OS tries to be user friendly by providing a UI for things that you’d normally need a command line for in a unix system. The problem is that they implemented it in such a way that the command line doesn’t work for things there are a UI for in many cases. Either that or I’m going insane, but either way a linux dork should be able to figure out how to get something as simple as cron jobs and boot programs running, but alas, no luck.

We originally got it because it would be our personal server for testing and running linux programs (like Sphinx search!) but it turns out it’s kind of a pain. I do love the OS interface when I’m using it, but most of the time I’m on it through remote SSH.

Well, I could live with just starting Sphinx manually every time it boots, but today MySQL just decided to quit randomly without warning. Now, this Mini is just for development, there are no actual sites running on it, so no REAL harm, but damn. The fact that it isn’t running anything on it should be reason enough for it to not suck.

I’d like if Apple would make an interface through OS for startup/crons instead of making you edit some backwoods-hick xml file hidden under some obscure camel-cased directory.

Aside from the Mac only running SSH and the GUI reliably, it does everything we want it to except for everything. It looks cool though. My advice is to never get a Mac, at least not until they can program stable kernels and not, like a pack of rabid wild apes, use launchd with its xml-jedi-mind-trickery. Who’s idea was that? And since when did cron stop doing everything we’ve ever wanted?