On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 05:58:36PM -0800, Yasha Karant wrote:
> 
> There are significant issues with a Mac.
>
> The software issues can be addressed from the fink download site
> (there are others) that provide all of the standard open systems tools
> and many of the environments.
>

"yum install" is replaced by "fink", "ports/packages/etc". no issue here. (most of the time you get newer versions compared to SL6+EPEL6)

>
> However, not only is Mac hardware (much) more
> expensive
>

you pay the extra money for the privilege of not having to read this mailing list. money well spent, AFAIC.

>
> the I/O ports are not as standard as on a properly
> specified professional laptop (for a fixed desktop workstation with
> enough PCI slots, this is never a problem), and typically require
> special adapters/dongles.
> 

"not as standard"? "properly specified professional laptop"?

Can you be more specific, latest Macbook Air and Macbook Pro Retina
are missing what I/O ports? (We are still talking about Linux laptops here,
right? Or you want to bring in desktops, servers, and specialized,
e.g. DAQ machines, too?)

(To remind all, we are still on topic here - if SL were perfect, Mac would be unecessary
and Apple would be out of business).

> ... the internal [Mac] "engine" is BSD and does work ...

Unfortunately, Apple have not been investing into the BSD engine
and in many ways it is severely behind the leading edge of OS functions,
design and performance compared to recent Linux kernels and even
to the remaining BSDs. For me, most missing are the latest POSIX
extensions to PTHREADS, to POSIX semaphores and to POSIX shared memory,
e.g. complete lack of "ls /dev/shm" function.

-- 
Konstantin Olchanski
Data Acquisition Systems: The Bytes Must Flow!
Email: olchansk-at-triumf-dot-ca
Snail mail: 4004 Wesbrook Mall, TRIUMF, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 2A3, Canada