Re: [Fsfe-uk] An ignorant question?

[Chris Croughton]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 08:08:51PM +0100, ian wrote:

> That's an interesting point. "Going Linux" seems to be a lot more
> emotive than being an established Mac user.

The keywords are 'going' versus 'established'.

> The only real rationale for that is fear of change. The Mac is
> familiar (ok reputation for user-friendly etc) but one set of
> disadvantages is pretty much the same ie lack of certain specialist
> apps.

But the availability of certain other specialised apps, and
compatibility with other people.  For instance, I have a friend who is a
freelance technical author.  Although she prefers *ix (and is glad that
MacOS-X is now based on *ix) she has to use certain apps only available
on a Mac because that's what her clients demand.  It's all very well to
say "don't take those clients", but in the current job market she either
does the work the way they want or she starves.

> Another - proprietary hardware and software expense and tie in is not a
> disadvantage with GNU/Linux. Maybe we should be questioning why the Mac
> is catered for eg for cable ISP connection etc porting apps etc and not
> other systems given that rumour has it that there are now close to as
> many people using desktop GNU/Linux as Mac.

Because the Mac is a single system which is always configured the same
way.  GNU/Linux isn't, there are at least 6 different ways to set up
networking on GNU/Linux ranging from editing ASCII files (in at least
three different places depending on distro, and sometimes changing from
one distro release to the next) to CLI, CUI and GUI tools.  Some ISPs
have had instructions for 'Unix' which amount to "This is how we did it
on SuSE v5 (or Solaris 6 or whatever), for anything else you're on your
own".  Not to mention the differences between IpChains, IpTables etc.
It's not a case of there being <n> "desktop GNU/Linux users", all
looking exactly alike, there are more probably around sqrt(<n>)
different systems all sharing a common set of kernels and utilities but
actually configured differently.

I've found that even with 'doze, it's not "We support all Windoze
systems" but "We support the latest few Windoze variants, anything else
we might be able to help if it's similar enough".  With the Mac you only
have to support two or three versions...

Chris C