Free Your Mind!

Folks,

I have 13 years as a UNIX admin/developer and 16 years as an annoyed PC user under my belt. Now the PC days are gone for good!

I bought a PowerBook G4 last weekend and have been asking myself this question ever since: "Why didn't I switch as soon as Apple went to UNIX?" This is easily the slickest, most seamless and functional OS I've ever used. All of my most necessary open-source tools are at my fingertips...Perl, Eclipse, GCC, Emacs, Ethereal...along with an amazing window manager (Aqua) and perfectly designed hardware. This is the way computers were always meant to be...functional, powerful and sexy.

I never figured I'b could be excited by a computer ever again...there was just too much water under my proverbial bridge but I now realise I was quite wrong. In two days time I have become a evangelical zealot!

Off to convert the masses...well, at least all the UNIX people I know.

--Pangloss

*laugh* now answer me something.. we're you a zealot against Macs before you actually tried one? That seems to be the trend.

switchToMacCount ++;

W00t!! Welcome to Mac and the forums! I was never a true Mac disser, though I passively sort of agreed with some Linux users who put Mac down a few years ago. Well - I'll say this, who's gonna have the last laugh? Mac OS X with Darwin has blown the doors off the best Linux distro I know of - that IMO being Slackware. I fully believe it to be the personal computing revolution to the non PC doz bloz blinded!

Murlyn said:

*laugh* now answer me something.. we're you a zealot against Macs before you actually tried one? That seems to be the trend.

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No...I never was a Mac basher before I saw the light. Indeed, I always appreciated MAC design...having played around with my friend's Macs over the years. I guess I stayed with PC's because of the perceived versatlity they offered me...i.e. the ability to run Linux as well as Bimbows(TM).

Once UNIX came to MacOS, I took notice however, I also figured I should wait a while before jumping in. Well, I'm about to start a new job which includes a fair bit of traveling and this impelled me to finally buy my own laptop...in the past my company always gave me a Bimbows(TM) laptop. After doing some research, I was conviced I was going to buy an IBM Thinkpad and immediately install Linux on it. Well a funny thing happened on the way to the proverbial forum.

Just after I had settled on buying a Thinkpad, I was flipping around the TV dial one night when I saw that the Jessica Simpson reality show was on MTV. Figuring this was good for a chuckle and some eye candy (go ahead call me a pig) for five minutes I watched waiting for either one of Jessica's trademark moronic statements or perhaps some partial nudity (oink, oink). Neither of these happened however I noticed that her husband was checking his e-mail on a PowerBook. This jogged my brain for a moment and I thought...perhaps I should check out a Mac...you know, they run UNIX now. (I swear this is a true story.)

The next night I went to CompUSA and spent an hour playing with a 15" Aluminum PowerBook. Once I got past the inherent WOW factor I settled in with a terminal prompt for 45 minutes....perl, it's here, version 5.8....gcc is also installed, only version 2.95 but that can probably be changed...grep, awk, tar, top, ifconfig, emacs, X11 - it's ALL HERE! ****, THIS IS UNIX!...not some dumbed down version either but a real BSD variant. My brain began to consider all the permutations. Since most of the software I use on a daily basis is open-source I couldn't really find much drawback to buying a Mac, save for the extra cost. I went home that night and did some reading on the web. I found out that just about EVERYTHING I use in the open-source world is available for MacOS X and most if it in binary form...compiling was even optional in most cases. Well, to wrap this somewhat verbose story up, two days later I went to my local Mac store and plunked down the Amex card...2.2kUSD later (I got and AirPort card), and I'm part of the religion.

I now view it as my mission to spread the word far and wide to all the UNIX people I know about my religious conversion. I work with Linux and Solaris for a living but I LIVE for MacOS!

--Pangloss

Yup! Isn't it a real treat!? All the BSD horsepower in the what doz bloz was supposed to be GUI W00t!! The true best of both worlds! I love the CLI -Terminal! BTW in case you want to do manually as I always do:
repair permissions. After every software update, and about every 2 weeks: close all apps and log totally off. Log on, go in Finder, Applications. Utilities, Disk Utility. After the message -getting disk information- select volume (below the hard drive name -upper left corner). Just highlight it. Now look to the lower two things are there near the middle, varify permissions, repair permissions. Click repair permissions. Also make sure you run cron tasks Finder, Applications. Utilities Terminal type (switching to root - superuser) sudo sh /etc/daily > this needs to be done /weekly (instead of dailly) and monthly. again with all apps closed.

trenollet: No one will ever hold a previous doubt against you! Most of us probably made the switch as far as I can see. And like you, just delighted! I almost don't remember what BSOD looks like any more... Notice how xpee tries to mimic the Aqua look?

Beatles4Life said:

Congratulations and welcome to the world of Macs, Pangloss.

P.S.: On a completely different note, I love your screenname, Pangloss. Are you a fan of Candide [the book by Voltaire]?

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Right reference! Dr. Pangloss was Voltaire's eternal optimist philosopher in Candide...his most famous line is something akin to:

We live in the best of all possible worlds.

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This is exactly how I feel now that I have a Mac...I now live in the best of all possible computing worlds.

Pangloss said:

Right reference! Dr. Pangloss was Voltaire's eternal optimist philosopher in Candide...his most famous line is something akin to:

This is exactly how I feel now that I have a Mac...I now live in the best of all possible computing worlds.

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It's so true, what can be better then a Unix BSD kernel based OS with Aqua GUI achieving what doz only closes in on recently? Now we gotta get the word out!

Thanks Witeshark!!

I was thinking about your last comment in post 11. The part about getting the word out.
I kind of like that my die-hard PC friends don't want to swtich... It's just for spite, but everytime they start talking about a problem they are having with thier PC, I just smile and say, "You know, can't say that has been a problem for me since I switched". They usually flip the international symbol of peace to me and continue on.

But deep down, I enjoy watching them suffer sometimes, just because I know I'm right, and so do they!! They just can't man up and admit it.

I have convinced one of them to take home and install Mandrake 10.0 so I don't think it would be very long before he converts. He is also the same one that didn't give me grief about switching, so I help him out the most when I can.

trenollet said:

Thanks Witeshark!!

But deep down, I enjoy watching them suffer sometimes, just because I know I'm right, and so do they!! They just can't man up and admit it.

I have convinced one of them to take home and install Mandrake 10.0 so I don't think it would be very long before he converts. He is also the same one that didn't give me grief about switching, so I help him out the most when I can.

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Some might consider schadenfreude a sin. I've been guilty of it several times in my life as well. ;-/

Regardless, I'm more intrigued by the fact that you've conviced a friend to install Mandrake 10 because he was struggling with his PC. I've using Linux since 1996 and I love it...especially in the business world. Nonetheless, I would never consider it easier and less problematic than Binbows(TM). Bimbows(TM) may suck when compared to MacOS, however it's certainly easier to configure and use than Linux...at least that's IMHO.

Perhaps I'm misinterpretting your comments?...Fess Up!...you told him to install Mandrake in an effort to FORCE him over to MacOS! This was a cunning plan to once and for all warp your friend's mind and bring him into the light wasn't it. ;-)

--Pangloss

Yup! I know what you mean. I have one pc/doz friend that insists on staying cause of all his games. So every time it comes up about my systems, he tries to tease me -so what can you do on it? Well I havn't yet, but I'm so tempted (he blocked all attachments to his e-mail) to say --well I can go to any web site, open any e-mail and not have to reboot twice a day (up time here since Christmas) How's that for a start? Plus, the games are coming (not that I need em)

Pangloss said:

Perhaps I'm misinterpretting your comments?...Fess Up!...you told him to install Mandrake in an effort to FORCE him over to MacOS! This was a cunning plan to once and for all warp your friend's mind and bring him into the light wasn't it. ;-)

--Pangloss

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I didn't give him Mandrake to try and make him switch. He was getting fed up with virus's and general web surfing junk that always managed to clutter up his windows install. He came over one night and saw I was running MDK 10 on my PC and started asking me questions about programs to stop all the annoying junk. I simply told him I didn't need any special programs. My Mac and Linux OS's, as you already know, aren't as vulnerable as windows is. That was enough for him. I burned him a copy and he went home and installed it that night.

MDK 10 is actually very easy to configure. Much easier than the days of RedHat 6. So I wasn't too worried. He called a few times and in under an hour, he was up and running. I did have to ssh into his box once to set up the video drivers for his nVidia card though. But that was about it for manual config. I use Gentoo on most of my PC's at work, but I find Mandrake to be easier to use and set-up for newbs.

I'm pretty sure the next time he in is the market for a new computer though, he'll be looking at a Mac. By that time, he'll have a pretty good working knowledge of Linux and using OS X will be that much easier when it comes to the term shell.

That's a great story! I didn't want my PC to just sit useless, so after my switch to Mac, I put Red Hat on that

trenollet said:

Games PII 266 running my Linux Firewall.
IBM ThinkPad running XP, for my wife, but soon to be traded in on a PB.
Gateway M500 P4 2.2 running Gentoo, work computer, been collecting dust since I got the 14" iBook

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Neat collection It's been almost a PC loss here, though I love my newly Red Hat PC I don't do much with it but explore Linux and their man list to commands in the terminal and compare to the awesome Darwin versions that is fun but seriously the Mac has completely taken over my internet and P computer needs! and that is a great thing I mean who knew? a BSD Unix with a GUI like Aqua! Does it get better? Not this planet! I am impressed that you run Mandy 10, I tend to think Slack 9.x is what I want next but I'd be glad to hear your suggestions!

I've had my iBook just over a week now and am continually impressed with it. I've even convinced my roommate to switch when he gets the money. I'll be taking my iBook to show my parents and I'll probably suggest that they get one instead of a PC (they're total computer newbies so I want their first experience to actually be enjoyable). I never thought I'd be using a Mac much less highly recommending them. Once you go Mac, you never go back.

sirlan said:

I'll be taking my iBook to show my parents and I'll probably suggest that they get one instead of a PC (they're total computer newbies so I want their first experience to actually be enjoyable). I never thought I'd be using a Mac much less highly recommending them. Once you go Mac, you never go back.

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This is good idea - to get them started on Mac and learn the right system first! FWI manual maintenence is my preference, done like this:
repair permissions. After every software update, and about every 2 weeks: close all apps and log totally off. Log on, go in Finder, Applications. Utilities, Disk Utility. After the message -getting disk information- select volume (below the hard drive name -upper left corner). Just highlight it. Now look to the lower two things are there near the middle, verify permissions, repair permissions. Click repair permissions. Also make sure you run cron tasks Finder, Applications. Utilities Terminal type (switching to root - superuser) sudo sh /etc/daily > this needs to be done /weekly (instead of daily) and monthly. again with all apps closed. Nice sig BTW