a million monkeys typing

Heresy, I tell you! (or, Confessions of a “Switcher”)

Posted October 20th, 2004 at 08:14am

People who know me well (and some not-so-well) are well aware that I am a pretty staunch Open Source advocate. It started back in the late 80’s and early 90’s when I was using Pascal as my language of choice. At the time, there were essentially two camps of x86 programmers: the Pascal people who freely offered advice and shared their code, mainly through some gopher and FTP servers in Finland; and the C folks, who seemed to jealously guard their creations, offering libraries and advice only for cold hard cash. (Yes, I’m aware of the GNU folks, but they didn’t really show up in the “circles” I frequented.) It was an early technology lesson for me: it was through the sharing of information that I became a good programmer in Pascal, and the dearth of it made me a lousy programmer in C. Since seizing upon Linux as my favorite OS in 1994, I hadn’t turned back. Indeed, each day made me appreciate the community more and more, and (in between skewering poor Microsoft boothies at trade shows who hadn’t even heard of Linux) I acted as an evangelist advocating Linux for core techies and web development environments. So why do I find I’m using Mac OS X far more than Linux as my main OS recently?

Now, don’t get me wrong: Linux is still wonderful. I’d take a broken low-power Linux box over a fine-tuned high-end Windows box any day. It’s a matter of “best tool for the job,” and for me, Linux is by far a better tool than Windows for my day-to-day work: I still use Debian Linux instead of the Windows XP Pro partition on my workplace’s dual-boot Vaio laptop. Between virtual windows, middle-clicks, my highly-customised environment, and hundreds of useful utilities, I am far more productive under Linux even for typical office work — the cross-platform OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird are my chief applications. My webservers are LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-Perl/PHP/Python), and they perform exceedingly well, providing the ultimate mixture of server flexibility and power.

But at home, it’s a different matter nowadays. Backing out of programming and server work, and concentrating more on writing and multimedia, means that OS X –as it stands out of the box– is more suitable for my tasks, and does everything with little or no tinkering. While I do like tinkering, I find that I often take more pleasure in it than actually getting productive work done. So the OS has now essentially become “transparent”, allowing me to concentrate on productivity without distractions. I can’t go tweak-happy like I can on Linux (infinitely customisable everything), but I can pay homage to my inner geek by jumping to the Terminal and using all the standard UNIX command-line wares, including Emacs, vi, Python, Perl and the Fink-fare. But because it’s not “in my face” like in Linux, where I habitually keep at least four xterms open at any one time, it’s not a constant temptation.

Meanwhile, OS X allows me to run applications like Dreamweaver, Flash, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. (Macromedia: get your ass in gear and deliver those Linux versions of your apps you promised.) True, some of these do have Linux Open Source near-equivalents, but they’re not quite there yet. (I do use GIMP, Inkscape, Scribus and other solid applications for other work-related uses, though.) So, until the Open Source applications catch up, or Adobe and Macromedia applications run well under Linux, I’m going to remain in eternal “tinker” mode there, and thus not be able to get everything done at home that I’d like to do.

So I find myself at a transition point. Moving from a programmer/techie role to a content producer means that Linux, in itself, is not quite as valuable as it used to be. Right now, the range of software that runs on OS X –both Open Source and (often expensive) proprietary applications– means that it has a far broader range of usage for me. With UNIX behind the scenes, I can still seek the capabilities of the command-line to get things done in ways that I’m familiar with, and can run Apache, PHP, MySQL and other powerful Open Source server apps in a pinch as well.

OS X is thus the ultimate self-contained operating system for this stage in my life. Not an easy thing for a Linux enthusiast to admit, but that’s a fact, as embarrassing as it is for me. I’m not cut out to be an acolyte in the Cult of Steve Jobs, nor am I an Mac zealot, but I do have to say that Apple has produced an operating system that –at least for the moment– suits me and my lifestyle perfectly.

Ouch. I’m expecting a lot of flames after this….