m$ vs ubuntu vs mac os X

I'm just another owner of a MAC. Does it worth it ?!?!?!

First of all, lets clear it out with the M$ stuff. I am a sysmgr, nowdays they call us admins, most of my kind are operators but anyway... Since I'm in the business for 25 years in major operating systems (major by design not commerce - VAX/VMS, Unix/OSF) I'm dealing with m$ products for the money only. I'm making a living showing people the obvious and locking the permissions - to plain user- for their accounts. To get over with this ... M$ windows is an application, its far far away from an operating system and we (fellow R&D engineers back in late 80's, working at a company on route 9) wrote lots of applications for SCADA that kicked out DOS (used only for boot up) and had our own application with windows (hand made, low res, like win 1.o) and zillions of graphics running up and down, clicking with the mouse and selecting stuff from the menus. Windows Vista is using the same technology (as win2, win95, win98, nt, millenium, 2000, xp and etc). Thank god graphics have evolved and they look better. Check out the cost though in resources. At that time we used to walk into the office, started also a SunOS to boot, went for breakfast at the dinner across the street and by the time we got back the logon screen would appear. Oh, those were the days! Tottaly unusable for our product, we kept on booting dos and kicking it out after loading our application. The only and real system that could do as good as our monolithic dos was vms (at that time OpenVMS with the brand-new windows motif) but there were only a couple of us that knew how to use it, and management was scared, so they managed (!@!) to spend all the money on the other "mature" os of the time, the glorious OS9.
The company died along with os9, unless you think that is still alive. It survives for obscure reasons in Israel, and possibly Vista will find a country to survive too. But that is "Just one country". There is also the way of the millenium product. "Lets forget we ever released that, and it'll go away". Maybe thats the reason Israely's are touchy. Imagine working and programming on os9 for years. You get lots of weird side effects and mutations.

And now .. (drum roll) MAC OS .... (another drum roll).. (pause)....

I have those friends that are really into macs. a couple are engineers ... not electrical though. with money to spend. maybe that is what the macs are. For people that are not afraid of the keyboard and require from the systems to boot for basic functions with funcy layouts. You press the button and it works. Thats good. You have a limited ammount of applications that you pay a bundle for (that why you have to have money) and you have to pick from a limited selection of hardware, that is expensive. Even with my freebsd subsystem, everything I want to do is costly, and cannot take the system apart. Cannot even eject a cd from the system (mini mac) if I turn the system of, or it gets stuck. My best friend with this system is a putty knife (to take it apart that is, not to break it).
I always make my systems work with all my hardware. The only hardware actually working with the mac os x 10.4 is a usb microsoft keyboard and mouse. Ain't gonna spend that money for apple's keyboard and mouse, get real! Does not recognize anything besides its own. Tried 4 sets of bluetooth headsets, 2 of them expensive (owned from the past), accepted them as headset devices alright and then was giving me errors that could not communicate. To all of them.
For my HP scanner, forget it... my external storage is recognized but can only write to fat32, read ntfs, for other ext3 partitions forget it... again. One of my cameras had picture bridge and it connected. The rest cannot be seen, even as usb dongles.
Wireless has some problems.. havent figured it out yet. It works, but not nicely. My guess would be that it does not see an apple AP at the other end and its jealous. That could be a proffessional opinion as far as macs go. At least the wired ethernet is working fine. There is a limited bunch of free software, and the best of all NeoOffice, the native OpenOffice. I've installed both. The neo was second, since I didn't know it existed in the first place. And spend a few hours how to configure X for running openoffice. I kept both for sentimental reasons. I have also kept, (not erased that is, but not activated) the preinstalled m$ office in MY mac.
As printers go... you will love ubuntu. Cause with the mac, apple is the boss. I got a very low tech, barely usefull wireless belkin printer server for 2 usb printers. It works -in general- with my XPs and my ubuntus (I got 8 pc's and 1 vaxstation at the house running, the 8th pc is utilized by the help with ubuntu in russian -language switchover in a matter of a few clicks). The mac keeps its nose so high that does not want to see such h/w around its neibourhood. So I can only print usb, with only one of my printers and that just because epson ships a cd for the mac. Ubuntu never asked for a cd. NEVER till now, to keep it fair. Even after the cd, had to do some manual things to recon the printer. The photo dock was the same story. Kodak cd and s/w!!! Ubuntu did not ask for a cd. My cameras, web and non web (usb converted) are not reconed. My fourth camera (Canon) had a cd, but thats for video editing only. At least it reads the video, something I never used before, I just edited on the camera, well I'll use it to get some of my investment back.

All the OpenSource s/w runs better on ubuntu since with that X sublayer the applications are on a "need to run" basis only. Aesthetically does not bind, looks weird. I prefer to run gimp on ubuntu under gnome, feels more integrated, and actually is. Dont miss the point here, ubuntu is debian and is far more related to freebsd than I am to my wife. Still doesnt run the same, doesnt feel the same, apple got a free subsystem and did something with it that I still haven't figured out what it is.
I also did not pay top euro for my mac, it was a clearance sale and could not resist the price. never had a mac before and I was itching. I will also buy one after retirement bundled with Alzheimer and total lack of perception.

closure
Ubuntu 8.04, is so user friendly than 7.10, which was better that 6.06 which was better than some 5 which was better that a 4. It works with no cds to load drivers, it recognizes (better or worst) pretty much everything, has the BEST active forums (beat that mac and windows), that will help you find a solution on ANYTHING, and its FREE, very FREE,
AND (big big letters)
you, the owner, are the master of your system, no secret hidden files and stuff. Reads/Writes to all (that I use and probably u use) filesystems, and you have over 100000 modules of freeware to work with.. (antivir, network tools, graphics, office stuff, games, education etc etc)

apple, kingdom of closed/locked systems, nice try, maybe next life.. got an HTC for twice the price of an iphone. You have to make me a better offer.
m$, even you are tired, give it up, the planet is still spinning and there are alternatives, now, not a year ago .. but its here, now.. start sueing everybody as fast as you can, buy them out, do something to give as a reason to hate you, dont go without a fight.

thank you, and have a nice day.


disclaimer
I am a proffessional for 25years, that have spent all my time on OSs for system management. My opinion is evaluated by my customers, and is valued according to their background, experience and education. I sell my self a.k.a services to anyone (not retail) for any type of installation. There is no ideal world, only one ideal os and thats VMS. - maybe would be CP/M from DR but...



after review update: you have to try bootcamp from apple. Dont forget to press the control on th e bluetooth keyboard. they are selling this to proffessionals in my country so the system boots xp direclty. Please, somebody.. take them out of their misery.