[geeks] Can't decide on an OS

[Jonathan Patschke]

On Tue, 24 Sep 2013, Cory Smelosky wrote:

> I've gotten too angry at OS X being too slow and bloated to the point I 
> needed to pick another one.

The short answer is that there isn't one, and it's getting time that
competent "someones" get together and make the next usable workstation OS.

OS X has been getting worse since 10.5 shipped.  Each new release makes it
harder to use for anything that isn't directly supported by a program in
the "App Store."  I'm really saddened by what OS X has become.  Dedicated
creative folks and techies who didn't want to support 'doze at home pulled
Apple's collective ass out of the fire in the early days of OS X before
the iToys kicked their market capitalization into orbit.  These days, OS X
doesn't lend itself to supporting either of those two groups of people.

Windows 8.1 was looking like a good fix to the debacle that was Windows 8,
but it's going to push Trusted Computing on us again (by virtue of the
hardware logo program), and I don't really like that.  I use Windows 7
inside several VMs for Windows development and rather like it.  So, of
course it had to be a short-lived major release.

Linux is still the quality-control nightmare that it's been for over 10
years.  If you're okay with bloat and long gaps between releases, RHEL is
good software (as are the community-supported "CentOS" and "Scientific
Linux" re-spins of it).  I don't know if they will boot bare-bones on a
Mac system or not, but Fedora and RHEL are probably your best bets for
that.

I see the most hope for FreeBSD turning into something I could use on a
daily basis.  The rolling-beta ports tree is an annoyance and occasionally
results in things breaking impressively, and graphics support is currently
minimal, but it is, IMO, the most solidly-organized OS shipping for
i386/amd64 right now.  I run it almost universally on my headless systems,
and it works exceedingly well, but it's going to take some hell of an
angel investor to get graphics support where it needs to be for
workstation use, though.

OpenBSD and NetBSD are nifty, and I enjoy running them, but their
interactive graphics experience is even worse than FreeBSD.

Solaris on the workstation is as dead as IRIX, and we should let it rot.
OpenIndiexentillumos or whatever is forking at a rate that makes the Linux
community look stagnant by comparison, and Oracle has killed the source
drops that would've provided for the compatibility with the parent OS that
made it a compelling offering.

Though, if you can afford $1000/socket/year and it suits your application,
Solaris 11.11 is a Very Nice OS.  It's everything Sun promised us that
Solaris 10 would be plus a layer of polish and cohesion that only a
single-vendor solution can give.


I'm sticking with OS X for now.  I hate the sort company Apple have
become, and I've not bought any new hardware from them in quite a while
for that reason.  My Macs are all used.  As much as OS X sucks, it's easy
to recover when it craters.  Also, it tends to not crater as hard as
Windows, and it just generally stays more out of my way.

OS X could probably be salvaged from Apple's idiocy by the user community,
since the core OS is pretty good.  It's just that it'd be really nice if
Spotlight took battery status into account when deciding it really needs
to update its index Right Now, and it'd be nice if Apple didn't disable
hardware support in patch releases (SiL SATA chipsets in 10.8.4, for
example).  But, hey, making spotlight kill your disk is how they advertise
their overpriced SSD upgrades and silently killing support for third-party
peripherals means you'll grudgingly go to the Apple store to buy
replacements.

I don't know, man.  I'm pretty bummed about the situation.  I just want to
write code (code that must frequently target OSes that other people use,
so speedy VMs are a necessity) and have my computer stay out of my way.
Apparently that's a tall order.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "No matter how much the government controls...any
Elgin, TX         %  problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of
USA               |  freedom that remains."         --Sheldon Richman