praka123
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Thursday, December 13th, 2007
By Scott Granneman
Today we have a technological cage match involving two operating systems, both UNIX- based, both mature, both with passionate detractors and even more passionate defenders, and both released just a week apart. I'm talking, of course, about Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), with its final release on October 18, and Apple' s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was available for purchase on October 26.
The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let's see how they stack up against each other.
Hardware Support
Ubuntu will run on pretty much any computer with an Intel-compatible or PowerPC CPU. The distro claims that you need a bare minimum of 256MB of RAM, but expect glacial performance. In reality, you'll want at least 512MB of RAM, with 1GB even better. You're told to expect that the OS will take up about 4GB of space on your hard drive, which is nothing in terms of today's ginormous hard drives. My main Kubuntu box has 756MB of RAM, with a Pentium 4 CPU, and while certain tasks can be kind of poky, overall it's quite usable.
You can install Leopard on any computer made by Dell, HP, Lenovo, or... just kidding! You install Leopard on Apple's boxes, or you buy a new Mac, and it comes with Leopard pre-installed. That's it. According to Apple, you can install Leopard on any Intel-based Mac, as well as any PowerPC G5 or G4 box, as long as it has a 867 MHz or faster CPU. You'll need at least 512MB of RAM, a DVD drive for the installation disc, and 9GB for the OS. My main Mac is a first generation MacBook Pro, with a 2 GHz Core Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM. Leopard screams on it, with the dreaded colored beachballs almost entirely a thing of the past.
The bottom line: if you have an old PC sitting around, it's gonna run Ubuntu or Windows. No Leopard for you. If you have a Mac made within the last five or six years, you can probably run Leopard on it, as well as Ubuntu.
Installation
Most operating systems have improved their installation routines over the last few years, and this is certainly true for both Leopard and Ubuntu. In fact, both are incredibly easy to install. If you're dual-booting with Windows, the easiest line of attack in the case of Linux is to install Ubuntu after Windows, while the opposite is true for the Mac-- install Windows using Boot Camp after Leopard is completely set up.
Leopard bests Ubuntu in one area, though: multiple monitor support. It just works like it's supposed to in Leopard, and I shuttle my laptop back and forth between a huge variety of monitors and projectors. I've never had an issue. Contrast that to Ubuntu, which touts its better multiple monitor support. It may be getting better, but it's still not there yet, and I'm just glad I had my trusty xorg.conf file backed up and ready to fall back on. Both Leopard and Ubuntu are excellent when it comes to installation.
click here to continue
By Scott Granneman
Today we have a technological cage match involving two operating systems, both UNIX- based, both mature, both with passionate detractors and even more passionate defenders, and both released just a week apart. I'm talking, of course, about Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), with its final release on October 18, and Apple' s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was available for purchase on October 26.
The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let's see how they stack up against each other.
Hardware Support
Ubuntu will run on pretty much any computer with an Intel-compatible or PowerPC CPU. The distro claims that you need a bare minimum of 256MB of RAM, but expect glacial performance. In reality, you'll want at least 512MB of RAM, with 1GB even better. You're told to expect that the OS will take up about 4GB of space on your hard drive, which is nothing in terms of today's ginormous hard drives. My main Kubuntu box has 756MB of RAM, with a Pentium 4 CPU, and while certain tasks can be kind of poky, overall it's quite usable.
You can install Leopard on any computer made by Dell, HP, Lenovo, or... just kidding! You install Leopard on Apple's boxes, or you buy a new Mac, and it comes with Leopard pre-installed. That's it. According to Apple, you can install Leopard on any Intel-based Mac, as well as any PowerPC G5 or G4 box, as long as it has a 867 MHz or faster CPU. You'll need at least 512MB of RAM, a DVD drive for the installation disc, and 9GB for the OS. My main Mac is a first generation MacBook Pro, with a 2 GHz Core Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM. Leopard screams on it, with the dreaded colored beachballs almost entirely a thing of the past.
The bottom line: if you have an old PC sitting around, it's gonna run Ubuntu or Windows. No Leopard for you. If you have a Mac made within the last five or six years, you can probably run Leopard on it, as well as Ubuntu.
Installation
Most operating systems have improved their installation routines over the last few years, and this is certainly true for both Leopard and Ubuntu. In fact, both are incredibly easy to install. If you're dual-booting with Windows, the easiest line of attack in the case of Linux is to install Ubuntu after Windows, while the opposite is true for the Mac-- install Windows using Boot Camp after Leopard is completely set up.
Leopard bests Ubuntu in one area, though: multiple monitor support. It just works like it's supposed to in Leopard, and I shuttle my laptop back and forth between a huge variety of monitors and projectors. I've never had an issue. Contrast that to Ubuntu, which touts its better multiple monitor support. It may be getting better, but it's still not there yet, and I'm just glad I had my trusty xorg.conf file backed up and ready to fall back on. Both Leopard and Ubuntu are excellent when it comes to installation.
click here to continue
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