Mandrake 9.2 crashes LG CD-ROM drives

Yes, the Mac is very stable and always has been.

There are tons of software available for the Mac, but not necessarily mainstream programs. A lot of the programs are little utility programs or written for one specific purpose. It does have pretty much all the major programs necessary to run most business. It may not have specialty programs written for some businesses (that can be said for any of them).

It does seem to lacking a lot of major database support, which would make it difficult to justify for a large company that is database driven.

Linux has a similar problem - not a lot of software. But then it is a fairly young OS and this should change as it becomes more and more accepted as mainstream - as it seems to be doing.

This was what limited the Mac. It fell out of the mainstream, partially because of price and Windows started to take over the market. Many of the mainstream software designers that prefered the Mac saw that they could sell more of their software on Windows - from sheer volume. So what would you do, as a software designer? Develop software that you could marketed and sold to 20 percent of the market or software that could be marketed and sold to 60 percent of the market. Doesn't take a genius to figure out your best ROI.

Here is a pretty good article on the comparison of the 3 OSs. I don't understand why it takes him so long to put a PC on the network. Based on what he says, it is much harder to put a PC on the network and that just isn't the case. I can put a PC on the network in 10 minutes or less.

www.pmmag.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/fea.../0,2379,3192,00.html

Also, comparisons are usually based on familiarity. We are usually biased by what we know. I can honestly say I know very little about Linux as I have not used much. I do know more about Windows as I have used it a bunch.

It's still fun to debate (discuss) the pros and cons of each.

Valid points all around and you're right Tom, Apple are the only people trying to do something different -- as in actually radically different.. and its worked in quite a few places.. think Imac, Itunes etc etc.

In terms of innovation I think everyones really trying something different now, for example linux went to the ext3 journaling file system which is light years ahead of NTFS or HFS (isn't that the macs fs still ?) Microsoft is countering by doing this -- when longhorn comes out, its not gonna have a filesystem like we think of.. no directories etc, its gonna be based on an SQL database ! Its quite a crazy concept and as they themselves say they're 'betting the company' on it.. if they pull it off then it'll be incredibly efficient.. if they flop, they'll be in a world of trouble trying to port all the old apps to use the new system. Check it out :
news.com.com/2009-1017-857509.html

Anyway the issue that started this melee has been sorted out, Mandrake released a fix for the CD-ROM problem
www.linux.org/news/2003/10/31/0004.html


Btw check out the sneak previews of Windows Longhorn and Winamp5 (totally unrelated) in cool software. If you're thinking that Longhorn will come with a better looking default wallpaper.. lol think again !

Dueling with Tom is always fun, and invariably Chris has to post something in the middle to keep us from really going overboard

I'm not sure what the Mac uses at this point. I haven't really been that deep into it. I use it, but I haven't really kept up with all the OS changes.

Gee Longhorn looks more like the Mac !