Ubuntu vs. Mac OS

For me, OS X is the perfect blend between traditional, more user-oriented, graphically savvy world with a great interface (one can dislike it but at least it is consistent and powerful) and the UNIX world of command-line utilities and networking. I've been a FreeBSD developer for quite some years now and I can enjoy both developing and running FreeBSD systems (in a VMware VM) and using my computer for photo-managing tasks with Lightroom and other apps like that without having to switch.

It is also a great system to run on laptops, soemthing which is generally a pain with free OSes (some fare slightly better like ubuntu but I'm not a linux user).

If the goal is to learn UNIX, then something like Linux or BSD makes far more sense than OS X.

When I think of "learning UNIX", I think of something like Arch or Slackware where you start with a minimal base system and build from there. I don't think of a big OS where you install a one-size-fits-all base system with a large closed-source GUI system on top of it. I don't think of a base system where you don't update the packages yourself, but instead get updates rolled up in occasional point release updates of the OS in general (and even then, the updates lag far behind). I don't think of a userland where the accepted practice is to just leave it the hell alone and build your own packages somewhere else, as Fink and MacPorts do.

I type all of this on my brand new 13" MacBook Pro, which I adore. I love using OS X. I don't consider any of the above to be bad necessarily. But learning UNIX? No.

Perhaps the best way to learn UNIX is to throw together a cheap white box to experiment on. Something that you don't need to always be in a working state. Virtual machines are good for playing around with too, and certainly, you can run VMWare Fusion and experiment with other UNIXes in VMs 'till your heart's content.

There's a lot of reasons to like and use OS X, and UNIX is a big one of those, but OS X's UNIX is decidedly prefab. Plenty good for using, but not what I'd point to as an ideal platform for learning the underpinnings.

Get both.

Buy a Mac, use Mac OS X, get VMware, install Ubuntu.

If you are into playing and editing movies, you'll be surprised how excellent Mac OS handles video. And with VMware you have the option of visiting a Ubuntu desktop to change settings the Linux way while otherwise using Ubuntu from the Mac desktop, using SSH and X11.

I have been a Mac user since 1998 (I was actually a BeOS user back then), so I am obviously biased, but I think you will find that Mac OS X and Ubuntu running at the same time give you a lot more than just running Ubuntu.

Plus you will have access to standard end user applications like Microsoft Office, iTunes, Quicktime Player etc. and Apple's excellent multimedia applications.

Seeing as how you can run Ubuntu on a mac with Parallels for the VMWare Fusion product, I think the real question is do you NEED to have a MAC? Thats quite a bit of money for something to play around with a free OS on....