Comparing Linux and OSX

I’ve been a big fan of Linux since my freshman year at Georgia Tech but about a year ago now was given a loaded Macbook Pro and over the next several months became convinced that OSX offered the best workstation OS available.

I still think OSX is the best, but was recently forced to use Linux on an old laptop for 7-8 days of work while my MBP was being repaired. I administer Linux servers every day but this was the first forced return to Desktop Linux after having spent an extended period of time with OSX.

First a side note – I think Apple’s Genius bar system is broken. It takes too long to get an appointment and repairs take too long as well. My “Main Logic Board” and GPU failed suddenly during a routine reboot of the MBP and after talking to a Genius and handing over my only machine it took 7 full days to get it back. Dell standard nbd service would have put a tech in our office the next day equipped to swap out motherboards and whatever else needed swapped. This is all I will say about that.

In any case I unexpectedly had to hand over my only working computer last Monday. I walked into the Apple store with a computer and walked out with an empty laptop bag (it was a little bit depressing). As a temporary solution I installed Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex on my old laptop and was pretty impressed. What follows are some observations and rough comparison in the context of Java development and light sysadmin work.

Installation

The latest iteration of Ubuntu was a breeze to install. I burned the ISO, booted, selected auto for the partitioning, let it spin for a little while and was set. A note: I DID have an issue with the burnt CD and had to burn the image in “Disc-At-Once” mode. “Session-At-Once” mode did not create a usable installation CD.

Everything but sound got picked up automatically and correctly – my screen, trackpad, sound, battery status/indicator, suspend/hibernate, and wifi all worked right away. Upon first login I was immediately prompted to install the proprietary ATI driver for my graphics card and with a click that was done as well.

The sound was totally jacked up, I couldn’t use the alsa CLI tool or the Ubuntu sound volume controls to prevent it from being ear-shattering loud. I ended up performing a purge of all volumes, sound files, boot settings, etc to just shut the thing up.

Additional Setup

Ubuntu uses the fantastic apt for package management and the Gnome setup I was dumped into had an awesome wrapper “Add/Remove Programs” application wrapped around it which could optionally be used. This graphical interface is really nice allowing easy search of the repository and dead simple installation of new packages for anyone even those who aren’t up to using apt-get on the command line.

The default installation had me almost ready to do work. I used the GUI apt-get tool (just to try it out) to bring in Java 6, PostgreSQL 8.3, and Ant and then downloaded and installed ActiveMQ and Tomcat manually.

The final step was to beef up the interface a bit as I was at this point beginning to severely miss my hotkeys, active corners, and usability effects of OSX. I switched the Graphics to “Advanced” using the GUI preferences utility, and then installed the Compiz Settings Manager through the Add/Remove GUI. This made available dozens of customizations and visual effects – the options are numerous and awesome. In total I only adjusted a few things since this was a temporary only-for-work computer there was no need to get it perfect. I did the following:

• Disabled wobbly windows. They weird me out, make it feel like repositioning windows is not precise, and IMHO serve no purpose.
• Setup hotkeys and active corners for virtual desktop so it matched Spaces look and feel.
• Enabled “Scale” (think Expose) and setup hotkeys and active corners to be identical to OSX.

The key thing to note at this point is everything was done through an easy to figure out GUI. I didn’t have to touch the command line for anything other than sound.

The Linux Bad

While Desktop Linux has obviously come a long way, there are still a few rough edges. I had the already mentioned issue with Sound and also was unable to get a second monitor to work without resorting to CLI hacking of my xorg.conf file. These things should just work.

The Desktop environment is not consistent (at least not compared to OSX). Some concrete examples:

• In Linux copy/paste is different depending on your context. It’s generally CTRL-C/V but is CTRL-SHIFT-C/V in terminals.
• There are not consistent new and close hotkeys as in OSX. Similarly, new tabs/windows, moving between tabs, and related is not consistent between applications.

Finally, the apps are not as polished as a whole on Linux. I don’t like Pidgin as much as Adium, the Linux skins of things do not look as good as those for OSX, the Twitter clients in apt-get are awful, there is no iTunes (Apple’s fault), etc etc.

As a final note, I really missed Quicksilver and the two-finger all direction scrolling of the MBP trackpad.

The Linux Good

Package management in Linux is so well done. Macports can go a long way in improving the situation on OSX but why isn’t macports a core part of the OS? Apple could even wrap an awesome interface around it.

That brings me to the only other big advantage – speed. This was the latest version of Ubuntu (not some streamlined distribution) with graphic acceleration on, several Compiz features enabled, running on 4 year old hardware, and it was fast.

Without breaking down the components to the model numbers (don’t feel like looking them up), my MBP has the following hardware advantages over the old Dell I was running Ubuntu on:

• More, faster cores
• Double the RAM and faster RAM
• A faster hard drive
• GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB instead of a 4 year old ATI X300

Even with this tremendous difference in hardware Ubuntu was faster than OSX. Raw computational tasks like compiling or starting Tomcat were indeed slower due to the CPU difference but application tasks and the system as a whole felt faster. IntelliJ IDEA (a resource consuming monster that I love) specifically was orders of magnitude faster and less resource hungry – I didn’t get a single pause or stutter which happens often in OSX using the same version of IDEA. The system was quick, efficient, and utterly stable.

The performance was so profound I am exploring putting Ubuntu on this MBP in a separate partition and when it comes time to buy a new laptop I will now be forced to at least explore the latest Linux has to offer.

Conclusion

The overall take away for me is that Linux wins on performance hands down, but is beaten on overall usability and functionality. In the end my old laptop is now fully configured and ready to work providing a miscellaneous server machine in the house by default and a suitable workstation should this Macbook Pro fail again and get taken from me by the Geniuses.