I wholeheartedly recommend MacOS for people like my mom, who certainly doesn't need to fire up something like Emacs.
However, for those who like to explore technology in creative ways (hackers, in other words), and want to deeply understand the systems they use, the freedom involved with a system like Linux is still the place to be, IMO.
And for when you're just getting stuff done, I don't think it poses any major challenges these days; or at least it doesn't for me. If you're a graphics guy and need Photoshop, clearly things are different.
Ok so my basic question is, why can't OSX be a "hacker" os? Or even windows for that matter? Not having source has at times made things more fun to explore. Look at the sheer creativity of virus writers.
Why is having a workstation that you don't need to babysit due to version upgrades a bad thing? Note I've used linux since 1997ish, might have been sooner I can't be arsed to check.
Note: I run with chrome/emacs/iterm/vmware basically, and my "day job" gives me more of the linux kernel and scsi/fibre stack than I'd really like. I've dug through enough of their sources fixing problems we encounter that I hope I at least get the title of honorary hacker.
But complete understanding of everything I run? Meh, there is more to life than that, maybe I'm getting old, but administering my home machines has gotten less appealing as time goes on to the point that I really just want to see things mostly working without me needing to spoon feed things.
I can setup a new mac in about 30 minutes. Course I can do about the same on linux. Mostly just a git clone and run a few scripts and I'm setup. As far as distros, i've had them all blow up in one way or another, debian, gentoo, linux from scratch, arch, ubuntu, opensuse, suse, redhat, fedora, centos, those are all I can remember using at the moment. The one thing I've found is after 6ish+ months of updates something managed to break my xorg config or nvidia driver installs. So far Arch is the only one that makes updates simple enough.
Sorry got on a bit of a rant there. And for that upgrade unavailable, the laptop I'm typing this on just got a new lion install from leopard via a usb drive. Yes I couldn't upgrade it, but to be honest I don't do anything overly too off the wall to care. No need to have snow leopard, just do what I did for friends that bought it after they installed it, get a buddy to burn the dmg to a usb drive, or dvd I guess.
> Ok so my basic question is, why can't OSX be a "hacker" os?
The basic problem is that development and hacking are different use cases for the machine than the general public needs. Apple considers the general public primarily, and the development and hacking public secondarily.
However, for those who like to explore technology in creative ways (hackers, in other words), and want to deeply understand the systems they use, the freedom involved with a system like Linux is still the place to be, IMO.
And for when you're just getting stuff done, I don't think it poses any major challenges these days; or at least it doesn't for me. If you're a graphics guy and need Photoshop, clearly things are different.
Edit:
http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2011/08/09/Upgrade-Unavaila...