Well, those who know me will remember when I started to join in with then goings on in the IRC channel for macobserver, and later joined the forum and became a mod.  Unfortunately, after about 6-7 years of using a Mac as my main desktop, I’m leaving the Mac platform for a Linux desktop. 

Yesterday evening, I finished assembling a new Intel Core 2 Quad machine from parts and promptly installed Ubuntu x86_64 on it.  I’m currently in the process of transferring all relevant files from the G5 tower I had been using to the new machine.  In the process, I’ve gone highly power efficient, and will be cutting the average power consumption of my desktop in half, from 130W to 60W as measured by my UPS unit.

I will miss the Mac platform to a degree, but I still feel burned by Apple’s decision to leave the PPC platform, given my 4 year old G5 isn’t even supported under 10.6.  My G5 tower is going to be retired to a speciality machine, only to be booted when I haven’t figured out how to do something I used to do with my new machine.

I’ll still be hanging around the IRC channel for anyone that wants to visit, but I’ll probably visit the forums even less than I have been for the last couple years.

So, to take a line from famous closing catch phrase from Cowboy Bebop….

See you Space Cowboy.

FlatEric - 21 November 2009 11:42 PM

I’ll still be hanging around the IRC channel for anyone that wants to visit, but I’ll probably visit the forums even less than I have been for the last couple years.

And that’s saying something.

Well, I’ll gladly take your G5 off your hands if you feel you don’t need it anymore!

Best of luck, man!

Apple’s unspoken motto is “our way or the highway.” It has its positives (moving things forward quickly) and negatives (premature obsolescence) but it’s a reality of the platform. I for one think the occasional downsides are far outweighed by the benefits of the platform as a whole.

I’m no kernel hacker, but I am experienced with both Mac OS X and Linux – have used both as a day-to-day desktops and as production servers. Personally I wouldn’t dream of leaving the Mac as my main personal computer. But that’s just me.

I hope things go well for you! Good choice with Ubuntu. I’ve always enjoyed Debian (same general idea maintained by a different team with a different focus) and Fedora.

FE, enjoy the new Linux machine! 

It’s really too bad Apple doesn’t support the longtail users better.  If you haven’t upgraded in 5 years for hardware, 2-3 years for software, things start not working as well on a perfectly good machine.  My parents have a G5 iMac with Panther.  They used Safari (1.3) until sites started looking weird, so I told them they needed to switch to FireFox, but even then 3.5 requires Tiger.

David Nelson - 29 November 2009 01:10 AM

Personally I wouldn’t dream of leaving the Mac as my main personal computer. But that’s just me.

I hope things go well for you! Good choice with Ubuntu. I’ve always enjoyed Debian (same general idea maintained by a different team with a different focus) and Fedora.

If you had asked me two years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined switching from OS X to Linux for my home desktop.  Then I used Ubuntu on my EEE PC for a year and got even more tired of Apple.  The switch came easily after that.  I’ve used Debian as a fileserver OS since 2004, but I never have used Red Hat or Fedora.

Stephen Swift - 10 December 2009 11:20 AM

FE, enjoy the new Linux machine! 

It’s really too bad Apple doesn’t support the longtail users better.  If you haven’t upgraded in 5 years for hardware, 2-3 years for software, things start not working as well on a perfectly good machine.  My parents have a G5 iMac with Panther.  They used Safari (1.3) until sites started looking weird, so I told them they needed to switch to FireFox, but even then 3.5 requires Tiger.

Thanks.  And for your parents, I recommend Opera 10.  My 12in PowerBook G4 still runs 10.3 (mostly because I never purchased a retail 10.4 disc since it shipped with my G5).  FireFox dropped support for 10.3 with the FireFox 3.0 release, so I’ve been using Opera on that laptop for a while now.  When they released Opera 10, it did seem to be a noticeable improvement from 9.6.x.