OS X – Windows 7 – Linux

My home computers are setup with several operating systems. Coming from a Windows background, the transition to Mac OS X several years ago was interesting and fun. I also had a Linux background from my days of setting up web, email and telephony servers. So diving into OS X was familiar in regards to the command line. I found OS X extremely stable. I also have a graphic arts background, which included print advertising, video editing/animation and eventually web design. OS X fit perfectly with that background. The tools, environment and applications available for OS X was a creative persons dream. Along with the stability and security of OS X, I was able to actually work on creative projects instead of downloading and maintaining anti-virus/spy-ware software, and defragmenting my harddrive. Not to mention all the times Windows would crash on me.

After the recent announcement from Google to release Chrome OS, my interest in Linux was sparked again, and I setup my old PC with Ubuntu 9.10. I’ve made a commitment to use Linux wherever I can to do video and photo editing, along with web development. So far my Mac plays nice with Linux. I’ve been able to partition my “/home” directory onto a separate drive and network it. Since OS X and Linux are UNIX or UNIX-like operating systems, I can use “rsync” to keeps my music, photos, docs and videos synchronized between computers.

So-far, I’m amazed at how “zippy” Ubuntu is. My Linux box only has 1GB of memory compared to the 2GB I have on my MacBook, but the Linux box is more responsive. I’ve also dumped my favorite browser Firefox (for the time being), in favor of Google Chrome on both the Mac and Linux boxes.

I would also like to note installing and playing with Windows 7. Well, it’s definitely an improvement over Vista, and runs about as quick as XP does on the same machine, I’m not overly impressed, except with the task-bar which really just reminds me of OS X. Windows in general is complete garbage. I’m not really talking about the driver support or the GUI (Graphical User Interface), but the NT kernel. It is based on a very shaky foundation and has repeatedly been subject to attack and is inherently very buggy. Why do you think almost every web server in the world is run on Linux (where the GUI doesn’t matter but stability does)? If Microsoft would just use a BSD, Mach or Linux kernel and focus on the GUI, driver support and OpenGL (dump DirectX) they could really compete. Apple was smart. They choose BSD (pure UNIX), also known as the Darwin kernel, and then really focused all of their effort and resources on the user experience.

Right now I’m most excited about Ubuntu. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I really like it. I’m right at home in the command line and terminal from my days of administering Linux servers, I love open-source, and the Linux kernel in general is just rock solid. I never have to reboot. If my Gnome session gets whacked out, I just go to another terminal (CTRL-ALT-F1), log in as ROOT and type “/etc/init.d/gdm restart” …and voila! I’m back up and running in 3 seconds.

So, we’ll see how this experiment works out, but really, with Google and Canonical (creators of Ubuntu, based on Debian) working together on Chrome OS and all of the improvements getting folded back into the Linux community, it will be hard to ever recommend Windows again to anyone. At the very least, although expensive, I would recommend Mac OS X, simply because for most users, especially the creative types (musicians, graphic artists, multimedia enthusiasts) it just fits. It looks nice, runs stable and everything on PC is available on Mac.