What's with Ubuntu, is it an viable option?

piquant · #1 January 24th, 2009, 07:49 PM

I'd love to hear from anyone who has installed Ubuntu, and has formed an opinion of its worth compared to Mac OS X.

**Giaguara** · #2 January 24th, 2009, 08:41 PM

Well... they're different. For a peecee my choice would be Ubuntu for its userfriendliness nad still being *nix. For a Mac it would be Mac OS X and for the same reasons.
Worthiness.. depends a lot on what you need to do, what you want to do and how. The best way to find out is try yourself - install Fusion, Parallels or VirtualBox and install Ubuntu in it, and see how it feels to use, and try to do what you need to do with it.

piquant · #3 January 25th, 2009, 10:48 AM

Thank you for responding so fast. Having found someone who can really help, let me flesh out my dilemma. I've never had any experience with a PC, nor do I yearn to do so now. My current machine is the G3 iBook 600 and I don't want to spend $2000+ for another Mac. When I read about Ubuntu, I wondered if a much more reasonably priced PC running Ubuntu would fit the bill for me. The article i read made it sound like this OS is not unlike OS X including Apple Mail.
Pairing an email program that I know with Firefox really takes care of all my needs.

nixgeek · #4 January 25th, 2009, 10:53 AM

I use Ubuntu on a daily basis as my main OS on my work laptop. My kids run it on their PC and manage just fine. The only issues they ever encounter are probably issues they wouldn't be able to solve on Windows or OS X either. IMO, Ubuntu really has come along in such a short amount of time that it's a viable alternative. Mind you, if you have older Windows games and such you MIGHT possible be able to run them using WINE, but your mileage may vary. I've had some games for the kids that wouldn't run properly on WINE, though others have been successful.

But for everyday use (Internet, e-mail, chat, IM, document creation, etc.), it's pretty much good to go.

I've run Ubuntu on my iMac G5 as well, and though it runs great and I can manage with it, there are still some things missing that don't allow for a complete experience on the web (Adobe Flash comes to mind). There is an open source implementation of Flash called Gnash, but it's still not quite there yet.

piquant · #5 January 25th, 2009, 11:12 AM

It seems to me that the lack of Adobe Flash is a serious defect, but leaving that aside, I'm trying to determine how much of a trauma Ubuntu would be for a Mac lover with absolutely no PC experience?

nixgeek · #6 January 25th, 2009, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by piquant

It seems to me that the lack of Adobe Flash is a serious defect, but leaving that aside, I'm trying to determine how much of a trauma Ubuntu would be for a Mac lover with absolutely no PC experience?

Let me clarify. The lack of Adobe Flash is only on the PowerPC port of Ubuntu (or any other GNU/Linux distribution ported to PowerPC for that matter). All x86 versions of GNU/Linux can run Adobe Flash. There is a GNU/Linux version of Adobe Flash available on Adobe's site and in each distribution's respective repositories. For 64-bit x86, there is an alpha of Flash Player 10 that runs natively on x86_64. I've used it and I'm quite surprised at how well it runs even though it is alpha software.

As for the experience when coming from the Mac, that's subjective. There have been people that have tried it and enjoyed the experience, while there are others that find the desktop environments available in GNU/Linux to be very lacking compared to OS X's Finder. It all depends on your perception.

piquant · #7 January 25th, 2009, 11:31 AM

This is not sarcasm, I'm being sincere. I thank you for providing me with a valuable insight, which is to say: I better not mess around with Ubuntu. The reality is, I didn't understand a word of your first paragraph. Happily I fathomed the second. I think I'd better stay with Apple.

nixgeek · #8 January 25th, 2009, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by piquant

This is not sarcasm, I'm being sincere. I thank you for providing me with a valuable insight, which is to say: I better not mess around with Ubuntu. The reality is, I didn't understand a word of your first paragraph. Happily I fathomed the second. I think I'd better stay with Apple.

I didn't take it as sarcasm, honestly. I looked back at my post and I realized that I wasn't specific enough. Installation for Ubuntu on x86 is not much different than installing Windows XP, IMO.

Incidentally, you can use the stock x86 or AMD64 versions of Ubuntu on the Intel Macs without too much work.

But fair enough, you've made your decision.

The Following User Says Thank You to Giaguara For This Useful Post:
piquant (January 25th, 2009)

The Following User Says Thank You to nixgeek For This Useful Post:
piquant (January 25th, 2009)