Good Bye Linux

[Gary Nichols]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Kurt Granroth wrote:
> I'll agree that a Mac with OS X is a sweet piece of work (I'm a recent convert 
> myself with a new 17" iMac).  However, I've noticed that for some specific 
> purposes, Linux is actually easier to setup.

This has been my experience as well.

> Things aren't quite so easy with OS X.  It took me a solid weekend of messing 
> with configure switches and editing header files to get exim and courier to 
> compile.  And even then, they didn't work the same way under OS X that they 
> did under Linux.  It took a another few days of tweaking to get it up and 
> working.

This is, IMHO, most source packages are geared towards the x86 
architecture.  If you look through the source of OSS that that has been 
ported to PPC, SPARC, etc... you'll still see some assumptions in there 
for x86.  

> I'm not holding a grudge or anything, though.  Linux has been used as an
> email server by a lot of people for a long time so it stands to reason
> that installing and configuring it would be so streamlined.  Since OS X
> is just now inching into the server area, it's bound to take more work.

I'm a huge Machead - however my backend systems are all Linux/Solaris.  I 
don't plan to change that anytime soon - because it JustWorks[tm].

> But I did find it ironic that working with OS X when I first got it was 
> significantly harder than working with Linux :-)

I'm curious if Panther will be any easier.  Hmmm.