🚀 go-pugleaf

>] Every week that I spend having to tune my Unix box, is a week
>] of real work lost.
>
>You wouldn't need to tune it if you had left it tuned in the
>first place, or were trying to use it beyond the scope of the
>tuned configuration from the install.

   Which exactly illustrates the problem with Unix. Most of the vaunted
power and configuarability is available only to people with a very large
amount of time and knowledge (usually someone that does nothing but Unix
system adminstrate). Which makes it a very expensive solution. A Mac might
not be as powerful as a Unix box, but you can do all the system
administration for a dozen Macs (including system updates, retuning,
networking... the whole lot) in well and truly less than an afternoon a
week. And that is presuming that your users are often installing new
stuff. But a Unix system with a dozen excitable users (that keep wanting
new stuff all the time) will keep a sys admin run of their feet. 
   Unix is a good OS for many commercial environments - ones where you
install one or two networked apps that are absolutely necessary, and then
leave it alone. And the larger the site, with the smaller number of actual
apps, then the better it looks, as the sysadmin salary is amortised over
more machines. But for most small business situations, with a small number
of people who need to do a wide variety of things, Unix looks pretty bad,
and Macs look pretty good.
   Horses for courses - but I don't run on the courses where Unix looks
good very often (though we do use it as a file server, and its OK). 

>I can intentionally screw up a Mac too, but that wouldn't make
>arguments about having to undo screwups any more valid.
>
   But a very small amount of computer knowledge would allow you to fix
the Mac quite quickly, in most cases (reinstall the system, Zap the PRAM,
rebuild the desktop (not in that order) and your generally looking fine).
   On the other hand, even a fairly simple mistake or hardware problem can
often take a very large amount of Unix knowledge to fix up. 
   Cheers
               Dave
>
>                                        Terry Lambert
>                                        terry@cs.weber.edu
>---

-- 
David Cake
davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au

Faculty of Arts
University of Western Australia