ToddBlanchard wrote:

Anyhow, the need to hamstring a perfectly good FreeBSD system and its decent UI and working consistently designed applications by running one or another of the ugly hacks atop "X: The First Fully Modular Software Disaster" (tm) escapes me.

What can linux give me that I can't get with darwin?

It's difficult to know in what order one should take the foregoing... pile. What the heck: Let's start at the end.

1. I very much doubt anyone around this particular board gives a rat's ass what operating system you run. ("Converting" people is a fetish of the proprietary-software mindset.) But, to answer your question, quickly comparing my old model M6411 iBook running OSX 10.2.5 and my even older Dell Inspiron 7000 laptop running Debian "sarge":

  • Decent performance.
  • A clean, non-junked-up implementation of the Openstep spec that doesn't clutter up your screen with cutesy graphical rubbish.
  • Multiple workspaces (desktops) without the need to run poorly-tested extensions.
  • Proper, well-tested journaling filesystems.
  • A system whose configuration can be parsed and administered using standard editors and analysis tools.
  • Decent remote graphics capability. (Please, I've used Timbuktu.)
  • A future-proofed software environment that's in the hands of the users and developers rather than a company with uncertain prospects and a long and unglorious record of leaving user communities high and dry.

Your mileage will of course differ dramatically in that cute fashion exhibited by proprietary-software groupies the world over, but I'm writing basically for other people's benefit, not yours.

2. OSX/Darwin is of course not FreeBSD. I know FreeBSD. FreeBSD is a friend of mine. And Darwin ain't it. (I in fact have a FreeBSD 4.8 host in front of me. It's rock-solid and extremely high performance in every particular other than filesystems, where Linux 2.4/2.5 systems outpoint it handily.)

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com