MacBook or cheap laptop + Linux
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I run Mythbuntu on the HTPC and am setting my main PC to dual boot XP and Mythbuntu for development purposes (and keep it in sync with the HTPC). Ubuntu is definitely the best Linux distro around! Oop - talk you out of it? :-O
Visit http://www.notreadytogiveup.com/[^] and do something special today.
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Mike Mullikin wrote:
Care to explain why you'd leave the Apple ship?
Strangely enough there is very little reason for the change. Apart from some reliability concerns* I have about Apple laptops I like the MacBook Pro a lot. But it could be lighter and have a smaller footprint. The MacBook Air is lovely but the Lenovo X300 is very nicely done too. The WWAN and the GPS in the X300 though tip it into my favour. A removable battery and being able to put a second battery in place of the optical drive is handy too. OS wise, I am a web-developer so OS choice isn't hugely important. I like OS X but it doesn't do anything that I can't do on Ubuntu. Most of my code runs on Ubuntu servers. Deployment is less error prone when you develop close to what you deploy on. I am also a bit weary of Apple's tactics. They are no saints. I'd rather support Ubuntu and an "open" manufacturer like Lenovo/IBM. For non-tech users I'd still recommend OS X and the iMac or MacBook line. But for web-developers who can handle some of the rough edges of Ubuntu I'd go with that on generic Intel hardware. I will still have access to OS X via a Mac Mini just as I have some Windows boxes lying about for testing purposes. At the end of the day not a whole lot is going to change when I swap. * My MacBook Pro HD died after 1.5 years. A co-worker's MacBook Pro HD died after 2 years. Another co-workers MacBook Pro isn't booting up. My girlfriend's MacBook HD died after 6 months. All of them were the known-to-be-faulty Seagate 7.1 drives. But Apple have been poor in responding to this problem, they replace them but don't admit much fault.
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
Paul Watson wrote:
* My MacBook Pro HD died after 1.5 years. A co-worker's MacBook Pro HD died after 2 years. Another co-workers MacBook Pro isn't booting up. My girlfriend's MacBook HD died after 6 months. All of them were the known-to-be-faulty Seagate 7.1 drives. But Apple have been poor in responding to this problem, they replace them but don't admit much fault.
If it makes you feel any better, i've had similar issues with Dell machines (also Seagate drives...) :sigh:
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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Chris Austin wrote:
and I have a license for everything I use.
If you have a license for OS X, you should probably read it. Apple's Mac OS X end-user license states the operating system is only licensed for use on Apple-branded hardware...
I don't care.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - -Lazarus Long
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Just curious what you think you get from Apple that you won't get from Acer/Fujitsu + Ubuntu?
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
Well at the risk of sounding like a "fanboy", my experience has been that the hardware itself tends to be really good. In terms of dekstop PC's that's worth a lot to me, in the sense that it's easy to open the box up, expand things, and so on. Most of the PC's I've worked with have not been physically designed well for this even though they allow it. In terms of an OS, while Unbuntu has made *huge* strides, there's still *potentially* stuff you have to tweak at the command line which is just silly. That and the ridiculous licensing stance means that I tend to have little interest in using it other than when forced to for development purposes.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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Well at the risk of sounding like a "fanboy", my experience has been that the hardware itself tends to be really good. In terms of dekstop PC's that's worth a lot to me, in the sense that it's easy to open the box up, expand things, and so on. Most of the PC's I've worked with have not been physically designed well for this even though they allow it. In terms of an OS, while Unbuntu has made *huge* strides, there's still *potentially* stuff you have to tweak at the command line which is just silly. That and the ridiculous licensing stance means that I tend to have little interest in using it other than when forced to for development purposes.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
Jim Crafton wrote:
in the sense that it's easy to open the box up, expand things
Their Mac Pro line is very good in this regard. The iMac and even Mac Mini though are pretty dismal when it comes to expandability or easy swapping of bits. The MacBooks are even poorer. About the only two things you can easily are memory and the battery. HD is a warranty voiding torx screw-driver affair. The hardware is well designed though and lovely to use, absolutely agree.
Jim Crafton wrote:
ridiculous licensing stance
Ubuntu has a ridiculous license?
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
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Jim Crafton wrote:
in the sense that it's easy to open the box up, expand things
Their Mac Pro line is very good in this regard. The iMac and even Mac Mini though are pretty dismal when it comes to expandability or easy swapping of bits. The MacBooks are even poorer. About the only two things you can easily are memory and the battery. HD is a warranty voiding torx screw-driver affair. The hardware is well designed though and lovely to use, absolutely agree.
Jim Crafton wrote:
ridiculous licensing stance
Ubuntu has a ridiculous license?
regards, Paul Watson Ireland & South Africa
Fernando A. Gomez F. wrote:
At least he achieved immortality for a few years.
Paul Watson wrote:
Their Mac Pro line is very good in this regard.
Yeah, sorry I should have been more specific. The Imac and mini are nice but a practically speaking they're a black box.
Paul Watson wrote:
Ubuntu has a ridiculous license?
Ubuntu per se, no, but the fact that it's built on top of a GPL kernel and all sorts of other GPL apps, and that the community around it gets into a hissy fit over the slightest perceived slant to it, means that they don't (or didn't maybe it's changed in the latest release) distribute practical software modules. For example, in the past you could make *any* use of your kick ass Nvidia graphics card till you updated various drivers, and that meant monkeying around with the update repository, setting it to include the "tainted" drivers repository, and then downloading them and installing them. Ditto for various common everyday codecs from Apple or Microsoft (or whomever). Who the hell wants to dick around with stuff like that? I don't, it's a complete waste of my time. Sure it's easier than it use to be, and you can probably accomplish it without the command line (maybe!), and it only takes 5 or 6 clicks of the mouse, and then only waiting around for 15 to 45 minutes depending on your net connection, and then a possible X reset, and so on... But the fact that I have to do this *at all* is a complete waste of time. And *all* of this is due simply to blind adherence to the GPL license.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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yah it works great if you have the right version of libgpod for your ipod model :)
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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Paul Watson wrote:
Their Mac Pro line is very good in this regard.
Yeah, sorry I should have been more specific. The Imac and mini are nice but a practically speaking they're a black box.
Paul Watson wrote:
Ubuntu has a ridiculous license?
Ubuntu per se, no, but the fact that it's built on top of a GPL kernel and all sorts of other GPL apps, and that the community around it gets into a hissy fit over the slightest perceived slant to it, means that they don't (or didn't maybe it's changed in the latest release) distribute practical software modules. For example, in the past you could make *any* use of your kick ass Nvidia graphics card till you updated various drivers, and that meant monkeying around with the update repository, setting it to include the "tainted" drivers repository, and then downloading them and installing them. Ditto for various common everyday codecs from Apple or Microsoft (or whomever). Who the hell wants to dick around with stuff like that? I don't, it's a complete waste of my time. Sure it's easier than it use to be, and you can probably accomplish it without the command line (maybe!), and it only takes 5 or 6 clicks of the mouse, and then only waiting around for 15 to 45 minutes depending on your net connection, and then a possible X reset, and so on... But the fact that I have to do this *at all* is a complete waste of time. And *all* of this is due simply to blind adherence to the GPL license.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
ummmmmmm not really ... it's far easier than that these days AND it isn't to do with the GPL license ... it's beacuse those formats are patented and as such ANY linux distro cannot distribute them with their distro and HAVE TO make the user install them afterwards if that bothers you then talk to the patent owners about allowing it to be pre-installed i respect you and your abilities and knowledge jim but to blame linux for these problems is really stretching a point a bit no?
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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You forgot saying that it is also the most unstable distro ever. I was a long time user of Fedora. And on my desktop computer I have Gentoo and it is much more stable also...
absolutely not true ... sorry
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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ummmmmmm not really ... it's far easier than that these days AND it isn't to do with the GPL license ... it's beacuse those formats are patented and as such ANY linux distro cannot distribute them with their distro and HAVE TO make the user install them afterwards if that bothers you then talk to the patent owners about allowing it to be pre-installed i respect you and your abilities and knowledge jim but to blame linux for these problems is really stretching a point a bit no?
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
l a u r e n wrote:
it's beacuse those formats are patented and as such ANY linux distro cannot distribute them with their distro
Then they (the distros) should just do what everyone else does and license them. If Mark Shuttlesworth's Ubuntu has enough money to do all these adds, and pay developers, and other such things, then it seems they have enough to license the relevant formats. Otherwise it just ends up confusing the end user (assuming the end user is not a techie like you or I). I do agree that for the codecs this is a bigger PITA than for the binary driver issue. The driver issue seems to be one mainly driven by developer ego and ideological issues than practical ones. So maybe blaming "linux" is wrong, but blaming the developers, FSF, and distros for encouraging this is not, and that's what I take issue with.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
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I don't care.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - -Lazarus Long
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l a u r e n wrote:
it's beacuse those formats are patented and as such ANY linux distro cannot distribute them with their distro
Then they (the distros) should just do what everyone else does and license them. If Mark Shuttlesworth's Ubuntu has enough money to do all these adds, and pay developers, and other such things, then it seems they have enough to license the relevant formats. Otherwise it just ends up confusing the end user (assuming the end user is not a techie like you or I). I do agree that for the codecs this is a bigger PITA than for the binary driver issue. The driver issue seems to be one mainly driven by developer ego and ideological issues than practical ones. So maybe blaming "linux" is wrong, but blaming the developers, FSF, and distros for encouraging this is not, and that's what I take issue with.
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
well do you honestly think that the likes of microsoft or apple WANT competition from free OS's that can do everything they can do? of course not ... so they won't license them or allow them to be used by the distros ... they can't go after the users so they have to accept users installing them but they don't like it you can rest assured likewise with the drivers ... hardware companies don't want to give away "their secrets" so they quote BS fcc requirements and such as to why they cannot give them away and threaten DMCA notices on anybody trying to reverse engineer them i think the "blame" lies squarely at the feet of the patent holders
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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absolutely not true ... sorry
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
The fact is that whether you like it or not Shuttleworth's obsession[^] on releasing the new distro version the very same day it was scheduled has an unlucky impact on Ubuntu's stability. Common problems with Ubuntu (even with version 8.04) are: *ACPI not working properly: You will have to patch/recompile the kernel if you do not want your processor burnt. *Serious problems with DBUS: For example when shutting down the computer. Or specially when working with USB sticks an cameras (it starts hoarding the memory and CPU). *ALSA: Even for some of the most integrated sound cards, you have to download ALSA and compile manually. The same thing if you have integrated speakers. *Too many Beta versions without a clear trade-off: Like Mozilla Beta. Until a few days ago Mozilla made a excessive CPU access even when navigating with a simple tab. The patch is not yet in the repositories. *Network daemon goes nuts: You have to stop/start the deamon if you want wifi. If you use restart it will try to start disabled interfaces. * Gnome issues: Until a few days ago the edit start menu option was not working properly (Didn't take effect) When you empty trash and it is empty the icon still show papers in the basket (This one was long time solved but it has appeared again...) ... Ubuntu is much more unstable than most serious desktop distros: Fedora, OpenSuse or Gentoo. PS: For me the biggest disappointment was having to download other than the live CD to have the option to install LVM or use a real guided partitioning (the partition manager is completely manual or completely automatic in the live CD).
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The fact is that whether you like it or not Shuttleworth's obsession[^] on releasing the new distro version the very same day it was scheduled has an unlucky impact on Ubuntu's stability. Common problems with Ubuntu (even with version 8.04) are: *ACPI not working properly: You will have to patch/recompile the kernel if you do not want your processor burnt. *Serious problems with DBUS: For example when shutting down the computer. Or specially when working with USB sticks an cameras (it starts hoarding the memory and CPU). *ALSA: Even for some of the most integrated sound cards, you have to download ALSA and compile manually. The same thing if you have integrated speakers. *Too many Beta versions without a clear trade-off: Like Mozilla Beta. Until a few days ago Mozilla made a excessive CPU access even when navigating with a simple tab. The patch is not yet in the repositories. *Network daemon goes nuts: You have to stop/start the deamon if you want wifi. If you use restart it will try to start disabled interfaces. * Gnome issues: Until a few days ago the edit start menu option was not working properly (Didn't take effect) When you empty trash and it is empty the icon still show papers in the basket (This one was long time solved but it has appeared again...) ... Ubuntu is much more unstable than most serious desktop distros: Fedora, OpenSuse or Gentoo. PS: For me the biggest disappointment was having to download other than the live CD to have the option to install LVM or use a real guided partitioning (the partition manager is completely manual or completely automatic in the live CD).
again i have to strongly disagree i have several friends running 8.04 with no problems at all so maybe you have odd hardware or something?
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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again i have to strongly disagree i have several friends running 8.04 with no problems at all so maybe you have odd hardware or something?
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
Saying that is like when somebody argues that smoking is not (so) bad because his grandfather smoked for his whole life and lived longer than 90. Having a small/medium/big group of friends who do not have problems just means that, that they hadn't problems. That does not invalidate the fact that Ubuntu's baseline do not meet other distros' stability criterions. Just have a look at the support forums. An you will find out a very big number of people with those and much more problems. Just google "ubuntu dbus issues/problems" Going back to your line of argument: My Desktop computer is older than my laptop (three years old) and I was having those problems also. I switched to to Gentoo and everything goes smoothly. A department of my former university complained about that very same issue. They switched to Fedora and everything goes smoothly also.
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Saying that is like when somebody argues that smoking is not (so) bad because his grandfather smoked for his whole life and lived longer than 90. Having a small/medium/big group of friends who do not have problems just means that, that they hadn't problems. That does not invalidate the fact that Ubuntu's baseline do not meet other distros' stability criterions. Just have a look at the support forums. An you will find out a very big number of people with those and much more problems. Just google "ubuntu dbus issues/problems" Going back to your line of argument: My Desktop computer is older than my laptop (three years old) and I was having those problems also. I switched to to Gentoo and everything goes smoothly. A department of my former university complained about that very same issue. They switched to Fedora and everything goes smoothly also.
all im saying is that your blanket statement that "ubuntu 8.04 sux!!" is clearly not true ... many many people are using it perfectly happily ergo it doesn't suck
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
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all im saying is that your blanket statement that "ubuntu 8.04 sux!!" is clearly not true ... many many people are using it perfectly happily ergo it doesn't suck
"mostly watching the human race is like watching dogs watch tv ... they see the pictures move but the meaning escapes them"
I never said something like "Ubuntu Sucks". Trollslayer "dixit" "Ubuntu is definitely the best Linux distro around!". I just wanted to point out a very big "BUT" in view of the comment. Ubuntu has many good things: a broad packet repository, it is based on deb which I like better than rpm... BUT, when dealing with desktop distros you expect certain qualities. For example that edge cutting features do not put on risk your processor... So if he finally switches first should carry out a few searches in the Ubuntu forums with his laptop manufacturer and model number to avoid unpleasant surprises or even considering buying a officially supported laptop...
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I am in the market for a new laptop, as my company have declared that all personal software be removed from company machines (including iTunes, etc.). Now, I *really* want a MacBook, but they are incredibly expensive (£700 for a basic model) and if I want one with a DVD burner (essential) I have to trade up to one that costs £830! WTF? It appears that the basic model comes with a CDRW/DVD-ROM drive and it cannot be upgraded. Sigh. That really blows. I don't want much - I want to browse, burn DVDs, store music/pictures, sync my iPod, etc. I know a few people with Macs and they seem to think the software is brilliant, the machines reliable and the whole 'experience' painless. Alternatively, I can buy a cheapo laptop (a Fujitsu or an Acer) for around £300, stick Ubuntu on it (Vista doesn't really interest me), and try to find some iTunes-like package so I can keep my music library synced (I have an Apple iPod Hi-Fi, so I don't play music via the computer - but I must be able to manage smart playlists and the like). The Ubuntu route is looking best, obviously - does anyone want to try and talk me out of it? :)
I bought a cheap Fujitsu laptop, which came with Vista installed. I partitioned the HD and installed Ubuntu (currently running Gutsy, not sure if there's a newer release). So, now I have a dual-boot Vista box for playing and testing and a Linux box for doing just about everything else.
The PetroNerd
Walt Fair, Jr. Comport Computing Specializing in Technical Engineering Software