[Tfug] 2 weeks of Hackintosh fun..

[Jeremy D Rogers]

Hi Bowie,
I've agreed with a surprisingly large amount of what you have said lately.
Especially about goose poo, having grown up in MI and no being back in the
midwest.  And I actually have been pretty interested in OSX for a while now,
so I enjoy the comments and am glad to have you share your experiences. I
have been thinking for some time about going with a Mac for my wife next
time around (pay the price for the real hardware, even).

But what I think you are missing is what linux is to many of us. I honestly
couldn't care less if linux desktop never becomes mainstream (as long as it
gets enough attention that drivers and such work). As I get older and more
consumed by things other than linux, I have sadly become more and more a
'user' rather than a tinkerer. I have less time to trouble shoot oddities,
so I really want something to just work. However, that said, I still like to
to be able to lift the hood and tweek.

What I meen is, I agree that gnome and kde try too much to be like windows,
which is part of why I mostly use fluxbox and keep a close eye on E17.
There's something quite satisfying about  having so many choices in desktops
all within the same OS and being able to switch and try each out whenever I
feel like it.

It's probably the same reason I own a soldering iron. There's really no
reason for me to spend my time fixing a broken $2 fan, or spend hundreds of
hours building a telescope from scratch that has the performance of
something I could buy for less than $100 at walmart. But the reason I do it
is because the process fun and educational. Sometimes it's more about the
journey, not the desitination. But for my wife it's the destination (at
least with computers), so I may well buy her a mac or try out the
hackintosh. I continue to enjoy your thoughts and experiences on that.
Cheers,
JDR


--
Jeremy D. Rogers, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Biomedical Engineering
Northwestern University


On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 2:51 PM, Bowie J. Poag <bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> Well, it's been two weeks now since I gave up my Linux desktop in favor of
> an Darwin/x86 OS X "Hackintosh" desktop.
>
> I'm not looking back.
>
> I've got some sobering news for you guys... I really think we're entering a
> post-Linux sort of era, if not already there.. Having enjoyed 2 weeks of a
> consistent, elegant, functional, stable, efficient Unix desktop, there's
> really nothing attractive left to draw me back to Linux as a day-to-day
> environment. I'm sure Linux will always occupy a strong position
> server-wise, but as a desktop environment, the game's over.  Even after 10
> years going, the Linux community has failed to deliver a desktop with the
> attributes I listed above..That's about has frank and as honest as I can be
> with it.
>
> Call me smug, but the thing I've always warned and yapped incessantly about
> is now the proverbial writing on the wall. If the primary development focus
> of a desktop project is to do nothing more than try and mimic an existing
> design, you'll resign yourself to perpetual 2nd place flea market knock-off
> status. Both KDE and GNOME are absolutely consumed with this approach, and
> it's only a matter of time before the end user realizes both projects have
> only succeeded at perpetually failing to deliver. If you're a hobbyist,
> that's fine, enjoy it.. But as a mainstream desktop, when it comes to Linux
> it just ain't gonna happen, i'm afraid.
>
> Cheers,
> Bowie
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