Linux and Mac OS X 172
William J writes "Here is an article with an interesting slant on the relationship between the Mac OS and Linux. The author suggests that Gnome and KDE developers can learn from the Mac GUI. Worth quoting: 'It is amazing to me that an OS which was developed largely by volunteers (and which is essentially free) can run with unprecedented stability on the same hodgepodge of PC hardware on which another company has spent billions of dollars in R&D costs and is still unable to produce a product which can run for more than a few days without crashing -- and it costs hundreds of dollars.'"
Proposal (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck is the point of this article? OS X is more polished than KDE/Gnome, Windows is not so stable, you can use Linux as a server for Macs... News at eleven!
Re:People accomplish things (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the Linux hype, it was quite common knowledge (or, at least, opinion) that Free Software is not only great because of its unbeatable price or even the "philosophic" implications (that come down to "be kind to your customers" when restricted to licenses), but because of its quality, which in turn is directly related to the freedom of programmers - at least as important as the freedoms of software users.
Not only do people not need management, they can build better things without worrying about deadlines (leading to "good enough" solutions), corporate politics, marketability etc. Free programmers can focus on doing the Right Thing, which is often not possible in a corporate environment. The results of this are where the pride of the free software movement should come from, not the sympathy of venture capitalists or IBM or Apple.Re:What IS the fucking deal with Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
> you're claiming that >>OSX has "a large application base"? ROFL!!!
> What are you smoking?
Okay, you asked for it
1) Most Mac applications ever written. I've found very few that don't run well under the Classic environment. This includes popular commercial packages and tons of shareware and freeware.
2) New and ported Carbon and Cocoa Mac OS X applications. This is increasing in number daily, especially since the development tools are free. Again, this includes popular commercial packages and tons of shareware and freeware.
3) Most Java J2SE applications, and J2EE applications if you obtain the necessary libraries. The first Airport utilities that were in use on OS X were Java apps originally created for Windows. OS X has the best Java 2 on the desktop.
4) Various Unix applications, many Open Source or GNU, ported for OS X/Darwin. Some of these beloved programs come with OS X, such as the Apache web server and Emacs. Others (like an X server or postgresSQL) are available for the download.
5) If you care to plunk down around $200 (ranges from about $99 for DOS to $249 for Windows NT, per operating system) for Virtual PC 5.0, you can run most any Windows, DOS, or Linux application.
6) Go to "http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/index.shtml
In short, OS X can pretty much run whatever you want it to run. I've been using it for nearly a year now. It is great, and getting better all the time.
OS X: the Apple of Mothra's Aqua eye.
Re:KDE and Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two kinds of standards: informal de facto standards and formalized official standards.
Linux certainly is not the formal official standard for anything, not even for itself, since you are not allowed to define a thing in terms of itself. POSIX is the formal standard because it went through a formal standardization process. There's an actual document reviewed and approved by experts after much discussion that says what POSIX is.
Is Linux an informal de facto standard? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what your definition is. It may be a standard for a kernel, but your system is much more than a kernel, it's an amalgamation of software from several different projects. So you end up with software that says it needs this version of a kernel and that version of a libc and you're still not sure you won't have to crowbar it into place unless you're running the exact same distro version that the packager used.
The aim of POSIX is to get beyond all of this. If you have a POSIX compliant system, and the software claims POSIX compliance as well, you are virtually guaranteed that the software will work. That's great! (POSIX is actually a set of standards, so my referal to it as a single standard is merely semantic shorthand)
But I want to respond to your unwritten question. If my powers of telepathy still operate sufficiently, I can tell that your real question is "when will Linux finally become a standard?" Okay, may telepathy is a bit rusty, it might not be you thinking this, but I'm definitely picking it up from someone. The answer is, "Linux should never become a standard." The reason is simple: standards and implementations of the standards are two very different things. Eventually Linux may implement POSIX so well that it becomes a "reference" implementation, but it will never be the standard itself.
Think about the web for a bit, and you'll understand. Because of a variety of bizarre circumstances, including certain recessive genes in most web developers, implementations have gained the status of standards. And the result is chaos. Web sites aren't written to standards, they're written to specific implementations of the standards. Unless you're using one particular browser released by a company in Washington, you will *never* be able to access every web site claiming standards conformance. The situation is even worse in word processing land where MSWord is the standard.
I don't want to see those situations occur in Unix. So please write your software to the POSIX standards instead of to the Linux implementation.
The Future of Computing (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux, by it's very nature, will never be a consumer OS. The fragmentation involved in a non-managed open-source computing project will never translate into a unified technology easily marketable to Joe Shmo, the average consumer.
On the other hand, Apple has managed to do an extraordinary (and unprecedented job) of brining a UNIX-based OS (Darwin) to the masses. The fact of the matter is, my grandmother, who has owned an iMac for three months now, can use OS X. I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell, even if I set up a standard distribution, GNOME, and graphic login, she could consistently and flawlessly use Linux.
Apple should be congratulated -- not condemned -- for bringing what is, at it's core, an open-source OS to the masses. Darwin, and Apple, represent what I hope will be the salvation of computing from the monopoly that is Microsoft.
Linux power users, sysadmins, and academics should work along with those in charge of the consumer segment of the mac market to bring us a world in which consumers and home users use Macs, power users, servers and sysadmins run Linux, and the business (ie white collar) world runs desktop Wintel boxes. Because yes, as much as we all might hate to admit it, Microsoft does have a place in a post-monopolistic world: regardless of what most of we uberusers maintain, large corporations (which, for better or for worse, form a good part of the structure on which our society functions) will always be reluctant to give end users anything less than a robust commercial interface. Macs will be too expensive, Linux will always be too cutting-edge; Wintel boxes running a variant of Microsoft Office will provide the middle ground for businesses seeking stability, low prices, and standardization -- something that they will never get from proprietary Apple hardware and/or open-source Linux software.
Computing today too often reminds me of a sort of religious fanaticism. Everybody has their religion, and everybody else is just downright wrong. As in the real world, pluralism is the value that should and hopefully will triumph. We should work towards a vision in which Linux has a 80% server share (with the remainder going mainly to other UNIXes), a 10% power desktop share, and a 30% academic share. Such a world would have consumers running 80% Macs and business end-users running 80% Wintel. We need to give up on the idea that OSes need to be "swiss army knives" (or Gerber multitools, if you prefer) capable of and suitable to any task. There is an array of OSes, an array of tools out there. I use a Mac for Digital Video and Photography, Wintel for writing papers and grants, doing CAD, and contact management, and I have a Linux box sitting under my desk that I use as a file/web/mail server and occasionally for workstation tasks. The face of tomorrow's computing, of Linux, of Windows, and of the Mac will hopefully be founded upon that view.
I welcome your comments and await replies,
Shylock