install ALSA 0.9.6 so I can get my sound working. Even when I was installing Red Hat I kept running into setup issues.

 

 

Ease of Use

======

 

Again, Mac OS X wins this one. It Just Works. (I say that a lot nowadays...:) ) There are some weirdnesses if you're used to Windows, but I at least have no trouble with them because I switch OSes so often. Mac OS X Safari is by far my favorite web browser on any platform, and there's nobody out there who does multimedia content creation (ripping MP3s, burning CDs, making movies and DVD videos, etc.) better. Even Microsoft Office runs better on a Mac than it does on Windows, and setup consists of dragging the Office folder from the CD to your hard disk.

 

Linux has some very good ease of use stuff out there -- it gets very good marks on availability, worse marks on consistency (very important for ease of use) and documentation.

 

Windows is easy to use, but annoying as hell. It suffers greatly from the arrogance of Microsoft here -- you can't do almost anything without wondering why you have to do stupid thing X to get it done right.

 

Features

======

 

Linux really shines here -- there's simply more stuff you can do in Linux than anywhere else. Windows comes a close second (but costs more), and the Mac has focused on providing all the features that 95% of the people really care about, but falls behind on covering what that other 5% need to get the job done.

 

For example, I'm mainly using Linux on the new machine because I want a home theatre/PVR machine. There's software to do all of that on Linux, and do it well. There's some commercial products to do some of that on Windows, but not well, and not how I want it. And the Mac hasn't got much in that area yet.

 

And Windows? Best game machine I have, hands down.

 

 

Programmability

====

 

For this, as a programmer, I want powerful programming tools that let me do what I want to get done easily.

 

Linux and Mac OS X are neck and neck here -- while Linux has all the command line tools you'd ever want and more flexibility than anything else out there, that flexibility comes at a terrible cost in learning curve and it doesn't have the polish it needs to be easy to program.

 

Mac may be a bit shorter on the command line tools, but not much - it does, after all have a full BSD distribution, plus it has some Apple specific tools and frameworks (ah, Cocoa - a programmers paradise... :) ) that are simply awesome. I do a lot of driver writing as well, and Apple's driver architecture is both extremely powerful and by far the least problematic I've ever worked with.

 

Windows -- well, Windows falls down here as much (if not more) than Linux does on the Setup job. Programming Windows is, to me, an exercise in continual frustration, the Registry is the worst programming idea I've encountered in my career, and *don't* get me started on drivers and WHQL....

 

 

Conclusion

------------

 

They all have their strengths. As a user, I'll use each as appropriate -- Windows for games, Mac for day to day stuff like web browsing, email, and some multimedia stuff, and Linux for the things I can't do well anywhere else (like my PVR project). But I'll take the Mac for programming, any day.

 

-->Zgwortz

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I have only used multiple windows versions dos and linux

 

And mandrake is extremely easy to setup once you learn a little about linux.

In fact it is usually as easy as you state Mac OS X on decent hardware. Isn't the only reason Mac OS X has it so easy is that it supports so little hardware comparatively to linux?

 

Also installation is the least important feature of an OS, it's is something you only do once per computer (win 9X excluded), and most computer users have never installed an OS ever, they get someone like me to do it for them bastards :wink:

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zgwortz, thanks for your comments from a Mac users perspective,... that is, more mac perspective than I have, since I have never touched osX and barely other/older mac oses.

 

Couple of comments and questions:

Naturally this thread is Linux biased, but the people here just know linux better than the reviewer that wrote the article, and he left too many gaps.

 

It is fine to have a preference, but to have a preference (or give 'good notes' to your preference and bad notes to the other system) due to a lack of knowledge of other systems is wearing blinds.

I don't know for sure about others posting here, but we were/I was not so much saying that linux in general is better than the other os-es (mac, win), but that the comparison was very badly done in some ways. And yes, I was saying that for me linux is better, but that's just me.

 

 

 

Linux loses bigtime in this category -- I've spent nearly 50 hours of my time trying to get this machine setup (The Windows install on the same machine was done in 2) and I *still* haven't got it. I'm fairly certain I need to rebuild the kernel (and figure out why my first attempt to do so failed miserably...) to get a useful base to work with so I can install ALSA 0.9.6 so I can get my sound working. Even when I was installing Red Hat I kept running into setup issues.

 

Ok, so you have a linux incompatible machine. Heck, macosX doesn't even install on my athlon 2400+ system!! :D

My point being: you tried to install linux on a non-compatible machine/configuration, of which unfortunately there are quite a few.

Check my site and go through the steps of determining if it is worthwhile for you to switch to linux. If your audio, scanner, printer and modem are not going to work, then what's the good part of linux being virusfree (atm), having great video / dvd playback and all the stability needed to stay up for months and serve as a (p2p) download and internet sharing machine....

On my system, that was carefully configured, mdk9.1 installs in 1 hour, and that is including all software that I want, and including counting the minutes that it takes me to make my selection from the list of software.

Then the configuration took about one more hour.

After those 2 hours, I have all software that I have any use for installed on my machine and all hardware functioning properly (some very minor things aside).

 

Q: so how does that go for Mac OSX, don't you have to install extra software?

 

Other remark, howabout booting knoppix (again, on a linux compatible hardware config), 5 minutes into a full fledged linux system. Don't see how anything can beat that...

 

 

Ease of use:

I agree that on the mac you have all software (though I don't know the price, feel free to enlighten me, especially on good video editing software etc.) and I believe that it works really well.

BTW: do you have to register online? That, imho, would be really a negative point.

 

But to me, when comparing OSes, I look at what parts of the OS/system I use, and that boils down to the core/kernel, the graphical environment and the window manager + desktop environment.

So I leave applications out of the equation; they only come back into the picture when comparing platforms, so windows is clearly the best gaming platform (of the 3 platforms discussed).

When doing so, all I can conclude is that with my current way of working, both on Unix and linux, winxp cannot hold a candle to even cde on unix, and shines as brightly as a firefly compared to kde.

I'm talking proper window management, being able to set up/configure the system to behave as I want. This makes windows users so unflexible, they were once forced into using their desktops in a certain way, and later proposing them to actually figure out how they can work more efficiently is too much for many of them.

I'm not just talking virtual desktops (have a look at kde pager, then you know what I mean -- being able to see what app is running where, and shift them to your current or another desktop etcetc), it's much simpler: moving windows around, resizing etcetc.

 

Talking about apps, sure we all know that in the OSS world not all gaps have been filled in a proper way.

Talking about inconsistency: yes, dead on, that's where linux scores really lower. But for some things it is not soo needed as people try to lead others to believe. For instance, winamp is not consistent with anything, but people still love(d) it. So consistency helps ease of use, it's a big part but it is not the bigger part of ease of use.

The major things in consistency are between apps like office apps, and with a suite like OOo you're fine.

 

Programmability:

On mac I wouldn't know, but I do believe that many programmers use Linux as a platform. I would guess that more professional programmers use windows, but especially due to India and China, they will soon be overtaken by linux programmers. I realise that Mac probably has nice things to offer, but I don't see much relevance for a truely larger % of users than mac has today.

 

 

I agree with your conclusion for you, in my case I decided to go a slight bit beyond being pragmatic today (which would probably be: windows for games, linux for the rest) and went with 'pragmatic for the future' which is linux all the way. So I just got me some linux games, 3 in total, and up to now only seriously played one of them (Majesty), since I don't want to put too much time in playing games anyway...

'Pragmatic for the future' means: using linux, since by using linux/floss and not windows, I do not count as a windows user and I do count as linux user. And that is the only problem with gnu/linux/floss: a lack of users so that for game makers (for instance) it is not profitable yet to port software.

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I recently read that article in my learnings of OSX. Yep, it's totally biased, but then if a Windoze user did the same comparison you would see a different set of answers. Replies here have even started the Linux based version. It's all horses for courses.

I totally aggree with zgwortz comments. The install on my new imac was a dream, to be honest I didn't even know I was installing the OS, just thought I was setting up the unit. Safari, what can you say, it's Firebird on steriods. Dont get me worng I use all three OS and they each have there quirks and fun points. I picked up a mac for it's digital media aspect, Linux didn't quite cut it. I still use Linux at work 95% of the time and mess about on it at home, more freedom to explore. I only use XP now for staring at blue screens and forever loading new drivers and security updates.

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Mac is written for a very limited set of hardware. Both windex and linux attempt a broader spectrum of hardware. Let's see, if software were written specifically for my computer, then it would indeed install and set up with a snap because there are no other configuration options needed by the software.

 

I agree that there are good characteristics about the three os's in the article. But i also disagree with a critique out of ignorance, and an article that clearly supports only proprietary software. And that is the real intent of the article, to go against open source. The article has an agenda of propaganda, not education.

 

I use mac and windex at work, and linux and windex at home.

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Guest dardack

I have not used OSX but i have used older mac's and such, and as pointed out install for macs in on proprietary hardware, you need a specific motherboard and stuff, you just can't install it on my pc. When i first picked up linux (mk9.1) not too long ago, i put the first cd in, customized my own partitions, selected the packages i wanted and in about 1 hour i was into mandrake up and running. I will say Mac has an easy learning curve, but after about a day of just running through everything and reading a bunch of stuff, i'm decently proficient in linux, i mean i'm no expert but have been able to figure out most things and in a relatively short amount of time, unlike windows sometimes which can take me a few hours to get specific pieces of hardware to work like it should. My wife has actually picked up linux pretty good right now too. I liked mac for graphics stuff when i was doing it in school, it's really sweet in that regard. And the only reason windows is a gaming machine is cause all the people write games for that only, if they wrote it for linux it would be the same, the games would prolly actually run faster i linux with the same hardware. i hardly ever boot into winxp (had to recently cause i lost my 30gig linux drive, sigh) and i don't own a mac any more, but to each his own. what works for me might not work for you and for you might not work for someone else.

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I'm fairly certain I need to rebuild the kernel (and figure out why my first attempt to do so failed miserably...) to get a useful base to work with so I can install ALSA 0.9.6 so I can get my sound working.  Even when I was installing Red Hat  I kept running into setup issues.

 

If you use Mandrake Linux 9.x ALSA 0.9.x is installed by default, though not the latest update version. Still it works pretty good and I have not run into problems with my soundcard (SB Live) with it.

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you know......*goes into devils advocate mode*

 

linux people can be just as biased (if not more so) as any other OS "groupies". who are we to call out other OS zealots when we can be just as bad?

 

*end devils advocate mode*

 

despite the fact i was just playing devils advocate there, it is true in a respect...

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Hi, my name is cybrjackle

 

I'm a Linux Zealot. "cry" "sigh" "cry" :wink:

 

I know I am, I wont deny that, I'm in a LZ group for help right now.

 

Really, the reason I brought this up was the fact that I believe they did a real bad description of MDK (linux) and treated it like the download addition was supposed to have everything up and going while the pre-fab box's from MS & Mac came loaded and ready to go. ;-)

 

True, you can pop in a MAC CD and it will load the hardware and software right up, but as others have mentioned. MAC doesn't work on very many hardware platforms, (mac only) so it's not hard to have it detect all the hardware and have it setup, that was there whole idea behind it. Really, if Linux or M$ had on a certain line of hardware they worked on, it would do the same thing IMHO.

 

I wasn't even bashing MAC or M$(ok maybe M$, just don't like it), I just felt the report treated Mandrake like it was a black sheep OS that wasn't worth your time or effort. If you go over to HP and buy a pre-built box with MDK on it, I would gurantee that all the hardware (e.g. burner, nic, tv , <whatever place here>) will work flawlessly on it. Why, becuase it came built like that. I feel if there going to compare apples to oranges than they just at least give it the same respect.

 

Heck, I would love to get a powerbook, specially if the G5 proc & 17" screen comes with. Would I put Linux on atleast half of it? Well of course. :wink: Will I ever be able to affoard one, I really doubt it.

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