15 ms·

Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003)

68 points by dannyrosen 9y ago

jordigh 9y ago
Last week I was sitting in an undergraduate lecture hall with hundreds of students. I looked back at their laptops and it was a sea of Apple logos. We've traded one monopoly for another.
- overcast 9y ago
  That's because MacOS is the Unix/Linux desktop done correctly. Gives both power users, and my grandmother, what they want in that environment, with a proper interface, and good software.
  - spodek 9y ago
    To those who value freedom, MacOS lacks it. All Apple has to do is release their software under the GPL or similar, but they don't. You and Apple may value technical aspects more than freedom, but not all do.
    - LeoPanthera 9y ago
      > but they don't. They do for a lot of it. Not Cocoa. Not the UI. But nearly everything else: https://opensource.apple.com https://opensource.apple.com
  - hood_syntax 9y ago
    I want freedom and access to the source code of my OS and desktop. Wish I could have that with Apple
    - troupe 9y ago
      You do have access to the source code of the underlying operating system itself with Darwin don't you?
      - stuaxo 9y ago
        But not Cocoa and the UI :/
        yellowapple 9y ago
        I'm still holding out hope that GNUStep will fix that someday.
        H1Supreme 9y ago
        Which is the good stuff. This is similar to the them open-sourcing Swift, but none of the libraries like UIKit that actually make it worth using for open source.
    - overcast 9y ago
      Please be realistic here, no one is asking for that when looking for a computer. You, and your peers are an incredibly small fraction of a percent.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        We might be a small fraction, but we are a vocal fraction. Our rage might be impotent, but it is very loud. For such a small group, we've won some large concessions. Some of them have probably benefitted you.
      - Alan_Dillman 9y ago
        They don't know that they can ask. But people —average people— do that for their food, their cars, their homes, their personal appearance. This includes clothes, hairstyles, after market pigmentations, permanent and temporary, as well as extra holes and plugs in their epidermis in all sorts of novel and creative ways. They ask for customisation on their vacations, hotel stays, upgrades on airplane tickets and car rentals. People ask for concessions on their employment contracts, seek special arrangements for schooling, loans and mortgages. Some even customise their computer hardware, slapping stickers on custom cases, adding fancy illumination, aftermarket cooling, fancier peripherals, upgrades, et cetera, ad nausea. And companies jump at the chance to chance to service these requests. But not commercial software and operating systems. They are special snowflakes apparently. I and my peers are an incredibly small fraction of a percent? 2% anyway. But sure, ok, a small group. But we're loud, and we're having it our way. We make sure people see us having it our way, so they will start asking to have it their way too. Whatever that way might be. And it's working. Which is why that "incredibly small fraction of a percent" somehow motivated Microsoft to add bash to Windows. They weren't catering to average people. Or why there is growing interest in customising Mac OS. https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/61gdup/ricing_mac_os_x/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/61gdup/ricing_mac...
        exikyut 9y ago
        Not much I can add, except to say I completely agree, and that this is incredibly well written.
    - e12e 9y ago
      I do too. But what really gets me with Apple is that they're unwilling to grant even freedom 0 - you can buy a copy of OSX - but you're not allowed to run it on non-appearance hw. So you can't legally run a gnu/Linux desktop on a lenovo laptop and run OSX in a vm. But you can run Linux and Windows on a macbook.
  - safisher 9y ago
    There's a trade-off still in that with Linux, often you have to spend time fixing things that you wouldn't accept to be broken on an OS you paid for, but at least you can often fix them. Whereas on MacOS, you're stuck with the decisions Apple made about their window and workspace management, both of which I abhor even after giving MacOS a shot for a year. Neither is right or wrong, but I feel the same surprise of GP. I don't understand how you could say "proper interface" as if there are no flaws.
    - deong 9y ago
      I had the same reaction to MacOS. It's permanently chafing me versus forcing me to fix something myself once. I don't see how that's a preferable option. That said, if I could only use one computer and OS, it would be a Mac simply because it's the best set of compromises. I can play a few games, I can run things like Lightroom and Photoshop that have no compelling (to me) open source alternative, and I can use a serviceable if clunky Unix environment for serious work. But it's worse at any specific thing I want to do. It's just better than any single alternative at doing all of them.
    - blfr 9y ago
      If you deliberately buy a computer to run Linux, as you do with macOS, there really isn't any fixing involved nowadays. It just works. You may need to disable SecureBoot.
      - dredmorbius 9y ago
        Except for that libinput bug which crippled my mouse for a year or so. This on Debian. (I'm not even going to start on SystemDestroyer.) I've been using Linux for > 20 years. It still manages to fuck up really, really badly at times. At an increasing rate. It remains my preferred OS, but the self-inflicted problems are getting quite annoying. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/06/msg00831.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/06/msg00831.html
        ernst_klim 9y ago
  - jaclaz 9y ago
    >That's because MacOS is the Unix/Linux desktop done correctly. Isn't it kinda Unix/BSD (non-Linux) desktop?
    - giancarlostoro 9y ago
      FreeBSD fork known as Darwin: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/SystemTechnology/SystemTechnology.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ma...
      - bitwize 9y ago
        It's actually a NeXTSTEP fork with FreeBSD code integrated in.
        jaclaz 9y ago
        >It's actually a NeXTSTEP fork with FreeBSD code integrated in. Sure, but NextStep itself belongs to the BSD family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_timeline.en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_timeline.en.svg Anyway, the accent in my previous post was more on the non-Linux nature of the MacOS.
        bitwize 9y ago
        Then say "Mac OS X belongs to the BSD family". Don't call it a fork of FreeBSD.
        giancarlostoro 9y ago
        Reasonably derived from FreeBSD I suppose. It's obvious to most that they made their own components on top of the work already done on FreeBSD, in some versions they've done updates to Darwin to match more current FreeBSD versions (guessing core components / kernel), not sure if they bother anymore as much though.
  - chme 9y ago
    I would be ok with MacOS if Apple wouldn't try so hard to sell me everything else from them. If they instead would push more to open standards and iteroperability, but they are busy building a prison for their customers where they can push them all their products down their throat. Microsoft is doing the same, but in my opinion not that extreme, because they aren't as successful with it as Apple is. Google and all the other big corps are doing it too to some degree and thats why I try to stay away from them as far as I can.
    - schrodinger 9y ago
      Prison?
      - dramm 9y ago
        Well a comfortably padded cell. :-) To me a MacBook Pro with productivity apps and Ubuntu VMs in Fusion for software development is a pretty nice environment.
      - KGIII 9y ago
        More like a Swedish prison, less like Holman Correctional.
    - overcast 9y ago
      That "prison" you speak of, is exactly why people buy into the Apple ecosystem.
  - emilsedgh 9y ago
    That's because MacOS is the Unix/Linux desktop advertised correctly. What I mean is: Market share of Mac is tens of times more than Linux. Not because its that much better.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      The last 90% of polish is what makes the difference however.
      - jhoechtl 9y ago
        You meant the last 10% of polish which requires 90% of effort makes the difference?
    - cholantesh 9y ago
      Yeah, seriously; I think it all really comes down to willingness/ability to learn. My grandfather came to computers very late in life and has since managed to pick up every Windows iteration since 95, Ubuntu, ChromeOS, and OS X with aplomb. He loves his iPad best, though (mainly for Skype and FaceTime). My mother, in the meanwhile, struggles to use Word.
    - markshead 9y ago
      The user experience of an Apple laptop may be 10 times better than a Linux laptop for the types of things most people want a computer to do. Consider the out of the box battery life experience for example.
    - Kadin 9y ago
      The hardware/software integration is a big part of it, it's not just the software. Linux attempts a much harder task than MacOS, in trying to be compatible with a wide variety of hardware. That it's even considered remotely comparable to a product that's sold only on a few supported platforms at a time is impressive. (In fairness, Windows manages this too, although it does it by forcing most of the work on hardware vendors and OEMs to do driver development and integration, respectively.) Although a few companies have tried over the years to do Linux preinstalled on private-label hardware, thus taking the hardware-compatibility and installation issues out of the picture, there's sort of a chicken-and-egg issue with doing it at scale. Apple has managed to always have just enough volume to compete with commodity systems (even if just barely compete, particularly on price) but present a tightly-coupled hardware/software package.
  - kelnos 9y ago
    We're a Mac shop developer-wise (I'm one of the dozen or so of us that runs Linux), and I hear no amount of grief from the Mac users for random problems with wifi, VPN, etc. They also complain of performance issues (hangs, lockups, etc.). Some of the perf problems are certainly caused by the "security" junk IT has put on the systems, which I'm lucky not to have. But overall I have fewer complaints running Linux on my dev box than other developers have with MacOS, it seems. I wouldn't put a Linux desktop in front of a non-technical user (yes, I know, people are successful at this, but...), but I still find it to be a much better developer OS than MacOS is.
    - Kadin 9y ago
      I've been a Mac user for decades and I think I'm reaching the end of the line; it's always been just enough of a better overall experience to keep me paying the "Apple tax" over Linux on commodity x86 hardware, but the gap has seemingly been narrowing each year. Sadly, too much of that narrowing is due to Apple ceding the advantage for me to be exactly happy with it (although there has been progress on the Linux front; things have come a long way, certainly). I'm still running MacOS 10.10 right now, and when something finally breaks, I don't know if I can stomach the thought of a forced upgrade to Sierra with its "System Integrity Protection". No, thanks.
      - tapoxi 9y ago
        You can disable System Integrity Protection pretty easily. I've used Linux full-time at work, and while most things are fine, VPNs, WebEx meetings, Evernote, MS Office documents, Spotify and Skype are not. Spotify and Skype at least offer Linux versions, but they are for the most part terrible and not maintained. With Windows running in a VM I could get through a workday just fine, but its an additional hassle and a good chunk of your RAM. I'm using a Mac now (on Sierra), and for the most part its a great experience. That may change as this 2013 MBP dies and I'm forced to use that awful touch bar.
        mavhc 9y ago
        Evernote, MS Office, Spotify and Skype all have web clients.
  - amelius 9y ago
    I think it's strange that there isn't any Linux distro yet that successfully mimics the good parts of the UI of OSX.
    - symlinkk 9y ago
      Elementary and Fedora come close. It's the hardware that's the stumbling block.
      - eropple 9y ago
        Elementary has a ton of hype so I tried it recently (laptop OS X, desktop Windows/Linux) and...man... Going to a well-supported desktop, and to the keyboard and the mouse I like should alleviate the hardware thing and it really doesn't. It's still GTK. And GTK just feels weird and gross regardless of hardware. As a GNOMEalike goes, Elementary seems just fine, probably a cut above (though it won't replace Mint/Cinnamon for me at the moment because I value how little Mint gets in my way). But it is still a GNOMEalike even with all its custom apps. It's really frustrating.
        LeoPanthera 9y ago
        You haven't actually said anything bad about it except "It's GNOME". Could you explain what's bad about GNOME?
        chris_wot 9y ago
        Not much nowadays, but they still sometimes just change things "just because". They still have a bug with changing the number of volume steps, took they 5 years to accept any patch and it's still inadequate. Luckily that's not frequent though.
        eropple 9y ago
        GTK (and EFL, which Elementary actually uses and was absolutely indistinguishable to me in casual use, but I know GNOME and derivatives better) feels bad and makes me sad to use it. Like...that's it. And I realize that's not a satisfying answer, and that it's super subjective, but that's pretty much it. Navigating around feels off, the way it nods to OS X but adds very obviously Windows stuff on top of it is kind of hard to deal with, it doesn't feel cohesive. It also looks pretty rough (too much unrelieved flat-panel gray) and text rendering is nowhere near as nice as OS X. My Linux Mint desktop runs Cinnamon, but it's a lot less of a pain there because the only apps I run are Atom, Chrome, and Terminator (which is not a great terminal emulator but whatever, it's fine).
  - dagenleg 9y ago
    [citation needed] I disagree with your categorical statement, it's inevitably going to start comment wars just because of the provocative phrasing.
  - Mikeb85 9y ago
    Check out the newest Fedora (Gnome Shell). IMO best desktop experience ever. Of course, for the masses the lack of MS Office and a few other commercial programs is a problem, but as far as the OS itself, the desktop, how everything functions, easily the best desktop I've ever used.
    - FrobozzElectric 9y ago
      I find Cinnamon to be quite a nice desktop experience too.
      - safisher 9y ago
        It's legitimately my favorite interface of the major OSs or the many choices of desktops on Linux. It has everything I want. And since they stopped having "hot corner" nonsense on by default, nothing I don't want gets in the way.
    - jetti 9y ago
      I installed Fedora 26 as the only OS on my laptop and I am very impressed. I don't miss Windows at all. I have played with Ubuntu in the past but Fedora blows that out of the water.
      - jhoechtl 9y ago
        Absolutely not dissing fedora at all but you might be pleased to hear that Ubuntu 17.10 will over a mostly plain gnome shell 3.26 experience
        jetti 9y ago
        If that is the case, what benefits do you see in switching? I'm genuinely curious.
        jhoechtl 9y ago
        The main benefit I see is that you will get mostly vanilla Gnome yet with a more stable (yet not as current) system underneath
  - latj 9y ago
    I used to think so too. I used ubuntu desktop and macbook for laptop for years. But every year the macbook has shifted to be more for your grandmother than me. Its always been overpriced but for the hardware you are getting now you really have to accept that you are a sucker to buy one. At an OS level everything is slightly different- different versions of tools, different packages, etc. My software is going to run on redhat or ubuntu based servers in production, so using those OS's everywhere makes life just a little bit more pleasant. And, do I even have to mention that stupid fucking strip at the top? What kind of programmer is ok with a virtual ESC key? I dont really pay attention to mac news but the last series had a huge battery problem that the company didnt seem to even bother fixing? Windows for PUBG and Overwatch. Linux for everything else. But yeah if my grandmother asked me to get her a laptop I'd probably go with a mac.
    - foxylad 9y ago
      Linux for me, Chromebooks for everyone else. Probably like many here, I have to support several family members' personal computing needs. I switched them all from Windows first to Linux, and then Chromebooks, and each time support became five times easier. With Chromebooks, the only support I have done in the last year has been getting a cloud printer working again.
      - gh02t 9y ago
        Even for me (a full time Linux guy) Chromebooks have become very attractive since they added Android app support. I can get quite a lot done on my dinky Chromebook over ssh in Termux, without even having to bother with Crouton.
  - Kadin 9y ago
    Well, it was. I think the high water mark for MacOS as a Unix-with-a-nice-UI will, in retrospect, be back around 10.8 or 10.10. The latest iterations have been stagnation in most respects, except for iOS-like functionality that's been forklifted over, and increasing lockdown that makes it hard for a user to have control over their own hardware. Oh, and broken binary compatibility with older versions of the OS (by removing ObjC GC support), which is really just nice. Every OS manufacturer has tried its hand at "convergence" across desktops and mobile. Apple seems no different. I'm not sure why, but OS vendors seem drawn to the concept like moths to a flame, and it's always a mess.
    - wtallis 9y ago
      I'd place the high water mark a bit earlier, probably around 10.6. They mostly hadn't started removing or dumbing down stuff yet: you still had Front Row, because they weren't trying to sell you Apple TV; it was new enough to have the modern Cocoa Finder but also still provided Rosetta; iOS influences weren't a problem yet; iCloud wasn't so deeply integrated and File menus still showed Save As by default; multi-monitor use hadn't yet been ruined by the new full-screen app modes; you still had real scrollbars and the OS didn't make the mistake of treating indirect touchpad scrolling the same as direct touchscreen scrolling. There's still a lot to like about newer versions, but the stuff that was removed on the way to 10.6 I was mostly glad to see go (excessive brushed metal) or at least don't miss now, while there are some things from 10.6 that are now gone and I still miss them. I don't see the removal of ObjC GC as all that bad, especially in comparison to the death of the Cocoa-Java bridge. At least the former offered a compelling migration path for actively maintained software, in the form of ARC.
    - dnautics 9y ago
      > Every OS manufacturer has tried its hand at "convergence" across desktops and mobile. Apple seems no different. I'm not sure why, but OS vendors seem drawn to the concept like moths to a flame, and it's always a mess. That is an interesting observation. Off the top of my head I can think of: MS, BeOS, MacOS, and Ubuntu.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    > Gives both power users Oh really? No package manager included (need brew for that), removal of most GNU tools, nothing open sourced about the OS, "good software" is hardly relevant when you see the breakage they cause when moving users to the newest version... Additionally the desktop style is hideous and if you don't like it, you can't change it. Nothing to do with a proper "Linux desktop". And Macs are expensive. That's not what most users want.
    - cududa 9y ago
      Given that there are more MacOS than Linux machines, I'd say that is exactly what users want: (And don't get into some "But Android is linux" nonsense)
      - jhoechtl 9y ago
        You mix marketing induced needs with rationality
      - vacri 9y ago
        With the exception of the desktop space, from tiny embedded machines to the world's top supercomputers, linux installs dwarf any other OS. If you want to compare 'macos' and 'linux' machines at that level, macos is just a blip.
      - ekianjo 9y ago
        Linux is hardly marketed by any single company with billions of dollars in cash, so I'd say the comparison is completely moot.
    - rblatz 9y ago
      GNU is Not Unix! Nor is it Linux. MacOS was a Unix, not sure if it technically still is, but if not it has Unix roots. And it is simple, the vast majority of users don't need a CLI package manager, they get the App Store and downloading from the web. If you want one there are package managers. Also Darwin is open source, it isn't developed in the open but they do release sources last time I checked.
  - justherefortart 9y ago
    It's because everyone wants to fit in. Apple is as much a style product as a functional product. It has virtually nothing to do with the underlying OS.
  - ionised 9y ago
    And yet I cannot disable mouse acceleration in my company MacBook Pro 2017 without having the sensitivity spike to insane levels.
  - kw71 9y ago
    Even when the software I use is available for Mac I would be the odd one out running it on a Mac. Looks like Autodesk has support, but Cadence supports everything but Mac. To me it looks like most of the professional software available is for some kind of artist or another. When I tried a Mac it was only useful as a terminal/browser.
- VMG 9y ago
  That is an unusual definition of "monopoly"
  - cholantesh 9y ago
    Yeah as much as I dislike Apple laptops (now), monopoly != consumers making one choice more often.
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  What to you study? (assuming you are a student because you had to "look back" to see other laptops) I imagine it is dependent on major. Go to any tech conference and it is 90% Macs as well and a good portion of the remainder is Linux. But I'm guessing other industries / fields of study are mostly Windows. The only developers I know still on Windows are either writing Windows software or using hardware that only works on Windows. And even some of them use a Windows VM on Linux or OSX. That is of course anecdotal.
  - skrebbel 9y ago
    > The only developers I know still on Windows are either writing Windows software or using hardware that only works on Windows. This varies a lot by place too. Where I live, lots of developers choose to use Windows. Fashion and momentum matters.
  - binthere 9y ago
    Depends on what you call "developers". I believe that most developers in the gaming industry still uses Windows as their platform.
    - throwaway2016a 9y ago
      I put right in my comment: > are either writing Windows software I assume most people in the game industry need their game to run on Windows or use hardware that only works with Windows (like a dev kit for a console). Unless you are talking Web and mobile games, in which case, most of the web gave devs I know use Mac and so do most of the mobile devs (thanks the the difficulty deving for iOS on Windows). But that is why I called it an "anecdote"... your milage may vary.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway2016a 9y ago
    I am legitimately curious why people down voted me... I was trying to start a conversation and asked a question of the OP I actually wanted to know the answer to. If it is because I said "any tech conference"... if so I humbly beg for your forgiveness for using an absolute when I meant to be anecdotal. I thought people understood hyperbole. In any case, it would have been more productive to post a comment... "actually my experience at tech conference has been different" rather than down vote. Personally I reserve my down votes for trolls and off topic posts, I don't even use it for people I disagree with, but to each their own. I accept your judgement.
- symlinkk 9y ago
  It's completely because of Apple's hardware design. No one else does touchpads as well as Apple and you literally interact with a touchpad every time you use the damn thing. Apple's cases and batteries and screens are also top 5 in the world as well. You can tell that this is the stuff that's holding people back from other devices because when a manufacturer actually makes a product with solid hardware - like the Surface - people started to buy them.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    They are also pretty good at integration (e.g. iOS with MaccOS) and at UI. Look at UI scaling on high dpi screens in Windows/linux and compare it to OS X. Also of course the fact that OS X gets you both big commercial software for e.g. media creation and a unix-y machine. So I wouldn't explain it with hardware alone, I think others have cought up pretty well compared to say 10 years ago.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  The question isn't perhaps what kind of computer they were using but why on earth they brought computers to a lecture hall...
deleted 9y ago
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thehardsphere 9y ago
I'm guessing in the ensuing 14 years this offering did not continue. I wouldn't know; I'm part of the generation that swore off buying software or computers at Wal-Mart when they were selling Duke Nukem 3D with the parental control option permanently turned on.
- AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
  It did continue. They're called Chromebooks now. Granted it perverted the entire idea of Linux by limiting the user's freedom to run anything but a data-harvesting web-browser, but, semantics.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    FreeBSD (as the other thread points out) brought us macOS and Linux brought us Chrome OS. Do FOSS folks lament this dramatic irony a lot?
    - liveoneggs 9y ago
      BSD people certainly do not.
    - TallGuyShort 9y ago
      I will admit to passive-aggressively refusing to help people fix their Macs and iPads, telling them that Apple makes a point of being closed and proprietary, and that if they want free tech support from me they should ask me for a software recommendation I'm willing and able to stand behind first. But... I don't really care if my contributions to open-source get used in a closed-source product. I just won't buy it because you intentionally neutered my ability to fix it myself. And I'm going to raise that point if your potential customers ask me what I think of it. But I don't feel any bitterness over it that I don't also feel for stuff that's entirely proprietary to begin with.
    - bachmeier 9y ago
      It's trivial to run Linux on a Chromebook, so I don't see much of a problem.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
I've been looking to "upgrade" my OSX laptop to Linux and on a whole have been disappointed by the hardware build quality on the Linux machines. What I really want is a thin and light unibody aluminum frame and high density screen on a Linux machine. But since I can't find that, OS X is a nice substitute. Edit: Thank you for the suggestions everyone.
- sepharoth213 9y ago
  Clevo N130BU
- batisteo 9y ago
  I've got an Asus UX305C for 1,5 years now, very nice machine.
  - Abundnce10 9y ago
    I'm assuming it didn't come with Linux installed. Which version of Linux are you running? And do any features of the laptop not working with the Linux OS?
    - CoolGuySteve 9y ago
      I have one with ubuntu 16.04. The only thing that didn't work was the volume up/down keys due to some weirdness in the Asus BIOS. I changed it to be shift + Fkeys instead of fn+FKeys in the keyboard settings. Other than that, because the Intel chipset has pretty good open source support, it's an excellent laptop.
  - blfr 9y ago
    Yes, it sounds like GP is looking for a ZenBook, UX410UA for example. https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-UX410UA/ https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-UX410UA/
  - jhx 9y ago
    Ive also been using a UX305C for a bout 2 years now also, Its a great cheap fanless macbook air clone. Been running Ubuntu Mate and out side some issues with the function keys, its worked 100%. Its pretty great for a fanless laptop thats sub $600. Its too bad you can't buy the latest model(UX330CA) right now outside of ebay. Its only available in Canada for some reason
git-pull 9y ago
Anyone else here remember LindowsOS (later changed its name to Linspire)? In the early 2000's (around the time of the article), they were trying to get point and click simplicity for installing software (which even back then was abundant in Linux). I remember a few others distros, like Mandriva (Mandrake at the time) had graphical package managers. There were others. To anyone who's curious and feels like giving old Linux distros a try, https://old-linux.com/ https://old-linux.com/ is a good resource. Unfortunately I can't find any mirrors of repos with packages that go back to 1998 and early 2000's.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  I think that I've got full CD sets for Mandrake and Red Hat 7 or so around somewhere. Or maybe partial for Mandrake, and full for Red Hat? I'd have to look around and see what I've kept, over the years. It should certainly be more than the 1-2 disks that most of those earlier distros have on that page, but only maybe 1 or 2 releases.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    Found 3 disks of Mandrake 8.1, one disk of Mandrake 9.0, and one of Slackware 11. I know that I've got a few of Red Hat 8, and at least one of 9, because I had the book "Red Hat Linux 8 for Dummies", and downloaded the extra disks from Red Hat themselves afterwards. I think that book's in my (sleeping) son's room, along with some other mid-2000s Linux disks.
- xrqvt 9y ago
  > Anyone else here remember LindowsOS... I don't just remember, I ordered the desktop! Linspire's attempt at low-cost did Linux a lot of harm. The desktop was under-powered, their software manager lacked too many apps and... it still suffered from dependency hell - leading to breakage. While it looked nice, the polish wasn't there. Eventually, I found Mepis and everything just worked but I didn't have enough knowledge & (especially) time to stick with it. It was years before I attempted to go full-time Linux again. I still did lots and lots of distro-hopping though I'm happy to report that I've been a full-time Linux user the last three years (Mint, for the curious). The entire landscape has changed enough that I have even effortlessly transitioned three users. Most users aren't heavy downloaders like me, so once they have their core apps, they're happy. It literally is click-n-play as far as usage now with the benefit of tremendous built-in hardware support when doing installs.
aabajian 9y ago
I bought SuSE Linux at Best Buy 15 years ago. This was before I had a fast-enough internet connection to download it. I remember there were a few other distros available as well.
MentallyRetired 9y ago
15 years and Linux still has barely improved the usability for the average user.
- KGIII 9y ago
  Average user of Linux, or average computer user? Specific DE that you have in mind? Those vary, a lot. I am a happy Linux user and find it very usable. It is just point and click. I find other OSes to be more difficult, but I suppose that's unfamiliarity.
- flukus 9y ago
  Considering the direction windows has gone with usability I'm quite happy with remaining stagnant.
- 88e282102ae2e5b 9y ago
  I would argue that Xubuntu is almost grandparent-ready.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Frankly Linux is grandparent ready. The problem i "power user" ready, in particular "media production power user" ready. But then that group is tribal, if not religious, that makes RMS seem atheist.
  - theandrewbailey 9y ago
    Xubuntu was mom-proof about 7 years ago. I put her on mint for a year or two, but I've had her on Xubuntu for most of the past 7 years. She's old enough to be a grandma.
burntrelish1273 9y ago
Wasn't this about the same price-point as eMachines (sans Linux)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines

68 points by dannyrosen 9y ago

Last week I was sitting in an undergraduate lecture hall with hundreds of students. I looked back at their laptops and it was a sea of Apple logos. We've traded one monopoly for another.

overcast 9y ago
That's because MacOS is the Unix/Linux desktop done correctly. Gives both power users, and my grandmother, what they want in that environment, with a proper interface, and good software.
- spodek 9y ago
  To those who value freedom, MacOS lacks it. All Apple has to do is release their software under the GPL or similar, but they don't. You and Apple may value technical aspects more than freedom, but not all do.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    > but they don't. They do for a lot of it. Not Cocoa. Not the UI. But nearly everything else: https://opensource.apple.com https://opensource.apple.com
- hood_syntax 9y ago
  I want freedom and access to the source code of my OS and desktop. Wish I could have that with Apple
  - troupe 9y ago
    You do have access to the source code of the underlying operating system itself with Darwin don't you?
    - stuaxo 9y ago
      But not Cocoa and the UI :/
      - yellowapple 9y ago
        I'm still holding out hope that GNUStep will fix that someday.
      - H1Supreme 9y ago
        Which is the good stuff. This is similar to the them open-sourcing Swift, but none of the libraries like UIKit that actually make it worth using for open source.
  - overcast 9y ago
    Please be realistic here, no one is asking for that when looking for a computer. You, and your peers are an incredibly small fraction of a percent.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      We might be a small fraction, but we are a vocal fraction. Our rage might be impotent, but it is very loud. For such a small group, we've won some large concessions. Some of them have probably benefitted you.
    - Alan_Dillman 9y ago
      They don't know that they can ask. But people —average people— do that for their food, their cars, their homes, their personal appearance. This includes clothes, hairstyles, after market pigmentations, permanent and temporary, as well as extra holes and plugs in their epidermis in all sorts of novel and creative ways. They ask for customisation on their vacations, hotel stays, upgrades on airplane tickets and car rentals. People ask for concessions on their employment contracts, seek special arrangements for schooling, loans and mortgages. Some even customise their computer hardware, slapping stickers on custom cases, adding fancy illumination, aftermarket cooling, fancier peripherals, upgrades, et cetera, ad nausea. And companies jump at the chance to chance to service these requests. But not commercial software and operating systems. They are special snowflakes apparently. I and my peers are an incredibly small fraction of a percent? 2% anyway. But sure, ok, a small group. But we're loud, and we're having it our way. We make sure people see us having it our way, so they will start asking to have it their way too. Whatever that way might be. And it's working. Which is why that "incredibly small fraction of a percent" somehow motivated Microsoft to add bash to Windows. They weren't catering to average people. Or why there is growing interest in customising Mac OS. https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/61gdup/ricing_mac_os_x/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/61gdup/ricing_mac...
      - exikyut 9y ago
        Not much I can add, except to say I completely agree, and that this is incredibly well written.
  - e12e 9y ago
    I do too. But what really gets me with Apple is that they're unwilling to grant even freedom 0 - you can buy a copy of OSX - but you're not allowed to run it on non-appearance hw. So you can't legally run a gnu/Linux desktop on a lenovo laptop and run OSX in a vm. But you can run Linux and Windows on a macbook.
- safisher 9y ago
  There's a trade-off still in that with Linux, often you have to spend time fixing things that you wouldn't accept to be broken on an OS you paid for, but at least you can often fix them. Whereas on MacOS, you're stuck with the decisions Apple made about their window and workspace management, both of which I abhor even after giving MacOS a shot for a year. Neither is right or wrong, but I feel the same surprise of GP. I don't understand how you could say "proper interface" as if there are no flaws.
  - deong 9y ago
    I had the same reaction to MacOS. It's permanently chafing me versus forcing me to fix something myself once. I don't see how that's a preferable option. That said, if I could only use one computer and OS, it would be a Mac simply because it's the best set of compromises. I can play a few games, I can run things like Lightroom and Photoshop that have no compelling (to me) open source alternative, and I can use a serviceable if clunky Unix environment for serious work. But it's worse at any specific thing I want to do. It's just better than any single alternative at doing all of them.
  - blfr 9y ago
    If you deliberately buy a computer to run Linux, as you do with macOS, there really isn't any fixing involved nowadays. It just works. You may need to disable SecureBoot.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      Except for that libinput bug which crippled my mouse for a year or so. This on Debian. (I'm not even going to start on SystemDestroyer.) I've been using Linux for > 20 years. It still manages to fuck up really, really badly at times. At an increasing rate. It remains my preferred OS, but the self-inflicted problems are getting quite annoying. https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/06/msg00831.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/06/msg00831.html
      - ernst_klim 9y ago
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >That's because MacOS is the Unix/Linux desktop done correctly. Isn't it kinda Unix/BSD (non-Linux) desktop?
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    FreeBSD fork known as Darwin: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/SystemTechnology/SystemTechnology.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ma...
    - bitwize 9y ago
      It's actually a NeXTSTEP fork with FreeBSD code integrated in.
      - jaclaz 9y ago
        >It's actually a NeXTSTEP fork with FreeBSD code integrated in. Sure, but NextStep itself belongs to the BSD family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_timeline.en.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Unix_timeline.en.svg Anyway, the accent in my previous post was more on the non-Linux nature of the MacOS.
        bitwize 9y ago
        Then say "Mac OS X belongs to the BSD family". Don't call it a fork of FreeBSD.
        giancarlostoro 9y ago
        Reasonably derived from FreeBSD I suppose. It's obvious to most that they made their own components on top of the work already done on FreeBSD, in some versions they've done updates to Darwin to match more current FreeBSD versions (guessing core components / kernel), not sure if they bother anymore as much though.
- chme 9y ago
  I would be ok with MacOS if Apple wouldn't try so hard to sell me everything else from them. If they instead would push more to open standards and iteroperability, but they are busy building a prison for their customers where they can push them all their products down their throat. Microsoft is doing the same, but in my opinion not that extreme, because they aren't as successful with it as Apple is. Google and all the other big corps are doing it too to some degree and thats why I try to stay away from them as far as I can.
  - schrodinger 9y ago
    Prison?
    - dramm 9y ago
      Well a comfortably padded cell. :-) To me a MacBook Pro with productivity apps and Ubuntu VMs in Fusion for software development is a pretty nice environment.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      More like a Swedish prison, less like Holman Correctional.
  - overcast 9y ago
    That "prison" you speak of, is exactly why people buy into the Apple ecosystem.
- emilsedgh 9y ago
  That's because MacOS is the Unix/Linux desktop advertised correctly. What I mean is: Market share of Mac is tens of times more than Linux. Not because its that much better.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    The last 90% of polish is what makes the difference however.
    - jhoechtl 9y ago
      You meant the last 10% of polish which requires 90% of effort makes the difference?
  - cholantesh 9y ago
    Yeah, seriously; I think it all really comes down to willingness/ability to learn. My grandfather came to computers very late in life and has since managed to pick up every Windows iteration since 95, Ubuntu, ChromeOS, and OS X with aplomb. He loves his iPad best, though (mainly for Skype and FaceTime). My mother, in the meanwhile, struggles to use Word.
  - markshead 9y ago
    The user experience of an Apple laptop may be 10 times better than a Linux laptop for the types of things most people want a computer to do. Consider the out of the box battery life experience for example.
  - Kadin 9y ago
    The hardware/software integration is a big part of it, it's not just the software. Linux attempts a much harder task than MacOS, in trying to be compatible with a wide variety of hardware. That it's even considered remotely comparable to a product that's sold only on a few supported platforms at a time is impressive. (In fairness, Windows manages this too, although it does it by forcing most of the work on hardware vendors and OEMs to do driver development and integration, respectively.) Although a few companies have tried over the years to do Linux preinstalled on private-label hardware, thus taking the hardware-compatibility and installation issues out of the picture, there's sort of a chicken-and-egg issue with doing it at scale. Apple has managed to always have just enough volume to compete with commodity systems (even if just barely compete, particularly on price) but present a tightly-coupled hardware/software package.
- kelnos 9y ago
  We're a Mac shop developer-wise (I'm one of the dozen or so of us that runs Linux), and I hear no amount of grief from the Mac users for random problems with wifi, VPN, etc. They also complain of performance issues (hangs, lockups, etc.). Some of the perf problems are certainly caused by the "security" junk IT has put on the systems, which I'm lucky not to have. But overall I have fewer complaints running Linux on my dev box than other developers have with MacOS, it seems. I wouldn't put a Linux desktop in front of a non-technical user (yes, I know, people are successful at this, but...), but I still find it to be a much better developer OS than MacOS is.
  - Kadin 9y ago
    I've been a Mac user for decades and I think I'm reaching the end of the line; it's always been just enough of a better overall experience to keep me paying the "Apple tax" over Linux on commodity x86 hardware, but the gap has seemingly been narrowing each year. Sadly, too much of that narrowing is due to Apple ceding the advantage for me to be exactly happy with it (although there has been progress on the Linux front; things have come a long way, certainly). I'm still running MacOS 10.10 right now, and when something finally breaks, I don't know if I can stomach the thought of a forced upgrade to Sierra with its "System Integrity Protection". No, thanks.
    - tapoxi 9y ago
      You can disable System Integrity Protection pretty easily. I've used Linux full-time at work, and while most things are fine, VPNs, WebEx meetings, Evernote, MS Office documents, Spotify and Skype are not. Spotify and Skype at least offer Linux versions, but they are for the most part terrible and not maintained. With Windows running in a VM I could get through a workday just fine, but its an additional hassle and a good chunk of your RAM. I'm using a Mac now (on Sierra), and for the most part its a great experience. That may change as this 2013 MBP dies and I'm forced to use that awful touch bar.
      - mavhc 9y ago
        Evernote, MS Office, Spotify and Skype all have web clients.
- amelius 9y ago
  I think it's strange that there isn't any Linux distro yet that successfully mimics the good parts of the UI of OSX.
  - symlinkk 9y ago
    Elementary and Fedora come close. It's the hardware that's the stumbling block.
    - eropple 9y ago
      Elementary has a ton of hype so I tried it recently (laptop OS X, desktop Windows/Linux) and...man... Going to a well-supported desktop, and to the keyboard and the mouse I like should alleviate the hardware thing and it really doesn't. It's still GTK. And GTK just feels weird and gross regardless of hardware. As a GNOMEalike goes, Elementary seems just fine, probably a cut above (though it won't replace Mint/Cinnamon for me at the moment because I value how little Mint gets in my way). But it is still a GNOMEalike even with all its custom apps. It's really frustrating.
      - LeoPanthera 9y ago
        You haven't actually said anything bad about it except "It's GNOME". Could you explain what's bad about GNOME?
        chris_wot 9y ago
        Not much nowadays, but they still sometimes just change things "just because". They still have a bug with changing the number of volume steps, took they 5 years to accept any patch and it's still inadequate. Luckily that's not frequent though.
        eropple 9y ago
        GTK (and EFL, which Elementary actually uses and was absolutely indistinguishable to me in casual use, but I know GNOME and derivatives better) feels bad and makes me sad to use it. Like...that's it. And I realize that's not a satisfying answer, and that it's super subjective, but that's pretty much it. Navigating around feels off, the way it nods to OS X but adds very obviously Windows stuff on top of it is kind of hard to deal with, it doesn't feel cohesive. It also looks pretty rough (too much unrelieved flat-panel gray) and text rendering is nowhere near as nice as OS X. My Linux Mint desktop runs Cinnamon, but it's a lot less of a pain there because the only apps I run are Atom, Chrome, and Terminator (which is not a great terminal emulator but whatever, it's fine).
- dagenleg 9y ago
  [citation needed] I disagree with your categorical statement, it's inevitably going to start comment wars just because of the provocative phrasing.
- Mikeb85 9y ago
  Check out the newest Fedora (Gnome Shell). IMO best desktop experience ever. Of course, for the masses the lack of MS Office and a few other commercial programs is a problem, but as far as the OS itself, the desktop, how everything functions, easily the best desktop I've ever used.
  - FrobozzElectric 9y ago
    I find Cinnamon to be quite a nice desktop experience too.
    - safisher 9y ago
      It's legitimately my favorite interface of the major OSs or the many choices of desktops on Linux. It has everything I want. And since they stopped having "hot corner" nonsense on by default, nothing I don't want gets in the way.
  - jetti 9y ago
    I installed Fedora 26 as the only OS on my laptop and I am very impressed. I don't miss Windows at all. I have played with Ubuntu in the past but Fedora blows that out of the water.
    - jhoechtl 9y ago
      Absolutely not dissing fedora at all but you might be pleased to hear that Ubuntu 17.10 will over a mostly plain gnome shell 3.26 experience
      - jetti 9y ago
        If that is the case, what benefits do you see in switching? I'm genuinely curious.
        jhoechtl 9y ago
        The main benefit I see is that you will get mostly vanilla Gnome yet with a more stable (yet not as current) system underneath
- latj 9y ago
  I used to think so too. I used ubuntu desktop and macbook for laptop for years. But every year the macbook has shifted to be more for your grandmother than me. Its always been overpriced but for the hardware you are getting now you really have to accept that you are a sucker to buy one. At an OS level everything is slightly different- different versions of tools, different packages, etc. My software is going to run on redhat or ubuntu based servers in production, so using those OS's everywhere makes life just a little bit more pleasant. And, do I even have to mention that stupid fucking strip at the top? What kind of programmer is ok with a virtual ESC key? I dont really pay attention to mac news but the last series had a huge battery problem that the company didnt seem to even bother fixing? Windows for PUBG and Overwatch. Linux for everything else. But yeah if my grandmother asked me to get her a laptop I'd probably go with a mac.
  - foxylad 9y ago
    Linux for me, Chromebooks for everyone else. Probably like many here, I have to support several family members' personal computing needs. I switched them all from Windows first to Linux, and then Chromebooks, and each time support became five times easier. With Chromebooks, the only support I have done in the last year has been getting a cloud printer working again.
    - gh02t 9y ago
      Even for me (a full time Linux guy) Chromebooks have become very attractive since they added Android app support. I can get quite a lot done on my dinky Chromebook over ssh in Termux, without even having to bother with Crouton.
- Kadin 9y ago
  Well, it was. I think the high water mark for MacOS as a Unix-with-a-nice-UI will, in retrospect, be back around 10.8 or 10.10. The latest iterations have been stagnation in most respects, except for iOS-like functionality that's been forklifted over, and increasing lockdown that makes it hard for a user to have control over their own hardware. Oh, and broken binary compatibility with older versions of the OS (by removing ObjC GC support), which is really just nice. Every OS manufacturer has tried its hand at "convergence" across desktops and mobile. Apple seems no different. I'm not sure why, but OS vendors seem drawn to the concept like moths to a flame, and it's always a mess.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    I'd place the high water mark a bit earlier, probably around 10.6. They mostly hadn't started removing or dumbing down stuff yet: you still had Front Row, because they weren't trying to sell you Apple TV; it was new enough to have the modern Cocoa Finder but also still provided Rosetta; iOS influences weren't a problem yet; iCloud wasn't so deeply integrated and File menus still showed Save As by default; multi-monitor use hadn't yet been ruined by the new full-screen app modes; you still had real scrollbars and the OS didn't make the mistake of treating indirect touchpad scrolling the same as direct touchscreen scrolling. There's still a lot to like about newer versions, but the stuff that was removed on the way to 10.6 I was mostly glad to see go (excessive brushed metal) or at least don't miss now, while there are some things from 10.6 that are now gone and I still miss them. I don't see the removal of ObjC GC as all that bad, especially in comparison to the death of the Cocoa-Java bridge. At least the former offered a compelling migration path for actively maintained software, in the form of ARC.
  - dnautics 9y ago
    > Every OS manufacturer has tried its hand at "convergence" across desktops and mobile. Apple seems no different. I'm not sure why, but OS vendors seem drawn to the concept like moths to a flame, and it's always a mess. That is an interesting observation. Off the top of my head I can think of: MS, BeOS, MacOS, and Ubuntu.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > Gives both power users Oh really? No package manager included (need brew for that), removal of most GNU tools, nothing open sourced about the OS, "good software" is hardly relevant when you see the breakage they cause when moving users to the newest version... Additionally the desktop style is hideous and if you don't like it, you can't change it. Nothing to do with a proper "Linux desktop". And Macs are expensive. That's not what most users want.
  - cududa 9y ago
    Given that there are more MacOS than Linux machines, I'd say that is exactly what users want: (And don't get into some "But Android is linux" nonsense)
    - jhoechtl 9y ago
      You mix marketing induced needs with rationality
    - vacri 9y ago
      With the exception of the desktop space, from tiny embedded machines to the world's top supercomputers, linux installs dwarf any other OS. If you want to compare 'macos' and 'linux' machines at that level, macos is just a blip.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      Linux is hardly marketed by any single company with billions of dollars in cash, so I'd say the comparison is completely moot.
  - rblatz 9y ago
    GNU is Not Unix! Nor is it Linux. MacOS was a Unix, not sure if it technically still is, but if not it has Unix roots. And it is simple, the vast majority of users don't need a CLI package manager, they get the App Store and downloading from the web. If you want one there are package managers. Also Darwin is open source, it isn't developed in the open but they do release sources last time I checked.
- justherefortart 9y ago
  It's because everyone wants to fit in. Apple is as much a style product as a functional product. It has virtually nothing to do with the underlying OS.
- ionised 9y ago
  And yet I cannot disable mouse acceleration in my company MacBook Pro 2017 without having the sensitivity spike to insane levels.
- kw71 9y ago
  Even when the software I use is available for Mac I would be the odd one out running it on a Mac. Looks like Autodesk has support, but Cadence supports everything but Mac. To me it looks like most of the professional software available is for some kind of artist or another. When I tried a Mac it was only useful as a terminal/browser.
VMG 9y ago
That is an unusual definition of "monopoly"
- cholantesh 9y ago
  Yeah as much as I dislike Apple laptops (now), monopoly != consumers making one choice more often.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
What to you study? (assuming you are a student because you had to "look back" to see other laptops) I imagine it is dependent on major. Go to any tech conference and it is 90% Macs as well and a good portion of the remainder is Linux. But I'm guessing other industries / fields of study are mostly Windows. The only developers I know still on Windows are either writing Windows software or using hardware that only works on Windows. And even some of them use a Windows VM on Linux or OSX. That is of course anecdotal.
- skrebbel 9y ago
  > The only developers I know still on Windows are either writing Windows software or using hardware that only works on Windows. This varies a lot by place too. Where I live, lots of developers choose to use Windows. Fashion and momentum matters.
- binthere 9y ago
  Depends on what you call "developers". I believe that most developers in the gaming industry still uses Windows as their platform.
  - throwaway2016a 9y ago
    I put right in my comment: > are either writing Windows software I assume most people in the game industry need their game to run on Windows or use hardware that only works with Windows (like a dev kit for a console). Unless you are talking Web and mobile games, in which case, most of the web gave devs I know use Mac and so do most of the mobile devs (thanks the the difficulty deving for iOS on Windows). But that is why I called it an "anecdote"... your milage may vary.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway2016a 9y ago
  I am legitimately curious why people down voted me... I was trying to start a conversation and asked a question of the OP I actually wanted to know the answer to. If it is because I said "any tech conference"... if so I humbly beg for your forgiveness for using an absolute when I meant to be anecdotal. I thought people understood hyperbole. In any case, it would have been more productive to post a comment... "actually my experience at tech conference has been different" rather than down vote. Personally I reserve my down votes for trolls and off topic posts, I don't even use it for people I disagree with, but to each their own. I accept your judgement.
symlinkk 9y ago
It's completely because of Apple's hardware design. No one else does touchpads as well as Apple and you literally interact with a touchpad every time you use the damn thing. Apple's cases and batteries and screens are also top 5 in the world as well. You can tell that this is the stuff that's holding people back from other devices because when a manufacturer actually makes a product with solid hardware - like the Surface - people started to buy them.
- alkonaut 9y ago
  They are also pretty good at integration (e.g. iOS with MaccOS) and at UI. Look at UI scaling on high dpi screens in Windows/linux and compare it to OS X. Also of course the fact that OS X gets you both big commercial software for e.g. media creation and a unix-y machine. So I wouldn't explain it with hardware alone, I think others have cought up pretty well compared to say 10 years ago.
alkonaut 9y ago
The question isn't perhaps what kind of computer they were using but why on earth they brought computers to a lecture hall...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

thehardsphere 9y ago

I'm guessing in the ensuing 14 years this offering did not continue. I wouldn't know; I'm part of the generation that swore off buying software or computers at Wal-Mart when they were selling Duke Nukem 3D with the parental control option permanently turned on.

AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
It did continue. They're called Chromebooks now. Granted it perverted the entire idea of Linux by limiting the user's freedom to run anything but a data-harvesting web-browser, but, semantics.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  FreeBSD (as the other thread points out) brought us macOS and Linux brought us Chrome OS. Do FOSS folks lament this dramatic irony a lot?
  - liveoneggs 9y ago
    BSD people certainly do not.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    I will admit to passive-aggressively refusing to help people fix their Macs and iPads, telling them that Apple makes a point of being closed and proprietary, and that if they want free tech support from me they should ask me for a software recommendation I'm willing and able to stand behind first. But... I don't really care if my contributions to open-source get used in a closed-source product. I just won't buy it because you intentionally neutered my ability to fix it myself. And I'm going to raise that point if your potential customers ask me what I think of it. But I don't feel any bitterness over it that I don't also feel for stuff that's entirely proprietary to begin with.
  - bachmeier 9y ago
    It's trivial to run Linux on a Chromebook, so I don't see much of a problem.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

I've been looking to "upgrade" my OSX laptop to Linux and on a whole have been disappointed by the hardware build quality on the Linux machines. What I really want is a thin and light unibody aluminum frame and high density screen on a Linux machine. But since I can't find that, OS X is a nice substitute. Edit: Thank you for the suggestions everyone.

sepharoth213 9y ago
Clevo N130BU
batisteo 9y ago
I've got an Asus UX305C for 1,5 years now, very nice machine.
- Abundnce10 9y ago
  I'm assuming it didn't come with Linux installed. Which version of Linux are you running? And do any features of the laptop not working with the Linux OS?
  - CoolGuySteve 9y ago
    I have one with ubuntu 16.04. The only thing that didn't work was the volume up/down keys due to some weirdness in the Asus BIOS. I changed it to be shift + Fkeys instead of fn+FKeys in the keyboard settings. Other than that, because the Intel chipset has pretty good open source support, it's an excellent laptop.
- blfr 9y ago
  Yes, it sounds like GP is looking for a ZenBook, UX410UA for example. https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-UX410UA/ https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ASUS-ZenBook-UX410UA/
- jhx 9y ago
  Ive also been using a UX305C for a bout 2 years now also, Its a great cheap fanless macbook air clone. Been running Ubuntu Mate and out side some issues with the function keys, its worked 100%. Its pretty great for a fanless laptop thats sub $600. Its too bad you can't buy the latest model(UX330CA) right now outside of ebay. Its only available in Canada for some reason

git-pull 9y ago

Anyone else here remember LindowsOS (later changed its name to Linspire)? In the early 2000's (around the time of the article), they were trying to get point and click simplicity for installing software (which even back then was abundant in Linux). I remember a few others distros, like Mandriva (Mandrake at the time) had graphical package managers. There were others. To anyone who's curious and feels like giving old Linux distros a try, https://old-linux.com/ https://old-linux.com/ is a good resource. Unfortunately I can't find any mirrors of repos with packages that go back to 1998 and early 2000's.

khedoros1 9y ago
I think that I've got full CD sets for Mandrake and Red Hat 7 or so around somewhere. Or maybe partial for Mandrake, and full for Red Hat? I'd have to look around and see what I've kept, over the years. It should certainly be more than the 1-2 disks that most of those earlier distros have on that page, but only maybe 1 or 2 releases.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Found 3 disks of Mandrake 8.1, one disk of Mandrake 9.0, and one of Slackware 11. I know that I've got a few of Red Hat 8, and at least one of 9, because I had the book "Red Hat Linux 8 for Dummies", and downloaded the extra disks from Red Hat themselves afterwards. I think that book's in my (sleeping) son's room, along with some other mid-2000s Linux disks.
xrqvt 9y ago
> Anyone else here remember LindowsOS... I don't just remember, I ordered the desktop! Linspire's attempt at low-cost did Linux a lot of harm. The desktop was under-powered, their software manager lacked too many apps and... it still suffered from dependency hell - leading to breakage. While it looked nice, the polish wasn't there. Eventually, I found Mepis and everything just worked but I didn't have enough knowledge & (especially) time to stick with it. It was years before I attempted to go full-time Linux again. I still did lots and lots of distro-hopping though I'm happy to report that I've been a full-time Linux user the last three years (Mint, for the curious). The entire landscape has changed enough that I have even effortlessly transitioned three users. Most users aren't heavy downloaders like me, so once they have their core apps, they're happy. It literally is click-n-play as far as usage now with the benefit of tremendous built-in hardware support when doing installs.

aabajian 9y ago

I bought SuSE Linux at Best Buy 15 years ago. This was before I had a fast-enough internet connection to download it. I remember there were a few other distros available as well.

MentallyRetired 9y ago

15 years and Linux still has barely improved the usability for the average user.

KGIII 9y ago
Average user of Linux, or average computer user? Specific DE that you have in mind? Those vary, a lot. I am a happy Linux user and find it very usable. It is just point and click. I find other OSes to be more difficult, but I suppose that's unfamiliarity.
flukus 9y ago
Considering the direction windows has gone with usability I'm quite happy with remaining stagnant.
88e282102ae2e5b 9y ago
I would argue that Xubuntu is almost grandparent-ready.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Frankly Linux is grandparent ready. The problem i "power user" ready, in particular "media production power user" ready. But then that group is tribal, if not religious, that makes RMS seem atheist.
- theandrewbailey 9y ago
  Xubuntu was mom-proof about 7 years ago. I put her on mint for a year or two, but I've had her on Xubuntu for most of the past 7 years. She's old enough to be a grandma.

burntrelish1273 9y ago

Wasn't this about the same price-point as eMachines (sans Linux)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMachines