“Hope of Linux tackling the desktop market has suffered a reality check with the University of Melbourne’s Trinity College dumping the penguin in favour of Unix cousin Mac OS X, not x86-based rival, Windows,” Rodney Gedda reports for Computerworld. “A lab of 20 PCs running Debian GNU/Linux will be replaced by G5 iMacs with the compelling reasons for the migration being a ‘slick user interface’ and ease of use, according to Trinity College systems administrator Tim Bell.”
“‘Looking at the maturity of Debian as a desktop and it’s not quite there, particularly compared with Mac OS X, which has come a long way,’ Bell said. ‘It has a good user experience and is reliable [so] Mac OS X wins. Debian is still a good platform and is maintainable with minimal updates compared with Windows.’ Bell said OS X supports all the required applications, including Microsoft Office,” Gedda reports. ‘Under Linux we have been using OpenOffice which is great, but the interoperability is not quite there. The labs are not just used by students, so we need to provide labs for people without the time to learn Linux,’ he said. ‘Macs are simple to use and Linux still has a few rough edges.'”
“An additional 33 eMacs are being purchased for the library and administration along with Xserve RAID storage systems for server backups. All up the deal is worth around $90,000,” Gedda reports. “The new computers will ship with the just-released Mac OS X version 10.4 ‘Tiger,’ making the college one of the first in the country to deploy it for business.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looks like Tigers will eat swimming birds if they must, but they still greatly prefer consuming imaginary beef.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple’s Mac OS X is much more secure than Linux or Windows – November 12, 2004
Microsoft’s Longhorn mess opens window of opportunity; time for Linux users to switch to Mac OS X – September 02, 2004
Apple Macintosh easily leads Linux in market share, installed base – August 09, 2004
InfoWorld: Apple’s Mac OS X ‘will trounce Linux, give Microsoft a fast-moving target for Longhorn’ – July 05, 2004
Mercury News columnist: ‘best way for average person to run Unix is Mac OS X’ not Linux – April 04, 2004
Linux Magazine: ‘Linux interfaces pale besides the glory that is Mac OS X’s Aqua’ – March 08, 2004
Unix/Linux guru Simon Cozen defects to Mac OS X – September 21, 2002
Longhorn goes “moo” but what sound does a penguin make?
Yesssssssssss..
waack!!!!
Penguin I think sounds kind of like: Eek!
But anyways, I’m currious why they used Debian, since there has been all the conflict inside the Debian project about how the latest release has slacked off. But I do agree that Linux is more difficult to work with, and sometimes work on, than OS X. Its not a big win, but it is still a small college picking what they think is best switching from Windows to Linux, and they think its Apple’s OS X.
A staggering amount of 20 Macs! I’m impressed!!!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”hmmm” style=”border:0;” />
penguin sound = crunch
Kool,
I count 53 Macs and an unknown quantity of Xserve RAID storage systems where before there were 20 Linux installs that obviously failed to impress.
From: Kool
A staggering amount of 20 Macs! I’m impressed!!! hmmm
I worked for a fortune 100 company with several hundred thousand computers deployed in the US, alone. Needless to say, they were not Mac.
I was reminded of this when I read Kool’s comment.
Whatever the guys over at Slashdot will tell you, Linux really isn’t (yet) a desktop OS. It’s for the server room, where it beats Windows and, dare I say it, the Mac, with a big stick. The good thing about this Uni’s decision is not that they are moving to Mac, but that having made the jump to alternative OSs, they’re not willing to go back to the nightmare that Windows has become.
More Linux usage benefits the Mac and vice versa. It means more developers and companies have to think outside the Redmond mindset and follow real standards, rather than Microsoft ones. So you could argue that this decision isn’t really a loss for Linux.
An organization shifting to 53 new Macs is nothing to sneeze at, especially when it gets good press for the Mac. Higher Ed is an important target for Apple.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and again:
Australia will be the Macs savior. Free thinking Aussies rule!
Do you know that the city of Munich stopped using Linux, too? They got sick of no one knowing what Linux is about (the costs of training and troubleshooting for Linux are quite staggering) and how to use it, they went back to using the system everybody knows, because they have it at work and they have it at home. They went back to Windows. And that was more than a few dozen machines…
A battle won, a battle lost.
By my opinion Tiger work on Apple PC machine (not Intel),
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
Linux work on both. So the question is how you could replace Linux on Intel with Tiger ????
Love this quote:
“If you can run your business without paying Microsoft, significant cost savings can be achieved.”
Maki:
You can’t. But the Windows machines can communcate very well with the OSX servers – and vice versa.
Apple is doing quite well enough without putting itself into meltdown switching firms with >100,000 machines.
At least not yet.
Later.
About Munich, the last official news is this (May 16)
http://www.osdir.com/Article5527.phtml
Spain go to Linux too:
http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,39197928,00.htm
Today:
Bristol ready to put open source on 3,500 desktops
http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=138630&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID=6&liChannelID=1&liFlavourID=1&sSearch;=&nPage=1
And more, more …
That’s the true fact. Mac is good (it’s version of Unix, if someone still do not know), I do not hate MS (it’s good too, I just do not like MS politic, arrogance, DRM, limited tools, …), but Linux is not perfect, but better and better with every day.
Thanks
Mac the Knife:
I just comment the wrong interpellation of title
“University of Melbourne’s Trinity college replaces Linux penguins with Apple Mac Tigers”
It’s make very unrealistic view of the things.
Love that MDN take.
MDN take was the best thing about the article, which is saying alot since MDN had nothing to do with it.
Anybody who thinks Linux is comparable to Mac OS X Server has never gotten an Xserve out of the box, in the rack, on the LAN and running in five minutes.
I think it’s pretty clear to objective observers that Linux has the potential to be the Mac’s biggest competitor, but it’s also pretty clear to objective observers that Linux hasn’t evolved one damn bit in five years. It reached its zenith around the turn of the century and will go no farther. We’re going to see more and more Linux users switch to the Mac, especially since Microsoft, by keeping its next-generation offering in the stables for as long as it has, has basically bowed out of the fight for the time being.