What is on Your Mind?

This is my first post here. Hi everyone.

I voted no.

For me, I just can't see spending money on what I see as basically repackaged BSD, and without the freedom of open source and the wow-factor of things like Compiz Fusion. Why not just use Linux?

On the other hand, I absolutely understand the desire to have an OS which is as well maintained as the Mac OS is, and which might be considered more user-friendly than any of the pure unix-like systems. But what of Linux Mint? Or Ununtu/Kubuntu? Anyone could use those. And I suspect that if more people knew about them (and the fact that they don't need the Mac architecture to run), they would.

Yes I agree, but Apple has made it so everything can be done through the GUI, no command line needed. They also have added tons and tons of command line applications that interface with their applications from the GUI, which is really nice.

Just a nit, sorry.....

I don't do "everything" from the command line on my OS X machine.

Yes, the GUI permits many things, perhaps even most things for the average user, but it does not faciliate "everything" as mentioned above.

Well, just a few thoughts about the command line and the GUI, they all kind of tie into everything. These binaries are scriptable and can be ran from the from either the comamnd line or GUI

networksetup
scutil
dscl
diskutil
open
osascript
airportd
ARD kickstart
dsenableroot
find

I mean these commands almost all have GUI front ends of some sort, and they all tie into each other very nicely. I find the general documentation and support better than most distros of Linux and Unix. Since I am an OS X sys admin by trade I love writing small scripts to configure my 6,000+ clients and it makes it easy that almost anything you can configure in the OS GUI wise also has a command line counter part which can help you get your job done.

Now on the other hand you average user will never have to open up the terminal they can do almost everything I am talking about by the GUI, which is nice to have it both ways.

Yes, I agree. Just because OS X has a amazing GUI does not mean you cannot use the command line if you desire.

On the other hand, most users will be happy with the GUI as a desktop model.

More than likely I would not choose OS X as a remote server as I do agree most packages for OS X are designed for GUI installation.

PS: I recently installed LAMP for OS X, called MAMP, and it was the easiest LAMP/MAMP install I have ever seen.

Neo, I used to admin a bunch of Windows and Novell servers at my old job. 80 servers, 10,000 PC windows clients, maybe 300 Macs. I did all the Mac work with one other guy and then did some PC work.

Now at my new job I have 30+ Xserves running 10.5.5 Server, and 6,700 Mac clients all in a pure open directory environment. I use a third party suite called Casper from Jamf Software.

I can tell you from my experience that package deployment is not only easy, it is way customizable and there are so many things I can do with it. Very very robust products. I can push out an application to all my clients with in a day if I really wanted to from my office. I can send them jobs to netboot and automatically reimage, from my office across the WAN.

Apple is lacking a few things here and there but really to be honest it is some of the best things I have worked with, when it works. I don't mean to say they don't work but I have definitely had my isues. 10.5.3 was a giant heap of dung and so was Work Group Manager 10.5.3 I wanted to thunder kick all my Mac servers at that point in time.

If you are going to run Web servers I would say Linux all the way, but if you want a file server, home directories, open directory, DHCP, or any other service you can run on a sever OS X Server isn't that bad.

My main comment from before was suppose to be, you can do everything from the command line or the GUI, you have a choice, which no Linux or Unix distro really has accomplished yet. Maybe Ubuntu has come close, but I can't compare the end user experience to that of a Mac.

I intalled TomCat, PHP 5 and MySQL on one of my servers through an installer package and it took all of 3 minutes to do so. Then configured it through the GUI. I just now need to brush up on my mysql command line abilities and I will be set.

Just saying is all.

Hey tlarkin!

Thanks for the great post.

When I talk about installing packages on "a remote server", I am talking about an environment where no GUI is possible. The server is only configured from a SSH connection.

I am not sure, and you are free to correct me, but I don't think OS X is the best choice for this type of "SSH-only command line remote admin" installations.

In your post, you conclude:

Are you saying that you can install and run these packages and configure completely from the command line without the GUI, via SSH, just like a Linux server?

Honestly, I only use OS X as a desktop and when I find a package like MAMP (LAMP for OS X) it seems to require a GUI click-and-install approach. Even the directions for install do not discuss any OS X "pure command line" linstallation approach.

Are you saying you can do 100% remote install, upgrade and configuration vis SSH? Yes or No? Thanks.