Linux vs Mac

Why is it people think linux is better than mac?

Simple… most of them have never used a Mac.

Why would anyone think that an OS with severely limited application availability, hardware compatibility and virtually no support outside the open source "community" and that requires the user to have far more extensive knowledge of computers in general than is posessed by the typical user would be "better" than something like MacOS? Seems obvious to me. It's cheap and allows you membership in a very small "club" with an extremly high "geek factor" so you can justify a huge attitude....:)

One question that I have always had tho...isn't it odd that there has never been any version of VPC or something like BootCamp that would allow windoze apps to run on linux boxes?

IIRC, PC users have been skeptical in switching to Mac because of "limited application availability and hardware compatibility."

Linux boxes have been able to dual boot with Windows and a dozen other operating systems for almost as long as Linux has been around (circa 1991.) Furthermore, VMWare has been available on Linux for longer than I can remember, allowing Windows (and a dozen other OSes) to run on a virtual system within the Linux OS.

Linux also has the WINE project which is an implemenation of the Windows API allowing Windows programs to run natively (ie: no Windows OS or Virtual Machine required) on a Linux system.

There's also Xen which allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single system.

To the original poster - that's a very complicated argument not worth having. Your friends like Linux, you like Mac, just leave it at that.

Ok,ok....I get it....;)

One question that I have always had tho...isn't it
odd that there has never been any version of VPC or
something like BootCamp that would allow windoze apps
to run on linux boxes?

There are many programs that allow running Windows apps and even Windows directly on linux, but unless you use linux, you would not know about them. There is Wine, Win4Lin, and Microsoft Virtual PC which I use to run both Windows and linux on my Mac G5. I find it rather boring, all these arguments about whose dad can beat up whose dad.
The real difference betwen linux and BSD is quite small and most of the free apps for OS-X are actually GNU-based open-source apps written by linux users. BTW, linux is only the kernel. Most of the programs on linux are identical to the ones Mac uses. GNU open-source apps.
When you look at the machine code, there is virtually no difference between any of the operating systems.
For those who use OS-X directly on their Macs the difference between it and linux is very small. The Mac GUI is the same X11 found in UNIX and linux. If you have never taken full advantage of OS-X in a terminal window, then you really are not a Mac OS-X user. If you have never written and compiled code on your Mac in a terminal you are missing most of the fun. Many Mac users are afraid of seeing a command prompt. If you have never heard of grep, you don't know your Mac at all. All of those powerful comands came from UNIX, as did linux, sort of 🙂
When I am working on code on my Mac, sometimes I forget it's not linux.
People like different operating systems for the same reason they like different kinds of cars. I use windows, Mac, linux and have used BSD, OS/2 and BeOS. I liked them all. Learning is what it's all about. Exploring new things. But then, programming is my business. Skiing is my fun.


Dual G5 and MacBookPro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Why is it people think linux is better than mac?

On the other hand, why is it people think mac is better than linux?
Perhaps it is because they have never used linux.
I use linux and I don't think it's better than mac. It's just a bit different. But if you have a customer who uses linux, you better know it cold.