Re: LINUX Workstations

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday, October 4, 2003, at 03:32  PM, Scott Klement wrote:

> I've never tried OS X, since I don't have a Mac.  But, it's based on
> FreeBSD -- one of FreeBSD's founders (Jordan Hubbard) was hired by 
> Apple
> to coordinate things, and knowing his work, OS X is probably VERY well
> done.

MacOS X is EXTREMELY well done. This is written on my PowerBook G4 (17" 
cause I'm like that). My partner has a 12" iBook. For me a PC is simply 
a tool. I do not want to tinker with it--I just want it to work. 
Securely, reliably, and easily. That's why I stuck with OS/2 for so 
long--it just works! Now I'm moving to MacOS X and loving it.  I'm 
prepared to pay Apple some money to save me having to build a Linux, or 
Free BSD, or whatever system. Apple have provided a delightful GUI and 
great hardware. I can get to the guts of the OS if I need to. It's Unix 
which, although powerful, is ugly as sin but mostly I can ignore that, 
and it's easy to learn due to the plethora of information available.

Apple's development tools are nice. Objective C is so much nicer than C 
and its incremental derivative but if I really want to I can use the 
GNU tools and play Unix weenie for a while.

I'm even running Win2K inside a VirtualPC emulator to handle the small 
amount of WinDOS rubbish I need. All I'm missing is a decent 5250 
emulator. I can use PC5250 in W2K but I'd rather not so I still use my 
OS/2 box for that.

If IBM would provide all their AS/400 development tools as pure Java, 
I'd be a really happy chappie! Imagine ... WDS, 5250, OpsNav on a Mac? 
Woohoo!

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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