Mac vs PC

We have PC's at home but we used to have some Macs in school that I have used. They were alright. But window's vista is basicaly the same as the Mac. I think I probly prefer the PC though. Printing stuff in school on a Mac is impossible. It comes out in code...
 
Mrs Gil-Galad Took said:
Tell me a bit more about Linux! Can you use many features you can use for windows or mac?
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It depends upon what you do.

Linux is an open source operating system kernel, a linux distribution is the linux kernel with a bunch of software compiled ready to run. Common distributions include Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake (I think now called Mandriva), Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS (a free RHEL clone). Some are a free download, some you pay for.

There are several desktop environments that run on top of Linux - the two major desktops are GNOME (what I use) and KDE. Both are free, and included with most distributions, and you can run apps built for one desktop inside the other.

While many major software applications, such as Photoshop and MS Office, do not run in Linux (though some can through WINE which emulates Windows system calls) there are free open source alternative to most of them.

The GIMP is a photo editing program. It does not have all the capabilities of Photoshop and does not have as many custom plugins available, it is more than sufficient for many people.

For office needs, there are several solutions. Most people use Open Office. I myself do not like Open Office, I use Gnumeric for spreadsheet needs and LaTeX for word processing needs. LaTeX is type setting software, you can output to ps, pdf, even xhtml with full MathML support. For reading a word document, I just use AbiWord. For creating a word process document someone else needs to edit, I again just use AbiWord (which will save the document as an RTF file but put a .doc extension on it, people who use MS Word never know the original was RTF and not a Word document).

For presentation needs, again I use LaTeX - to create a PDF slide show. PDF slide shows can include multimedia (such as movies) and are better IMHO than powerpoint because all you need to view them is a PDF reader, and Adobe Acrobat is available for just about anything out there.

You can play with Linux on your mac without installing anything, both Ubuntu and Fedora make live DVDs available that you can boot off of and fool around with at no risk to what is installed on your hard drive (just don't ask it to format your disks - because they will if you ask them to). Note that running off of a live DVD is going to be slower than if it is actually installed to your HD.
 
Maybe I ask stupid questions or maybe they sound dumb, forgive me for this but if I am right Linux is an operating system? It's not a kind of computer like Mac or Pc?
Yeah I know Gimp and have used it but I'm a photoshop addict. But I do know how Gimp works. So possibly Linux will also work on Mac's bootcamp? Bootcamp allows you to operate Windows on your laptop.
 
not that old haha. still in my teens but i feel old.
I had a sad experience w/ a Mac once and that's how i figured out i didn't know how to use one even though I used Macs before in elementary school and middle school.....
 
When it comes to us a Mac is not different than a windows pc. When you want to open a program you can do it by either using the finder or simply by clicking on the HD (hard drive) I never used a Mac before but I never had troubles with mine and I am a real oldie :p In my 30's already :D
 
haha. ah i see.
I guess i panicked that time because i was paying for how much time i was spending on the computer. when i couldn't figure out how to find the program for the scanner i gave up.
Took me more than $2 worth of time (i think it was like 30 cents per min). then i switched to a PC and everything went smoothly from there.
I think there's also a psychological factor involved: not willing to try new things. haha.
I guess i need more pairings of good experiences and Macs to reduce my dislike for them.
 
I understand this :D When you are used to a system and it works well you won't easily switch. My Windows XP laptop works perfectly. But the oher one messed everything up. I was so angry and I got myself a Mac to see the difference and until today I'm hooked :D The use of the Mac has become more smoothly as well. So maybe your time with the Mac was a bit different ;):D
 
Mrs Gil-Galad Took said:
I understand this :D When you are used to a system and it works well you won't easily switch. My Windows XP laptop works perfectly. But the oher one messed everything up. I was so angry and I got myself a Mac to see the difference and until today I'm hooked :D The use of the Mac has become more smoothly as well. So maybe your time with the Mac was a bit different ;):D
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Ah. Yes, Macs have improved by quite a bit.
Who knows, maybe 2 years from now I'll be a Mac fanatic.
I do enjoy watching those PC vs Mac ads though. They're quite entertaining.
 
There is more and more available for Mac now :D Maybe when you switch pc's there might be new kind of pc's available :D The features on Mac are already so much more nicer. I love the widgets!
 
Mrs Gil-Galad Took said:
Maybe I ask stupid questions or maybe they sound dumb, forgive me for this but if I am right Linux is an operating system? It's not a kind of computer like Mac or Pc?
Yeah I know Gimp and have used it but I'm a photoshop addict. But I do know how Gimp works. So possibly Linux will also work on Mac's bootcamp? Bootcamp allows you to operate Windows on your laptop.
Click to expand...

Linux is an operating system.
It has been ported to run on numerous 32-bit (and 64-bit) processors. I even ran it on a Mac SE/30 for awhile. I believe it works with boot camp, I know when boot camp was first released it did not, but I believe how to boot it from boot camp has been resolved (possibly with the help of Apple, in the past they have been helpful - they wrote or at least contributed to the boot loader that let us boot Linux on PPC in the old classic MacOS days, I think it was called BootX).

Another possibility - I believe the open source darwin kernel has been ported to xen, if OS X can run xen it may be possible to run OS X and Linux at the same time.

I know you can run Linux at the same time as Mac OS X using some of the other virtual machine software out there, xen would be the best way though if OS X supports it.

A xen installation though may be beyond what a new user to Linux should use.

I know some people have managed to boot OS X in a xen environment, with Linux as the xen host, but I don't know if OS X can be the xen host (which is probably what you would want).

But anyway - yeah, it should work with bootcamp.
I believe Ubuntu does. I'm fairly certain Fedora does but not positive, but I only recommend Fedora for people who want to use bleeding edge software, because it has such a frequent release schedule and only supports two releases at a time. IE - Fedora 10 was just released, so there won't be any more updates for Fedora 8. Ubuntu has a longer support time, as does CentOS (what I use - I switched to CentOS from Fedora because I was tired of needing to install a new version with new bugs every other release)
 
Mac is wonderful! Leave the Dark Side, come to Mac ... They gave you iPod ... Come to Mac ...
 
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