[luau] Mac OSX / User Friendly?

[R Scott Belford]

24/7 for weeks on end I run a multi-user gui on top of a freebsd core.  
My wife logs in and word processes, emails, and surfs.  I login, read 
email, surf, and do some word processing.  I listen to my music 
wirelessly from a debian file server on my lan.  When I want them, I 
have outstanding video and image editing software.  When I print, I have 
a remote queue on a redhat box setup most easily through the gui.  I 
entered the queue name, the ip address, and what, if any, filter I 
wanted.  When I want it, I have a shell.  Behind my happy gui, apache is 
serving web pages(locally), samba is sharing files with my windoze box, 
ssh is ready for me to login, the ftpd is ready to go should I summon 
its services.

I use OSX.  I have for about half a year now.  I use it "hard".  It is 
everything you want an os to be.  I have an original ibook with an 
airport card.  It is all older hardware.  Now that osx has had a few 
revisions, it gets a serious two thumbs up.  Original imacs can be had 
for not much more than 600.  Good stuff.  I think it exceeds user 
friendly.


On Saturday, April 6, 2002, at 10:08  AM, Cyberclops wrote:

> Here's the question:  Is OS-X actually user friendly?  After spending 
> lot's of time with Linux and putting a great deal of effort into making 
> it user-friendly, I have come to the conclusion that Linux isn't user 
> friendly primarily because of file permissions and software management 
> issues.
>
> For example when you create a new folder (directory) in KDE it doesn't 
> ask you what permissions you want to set when you create it.  More over 
> you can sometimes think that you are saving a document or file into a 
> folder and it acts as though it is being saved, but only later you 
> learn that nothing was saved at all because you didn't have permission.
>
> This has happened to me in GIMP, and it happened to me yesterday on a 
> whole bunch of KDE3 files that were being downloaded.  They all seemed 
> to be saved, but then the new folder was empty and I had to do it all 
> over again.  It wasn't a case of them being downloaded into a different 
> folder by mistake.
>
> Another huge issue is software installation.  It's still far too 
> difficult to manage the software on the system.  A lot of this is 
> distribution specific. but in my most recent case, the KDE3 install had 
> a few glitches in it and was getting mixed up with KDE2.  When I tried 
> to remove only the KDE2 files it took the KDE 3 with it.
>
> Now of course there will be those on the list that will claim I don't 
> know what I'm doing.  They might say if you used the CLI you wouldn't 
> be having these problems.  But to what extent do you need to be a full 
> on system administrator just to run a single home computer?
>
> Again question is has Apple made their system more user friendly and 
> more intelligible by an ordinary person?  I don't know.  It could be 
> better, or it could be worse.  What we know is that it has a great look 
> and feel, but I'm questioning if it has the same problems as Linux.  As 
> for the Apple file system, they probably had to do that to keep it 
> compatible with early Macintosh systems.
>
> How is the "fstab" managed on OS-X?
>
> Does the system have true flexibility or is it limited to the way it is 
> sold from Apple?  Obviously Macs aren't particularly economical and for 
> the most part are totally unupgradeable.  They can actually clutter 
> your actual desktop with the addition of extra, but required USB 
> peripherals hanging on the side. (Diskette Drive)  The cost machine is 
> one thing, but the additional software is going to be very expensive 
> for everyone who chooses to use it.
>
> The software on linux is getting better and better and of course the 
> cost is for the most part minimal.
>
> While I have complaints about Linux, it is what I'm using, and it's 
> good enough for most of what I do.  I'm into graphics and I 
> particularly enjoy "gimp", so I think I would stick with Linux for that 
> reason alone.
>
> The Macs are very tempting, but I don't think they are from me because 
> I have a low budget personality, and general don't pay extra for 
> designer items such as expense cars and clothes.
>
> Worst of all the OS-X operating system doesn't run on a PC clone and I 
> have a  bunch of them.  Macs and OS-X just doesn't fit my personality.
> Jeff Mings wrote:
>
>> I just received the latest issue of Linux Journal, wherein OSX is 
>> objectively discussed and compared.  The bottom line:  they liked it 
>> quite a bit, said that version 10.1.2 has come a very long way from 
>> 10.0, but still has a long way to go.  The only "deficiency" I can see 
>> is that the default filesystem seems to be HFS+, which I have on an 
>> old Powerbook 1400 running MacOS 8.1.  HPFS+ doesn't seem nearly 
>> robust enough for the job, and is case-insensitive, which would seem 
>> to break many things.
>> I would hope that ext3, reiserfs or a similarly capable journalling fs 
>> would be made available for it soon.
>>
>> -Jeff
>>
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