Inconvenient truths: PC vs. Mac, Windows vs. Linux, us vs. them, et al.

I don't like to generalize, so I'll get specific on the following inconvenient truths:

If you've got a 10-year-old PC and a 10-year-old Mac, you'll get way further with the PC if you want a decade-old computer that's productive today.

This is mostly due to the fact that the Classic Mac OS was abandoned by Apple, and there are almost no apps that have been updated so as to be useful in today's world of computing. In my experience, browsers and e-mail clients that run under the Classic Mac OS just don't work very well with today's Web pages and mail servers. On the other hand, most 10-year-old PCs will run Windows 2000 (or 98), and many will even run XP. And you can also run Firefox, IE, Abiword, Open Office, the GIMP, IrfanView, free antivirus software, EditPad Lite, even the dreaded Outlook Express for e-mail ... and the list goes on.

Windows is not slow. Some Linux distros are. On new hardware, you might not notice. On old hardware, you will.

I'm talking mostly about Windows 2000 here, and to a lesser extent Windows XP. I've run Win 2K on many, many platforms, and I'm continually surprised on how well it runs, even with low RAM. It may not be secure at all, may need lots of add-ons just to be usable and may be orphaned by Microsoft in a few years, but for now it's blazingly fast. I wish I had an XP disc so I could run the same tests with it.

While the Linux command line smokes anything Windows has to offer in terms of sheer speed, offers hundreds of up-to-date apps and can be a boon to productivity (as I learned during my Month at the Command Line), most of the Linux GUIs I've tried are a bit of a strain on the graphics capability of a PC, particularly of an older one with less than 512 MB of RAM.

Puppy Linux works great on most low-spec PCs, but in my experience, things like Flash and other multimedia files play with less trouble in Windows 2000.

Still, Puppy is much better than Xubuntu, which even though boasting a "fast" XFCE desktop, starts to chug considerably when Web pages have Flash on them. For an even faster experience than Puppy, there's Damn Small Linux.

But no matter the window manager, the apps themselves have much to do with performance. I suspect that much of my video problems stem from the Flash player in Windows being a better-written app than the one in Linux. All the more reason for Flash to be opened up to the community -- there's got to be a better player out there to be written. (Maybe the Democracy Player? So far, Gxine has been a disappointment.) If you happen to have an iPod, you're stuck. Apple doesn't appear to be interested in porting iTunes to Linux. I'm not happy about it, and you shouldn't be, either.

Still, there's much about Linux that Windows will never have, including:

a) a free, open-source base,
b) NOT being owned by Microsoft,
c) an extremely customizable desktop experience (from the command line, through basic X and small window managers, to the complex desktop environments of GNOME and KDE),
d) and did I forget to say that Linux is free?

Many, many people use pirated software -- I have, too -- and I don't like the feeling I get from doing it. Even if the apps are too expensive to begin with, and buying them would be out of the question, I don't think stealing the use of them is justified -- even if they're older versions that have been abandoned. (OK, I feel less bad about that, but I still feel way better running Linux and open-source apps whose developers want us to use them ... for free. And when it comes to much commercial software, asking paying customers to fork over hundreds of dollars on a yearly basis to keep their apps current -- is often abusive).

While I've seen many benefits from using Linux instead of Windows, I really don't think that sheer speed is one of them. Anybody who says that Linux is "faster" than Windows (NOT Vista) or Mac OS X, for that matter, at common desktop tasks has not had the same experiences I've had. As always, your mileage may vary, but I've been most disappointed in the XFCE-based Xubuntu, which doesn't seem any faster than regular Ubuntu with GNOME (or fasther than any number of KDE distros, of which NimbleX is my current favorite).

While Ubuntu and a standard desktop Debian both use GNOME, Debian runs faster.

And I'm not sure why. If you only read Web news about Ubuntu and Debian, you'd think that the people behind the extremely popular Ubuntu took an unformed, hard-to-use Debian and performed some kind of magic, bringing some kind of mystical computing power to the people. But Debian is surprisingly well-formed on the desktop, the install procedure is surprisingly like the alternate install of Ubuntu, and once you're up and running, there's not all that much different (except that Debian 4.0 Etch comes standard with more applications and, as I've said, runs just that much faster). And I haven't found running or maintaining Debian to be something only an "expert" can be -- especially since I'm far from being one myself.

It's marketing. Brilliant marketing. Ubuntu's best feature is its huge and helpful community at Ubuntuforums.org. There's a big Debian community out there too, but the Ubuntu people are just so dominant, even Debian users are wise to turn there for technical help since, at their core, the two distros are so similar (given that Ubuntu is derived from Debian, for those who don't know).

And while I'm on the subject, the Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux users are also extremely helpful -- they've come to this blog often with tips and suggestions, and I appreciate it greatly.

The only "modern" PC I have access to is my Dell 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB RAM, and I'm not at liberty to install anything huge (read: a Linux distro) to the hard drive.

I suspect that on a newish PC, the big Linux distributions run like so much buttah and that any speed advantages that an old version of Windows offers is far outshined by the added security, equality and fraternity of free Linux.

It's always better to have new, maxed-out hardware -- a luxury I've never had (besides that, I'm too cheap). And it's mandatory to try before you buy. With Linux, it's easy. Once you have a broadband Internet connection and a CD (or preferably DVD) burner and have learned how to turn an ISO into a bootable disc, you have the keys to quite a kingdom. (Now's the time to rant about how Windows DOES NOT include a utility that can burn a bootable CD. I use and recommend ISO Recorder. Mac OS X also does a good job of burning ISOs with its Disk Utility).

If I were buying a new PC today, would I want it preloaded with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora/RHEL SUSE/SLED, Mepis or PCLinuxOS?

None of the above. I'd prefer a blank hard drive. Any computer user has much to gain by a) experimenting with many distributions, and going through the installation process is part of that experience. Just knowing that you can reinstall your OS if necessary is a powerful and necessary thing for any savvy computer user (and even for some less savvy). Let me install my own OS, thank you.

Are Macs too expensive?

Yes.

What makes you blog day after day after day?

I began blogging on technology with This Old Mac and This Old PC two years ago this month, and I've been posting at Click since September 2006 (that's nine months, by my count), and it's been an enjoyable ride thus far. I haven't lost my enthusiasm for learning about all this stuff, and that's what keeps me going. It's no secret that I've gotten the best response since I began writing about Linux (with many, many thanks to Lxer, which lets me pimp this blog as much as I can. Lxer is, hands down, the best place for news on Linux and free, open-source software).

And finally ...

Linux -- and the choice to use (or not to use) Linux -- is political. There's no denying it or getting around it

It's the same if you choose to run Windows or Mac OS. Cost, convenience, knowledge, passion, maybe even ignorance all factor in, but making the choice to run one, some, all or none of the many computer operating systems out there says something about you and about the OSes themselves (and the companies and communities that produce and support them).

Do the moral, technological and intensely personal factor in? You bet they do. And that's what makes all this so damned interesting and important.