Craig White wrote:
> As for OS's, I have gotten to appreciate Linux. I like the fact that the
> repositories of packages is very deep on Fedora and that for minimal
> effort, I seem to get just about everything that I want with yum
> install...and don't have to scout around for development packages/build
> requirements, etc.

Indeed.  I see tutorials online all the time that describe in far too
much detail how to download this-and-that tar.gz and configure && make
&& make install and so on... and I wonder who they are aiming those at.
 The three main desktop Linux distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE) and the
two dominant server Distros (RHEL/Centos and SLES) all have nearly every
package you could want already packaged up.  I love it.

Which reminds me, in an earlier post, you (mildly) knocked CentOS saying
that it's good only until your users want the latest Firefox, etc.
Nah... you just need the right repos.  You can get anything you want on
CentOS.

> Every time I get on a Mac, it's work...and I still
> haven't figured out how to enable sshd server at startup (perhaps that
> got easier with the new 'service pack'  ;-)

Heh.. Macs are fantastic for what they are intended for.  As is Linux.
I'm going to give some examples.

Example One: Desktop-style
Recently, I bought a stereo bluetooth headset (Sony DR-BT50) for use
both as a (wireless) headset for listening to music and for possibly
doing some VOIP (skype, ekiga, etc).  Here's my steps under Linux

1. First start doing some searches online.  Gak!  There are wildly
conflicting articles all over the place.  I am not making head's nor
tails out of it.  Maybe openSUSE has something built-in?
2. Sure enough, YaST -> Hardware -> Bluetooth.  Click click click and
there you have it.  That was easy.  Wish I had done that for Step 1
3. How to pair my specific headset?  I see a bluetooth icon in my system
tray.  I click on it... and play around for awhile 'cause it's not
exactly intuitive but eventually I get it to pair.  We're in business!
4. Now what?  Is it working?  How do I select the headset as my
microphone and speaker.  There's nothing in YaST.  Nothing in the
KBlueTooth module.  Back to searching online
5-20. Beat my head against the wall trying to get this to work.  Compile
a few packages.  Go through some low-level stuff (from the Gentoo
forums, only they get deep enough).  Absolutely nothing works.  Linux
can see my headset, but it can't actually *use* it.  I finally give up
for the moment, after hours (stretched over a couple of days) of trying.

What about getting this working under OS X?  I go over to my trusty G4
PowerBook

1. System Preferences -> Bluetooth.  Enable everything.
2. A wizard finds my headset.  I pair it
3. System Preferences -> Sound.  I select the DR-BT50 as my microphone
and speaker.  Tadah!

Really, I'm being charitable giving it 3 steps vs the Linux steps.  It
took me all of 2 minutes to get up and working perfectly on OS X.  It
took me hours on Linux and I never did get it to work.

Example Two: Courier IMAP
I tried to install Courier IMAP on OS X a couple years ago.  This was
for Panther, I think, so it might be better now.

1. Try to find a DMG.  Nope.  Does fink have it?  Nope.  Download the source
2. configure fails.  Fix configure to get around something that's
expecting but is in an odd place on OS X.  It fails again.  Search
online and finally find a package I need.
3. Compile and install needed package
4. configure still fails.  Needs some more packages.  At least these are
on fink.  Thankfully I already had the base fink installed.  Install
those new packages
5. Oops.. one of those packages wasn't available in binary format so I
need to switch to unstable.  A bunch of dependencies are hosed.  I beat
on that for awhile and finally get it to work
6. configure finally succeeds.  I start building... building fails.
7. I end up patching 4 files, I think.  I am very thankful that I know
how to program in C or I would be pretty much SOL at this point since
there is nothing online about this.
8. I finally get it to work.  Total time... some 12 hours from beginning
to end.

On Linux, SuSE 9.3 (I think).  I was using apt-get with the gwdg.de repo
at the time:

1. apt-get install courier-imap
2. /etc/init.d/courier-imap start

Lesson Learned:
Both OS X and Linux can be successfully used in areas that they weren't
originally designed for... but they are far better when you stick to
their intended markets.

Kurt