

Dan Gillmor: This Mac devotee is moving to Linux - bensummers
http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/06/20/from_mac_to_linux/index.html

======
SamAtt
My main problem with this is he's dropping a platform that isn't a walled
garden (the Mac) to protest walled gardens. By doing that he's making Apple
more likely to abandon the one platform they have that isn't a walled garden
in the future

It seems to me the better strategy would be to support the Mac until Apple
tries to control Mac software development in the same way they do iOS
development and then go to Linux. That way Apple can clearly see that people
are rejecting the walled garden philosophy.

~~~
old-gregg
I was actually disappointed to learn that his move was a political one. He
started really great with _"My strategy is to use what works best, period."_
That should have been the best reason to switch. It was, in my case: playing
with random OSS projects is much easier on Linux because most often it's the
#1 target platform for software I'm interested in.

Speaking of "use what works best": I still have the MBP to run Photoshop,
precisely for that reason.

~~~
jpenney
"Playing with random OSS projects is much easier on Linux"

I couldn't agree more. I am primarily a .NET/Windows programmer, but I have an
Ubuntu VM that I have been using to hack on OSS-based work I've been doing
recently. Package managers make it super simple to get everything up and
running quickly, and mean I can keep each of my machine's VMs up to date with
whatever new thing I'm mucking around with.

------
astrodust
This strikes me as an especially misguided, misinformed expedition. To start
out on your journey by purchasing a notebook that's incompatible is a sure
sign you're doing something wrong. Like a man protesting the oil spill in the
gulf by abandoning their car only to buy a goat instead of a horse by
accident.

Why do people rail against Apple for making the iOS "walled garden" and yet
have nothing to say about Sony or Microsoft and their locked down game
platforms? At least Apple lets people produce applications and opens up their
marketplace to everyday people. Microsoft charges an extraordinary amount of
money for their 360 developer kit, XNA being a toy when compared with the real
thing. The PS3, likewise, is way beyond the reach of any hobbyist.

Apple charges $99 for the developer kit, cost of Mac notwithstanding, and your
application has a very good chance of being accepted. Call the App Store what
you will, but it's a very good place to do business.

~~~
orangecat
_Why do people rail against Apple for making the iOS "walled garden" and yet
have nothing to say about Sony or Microsoft and their locked down game
platforms?_

Consoles aren't trying to replace general purpose computers, iOS devices are.

~~~
jherdman
And you don't think that Apple has sent the clear message that they don't see
the iPad or iPhone as a general purpose computing device?

I think they've done a pretty great job of indicating that these are
appliances and are not to be considered as a smaller Mac. I don't think this
is necessarily the right thing to do, but sometimes you need a dictatorship
before a democracy. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out.

~~~
orangecat
_And you don't think that Apple has sent the clear message that they don't see
the iPad or iPhone as a general purpose computing device?_

My point exactly: in Apple's world, general purpose computing is gradually
going away. My prediction is that in 5 to 10 years, the ability to run
software of your choice on Apple products will be limited to ludicrously
priced "pro" and "developer" systems. If the rest of the industry follows
suit, as Microsoft is doing with Windows 7 phones, it's not going to be fun.

------
knowtheory
Yeah this guy has it backwards. OSX is still a *nix. It's still open, and you
can do more or less anything you would need with it.

It's the iOS devices that are locked down. The lock down was one of the major
reasons i got a Nexus One instead of an iphone.

Protest Apple where their behavior is bad, not where their behavior is decent.

~~~
cageface
If you disagree with a company's policies it's much more effective to boycott
them entirely than it is to boycott individual products.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Why? If they see their sales decline equally in distinct products under both
objectionable and reasonable policies, shouldn't they assume they have a
branding problem rather than a policy problem?

~~~
samd
It's not my responsibility to pay for the privilege of giving them data. If
they want to know why someone switches they can ask.

------
krig
I'm a Ubuntu user myself, but I found it a bit amusing that he bought a laptop
to run Linux, and the laptop can't run Linux.

~~~
technomancy
It's weird; I have one of those Thinkpads, and it works great with Ubuntu.

~~~
dotBen
Yeah, I've always found Thinkpads to be some of the most compatible machines
for running Linux (after Dell business machines, which tend to/used to be
spec'd to be available for purchase with an Ubuntu flavor).

I do think Thinkpads have lost some of their *nix roots since the Lenovo split
because IBM was traditionally a big supporter of Linux, Lenovo less so.

~~~
pyre
I'm running on a ThinkPad X41. It has the following issues:

\- The headphone jack stops working after the second suspend-to-ram after a
fresh reboot. The only way to get it working again (without rebooting) is to
suspend-to-disk (hibernate). It will then work until after the next time I
wake from suspend-to-ram.

\- I'm still on Jaunty, but the last couple of revisions of Ubuntu failed to
correctly detect and set-up scrolling on my TrackPoint. Prior to the move to
evdev, it worked out of the box. There are various write-ups on
ubuntuforums.org and blog posts about the fix, but IIRC as of 9.10 it still
wasn't in the default install. It may be working now.

\- Both the Cardbus slot and the SD reader slot work out of the box, but they
seem to have IRQ issues. Reading data off of either slot (the only cardbus
card I have is a CompactFlash reader) causes the system to slow to a crawl
with hte mouse jerking all over the place and windows refreshing at a snail's
pace.

\- The mute button only mutes. Pressing it a second time does not unmute the
audio. I suspect this is as the BIOS level, but GNOME sees the second press
and _thinks_ that the sound is un-muted, and thus reports sound as un-muted.
(The only way to un-mute is to hit the volume up or down buttons)

All of that said my biggest gripes with the X41 are the lack of a working
headphone jack, and the fact that IBM didn't use a standard 2.5" hard drive.
I'm stuck with a max of 60GB of space due to their usage of non-standard 1.8"
hard drives.

------
dylanz
I'm trying to do the same thing with OpenBSD.

A lot of vendor lock in on the ol' MacBook Pro hardware. Broadcom wireless
chipset, Nvidia chipset, etc. I've been hacking through my dmesg one by one
trying to tackle everything.

Instead of reverse engineering the drivers, like a lot of the community has
done (my hats off to you!), I broke down and got a USB wireless stick
(rum(4)), and am running on Vesa drivers :) It's not "pretty", but lets me run
my WM (xmonad) and everything is still pretty snappy.

It's not something you setup overnight, especially when you've lost your
.muttrc and a ton of other crucial dotfiles after spending too much time in
OSX land and using their native applications. That's my fault.

Eventually, I'd like to give back to the community, and that's what I'm going
to do.

------
BenoitEssiambre
imho, Ubuntu's user experience (when your computer's hardware is supported out
of the box) is now superior than both window's and mac's user experience.
Mac's UX is not bad to the extent they have adopted a Gnome like desktop.
Where they strayed away from Linux, the UX is usually inferior, for example
the very poor Spaces implementation and that bar at the bottom that doesn't
have separate icons for the different opened windows of applications. When I'm
on a mac, I'm always shuffling around piles of windows with no good way to
organize them and change between them. I'm horrified when I have to press
those side mouse button that makes it look like someone sneezed out barely
recognizable small versions off all my programs on my monitor. It's like the
computer equivalent, for finding a document in a pile of throwing the whole
pile across the floor and walking around to find what you are looking for.

~~~
jsz0
My pattern for trying out the latest & greatest Linux distros is something
like this:

\-- Install: Gets better every time. Rarely have issues anymore with the
basics of video, networking, sound, etc.

\-- First boot: Gets better every time. Things tend to look nicer, fonts are
nicer, icons are better, defaults are more reasonable. Installing software is
easy.

\-- First week of usage: Defeat that all the usual suspects suggested as
alternatives to the apps I use on OSX or Windows just haven't made much
progress. They're still borderline unusable or no viable alternatives exist.
No amount of perceived freedom justifies downgrading my applications, dual
booting, emulating, etc. Just not worth it.

~~~
jokermatt999
> Defeat that all the usual suspects suggested as alternatives to the apps I
> use on OSX or Windows just haven't made much progress. They're still
> borderline unusable or no viable alternatives exist.

I pretty much only use my home computer for entertainment purposes, so I
haven't had these issues really. I will admit that I prefer to run foobar2000
and Firefox through WINE, but I've mostly been satisfied or happier with the
Linux alternatives. There clearly is an issue with some professional
applications (GIMP vs PS comes to mind); I'm just curious which ones you have
in mind.

~~~
jsz0
The big ones for me:

\-- Logic Express: Not my job -- just a hobbyist. ardour is way too unstable
and doesn't even compare to GarageBand in terms of features at this point.

\-- OmniGraffle: Big part of my job. Better than Visio IMO. Dia is maybe on
par with a 10 year old version of Visio at this point and I haven't seen any
significant improvements in Dia in years.

\-- iWork: My office needs are pretty simple so on features OpenOffice's
feature set is good enough but it's always been buggy and clunky. Just stupid
stuff like a dialog box drawing underneath and active window causing the
program to appear to be frozen. Compatibility with MS Office formats is subpar
even compared to iWork which isn't quite good enough for me not to keep MS
Office installed.

\-- Mail clients: I still prefer a desktop mail client and I haven't found
anything I like on Linux. Evolution is clunky in the UI department.
Thunderbird is clunky in the performance department. My IMAP store is kind of
big (3GB-ish) so when I was using Linux I actually had to keep both Evolution
and Thunderbird installed because one of the two handled big IMAP folders
better than the other. (though at this point I can't remember which was which)

\-- VPN clients: At this moment I have VPN profiles for Cisco IPSEC, L2TP,
PPTP, and use both Cisco & Juniper SSL VPNs on a regular basis. It was too
difficult to set them up. At some point Cisco offered a client that handled
Cisco IPSEC but it would break every time I did a kernel update. L2TP/PPTP
weren't a big problem though I had to fight to make split tunneling work
properly. Juniper SSL VPN flat out did not work at the time though I've heard
they released Linux support over the last 18 months or so?

There are a few other examples that would be pure personal preference. If I
really had to I could use something else but basically I just don't want to. A
more motivated person could probably overcome these issues.

~~~
subsection1h
> Evolution is clunky in the UI department. Thunderbird is clunky in the
> performance department.

Did you try Claws Mail? I prefer it to Evolution and Thunderbird.

~~~
ableal
Kmail (the KDE client) is pretty sane. Worth a shot.

------
moxiemk1
I think he's making a stand at the wrong time. He says that he's leaving the
Mac to protest Apple's gradual move towards walled gardens, away from open
platforms.

When the Mac ceases to be an open platform, and becomes a walled garden; when
something he _actually wants to do_ becomes impossible because of Apple's
policies, moving away in protest makes sense. But moving away in protest of
something that hasn't happened?

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Why should he wait until something becomes impossible, rather than less than
ideal? Sometimes you just need to see the writing on the wall.

He writes "As noted, I've been happy in the relatively free Mac world. But
given the slowing pace of Mac OS development, there's reason to believe Apple
is mostly milking Mac OS users. Will it phase out serious PC development? Or
will it eventually move its command-and-control methods up the value chain to
the Mac? Apple says it's committed to the Mac's future. I'm not so sure,
especially after Jobs, speaking at the Wall Street Journal's All Things
Digital conference earlier this month, made it clear that he believes the
iPhone/iPad ecosystem is the real future of personal computing, with PCs
becoming a much smaller player."

~~~
moxiemk1
I'd say that "slowing pace of Mac OS development" simply isn't true; if
anything, I've felt like there is more development going on now that iOS is
creating a large pool of Cocoa/ObjC developers.

And also, it's still not less than ideal. Nothing has changed wrt. MacOS's
openness; in fact, Apple continues to promote new APIs that are cross vendor
(OpenCL, for example) with new releases of MacOS.

Apple isn't going to one day magically turn off "unapproved" applications with
no warning; it will be a gradual process if it ever happens. Indeed, one must
see the writing on the wall, but it has to be written first.

------
brisance
>> It's much lighter than my MacBook Pro, yet has a great set of hardware
features that Apple can't seem to provide in its own laptops despite their
high prices. (Example: The ThinkPad has a reader for flash-memory cards.)<<

So do the current lineup of Macbook Pros.

<http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/specs.html>

------
loewenskind
>I'm not so sure, especially after Jobs, speaking at the Wall Street Journal's
All Things Digital conference earlier this month, made it clear that he
believes the iPhone/iPad ecosystem is the real future of personal computing,
with PCs becoming a much smaller player.

Well of course! I think the vision Apple sees is computers being for
_producing_ and everything else being for _consuming_ [1], so since most of
what _every_ computer user does is consuming it stands to reason that
consumption devices will make up the majority of computing devices.

Life is hard to live if you're looking for conspiracies under ever rock and
assuming that everyone just has the most evil purpose possible.

[1] Actually by "producing" I mean 80% producing and 20% consuming, and with
"consuming" I mean the reverse.

------
ZeroGravitas
The reasons given are a bit odd, but it actually makes sense in one respect.
If you want to be working with Android phones and tablets because you don't
like Apple's direction with iOS, then there's going to be an impedance
mismatch between your new devices and Mac OS X.

~~~
wmf
Compared to what? I would believe that Android phones don't integrate
flawlessly with OS X, but do they work any better with Linux or Windows? My
impression is that Android only cares about the cloud and it barely
acknowledges the existence of PCs, let alone integrate with them.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Syncing music (including transcoding). Using your phone as a remote control.
These are things that work okay if you live entirely within the Apple
ecosystem, once you start straying outside and using FLAC or Vorbis or Android
or Rhythmbox you'd be as well leaving completely rather than muddle along
half-in and half-out and relying on 3rd party support like Doubletwist.

(Though it's worth noting that the Linux guys are getting really god with
iDevice support, but longer term I'd bet on Android working best.)

------
jasonlotito
People always talk about switching. Switching to Linux is easy. Sticking with
Linux is an entirely different situation. I'd be more inclined to enjoy
stories like this if it was more about how the person has been using the OS
for a few months already.

Edit: This isn't a jab at Linux, either. I just think a "I switched months
ago" story is more valuable then "I just switched an hour ago, rebel me!"

~~~
jakevoytko
I switched my last computer to Ubuntu 13 months ago, and haven't looked back.
I haven't regretted it once! Emacs and Firefox/Chrome work fine, there's
finally a reasonable 64-bit version of Flash, Steam works well under WINE, and
OpenOffice and GIMP are.. _ahem_ workable.

It hasn't been all sunshine: I installed Kubuntu on a new desktop 3 months
ago, and a month later had to do a complete wipe/reinstall to Ubuntu. I
couldn't find the incantation to completely switch to Ubuntu using apt-get.

------
warmfuzzykitten
I'm sure Dan is replacing his TV and cable hookup with a network-connected
computer and HDTV monitor so he won't be forced to watch only the programming
the cable network provides (and takes a cut of) but will be free to watch the
vast array of entertainment programs available on the net. The fact that there
are almost none of these shouldn't sway his decision, because if everyone did
the same, surely there would be some, sometime.

I feel the same about this as I do about any economic or technical decision
made for religious reasons. You're free to think what you want, but, as Scott
Adams says, I'm free to hear what you say on the subject as incoherent
babbling.

------
aohtsab
Does anyone have experience working with WINE? (WINE Is Not an Emulator). Also
switching from Mac to Linux (Ubuntu), but have a few applications that require
Windows.

~~~
vdoma
<http://appdb.winehq.org/> will tell you if your app is supported on Wine.
Most of my Windows-only apps work, albeit with some minor
glitches...sometimes.

~~~
dagw
Just be aware that just because an app is listed as working in the appdb,
doesn't mean you can reasonably expect to type "wine app.exe" on your computer
and have it work. All it means is that someone somewhere managed to get it to
run once under one particular configuration.

------
Shorel
I don't see why he can't simply keep using OSX and just not buy an iPod or
iPad or iPhone and use Android based devices instead.

------
napierzaza
Oh my. I feel like some people on the internet over-exagerate because they
hope the corporation will respond to their cries. So you're getting a linux
hand-held? Oh, no you're getting rid of your Mac because you don't like the
iPhone policies? I guess that hasn't been tried.

------
againstyou
_Unfortunately, Ubuntu's latest version, called "Lucid Lynx," won't run
properly yet on the X201._ _Meanwhile, Lucid Lynx is running nicely in a
"virtual machine" on my MacBook Pro._

wow! so you already moved ? what are you waiting for ? 10 years to get an OS
that at least run on your hardware ?

