DDirk
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Authored by DDirk on Dec 16, 2013 12:30:09 GMT
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meta-guest
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Authored by meta-guest on Dec 20, 2013 8:22:07 GMT
One of the many hats I wear is 'computer repair specialist' In that role I deal with a lot of different hardware. 5 years ago there were still some good laptop builds that had no problem running the mainstream distros with full support. These days the windows compatible laptop build quality is generally terrible and that makes the OS choice rather moot. It really doesn't matter which OS one runs on the hardware the user experience is going to be poor.
If the desire is to run FOSS on good hardware, Apple is kind of hard to beat on build quality alone. Using Bootcamp and a linux distro on Apple hardware is just as viable as running it on commodity hardware.
If FOSS purism is not a mandate then the situation with Apple is even better. OSX is a very good OS and though I don't like what happened with 10.7(Lion) and 10.8(Mountain Lion) in my opinion the User Experience changes they made are terrible(I still run 10.6 - Snow Leopard). 10.9 (Mavericks) looks quite good. The reason I say it is better is that with a modest investment in VMWare (and there are F/OSS solutions that are comparable) Linux can be run as a guest OS without any difficulty. I have been literally doing this for 7 years. It is not uncommon for me to be running apps in OSX, WinXP, and Ubuntu all at the same time, and slinging data between those OS environments *almost* seamlessly... all on a 2010 iMac.
There is no question that a dedicated haxor could make Linux the host operating system on commodity hardware and get this same flexibility, but coming at the problems from OSX makes the setup and maintenance of the Host OS a lot easier and more reliable.
Just for the record, I'm not a fanboi.... I am a pragmatist. I prefer to avoid hardware problems that come from commodity hardware/ build-quality issues, and focus my efforts on what I have a computer for: communications and data processing with any software tool I can get my paws on no matter what OS it prefers to run on.
Some might argue that I could kit-bash a commodity PC for half the price and get twice the performance.... What I think they fail to realize is that they spend twice as much time as I do dealing with fit and finish issues. I believe that the reason they don't see that is they have never used Apple hardware before, or they are dealing with a undeclared personal mandate that prohibits them from exploring ALL of the possible solutions to the Grand Problem, that is, in my opinion, completing the task at hand.
--Metaforest
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Authored by Bill R on Dec 23, 2013 1:20:22 GMT
I've done all of the above over the years and usually have or support a number of Windows, Mac, and Linux builds. What I find is if you are not careful, many of the issues mentioned can happen on whatever hardware you use. Of the three platforms, Windows is still by far the most fragile although I've gotten v7 to go for two years before rot sets in. Mac, I've had for longer but if you start installing non-Mac apps from source or via ports collections, need to be careful. My wife had a Macbook that the OS (last update Slow Leopard) out lived the hardware but extenuating circumstances called children. She never installed much on it other than updates so would have went longer if not for a three year old.
For me, I've used Linux in some form on my machines since late 90s on a variety hardware, commodity and otherwise. What I find, is when I am looking to upgrade I do my research looking for motherboard and components that work well with Linux. I've also found a few brands that behave well and stick with those. I've been hacking hardware since the TRS-80 days so simple enough to pull motherboard, power supply, and hard drive to swap out. Of course this is more oriented towards Desktop hardware but still prefer a desktop for a production machine.
For portability, give me a pad that I can sync with for note taking. Laptops in general, unless known to work Linux have a variety of results because of specialized hardware. Pad of course, no flexibility at all but they are light. Have not tried installing Linux on an ultra-light laptop and have not touched cloudbooks.
Plus, looking at the old crufty case, no one guesses what is inside. I don't do a lot of graphics apps so built in video good enough. I've also had a version upgrade fail, leaving me at a safe mode shell prompt but managed to recover with shell commands. Maybe not impossible with Windows or OS X but easier to reinstall from scratch.
I will say, thumbs up for virtualization. At work, we use VMWare ESX for servers. On desktop, I use Workstation for compatibility. However, can't beat apps like Virtual Box for the price. At home, I have KVM set up with Virtlib and all works well for Linux and Windows images.
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