Actually, I find that the desktop, and indeed the whole user experience, to be noticably faster under Linux0. And, as it's mainly a server, the multimedia stuff doesn't bother me at all (mind you, even my main system dosn't really do those things). Although, having been hacking Unix/Linux for over 20 years, I don't think I'm the target market for "Just Works" things; I almost always don't like them, as they don't work the right way (and, yes, macOS was no exception). And, the clincher, I absolutely loathe the menu bar at the top of the screen MacOS interface - it's relic of small screens, and "one app maximised" mindset; they make bugger all sense on a 1600x1200 desktop.
0] Ubuntu 7.10 Vs MacOS X 10.3.9 (the latest a G3 will run happily).
Different needs, is all. I love Linux, and I'm the kind of person who actually enjoys recompiling a kernel. I just got to a point where I needed to take a break from that stuff and actually get non-techy stuff done, which is easier for me on a Mac, for what I do. As part of that, I made a conscious decision to accept most of the default behavious and live with them, and it's that mindset as much as anything else that's probably keeping me happy.
I'll probably go back to Linux at some point, but for sheer ease of doing stuff like cutting videos together, or having hardware work when you plug it in, whatever, OS X works for me at the moment. And it's also _beautiful_, in terms of graphics and font rendering. Virtually any website looks much prettier in Safari on OSX than it does anywhere else, which isn't something I'd have thought would make a difference for me, but going back to Windows or Linux just makes the world seem like an uglier place.
As for the menubar at the top, I'm afraid I have to disagree. My experience bears out the expected Fitt's Law (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000642.html) results; I'm faster and hit the wrong thing far less often on a Mac than on Windows. It probably helps that my menubar is on a 17" widescreen, and also (because of the aforementioned mindset) that I've organised my way of working to cope with only the one menubar, with the less-interactive stuff on my the second screen.
Point take over menubars. Thing is, I just don't like them much at all, anywhere. On my screen at the moment, there are 4 windows, tiled, and none of them has a menu bar (not even Opera; it's turned it off, as I never use it). Of the four, only Opera is in any way graphical - the rest are 2 xterms, and an Emacs. And I also have a 4-screen virtual desktop (and have had for so long I forget when I started using it) that wraps in all directions, so any kind of edge-triggered menu/taskbar/whatever doesn't work for the way I work. The only regular use I make of the mouse is moving between windows, and clicking links in Opera.
When I first got the G3, I tried it the MacOS way for a few months. Yes, it was very pretty, and I could certainly see the attraction. But I slowly realised that I just couldn't live with the default behaviours, and I found them to be getting in the way, and causing frustration -- probably because I've been doig things the X11 way for so long. I simply can't get used to click-to-focus, or having to explicitly cut before paste, rather than just select, the paste. So, obviously Windows drives me nuts as well (as do the current default behaviours of Gnome and KDE - not that I use either of them).
I suspect that if I could have altered a little more of MacOS's behaviour to suit me, I would still be using it in preference to Linux, but as I can't, I'm not, and I don't see me returning any time soon. Although I can see myself buying a dual processot G4 or G5 as a serious proccesing engine.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-11-12 04:54 pm (UTC)0] Ubuntu 7.10 Vs MacOS X 10.3.9 (the latest a G3 will run happily).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 05:43 pm (UTC)I'll probably go back to Linux at some point, but for sheer ease of doing stuff like cutting videos together, or having hardware work when you plug it in, whatever, OS X works for me at the moment. And it's also _beautiful_, in terms of graphics and font rendering. Virtually any website looks much prettier in Safari on OSX than it does anywhere else, which isn't something I'd have thought would make a difference for me, but going back to Windows or Linux just makes the world seem like an uglier place.
As for the menubar at the top, I'm afraid I have to disagree. My experience bears out the expected Fitt's Law (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000642.html) results; I'm faster and hit the wrong thing far less often on a Mac than on Windows. It probably helps that my menubar is on a 17" widescreen, and also (because of the aforementioned mindset) that I've organised my way of working to cope with only the one menubar, with the less-interactive stuff on my the second screen.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-12 06:07 pm (UTC)When I first got the G3, I tried it the MacOS way for a few months. Yes, it was very pretty, and I could certainly see the attraction. But I slowly realised that I just couldn't live with the default behaviours, and I found them to be getting in the way, and causing frustration -- probably because I've been doig things the X11 way for so long. I simply can't get used to click-to-focus, or having to explicitly cut before paste, rather than just select, the paste. So, obviously Windows drives me nuts as well (as do the current default behaviours of Gnome and KDE - not that I use either of them).
I suspect that if I could have altered a little more of MacOS's behaviour to suit me, I would still be using it in preference to Linux, but as I can't, I'm not, and I don't see me returning any time soon. Although I can see myself buying a dual processot G4 or G5 as a serious proccesing engine.