[CS-FSLUG] Linus Switches to Mac Platform

[Timothy Butler]

On Mar 10, 2005, at 3:40 AM, Leon Brooks wrote:

> On Thursday 10 March 2005 13:19, Timothy Butler wrote:
>> Maybe if Linus is using it, more work will be put into making PPC
>> Linux a real option -- right now, it makes little sense to use it
>> over Mac OS X, since you get that free with the system and it
>> does a lot more.
>
> No, you don't. It's part of the price, but it's not free. USD$150?
> Something like that.

	Well, it's "essentially free," since you cannot get a Mac cheaper if 
you buy it without OS X. The price is built into the hardware. Upgrades 
are $129 USD, although presently Macs come with OS X 10.3 and iLife 
'05, which at a retail price is $210 worth of software... given that 
the Mac mini's price tag (for example) is only $289 more than that, 
it's clear that Apple is essentially doing an "OEM discount" on the 
bundled stuff.

	Of course, the G5 is so much cheaper than any other 64-bit RISC 
workstation that OS X really does almost become free. Where else can 
you get such a workstation for $1499 even without a UNIX-powered OS? 
But that goes back to the issue at hand. If you try TerraSoft YDL and 
then try Mac OS X 10.3, you'll almost certainly stick with the latter. 
It supports the wi-fi, bluetooth, and so on that YDL does not, and it 
does a lot more software wise.

	I started out on my G5 with YDL, and gave in and started using OS X, 
simply because it worked on stuff YDL *could not* do. I bought my G5 
from TerraSoft, so I received both YDL and Mac OS X for the sticker 
price of the system...

	If someone would start creating speciality distros focused on 
particular fields or some such, perhaps LinuxPPC would work though.

	-Tim

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