04-06-2008, 04:18 PM

Here goes...

I'm a total n00b to Macs. I've used Win 3.1 to XP (excluding Me, I heard it was horrid, I'm not falling over myself to try it out) operating systems for over 10 years and Ubuntu for at least 5 years.

I've used them once in a class (I wanna say it was a MacBook that had a 12 inch display, don't remember) and it was very frustrating. I wanted to create a text file and had to go into the console and do "$ touch someFile.txt" in order to create the darn thing -_- . You see, I'm a big fan of right-click . Yes, I know that Mac OS has it and there's a way of doing it (which I don't know how... to be honest.) Right-click, "New Document" and enter the name of the new file, boom, you're done .

I was hoping to try out the Mac mini in the next 6 months . I'm reluctant to splurge on a new PC. I bought a System76 machine and regret it.

So here are my questions that I was hoping to ask someone that has already tried it and if it's a bad idea, perhaps get a recommendation for something else.
* Do most programs load quickly? I don't want to sit and wait for over 5 seconds for it to open a text file that's, say, 20KB+.
* Does Xcode come with every Mac OS? Without it being separate? I hate the idea of buying something like VS .NET 2008 for my Windows OS when I get all of the development goodies in my Ubuntu 7.10 just just by doing "$ sudo apt-get install g++".
* Has anyone had major problems with customer support? Say the machine doesn't boot or something else and you send it in while you still have your 3-year warranty, any major problems?
* Say I wanna install something like an ssh server on it, does Mac OS have something like Synaptic on it?

Thanks in advance for your answers and recommendations.

[edit]

I'm hoping to use a 17 inch monitor on it right now (which is hooked up to my HP at the moment.) I'd like to share it on a KVM switch. My question. Are there any KVM specific issues that I should be aware of? Do I need a mouse/KVM switch that explicitly supports PS/2 and USB? In Fedora Core 5, if you don't boot the machine with the keyboard and mouse plugged in and then plug it in, it does not respond smoothly, it skips around the screen instead. Any issues like that?

04-06-2008, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by foobarism

Here goes...

I'm a total n00b to Macs. I've used Win 3.1 to XP (excluding Me, I heard it was horrid, I'm not falling over myself to try it out) operating systems for over 10 years and Ubuntu for at least 5 years.

I've used them once in a class (I wanna say it was a MacBook that had a 12 inch display, don't remember) and it was very frustrating. I wanted to create a text file and had to go into the console and do "$ touch someFile.txt" in order to create the darn thing -_- . You see, I'm a big fan of right-click . Yes, I know that Mac OS has it and there's a way of doing it (which I don't know how... to be honest.) Right-click, "New Document" and enter the name of the new file, boom, you're done .

I was hoping to try out the Mac mini in the next 6 months . I'm reluctant to splurge on a new PC. I bought a System76 machine and regret it.

So here are my questions that I was hoping to ask someone that has already tried it and if it's a bad idea, perhaps get a recommendation for something else.
* Do most programs load quickly? I don't want to sit and wait for over 5 seconds for it to open a text file that's, say, 20KB+.
* Does Xcode come with every Mac OS? Without it being separate? I hate the idea of buying something like VS .NET 2008 for my Windows OS when I get all of the development goodies in my Ubuntu 7.10 just just by doing "$ sudo apt-get install g++".
* Has anyone had major problems with customer support? Say the machine doesn't boot or something else and you send it in while you still have your 3-year warranty, any major problems?
* Say I wanna install something like an ssh server on it, does Mac OS have something like Synaptic on it?

Thanks in advance for your answers and recommendations.

[edit]

I'm hoping to use a 17 inch monitor on it right now (which is hooked up to my HP at the moment.) I'd like to share it on a KVM switch. My question. Are there any KVM specific issues that I should be aware of? Do I need a mouse/KVM switch that explicitly supports PS/2 and USB? In Fedora Core 5, if you don't boot the machine with the keyboard and mouse plugged in and then plug it in, it does not respond smoothly, it skips around the screen instead. Any issues like that?

Do programs load quickly? - As with ANY OS and system..depends on your configuration, RAM, etc. Quickly is subjective

XCode (Developer Tools) should be on your OS X install DVD (or a seperate CD)
Can't answer your question about support - I've never had to call them, or take my Mac to an Apple Store.
For something like an ssh server - or any other GNU/Linux tools...there is Macports. Installing mysql, gtk, ssh is as simple as sudo port install xyz
It should be noted that OS X is BSD under the hood. Start up a terminal and bash, ssh, ftp, locate, find, top, sed, nano and numerous other *NIX utilities are at your disposal.

04-06-2008, 04:50 PM

*Moved thread to appropriate forum - Switcher question -> Not just anything goes in Anything Goes*

04-06-2008, 05:01 PM

You Mac already has an SSH server built in and ready to go. Programs load fast on my fiance's Mac Mini, but as was said that is highly subjective.

With the ports, not everything is supported as there are differences between Darwin (Apple's Unix Version) and standard BSD and (of course) Linux distributions. I have MOST of what I need ported to my Mac, but there are still a few security programs that I need and hence dual boot with Gentoo Linux.

I switched from a pure Linux environment and love it! Your touch example is funny, because I would rather use the command line than my mouse. Just as an example, my primary window manager is xmonad, which can be used mouseless!

04-06-2008, 10:01 PM

Originally Posted by MacHeadCase

*Moved thread to appropriate forum - Switcher question -> Not just anything goes in Anything Goes*

Yes, I'm sorry about that. When I read the description about the forum, I thought that owning a mac was a prerequisite in order to post there, which is why I picked the "Anything Goes" section.

04-06-2008, 10:04 PM

Originally Posted by voiceofra

Do programs load quickly? - As with ANY OS and system..depends on your configuration, RAM, etc. Quickly is subjective

1 gig of ram. Base 1.83 dual-core Mac mini.

Originally Posted by voiceofra

XCode (Developer Tools) should be on your OS X install DVD (or a seperate CD)
Can't answer your question about support - I've never had to call them, or take my Mac to an Apple Store.
For something like an ssh server - or any other GNU/Linux tools...there is Macports. Installing mysql, gtk, ssh is as simple as sudo port install xyz
It should be noted that OS X is BSD under the hood. Start up a terminal and bash, ssh, ftp, locate, find, top, sed, nano and numerous other *NIX utilities are at your disposal.

Thank you.

04-06-2008, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by lifeafter2am

You Mac already has an SSH server built in and ready to go. Programs load fast on my fiance's Mac Mini, but as was said that is highly subjective.

With the ports, not everything is supported as there are differences between Darwin (Apple's Unix Version) and standard BSD and (of course) Linux distributions. I have MOST of what I need ported to my Mac, but there are still a few security programs that I need and hence dual boot with Gentoo Linux.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by lifeafter2am

I switched from a pure Linux environment and love it! Your touch example is funny, because I would rather use the command line than my mouse. Just as an example, my primary window manager is xmonad, which can be used mouseless!

It depends on what I'm doing. I can usually work faster with the keyboard, but if I need to, I like to have the right-click option. xmonad seems interesting too.

04-06-2008, 10:08 PM

One of my co-workers has a son in law with a mac. The main problem that the son-in-law has is the fact that he is constantly low on storage space in his HD. The explanation (at least how I understood it) was that the Mac OS seems to create a lot of unnecessary files that clogged up the HD. Any truth in this?

04-06-2008, 10:10 PM

Originally Posted by foobarism

One of my co-workers has a son in law with a mac. The main problem that the son-in-law has is the fact that he is constantly low on storage space in his HD. The explanation (at least how I understood it) was that the Mac OS seems to create a lot of unnecessary files that clogged up the HD. Any truth in this?

I haven't had a problem yet. Running on the same install (mostly) for the past 2 years. Still have 50gigs left on my 80. The son-in-law is probably downloading a ton of music or something, adds up quickly.

04-06-2008, 10:13 PM

Originally Posted by foobarism

One of my co-workers has a son in law with a mac. The main problem that the son-in-law has is the fact that he is constantly low on storage space in his HD. The explanation (at least how I understood it) was that the Mac OS seems to create a lot of unnecessary files that clogged up the HD. Any truth in this?

Sounds like bologna to me. OS-X does not create unnecessary files.

04-06-2008, 10:17 PM

I think you really need to step back and think of it like this: it's a proprietary Unix with a pretty front end. At it's core it is Unix, which if you use Linux, I would assume you know at least a little history of Unix.

04-06-2008, 11:55 PM

Originally Posted by foobarism

One of my co-workers has a son in law with a mac. The main problem that the son-in-law has is the fact that he is constantly low on storage space in his HD. The explanation (at least how I understood it) was that the Mac OS seems to create a lot of unnecessary files that clogged up the HD. Any truth in this?

I was low on HDD space all the time with my PowerBook G4's 100GB HDD, but it had nothing to do with the <10GB of space the OS took up and everything to do with the sheer amount of stuff I created and downloaded. Notebooks just haven't had decent storage space as primary computers until very recently.

04-07-2008, 06:21 AM

Originally Posted by lifeafter2am

I think you really need to step back and think of it like this: it's a proprietary Unix with a pretty front end. At it's core it is Unix, which if you use Linux, I would assume you know at least a little history of Unix.

I'm well aware of that. However, there are different distros and flavors of Unix and Linux, everyone rolls things differently, hence the seemingly silly questions .

Alright, thanks guys. I'll buy a mini mid-may and report back on how things are working out.

04-07-2008, 06:29 AM

Originally Posted by foobarism

I'll buy a mini mid-may and report back on how things are working out.

Cool! You won't be disappointed!