Originally posted by MsMittens
Actually, Macintoshes don't need to be for newbies and running a *nix system on Mac isn't new. Yellow Dog Linux, PPCLinux and SUSE are all versions of Linux that run on PowerPC. Heck, if you have older Macs MKLinux (I believe) has a version that runs on the Motorola 68000s.
I know I shouldn't add to this forum's lengthy if fruitless debate, but I wanted to add a few thoughts.

I've been running Debian for about a year now on an old SE/30 I had lying around and it sits there being a static file-server day in day out. This computer has been with me for the last ten years since I wrote my thesis on it (which included 3D protein diagrams and POV-ray pictures). Sure - I was setting up colours whilst watching "1 bit" black and white, but they sure looked pretty when I printed out the enzymes on the RGB printer. Once OS 8.0 came in for good, I turned to a *nix solution to carry on. OK so the bus is a little slow for now, but the

The other side of the coin, recently my PIs and PIIs have had a new lease of life with the LRP (Linux Router Project) moving in. Suddenly we are back in the old days where 4Mb RAM was a lot of RAM. You can get versions of LRP to load up on a 4Mb RAM chip and still have room for a 2Mb RAM disk for logs. (...brings me back to programming the old 48k Spectrums and the BEEB). Suddenly, I have an excellent firewall, VPN client/server all running on something that goes for less than 5% of a new machine.

I suppose my point is that whether a Mac is faster than a PC is should not what we should be discussing - that's what the manufacturers want us to do. Instead we should concentrate on how we can write stuff (and reward writers of software) that doesn't need Mbs of RAM and disk space to function.

Which is easier to program..? Well, surely we can bring back the "good ol days" on the purity of *nix's in time...

Cheers,

PS. I haven't tried putting on a LR on the SE/30, it may be fun to give it a try, given it's all run in memory, I could add apache and keep my fileserver as well :> after all it's all about trying new stuff.