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You'll accept imprisonment so long as the toilet doesn't overflow, the bars are painted candy cane, walls are padded, and a nice little window painted in?

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Honestly I found imprisonment while trying to use Linux professionaly at work. Reason being that I am in marketing and, like the majority of us on a payroll, have to worry about the quality of the applications, not the operating system which it runs on.
Linux at home? Sure, why not! Have as much fun as you can! I just find being commited to a computer related career to be imprisonment in its self regardless of how it ends up on your hardware.

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Well, Linux doesn't meet many of your requirements, either, so I guess you can recycle your computer and go without.

1. Availability
I have burned copies of my install DVD's for OS X. I've also checked to see that they work. I can purchase OS X online at Amazon and a couple of other web stores, and at two stores locally which are not Apple stores. The only thing I can't do is download the complete OS X DVD.

2. No activation keys or serial numbers.
Well, I'll admit, when the hardware _is_ the activation key, this is both true and false for OS X. But with some hacking, you can make it run on a PC, just like trying to get Linux to run back in the "good old days!" So I'd say that Linux is ahead by only about 0.05 out of a scale of 10 in this category.

3. Provide me with a simple, safe, accessible software portal.
LOL!
ROTFL!
How many times has Debian source repositories been compromised? At least twice that I know of. And Debian isn't the only distro source that's been compromised. I use OpenSuSE mostly, and it hasn't been compromised.

Yet.

That I know of.

Linux isn't a loser in this category, because I don't know about Apple's security. But Linux isn't a winner in this category, either.

4. Value added software pre-installed.
I think it's dishonest to pick an item that Microsoft uses to enforce a Windows only world: Microsoft Exchange. Otherwise, while Linux has more different things, I've found that the large number of choices _in_each_category_ such as music players, puts off new users, but overall I'd say Linux is only marginally better in terms of quality software.

Stuff I've downloaded for free for OS X - and worked:
Audacity
GIMP
OpenOffice
Firefox
Thunderbird (but I ended up staying with Apple Mail)
jEdit
Nedit
Eclipse
Netbeans
Subversion
VirtualBox
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Kompozer
Inkscape
Scribus
gawk
OS X only software:
fugu (sftp GUI)
ManOpen (Man pages GUI)
sshfs (MacFUSE - based sftp file system)
ClamXav (ClamAV for OS X)

... and I could go on. Linux isn't a clear winner here.

5. Allow me to choose my own desktop.
Well, it _can_ be done, with some effort on OS X. Really: I have seen screenshots of KDE running on Macs which use the Apple-supplied Darwin as the OS. You can also download and build KDE of you want. I haven't looked for GNOME, but I'll bet it's also available. But this begs the issue, the vast majority of people get used to one interface and stick with it. This is actually a valid reason to stick with Windows. My neighbor just got disgusted with WinXP and bought a Mac. But she's going up a learning curve with OS X. Now, if you have time to spend learning all sorts of new GUI's, that's fine, but most of us have jobs to do and want to stick with one GUI that we're comfortable with (in fact, the _vast_ majority of people want only one GUI, which ever one they're used to). So this is a bogus arguement.

6. Free me from horrible peripheral software installations.
Actually, OS X package installation system has always worked pretty smoothly for me. The various Linux distros are mostly pretty good, but some software still uses tar, and then, how do you get it out if you need to? As far as device drivers go, I still see a lot of nightmarish problems with getting the latest, top-end graphics cards to work on Linux, and it was only a couple of years ago, that a Linux install could take a week or more hunting down all sorts of device drivers and making them work. Linux has made great progress on this front, though. Most of the time (but not _all_ the time) Linux installs are smooth and interface with all the hardware. OS X? It's at least as good, though not perfect. Of course, there's not much hardware you can add to an iMac or the MacBooks.

7. Do not force OS updates that only serve to protect your assets.
I can agree with that. So far - repeat, so far - Apple hasn't been blatant about that. It goes with the hardware to a large extent.

8. My hardware, on my terms.
Well, as I indicated above, there are ways to get OS X running on non Apple PC's. But with the large number of laptops being sold, and with laptops having almost all the capabilities of an off-the-shelf-desktop, this isn't much of an issue since laptops don't have much room to install stuff.

9. Support interoperability with others.
I'm not sure that interoperability is the same as file sharing. I am also suspicious of people who talk about freedom to share their music - I suspect that they simply want music for free. Artists deserve to be paid, and yes, the current situation with music companies is atrociously exploitative of musicians.

But as for interoperability, I can access file on my Linux machine with three different protocols, I can run programs on my Linux machine remotely on my Mac, although it's more difficult to go the other way, due to Aqua differences. I have been constantly astounded by how much software has been ported from Linux and Unix.

As for email, there are lots of Linux mail readers which make migrating to another reader a painful experience. The only approach I've found that's easy is reading strictly from a browser. And there are several browsers that work on both OS X and Linux, this isn't much of an argument.

You are trying to say why Linux is better than OS X, and overall, your arguements add up to a weak rationale. As one who uses both, regularly, you've defined yourself as someone with very unique requirements and preferences, who doesn't fit the vast, vast majority of users, and for whom Linux is just fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But you haven't made a convincing case for anybody who's not already a True Linux Believer.

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