[Melbourne-pm] Getting a Mac Power Book

[Kirrily Robert]

Alec, I moved to OSX for my home machines about 2 years ago.  I did it
because I was moving countries and needed to put my entire digital
life onto a laptop to take with me, and there was a dip in Linux
laptops at the time.

On 5/28/07, Alec Clews <alecclews at gmail.com> wrote:
> The questions I have is as follows:
>
> * What can OS/X offer that Linux can't

Smooth, sexy media handling.  I no longer have a TV, and do heaps of
downloading and watching of media in all kinds of formats that
would've been a PITA under Linux.  (It's probably better now, but
still not up to Mac standards.)  Since switching to OSX I've also
found myself doing video editing and stuff like that, and I'm really
enjoying it.

> * What is the downside of migrating to OS/X?

You'll need to mind-switch a bit.  Rather than thinking "how do I
configure application X to have behaviour Y?" you need to think "I
wonder if I can download an add-on to get me behaviour Y."

> * Is OS/X as good as Linux for running and developing OSS software? Some of
> the things that I particularly interested in are: GNU Cash (possible to
> install I believe but not a supported platform); Apache, Perl and  all that
> goes with it (i.e. CPAN), MYSql (I believe there is a port supported by the
> vendor), svk.

Personally and very much IMHO, no.  For me it's mostly just a matter
of not having terminal emulators that work as I expect them to. (I've
tried Terminal.app, iTerm, and xterm under X11, for those who are
thinking of offering suggestions.)  I could probably retrain myself in
time, but to be honest I haven't done so yet, and my productivity has
dropped. I'm intending to get a Debian or Ubuntu box to actually do
more serious development on.

As for CPAN, MySQL, etc...  basically stuff will install in
non-standard places and you'll spend a bit of time figuring it out,
but once you've got used to it, it's fine.  For any particular app
you're wondering about support for, a quick google should tell you
whether it exists.  Most open source stuff is available, but you might
have a bit of annoyance figuring out which of the various install
mechanisms is right for any given package.

K.

-- 
Kirrily Robert
skud at infotrope.net
http://infotrope.net