A few months back I wrote a post that had quite a few reactions, speculating on why open source developers run OS X.
Recently I have been using the newest Macbook Pro 15″, and I thought I would update my direct experience on how Ubuntu and OS X stack up.
Web Browsing
On both platforms Chrome, in my view, is the defacto standard for nerds and an ever increasing porportion of the general population. Having used Safari for the first month to try ‘the apple way’, I can say that Chrome feels faster, has better features, and was just really well thought out. Both platforms are a wash on this one.
Flash Plugin
This one is also a wash, both platforms have support for flash — I actually think Ubuntu has an edge here since Flash can be installed via the package manager, instead of an entirely separate installer in OS X.
Text Editing
Textmate is a very cool application, with tons of pre-defined bundles that allow for quick completion, and a great project view. However for Java development, it seems that IDE autocompletion / debugger integration is hard to beat (Eclipse / Netbeans work on both platforms), while for Python / Ruby etc Vim was a better fit for both platforms, as an advanced user. Definitely a great entry level editor that is an inbetween for Gedit / Vim.
Terminals
I think here gnome-terminal blows away terminal.app — gnome-terminal is noticeably faster and the design was clearly by people using the terminal day in and out. I think the Mac community feels the same way, and in general uses ITerm, or the recently released ITerm2 (not same authors as ITerm oddly enough). ITerm2 does work well, but again it feels like the terminal lacks speed in comparison.
Performance
One thing that struck me was the lack of responsiveness / speed. This Macbook is a quad core with an ATI dedicated graphics card, but for most operations the OS feels quite sluggish. Starting up iTunes or Safari takes much longer than you would expect for a $2000 USD piece of machinery. I will however note that I only use Gnome 2, so Gnome 3 may suffer from a similar issue, but I am not experienced enough to write about it.
Application Installation Method
I was able to install apps through the Mac App Store, in the same manner I do in Ubuntu using the Software Center. The Mac App store has many more commercial applications, however most of them like Photoshop are just not needed for a Linux veteran as Gimp does everything needed. I also purchased XCode 4, but was underwhelmed other than the Iphone emulator which ran awesome in comparison to the Android emulator I was previously used to.
Email
I am sure a lot of people use Mail.app and like it, but I have always been a fan of the GMail interface. I guess if we are comparing Apples to Apples, Evolution and Mail.app are both not very strong competitors (ie the rest of the world either runs on Outlook or Gmail).
Photo Management
iPhoto is a strong point, it is very easy, intuitive and nice looking to manage photos. Linux alternatives here are weak.
Music Management
iTunes is a horrible, slow monster of expensive music. One thing I miss is my Droid and the Amazon MP3 application, as that was by far a better deal, and my purchases went straight to the cloud. iCloud is coming shortly, but Amazon is still my vendor of choice, and they already have proven to get the cloud right.
Gaming
OS X and Ubuntu both have my favorite game, Heroes of Newerth. Mac OS X has Steam, which is definitely a benefit and World of Warcraft. Ubuntu can’t really compete in this arena, so it is something to consider.
Conclusion
So, if you were like me, and curious about Mac OS X, you can see I am not overall impressed. Maybe I am just biased towards Ubuntu, but I find overall it has favorable performance, and I can change out any pieces I don’t like. I would recommend OS X if you wanted a generally worse experience but the ability to install Photoshop and a few more games (still nothing compared to Windows in this respect).
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#1 by Shane Fagan on July 17, 2011 - 5:55 pm
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Hey, add me on HoN sirshane is my nick. Its one of my fav games too although im playing SC2 more now since all the issues with the servers.
#2 by Evan on July 17, 2011 - 6:38 pm
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Your wrong about gamming, maybe OS X has a few more games, but you can run pretty much all the same games OS X can. I played WoW on ubuntu for a few years even. I also run steam just fine with wine.
#3 by Ted Wise on July 17, 2011 - 6:48 pm
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My own opinions mostly differ from yours.
1. Web Browsing – I wish I could use Chrome but the close buttons are on the wrong side and it drives me batty. OS/X applications are very, very consistent in UI conventions (I _love_ that cmd-, works in every app) and it’s extremely grating to use an application that doesn’t “fit”.
2. Flash – I think Flash works _better_ on Linux. I’ve seen way more CPU usage and fans running on OS/X then in Linux.
3. Text Editing – I switched to BBEdit from Textmate and am very happy, but, honestly with the exception of automation and system services, there’s not really a big difference in text editors between Linux and OS/X.
4. Terminals – Totally disagree. I must use terminals differently then you do. I tend to setup 3-4 terminals and leave them running for a long time, switching between them using the keyboard. So I’m not seeing any performance problems. I’m not seeing performance issues with outputting large streams of text either. One little-mentioned benefit of OS/X keyboard conventions is that the standard copy/paste keys work in a terminal since they don’t conflict with ctrl-c.
5. Performance. Here’s another one where I don’t see it. Maybe because I’m using an SSD, but the speed is instantaneous and I don’t see the inexplicable slow-downs and temporary freezes in OS/X that I do in Linux.
6. Applications. I’m widening this one since you weren’t really talking about just installation. Installation of apps is pretty simple on OS/X (as is uninstall) but it’s mostly a wash with Linux. apt-get (I hate Yum) is dead easy if there’s an open-source option but, as you stated, commercial applications are a pain. And when you get to commercial applications, OS/X installation and uninstallation is actually easier.
7. Email. People seem to either not care about Mail.app or love to hate it. I like it for one very simple reason, it Just Works. It works with IMAP, it works with Gmail, it works with Exchange. It automatically configures itself for most popular services and runs and runs. It’s very fast, it’s reliable and searches are lightning fast. And the one missing feature for me – threading – is coming in the next release.
8. Photo management. We agree.
9. Music management. We disagree.
I bought an Apple TV for $99 and can play all of my music and ripped DVD’s simply and easily on the TV. My wife, my kids and I share a library of music and it’s all simple and straight-forward. We probably work differently here too since I very rarely play music on the computer itself, mainly using iPhones, iPods and Apple TVs to do that.
10. Gaming. Gaming isn’t a reason to consider OS/X over Linux. They both suck for gaming. I haven’t been a gamer for many years but if I was, I’d steer far clear of anything other then Windows. OS/X _may_ suck slightly less then Linux for gaming, but if so, it’s by a thin margin.
Your conclusion is that OS/X is a generally worse experience but, if you need Photoshop, it’s a reasonable choice. Personally, I would flip that and say that, for me, Linux is a generally worse experience, but, if you need cutting-edge access to open-source projects, it’s a reasonable choice.
And I would add a few items:
11. Automation. I find it amusing that OS/X is the most easily automate-able platform I’ve ever worked on. It’s got the full Unix base and all of the automation capability that it shares with Linux in that regard. But Applescript (I know, it’s a POS language) let’s you reach into many, many GUI apps that script them as well. You can do the same with some Gnome and KDE apps, but the scripting platform is wide-spread and consistent between OS/X GUI apps. Enough so that Automator.app let’s you drag and drop scripting elements to create an automated workflow.
12. Consistency. I mentioned it above, but 95% of the apps on OS/X are extremely consistent. The same key strokes work everywhere, the same menu options in the same places, etc. It’s remarkable how helpful that is.
#4 by Juanjo on July 17, 2011 - 9:42 pm
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I’ve never used Mac but flash support on Linux is far from perfect. Acually “far fom perfect” it’s being too benevolent.
#5 by Tim on July 18, 2011 - 12:10 am
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You forget another point: power management. I have a mac book pro and the lifetime of the battery is amazing.
#6 by CMD on July 18, 2011 - 3:58 am
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For photo management on Linux i use Gthumb for importing photos and Picasa for viewing and organising, and uploading to G+ is easy.
What i found mostly with OSX is a lot of the third party apps are paid for ones, while in Linux there’s lots of great free apps.
#7 by Alex on July 18, 2011 - 2:17 pm
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I second Picasa. Also, you didn’t mention Thunderbird for email.
#8 by pckt on July 18, 2011 - 4:47 pm
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One key thing Ubuntu won’t charge you for the next version of whatever.
#9 by RSM on July 18, 2011 - 9:58 pm
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Some major points that are in favor of OS X compared to Linux:
Graphics stack: Mac OS X clearly is a winner here compared to the issues with X.Org. Also, hardware acceleration and power usage also weighs in favor of OS X.
Flash: Hardware acceleration of Flash works on OS X.
Hardware Compatibility: This also weighs in favor of OS X in terms of peripherals.
Audio: OS X’s audio stack is better than Linux’s.
Administration: OS X has an advantage in that you can tweak things easily using CLI if you want to, but it also has a unified (and powerful) GUI for administering the system.
Search: Spotlight (while not perfect) is much better integrated into OS X than comparable software in Linux.
Suspend / Hibernate: OS X’s near instant resume from low power states such as suspend or hibernate is superior. This includes being reconnected to the network, not just having the GUI appear on the screen.
#10 by TheGhost on July 20, 2011 - 10:30 am
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Nice comparison, but concerning the photo management you should look into Digikam its far the best photo software of the linux stack. It can even compete with professional pay software.
#11 by jim on July 22, 2011 - 1:13 pm
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“”OS X and Ubuntu both have my favorite game, Heroes of Newerth. Mac OS X has Steam, which is definitely a benefit and World of Warcraft. Ubuntu can’t really compete in this arena, so it is something to consider.”"
There are some really great games for Linux and you can some windows game via- Wine go to debget check out the games
“” speed — I never used Apple but I have used windows 7 and on my box Linux is waaayyy faster “”
Mail gmail
If you know where to look linux has some of the best text editors SciTe, Kate and so on
#12 by Martin Wildam on July 22, 2011 - 9:14 pm
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Basically there are so many options in the Linux world that everybody can find what he/she likes most. KDE has even mac style file explorer display option. I don’t want others (companies) decide how I should do certain things without offering alternatives.
#13 by Makhate Makhate on July 26, 2011 - 7:06 am
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I am running both Ubuntu 11.04 and Mac OS X (10.6) on a macbook white. One thing that always makes me to boot back to Mac is MS Office coz LibreOffice is not that compatible with MS Office. Otherwise for most of my applications, I use Ubuntu.
#14 by Ashish Jain on September 5, 2011 - 10:58 am
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+1 for thunderbird for email. I’ve been very happy with thunderbird… using it for 4 years now.
#15 by Martin Sorensen on September 10, 2011 - 2:29 pm
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The killer for me last I looked at Linux was Color Management. Seemed to be an enthusiast thing on Linux, I just want proper colours when I print photos.
#16 by Jason on January 20, 2012 - 1:21 pm
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True, Ubuntu has endless options and potential for tweaking. If you have infinite time I’d have to say Ubuntu. If you have finite time I have to go with OS X, which has far less problems and has a lot of little things that make working in it much more pleasant. Of course you could customize Ubuntu so that it’s actually more pleasant than OS X but in that same time you could write a pretty decent size application.