anyone switch fully from mac os x to ubuntu?

[tiiim]

Hello

Ive been on and off Linux for years with many dual boot efforts and in some case sole OS. However from Windows to Linux this was a lot easier. In the last few years Ive been a OS X user but also have a liken to Linux and i like the principles and philosophy behind it and in the end it is the future of computing as we know it.

I was wondering has anyone here 100% switch over to Linux from OS X. Im currently running it in a VM but considering dual booting (however VM is working fine at present).

If so what are your experiences and difficulties? I understand Mac hardware is prob not the best but getting "cheap" hw at present is not an option.

Apple's main app is the iLife suit, is there any good equivalents i know its a tough software to beat.

But anyway I would be interested in hearing from any fellow mac users who have switched or in the process? Or even those who are simply dual booting.:D

Thanks in advance.

[Romu]

I did exactly the opposite. I used Ubuntu exclusively on my Macbook Pro 2G (Core 2 Duo + ATI) for about 2,5 years, and I've recently re-installed the Mac with dual boot.

I was bored to fight with my Mac every time because of non working features. So I keep Ubuntu because I like it and want to keep an eye on its evolution, but OSX is definitely better if you want a plain working computer.

[tiiim]

Thank you for response yeah that the only prob with mac hardware is there is a lot of fighting and usually when its in a good working condition, Apple then go ahead and release new hardware. Im very happy with the VM way as everything works fine and it flies due to Linux very low memory requirements so running at full screen feels like a native OS.

[N_Nick]

Same here. I havent used Windows for a couple of years now but OSX just works. ;)

I like linux though so i made a fresh installation of Mint today on my Macbook Pro and so far everything is perfect. I think i ll stick with Linux for a couple of weeks and see what happens :)

[cubeist]

I did several years ago, and I'll never go back. The price premium for apple hardware does not justify the Mac OS.. or vice versa. Plus, you can't beat open source for customization.

edit in red

[N_Nick]

I did several years ago, and I'll never go back. The price premium for apple hardware does not justify the OS.. or vice versa. Plus, you can't beat open source for customization.

Correct me if i am wrong, but you are saying that you would buy Apple hardware but use Linux instead of OSX ?

Just food for thought

[cubeist]

Correct me if i am wrong, but you are saying that you would buy Apple hardware but use Linux instead of OSX ?

Just food for thought

Yikes, no, I think apple hardware is way overrated/overpriced.. I buy pc hardware and run linux on that.

[mkvnmtr]

I have a ppc mac I bought new in 2004. I liked osx 10,3,9 but didn't like the upgrade. I switched to Ubuntu and keep a 6 Gb mac partition to play one game about once every two weeks. In Ubuntu I can do stuff I could never do in osx unless I paid a lot for software or looked for torrents. If it wasn't for that one game I would never boot mac. I would keep it just like a windows partition on another unit I own simply because they are paid for.

[hictio]

I have a couple of PPC boxes with Tiger on them.
I'm planning on getting a 12" PowerBook to test a bit with Ubuntu, FreeBSD & OpenBSD; but, to be honest I'm not that confident that either of them will be a replacement for Os X on that particular box (perhaps on a Mactel things hardwarewise are different?)

[kgarbutt]

At work I have a iMac G4 running tiger. A while ago, I created a dual-boot with ubuntu. I perfer the ubuntu side but because it is an iMac G4 running ubuntu, there isn't a Citrix ICA client that I can use which I need for work. The trouble is is that there is a client for the Mac, but it expects to see the Mac OS & not linux. I can't run the linux version because it doesn't know what to do with the Mac firmware. I have the same problem with Skype too. So for the time being I am still tied to my mac at work.

As for my home computers, I have two labtops running ubuntu.

Ken

[cyberdork33]

I am quite sure if you did some looking around, you would find several people that have completely switched to using Ubuntu. In fact, you will likely find several people that buy Apple hardware to only run Ubuntu....

Personally, I do not see the point in having a Mac if you do not want to use OS X. You could easily sell your Mac for a good price on the secondary market and buy some compatible PC hardware.

There are some apps that you can try that are like iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie etc. (I don't know of anything like Garageband...)

Kino is similar to iMovie
I like picasa in place of iPhoto (in fact it is also available for OS X, so it is cross-platform), but there are other photo managers too)
There are several music library apps. Just have a look around as several people have asked these questions.

[N_Nick]

Personally, I do not see the point in having a Mac if you do not want to use OS X.

That is the reason i asked if anyone buys Apple hardware and runs Ubuntu on it. Doesn't that beat the whole purpose of "both hardware and software from the same vendor"?

I have to say Apple is doing a great job with its computers AND the OSX. The only drawback in my opinion is the price. But i have to agree with cubeist nothing beats open source on customization.

[bigfefan]

I've done just two days ago!

ilife can't be beat... openoffice 3 comes pretty close to iwork though.

it was wicked easy. I gave hardy the whole hard drive and in half an hour it was done. then I looked around for apps I liked. give wine a go. It's in the add/remove thingy. it only works for intel macs, though.

[jamesey]

I am quite sure if you did some looking around, you would find several people that have completely switched to using Ubuntu. In fact, you will likely find several people that buy Apple hardware to only run Ubuntu....

Personally, I do not see the point in having a Mac if you do not want to use OS X.

I bought a brand new 20" iMac this weekend. I had no intention of running MacOS. I had MacOS running for 30 minutes so I could download and install rEFIt and I'll probably never run it again.

I wanted an All-In-One desktop and the iMac was way ahead of the Dell XPS One, and Lenovo A600. It was actually competitively priced too. I know I'm an exception to the rule though. If someone was buying a brand new macbook or a 24" iMac, I'd advise them to look at other hardware. I'm completely happy with it, except for the fact that I only get sound through my headphone jack and not my speakers. I'm sure that'll get fixed soon somehow.

[buntuLo]

I know I'm an exception to the rule though. If someone was buying a brand new macbook or a 24" iMac, I'd advise them to look at other hardware.
i don't think you are an exception, and i'd be curious to hear advices for a macbookpro alternative: a great display, an excellent keyboard, a huge touchpad (with which i can do graphics without a mouse, wherever), all in a rigid aluminium case. i could go on with all the details of this product, maybe it's just worth mentioning that i did crash a laptop once, stepping in the power cord.. all in all, i think this box its worth what apple asks for it, planning to use it five/six years.

then there is macos: i had a look at it a few times (this is my first apple machine) and i liked it very much, great desktop on top of an evolution of freebsd.
but i'm simply not interested in commercial proprietary software, i'm happy to run free software. ubuntu is for me 'easier life' with debian, kde a practical desktop.
ubuntu is not specifically designed for this book? true, i did spend a bit of time setting it up, and now it does everything i want from it. i don't have sound out of the right speaker and i can't stay more that 1.30h away from a power plug.. luckily i'm not bothered by it.

it's only three months i got a mac to run ubuntu on it, and i'm already very happy :~)

[wersdaluv]

I am quite sure if you did some looking around, you would find several people that have completely switched to using Ubuntu. In fact, you will likely find several people that buy Apple hardware to only run Ubuntu....

Personally, I do not see the point in having a Mac if you do not want to use OS X. You could easily sell your Mac for a good price on the secondary market and buy some compatible PC hardware.

There are some apps that you can try that are like iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie etc. (I don't know of anything like Garageband...)

Kino is similar to iMovie
I like picasa in place of iPhoto (in fact it is also available for OS X, so it is cross-platform), but there are other photo managers too)
There are several music library apps. Just have a look around as several people have asked these questions.
There's Jokosher, a garageband alternative. Nothing beats Garageband, though.

I tried OS X. I still can't tell which is a better main OS. Right now, I guess, Ubuntu is a better main OS. It's just better to use OS X when you need iMovie, Garageband, or better support for Apple peripherals.

[Sweet Spot]

On the contrary, I was using Ubuntu for about 3+ years and recently bought a Macbook Pro. I honestly never thought that I would appreciate not having to tinker with an OS, as I was doing with Ubuntu on a constant basis, in order to have certain things which were once working that broke, work again. I do go back to Ubuntu on occasion to play Urban Terror and to check for updates and back up photos on that particular hard drive but...

I have to give it to OS X in terms of me being more productive since I don't have to search for a decent application for photo editing or music production and such. I'm trying out Lightroom 2, Bridge and CS4 (as well as ACR) which all work head and shoulders better than anything I've seen for Linux. Gimp is ok-ish, but nowhere near as intuitive or easy as PS for last minute adjustments and such.

Outside of those things, for music I am trying Songbird, which is still buggy, so I am waiting for a stable release. Until then, iTunes is fine for music playback off of my external HD without any hiccups, and if I need to do any office work, it's MS Office for the Mac because I'm not crazy about the format changes between Office and iWork's documents.

I'm not totally saying goodbye to Ubuntu, but I'm surely not visiting it as much either.

Doug

[mrsteveman1]

We used to host websites on a Mac OS X server system...won't be doing that again for a while, at least until 10.6.

On the desktop though, i use OS X most of the time, it's more polished.

[3rdalbum]

I switched over fully, to get off Apple's upgrade train ("You must have Mac OS 10.4 to install this software." "You must have a Firewire port to install Mac OS 10.4" "You cannot add a Firewire port to your existing Macintosh" to name one example). After a few months I bought regular PC hardware which worked much better with Ubuntu.

For a couple of hours one day I toyed with the idea of trying out OSX86, but I didn't see much point as my Ubuntu system is much more pleasant to use than OS X. To me, at least.

[3rdalbum]

We used to host websites on a Mac OS X server system...won't be doing that again for a while, at least until 10.6.

I've heard that Apple is looking to get out of the server market; their server sales are very low and they've had a lot of bad publicity from persistant reliability problems (servers slowing to a crawl and needing a reboot every few weeks, Apple doesn't seem to know what's causing it).

[mrsteveman1]

I've heard that Apple is looking to get out of the server market; their server sales are very low and they've had a lot of bad publicity from persistant reliability problems (servers slowing to a crawl and needing a reboot every few weeks, Apple doesn't seem to know what's causing it).

Yea i'm not quite sure what the issue is, we noticed random errors filling the log files for no reason and services suddenly refusing to start.

They do have nice management tools for controlling their servers (though they only run on OS X which is absurd), but so does redhat, so does novell. Hell even ebox (if i could get it to work right on intrepid) looks like it would work fine.

[cyberdork33]

We used to host websites on a Mac OS X server system...won't be doing that again for a while, at least until 10.6.
+1

I can't even use it for development / testing. it is terrible. I just use a VM with Ubuntu Server..

[hictio]

+1

I can't even use it for development / testing. it is terrible. I just use a VM with Ubuntu Server..

Personally, I would really like to know someone that has an Os X Server doing something that can't be done with Linux.


I've heard that Apple is looking to get out of the server market; their server sales are very low and they've had a lot of bad publicity from persistant reliability problems (servers slowing to a crawl and needing a reboot every few weeks, Apple doesn't seem to know what's causing it).

What would happen to all the people that invested all that money on that hardware?