SynApps The Open Source and Gadget blog

Learning new tricks is somewhat harder for middle-aged dogs, especially when they have been using computers for 28 years already. It should give you some flexibility since you came across many user interfaces (some that were not even called such) but for 10+ years we've been poisoned by The Windows UI Methaphor (TWUM).

It has been tough moving to TWUM coming from the object oriented IBM OS/2 Presentation Manager but in 1994 that's what you had to do, or go Mac, which I chose not to back then.

In 2000 my intrest in Linux was revived. I love Linux on the Server but I have my worries about KDE and Gnome as Desktops. There is no consistent UI metaphor other than "let's do what's possible" (and then only finish it 90%) which makes normal day-to-day use for a power user cumbersome. It has uses in the commercial world but here I am talking about ME.

Every other year Windows drives me nuts enough to earnestly consider switching. So far I've always been coming back on the Desktop (not on the Server, see above). I just hit the wall again a couple of weeks ago, so I ignored my account status and ordered a wonderful dual G5 Mac with an even better 30" screen to

Switch from Windows to OS X

• Mouse with only one Button, ctrl+click emulates right click. Go get a USB two-button plus scroll-wheel mouse immediately. It ill work and is supported by OS X and the apps
• Ctrl is Command (Apple),Control is Alt in may cases
• how do I unmount a network drive, eject a disk, uninstall a program? drag in to the Garbage!
• Programs are not terminated when you click the red X
• To get X'ed programs back click them in the Launch Bar once again (so stop worrying if a program already runs or not, only your business when you what to shut down the computer
• Updating to 10.3.5 took 2 hours, 1 minute = 5 minutes (Max Payne style)
• When navigating hierachical menues don't click on the submenu! (at least no ambiguity)
• can copy disk to iPod, boot from iPod (CarbonCopy)
• you can mount Windoze shares, but you don't need drive letters

Windows reboot Mac be root

The concept of root in OS-X is similar to what you find in other *Nix flavors. However, there are some more or less important differences. See http://www.osxfaq.com/Tutorials/Root_User_Creation/index.ws to find out how to create a root account.

Is usually found it enough to jump around with root privileges instead of having a 'real' root account. For that I only needed to type into the Terminal: sudo -s and then type in my password and voilá: I got root privileges. AFAIK sudo is some kind of unix tool to allow certain useraccounts to have root privileges in exchange for ther actions being logged, but I'm not at all sure about that...

- FL

sudo is Super User DO, su wil make you root in a shell, sudo will execute one command with root priviledges. Funny it works without acutally having a root user. su does not work ths way. - RL

Techie Stuff

• X11 Server from http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/download/
• Whimp stuff - http://www.biermann.org/philipp/OSX/ - mc sits in /usr/local/bin

-- RafaelLaguna - 12 Nov 2004