Here's a review of SuSE 9.3: "Right now I'm looking at a SuSE 9.3 installation which offers me everything I'm used to plus more. It's hard to say if and when I'll switch, but it sure looks tempting. In more than one way SuSE feels so much better than Ubuntu, and it's hard to resist all the small details and finishes Novell put into the product."
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Member since:2005-07-07
I find MacOS X to be just as bad a maintainence problem as Windows. A lot of my software (installed from fink and darwinports) broke during the upgrade to Tiger. Portage on ppc was unfortunately not very mature the last time I looked (earlier this year).
A lot of the breakage in Darwinports and fink had to do with the change in compilers. GCC 4 changed the ABI, hence you can't use libraries compiled for GCC 3.3, and the new version of GCC also broke some packages, who knows why. The simplest way to have solved the problem was to install the developer tools and the extra GCC 3.3 compiler, and made the GCC 3.3 compiler default. That was how I got by until fink updated itself.
Don't blame Apple for everything. Commercial software is always going to be a pain to update, unless all companies agree to some central repository where all users can download updates (ah... the dream... 
Every time I come back and try some commercial software, I am inevitably dissappointed - please show me something which doesn't have a free comparable or better than comparable offering.
Matlab. There is nothing comparable that is free. Octave just doesn't cut it and is usually about 100x slower in a lot of the code that I run (mainly due to loops). Not everything can be vectorized and even if they were, Octave still doesn't run as well as Matlab. OpenOffice is still a joke when it comes to presentation tools. It doesn't compare with either Keynote or Powerpoint.
Open sourced software is great, but it isn't the be all end all.
Member since:I'd tend to agree with your sentiments about Matlab, et. al., though I've been finding software such as various combinations of Scipy, Scilab, Axiom, etc., can generally fill the gaps.
As far as office apps are concerned, I prefer WYSIWYM, and I loathe screen presentation tools, for alternatives see, for instance: http://www.miwie.org/presentations/presentations.html
Member since:
I have a dual boot linux/MacOS X system at the moment, but hardly spend any time in MacOS X (except when I want to use the Airport, which currently has no linux ppc drivers), as I care very little for most of what MacOS X has to offer (it may be fantastic for others, but I care more about nuts-and-bolts than aesthetics).
I find MacOS X to be just as bad a maintainence problem as Windows. A lot of my software (installed from fink and darwinports) broke during the upgrade to Tiger. Portage on ppc was unfortunately not very mature the last time I looked (earlier this year).
If MacOS X officially sanctioned either or both fink and DarwinPorts and ensured that software in these systems didn't break during upgrades, I might consider revising my position on this issue.
That being said, a very large portion of software that may be worth installing on a mac is commercial, and not available in a standard repository - there is no way of executing "upgrade all my commerical software" for free!
Every time I come back and try some commercial software, I am inevitably dissappointed - please show me something which doesn't have a free comparable or better than comparable offering.
I'm sticking with software built by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, thank you very much!