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"One small step for man, one quantum leap for mankind" N. Armstrong
Indeed it is true. This year is the 40th anniversary of Armstrong's and Aldrin's landing on the moon and I wanted to celebrate that event (even if a bit late), with this famous quote as an overture to this article. This is the first piece of text that I write regarding the Mac OS operating system. As visitors of my website you might have guessed, from a previous post, that I have switched from Linux to Mac OS X. I have been using a MacBook Pro for a couple of weeks now, and I come up with some comments on it.
First of all, I would like to spend few words on the reason behind this move. The main driver of this choice was that, I have been using KDE 4 on Kubuntu since the birth of this version of this famouse desktop environment. I have always been upgrading it to newer versions. It was nice, but not light enough. The desktop in itself was quite heavy and it consumes too much cpu cycles. The notebook I have been running Linux on has some heating problems (that got even worse with the summer temperatures and with an upgrade of the HD), and KDE contributed to make them worse. At the end, it was quite impossible to use it in a productive way, since it was too slow.
Another reason was that, I have noticed that I had to re-install the system many times in a year. It might seem contraddiction. Normally Linux is known for the absence of need of reinstalling it, and Kubuntu (the distro I was using), also supports a cool update and upgrade service which, normally, does not require you to reinstall the system from scratch. But, as I told you, I have been using KDE 4 since it's birth, and since it's birth it was not included in Kubuntu's repositories. Therefore I have added custom repositories and also made some custom fixes and modification to some system files (from time to time there was the need to work under the hood to make it work). As a matter of fact, each 6/8 months in the last two years I have been installing a new version of Kubuntu (as soon as they were released), since the automatic installer failed to completely upgrade the system. Each time I have been reinstalling the distro I also needed, afterwards, to reinstall some software that was necessary for me, software that was not included in official Kubuntu repositories (again!!!). What's the meaning of this? Two/three days of downloading, installing, troubleshooting, testing and fixing things on the notebook: two/three days not working productively! Excuse me if I use this jargon but... at the end, it was really pissing me off!
So I have made up my mind. I wanted to switch to a more stable system, a system that allows me to do what I want (also going under the hood if I wish). Having already had an experience with Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, I have decided to go for Mac OS X, basically because it is a Unix operating system. I think that moving from Linux to Mac OS is probably less burdensome that moving from Windows to Mac OS. Mac OS is BSD based, therefore it has a Unix hearth pumping, and skilled Linux users might take advantages of it. Moreover, Mac OS X (i am using Leopard) has a great user experience. The 3D interface is really amazing: it is really interactive and there seems to be no time lags after users' inputs. From time to time it happens that the system gets busy for a while, but it does not freeze for so much time (and so often) as it commonly happens in Windows and sometimes in Linux. Of course it is not perfect. From time to time it happens that some software crashes (but honestly speaking I have to say that the most fragile one, among all the others I am using, is Microsoft Word, the second is R, the third is LyX), but in general, it is really satisfactory.
Of course, all these are personal opinions and are the results of a personal experience. It does not mean that what I think about all the systems that I have mentioned in this text it is gospel truth, it is just an opinion and you are free to take into consideration or not.
In forthcoming posts in this section of my blog I wish to write articles that can help new users that move from Linux to Mac OS, as I did. I wish also to write articles containing possible solutions to common problems that I have found in my daily working experience with the Mac. They might be useful for someone as well. So... stay tuned...
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