In my experience, they have nowhere near the range and quality of packaging as Linux distros have. There's just a much larger community for that stuff in Linux than there is for OS X, which focuses less on FOSS.
Yes, you can do all the Linux stuff if you run Linux in a VM. Not the same though as running it directly :) Performance in particular.
> Everything you say about open source, of course, is true, but keep in mind OS X (Darwin) from the knees down is also open source;
Yes, definitely Apple deserves credit for using a FOSS kernel as well as much in userspace - WebKit, LLVM, etc. Still, massive and crucial parts of OS X are proprietary; you aren't allowed to look into those.
> I'm not the OP but in summary, I love both Open Source and the OS X experience, to me it's not an either/or proposition
Of course, I agree completely. As I said above, OS X and Windows are great too, just for different things. Linux wins on hackability, they win on other stuff.
In my experience, they have nowhere near the range and quality of packaging as Linux distros have. There's just a much larger community for that stuff in Linux than there is for OS X, which focuses less on FOSS.
Yes, you can do all the Linux stuff if you run Linux in a VM. Not the same though as running it directly :) Performance in particular.
> Everything you say about open source, of course, is true, but keep in mind OS X (Darwin) from the knees down is also open source;
Yes, definitely Apple deserves credit for using a FOSS kernel as well as much in userspace - WebKit, LLVM, etc. Still, massive and crucial parts of OS X are proprietary; you aren't allowed to look into those.
> I'm not the OP but in summary, I love both Open Source and the OS X experience, to me it's not an either/or proposition
Of course, I agree completely. As I said above, OS X and Windows are great too, just for different things. Linux wins on hackability, they win on other stuff.