you can easily play 2 sounds at once in OS X. i've never had a problem with 2 apps doing this. i often set a playlist in iTunes and play games (SCUMM VM recently) with their own music off, but effects on. i never needed to setup a dmix like i did in linux. i don't care if the mixing is hardware or software... in OS X "it just works". many things are like this and its why i moved too. life it to short to spend your life in /etc. now i am actually productive when emacs is open! (not tweaking)
your comments to this OSS giant are incredibly patronising. do you really think he doesn't understand these technical details? this guy is responsible for Netscape, Mozilla, XEmacs and XScreensaver. he is an ooberhacker!
and as to why you'd want to keep linux as your primary OS, i have no idea. fink exists which allows you to use any OSS program you want. when i made the switch i got to keep all my fav apps (even very specific scientific apps), but no need to worry about hardware. plus a ton of really well designed base apps like Terminal, Mail, Safari and iLife. add onto that the incredible advances apple make (take automator, expose, spotlight for example).
have you ever even used a recent version of Mac OS X?
