[Discussion] Thinking of going IMAC

[dushanm at spinn.net]

Mark Brueggemann wrote:
> 
> --- On Wed, 12/2/09, dushanm at spinn.net <dushanm at spinn.net> wrote: 
> 
>> I did that about three years ago, and found it much more 
>> work than I had anticipated.
> 
> Wow Dushan, you don't paint a very rosy picture of the Mac.

Hi Mark.  No, for me it wasn't.  It all depends on one's personality.
Some people would be entirely happy with the Mac OS - I just wasn't one
of them.

> I'm going through OS woes myself.  I can't seem to get there 
> from here.

Your description of OS troubles is informative, but regrettably all too
familiar.  A few years ago I got Scientific Linux, thinking it would be
business-like.  Maybe it was, for somebody who could get it working.  I
couldn't. 

> I've got two doze desktops, my dual boot eCs/linux desktop, triple 
> boot Thinkpad (doze/eCs/linux), and a linux server box. 
> 
> The intent is to have everything connect to the linux machine
> as a file and print server.  It's been a real eye opener. 
> 
> The server is a Red Hat based system put out by an outfit
> called Clark Connect.  Gives you all the basic services you
> need in a no-frills simple install.  I'm running it on a "real" 
> HP server box.  Boxes are all connected up with a Linksys wifi 
> hub.  Wifi is for the laptop. 
> 
> Hardware wise everything seems to work fine.  Can't seem
> to find a common ground with the protocols though. 
> 
> The server box is currently configured as a Samba server
> for both public shares and print server.  That's when I discovered
> the Samba in eCs is old, and the new one I tried  (netlabs?)
> didn't work.  It can see the shares but won't open them. Need to 
> see if I can at least FTP with eCS and skip printing for now. 
> 
> Windoze of course can see, read and write the shares just
> fine, and print perfectly. 
> 
> Linux is a real pill.  I've tried half a dozen distributions and only
> one so far works with the server 100%.  My linux mentor says
> I need to read up on Samba.  The man page for that is only about
> 200 pages long.  I guess I'm not a true linux believer, since I 
> expect basic services to work out of the box.  
> 
> Seems like NFS might be an option for Linux and eCS but there's
> no client built into windoze for that, and would still leave me to 
> solve networking the printer.  
> 
> My goal of having one file/print bucket for all my machines is
> quickly turning to crap.  The more I dork with this stuff the
> better it looks to chuck the whole mess and put my data on
> thumb drives. 
> 
> The Mac theme to this post is I'd be happy to go proprietary
> if it meant I could plug and play, but even with apple there's
> no guarantees other than how much it will cost you.  I need
> at least one doze and one linux machine no matter what, so
> with a mixed bag like this it appears there's no simple solution.
> You'd think as the technology moved forward it would become
> more seamless and integrated but I'm finding it's just the 
> opposite. 
> 
> Makes me long for the days of Warp 4 and my simple peer
> network, which worked like a hose.

Yep, I hear you loud & clear. 

 - Dushan
Albuquerque, NM