So, approx 2 months ago I upgraded my laptop to lion. My backups became noticeably slower - they were slow has hell before but in 10.7 they were just unbelievable. Think system lagging to the point of unusable - that slow or worse.
I did find a good solution: Disable spotlight services.
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
Considering I never use spotlight to find anything, its just wasted cpu cycles anyway.
My backups now take a small fraction of the time they used to take - few minutes at a time unless I pulled down something big ( think os patches or something )
My laptop ( 2008 macbook pro ) is now usable though I think I'm going to need to replace the fans and am considering replacing the hard drive since its about 5 years old already. Hmmm, ssd? http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-830-MZ-7PC512N-Internal-Laptop/dp/B005T3GPXO/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2K5BO82B7593V&colid=1HSSX1GJ9ZT27 or maybe one of the intel drives but I'm thinking of just saving the $400 or so.
Showing posts with label OSX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OSX. Show all posts
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Heresy!
I started my 'career' about 10 years ago. Just out of high school, was playing around with this thing called unix. This odd thing called Exploring - post369 to be exact. I was about to head out on a trip when one of the organizers tells me: We need to talk at some point on this trip - I think I have a job for you.
That talk consisted of seeing if I was interested in cleaning up ( eg, I was wearing cut-off jean shorts and wore gritty combat boots :-> ) - to which I said sure. Turns out, that internship turned into a pretty wild ride. Got into Solaris administration which turned into Linux administration which also included learning lots about networking, the ( evil ) hacks you can do with a linux box acting as a router/switch/bridge and many other things. I have pretty much always been a unix geek - well, except for that very! short period I liked windows. C'mon, had to run games somehow. Long live StarCraft!
The last ~6 years or so I've been a big linux geek. I ran mostly RedHat/Fedora for quite a while. About 4 years ago a co-worker said we should switch to CentOS and thus began my permanent switch from Fedora to CentOS.
( Had to look it up :-> ) MacOSX came out back in 2001 and had captured my attention. I had owned a NeXT for a short while - and I liked the interface. I was really bummed it did not work out for them. The hardware was pretty good for the time and the OS had a pretty interesting look/feel to it. The first thing I thought when I saw some of the presentations on OSX was - heh, thats cute, they resurrected NextSTEP! From there I was quite interested in seeing just how well the OS would do given the past attempts.
Thanks to a really neat contract assignment, I had the opportunity to pick up a Mac G4 tower for free as they were refreshing their hardware. I picked up a nice new hard drive and a copy of OSX 10.4 ( Thanks to an un-named store for forgetting to scan the bar-code :->, that was a freebie too! ). I sat down with it, played and found that I pretty much liked the OS. There were a few things missing imho:
With 10.5 and the decision to run to an X86-based platform, in addition VMWare Fusion - most of my complaints have been answered. I went ahead and, for the first time in quite a while, bought software :-> I picked up VMWare Fusion and a copy of Aperture for my photos. Aperture is neat though I still need to learn some of the touchup features - just a time thing really.
VMWare fusion is missing a few things imho:
I have a few minor complaints about OSX 10.5, though they are reasonably minor:
A few handy links for apple-related things I use so far:
All in all, my experience with OSX as an operating system has been pretty good. The UI is pretty much functional to me. I can get most of my work done with little effort. Having VMWare helps, but I do use Terminal a lot. Having QuickSilver really makes it nice for getting around. It checks things like /Applications/foo if I hit ctrl+space and type foo ( or fo even - it looks for matches in various places ). I think apple may want to consider something like QuickSilver as a new feature and integrate that one!
I have found its nfs support to be ... meh :-> Its got issues, but so does the linux nfs implementation. The changes they made for autofs make automount config pretty much a snap. I have had issues with nfs-related hangs ( sleep the laptop and go off-network, it pretty much hung the laptop until I powered it off and rebooted... not good imho :-> )
I have managed to crash OSX a few times which is kind of frustrating. Operating systems do crash from time to time and that is nothing I would go screaming it sucks! but I would like to think there are ways around the gui crashing - eg, switch virtual terminals and kill the display manager. They may be a way to do it - I just have not found it :->
All in all - well, the fiance's mac book is in the plans. She used to have a mac and she really liked it. I've have to fend her away and kick her upstairs ( I know, I'm so nice :-> ). I dig it - at least for my user interface, I'm staying on OSX. The back-end for the house is still linux :-> And probably always will be.
That talk consisted of seeing if I was interested in cleaning up ( eg, I was wearing cut-off jean shorts and wore gritty combat boots :-> ) - to which I said sure. Turns out, that internship turned into a pretty wild ride. Got into Solaris administration which turned into Linux administration which also included learning lots about networking, the ( evil ) hacks you can do with a linux box acting as a router/switch/bridge and many other things. I have pretty much always been a unix geek - well, except for that very! short period I liked windows. C'mon, had to run games somehow. Long live StarCraft!
The last ~6 years or so I've been a big linux geek. I ran mostly RedHat/Fedora for quite a while. About 4 years ago a co-worker said we should switch to CentOS and thus began my permanent switch from Fedora to CentOS.
( Had to look it up :-> ) MacOSX came out back in 2001 and had captured my attention. I had owned a NeXT for a short while - and I liked the interface. I was really bummed it did not work out for them. The hardware was pretty good for the time and the OS had a pretty interesting look/feel to it. The first thing I thought when I saw some of the presentations on OSX was - heh, thats cute, they resurrected NextSTEP! From there I was quite interested in seeing just how well the OS would do given the past attempts.
Thanks to a really neat contract assignment, I had the opportunity to pick up a Mac G4 tower for free as they were refreshing their hardware. I picked up a nice new hard drive and a copy of OSX 10.4 ( Thanks to an un-named store for forgetting to scan the bar-code :->, that was a freebie too! ). I sat down with it, played and found that I pretty much liked the OS. There were a few things missing imho:
- Virtual Desktops ( Spaces in OSX 10.5 )
- Better game support
- Less expensive hardware
- The ability to run some other me-isms ( virtual machines, run a few X-based apps and automate some things which I had not yet had a chance to figure out )
With 10.5 and the decision to run to an X86-based platform, in addition VMWare Fusion - most of my complaints have been answered. I went ahead and, for the first time in quite a while, bought software :-> I picked up VMWare Fusion and a copy of Aperture for my photos. Aperture is neat though I still need to learn some of the touchup features - just a time thing really.
VMWare fusion is missing a few things imho:
- On start, auto load some of my vms for me in the background ( ala VMWare Server )
- The ability to have my linux guest work under Unity ( which is just cool! )
I have a few minor complaints about OSX 10.5, though they are reasonably minor:
- I really like the ability to have a window follow me when I change spaces. EG, if I have an Adium window up on space 2 and switch to space 3 it should stick with me
- If I click on the finder icon I want it to make a new one - not take me to another one!
- If I click on the terminal app in the launcher, I want it to start a new one!
- If I start an X application, I would like to have a Documents-style pop-up with all of my X applications/windows to choose from
- I would like to have a config option for power management such that when I close the lid and I have the power adapter plugged in - don't sleep the laptop!
A few handy links for apple-related things I use so far:
- Adium
- QuickSilver
- Warp
- Fink
- MacVim
- ... probably a lot of others, those are just off the top of my head ( eg, the ones I use most )
All in all, my experience with OSX as an operating system has been pretty good. The UI is pretty much functional to me. I can get most of my work done with little effort. Having VMWare helps, but I do use Terminal a lot. Having QuickSilver really makes it nice for getting around. It checks things like /Applications/foo if I hit ctrl+space and type foo ( or fo even - it looks for matches in various places ). I think apple may want to consider something like QuickSilver as a new feature and integrate that one!
I have found its nfs support to be ... meh :-> Its got issues, but so does the linux nfs implementation. The changes they made for autofs make automount config pretty much a snap. I have had issues with nfs-related hangs ( sleep the laptop and go off-network, it pretty much hung the laptop until I powered it off and rebooted... not good imho :-> )
I have managed to crash OSX a few times which is kind of frustrating. Operating systems do crash from time to time and that is nothing I would go screaming it sucks! but I would like to think there are ways around the gui crashing - eg, switch virtual terminals and kill the display manager. They may be a way to do it - I just have not found it :->
All in all - well, the fiance's mac book is in the plans. She used to have a mac and she really liked it. I've have to fend her away and kick her upstairs ( I know, I'm so nice :-> ). I dig it - at least for my user interface, I'm staying on OSX. The back-end for the house is still linux :-> And probably always will be.
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