Mac Gurus Switching to Ubuntu Linux

Mac Gurus Switching to Ubuntu Linux

by John Little on 6/07/2006

It’s time for your daily dose of nerd.

Ubuntu Linux has picked up two very high-profile users:

If you want to spend more time enjoying your PC (and less time configuring it and battling ‘helpful’ popups), you could do a lot worse than the synergy of a Mac running OS X.

So I got a big shock when I read that two of the Mac platform’s greatest supporters have moved over to GNU/Linux – the Ubuntu distribution – because they feel that it better satisfies their needs.

The first was software developer Mark Pilgrim about a month ago, and recently Cory Doctorow piped up an admitted that he was switching too.

How could it be that things could have changed so dramatically, so quickly?

Hard to believe it but this story is popping up everywhere. Tim O’Reilly looks for an emerging trend:

Nerds are a small demographic, but they can also be the canary in the coal mine with stuff like this.” Here’s Mark’s post. And here’s Cory’s. And it looks like Paul Bausch might not be far behind. Good timing for Ubuntu Hacks, although we might also want to take a leaf from David Pogue’s book, and do a Switching to Ubuntu as well :-) Brian Jepson added to the editors’ list thread: “I’ve been hearing these rumblings as well, but I don’t know what to make of them. One of my friends just told me that all this switching away buzz has convinced him to decide against switching to Mac OS X, and he’s going to move from Windows to Ubuntu instead.”

I’ve been using and pimping Ubuntu since it’s release. A good percentage of the technically inclined people (ok nerds) that I know use it. Still, I don’t think you’ll see many hardcore Mac types switch to Linux soon. However, I do think that some of the Windows to Mac, and old school Linux to Mac, switchers may stray.

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There are 2 comments in this article:

6/07/2006Dwight Silverman says:

I’ve been playing w/Ubuntu 6.06 myself, it’s very intriguing. I still think the best Linux distro for Windows users is Linspire, but it’s not free. Really, though, until doing things like installing drivers is as simple in Linux as it is in Windows or Mac, Linux won’t get very far with the masses.
13/07/2006Jimmy Charron says:

First, I run Suse Linux and it was super e-z to set up drivers. Yast detected everything perfect.

Second, Linux is free and diffirent. w/ suse and Ubuntu running Xgl, you have super slick nextgen desktops RIGHT NOW and free. Also, gNome and KDE use alot less sys resorces than Aero Glass(vista). So you can have all the fancy deskop eyecandy w/ 1/2 the system you would need to run Aero Glass. I see nothing but good times for linux ahead. Installing vista for me was a living nightmare. And when i got it running, it gets unstable if you let it run. Ppl are eirther going to stick with XP or look for somthing else. Just like those Mac gurus, reg ppl just like John L. right here a BOW, and myself are discovering linux. Linux is constanly being fixed, updated, and upgraded by companies and its more savy users.

I see linux becoming bigger than Mac very soon.

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