Re:this is it's strange (Score 1)

But there's NO EXCUSE not to use a Mac. And, no, they're not as expensive as everyone thinks. You can get a really fast iBook or eMac for $999. The apps, are there, stability, UNIX, ease of use and power.

Mac
Macs have a proprietary hardware (Score: -1), have only just become moderately stable in the lastest release 10.2 (Score: -1), which now doesn't have a customizable GUI (Score: -1) and have an incredibly restrictive amount of both available OSs (Score: -1) or software (Score: -1). OS X is vulnerable to the same problems affecting BSD whereas the totally lame non-threaded, single-tasking Mac OS 7.5.5 / Open Transport was completely (i.e. thoroughly tested) secure (Score: -1). It's just not enough to buy another Mac.

X86
My x86 boxes cycle between OSes (Score: +1). I have a substantial choice - Sun x86, BeOS, RedHat, Mandrake, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Darwin, Windows, DOS, even Lindows, etc. (Score: +10). My x86 hardware is not affected by proprietary OS upgrades like 68k -> PPC --> OS X (Score: +1). I can stay behind the curve with the latest patches or run pre-alpha compilations (Score: +1). My main production software (or a killer Open Source equivalent) doesn't yet work on Linux - including Eudora, Powerpoint, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Pro Tools & GigaStudio (Score: +1).

Linux
It works (Score: +1). It doesn't run everything I need (Score: -1).

The Wish List
You want to get me really exited. Give me choice (Score: +10). Give me complete (API, Kernel & GUI) compatibility all across my choices (Score: +10). Port all my Mac and Windows apps (Score: +10). Give me a decent GUI that is fully customizable (Score: +10). Give me unrestricted video and audio to create original works (Score: +10). Give it to me on any hardware platform - anyone remember CHRP? (Score: +10) And don't waste my time, CPU, or bandwidth with emulation running crash-prone inferior code (Score: +10).

There are very few killer client apps out there, and they are all currently Mac/Windows. Fortunately, all the killer server apps are already on Linux. Hopefully the Open Source Applications Foundation will make some headway in fixing this. Right now there isn't anything that really makes X worth installing. vi still rules.

Here we have 1 Mac (exclusively dedicated to Pro Tools), 5 Windows boxes (various) and 7 Linux boxes (none of which run X). We also have a ThinkNIC which runs X but it doesn't actually do anything except ssh and Netscape. It is mostly used by our clients needing to reach Hotmail. Go figure.