OS X vs. desktop Linux

[richard.pieri-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Richard Pieri)]

On Jun 20, 2009, at 9:30 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> What type of admin work do you do on your Linux desktop machines  
> that you find is not necessary on an OS X machine? Or is it more  
> that the OS X machine comes loaded with the system tools and  
> configuration that you find useful out-of-the-box, while the Linux  
> system requires more customization effort?

APM is one.  APM has always been more "miss" than "hit" on notebooks.   
Four of my six Linux notebooks had a habit of just locking up out of  
the blue, no reason, no kernel panic, nothing.  Those problems  
disappeared when I disabled APM in the BIOSes.  Killing APM goes a  
long way towards negating the point of notebooks.

Another is support for hardware that isn't in the mainline kernel or  
part of a packaged distribution.  Both WinBooks required ALSA to get  
sound working and at the time ALSA was not part of any distribution.   
Whenever I did a kernel upgrade I also had to compile ALSA by hand.

There really isn't one big thing; it's a lot of little things like  
these that can be a real PITA with Linux that aren't an issue with OS X.

> Does OS X permit you to do things you can't do with Linux? What  
> operations do you find are either impossible or less efficient with  
> Linux?


There is little different at the shell level.  One is GNU syntax, the  
other is BSD syntax.  That's nothing.  At the desktop level it is,  
again, the collection of little things.  A consistent menu bar.   
Applications that act like they belong together.  Selecting network  
configurations from a simple menu.  Lots of little things like these.

The only things I've run into as far as can't/impossible are vendor  
related.  For example, there is no Linux version of Microsoft Office.   
Good as OpenOffice is there are still things that don't work the same  
and probably never will.

--Rich P.