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Apple Businesses

Mac OS X replacing Linux at Tokyo University 93

Posted by pudge from the r00l-the-world dept.
TekkaDon writes "At least 1,150 desktop and server PCs running Linux will be replaced with Mac OS X computers at the University of Tokyo next year, as reported by Asahi (Japanese), and echoed by MacRumors.com. 'Ease of maintenance and software installation were cited among the reasons for the switch.' I wonder if Keitaro and Naru will get iMacs at Hinata as well."
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Mac OS X replacing Linux at Tokyo University More

Mac OS X replacing Linux at Tokyo University

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  • mega (Score:1, Funny)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) *
    Steve 'Largo' Jobs: P0WNZ3D.

    (ref [megatokyo.com])

  • Wow.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MaggieL ( 10193 )
    ...imagine the size of the discount that made this move cost-justified.

  • HAHAHA (Score:4, Funny)

    by BortQ ( 468164 ) on Saturday September 27, 2003 @06:50PM (#7074662) Homepage Journal
    All your Linux are belong to us!
    • Are you really the author of Lux? Can I have 3 free registration codes: "Eddie" "Simon" "Pam"

      Cheers, Ed.

      PS Please send to lemonade@digidiesel.com

      • Re:HAHAHA (Score:3, Interesting)

        by BortQ ( 468164 )
        Are you really the author of Lux?

        Yes. Yes I am.

        Can I have 3 free registration codes?

        No. No you can't.

        While it's nice to be recognized on slashdot it doesn't mean that I will just give my work away for free. I have spent a hell of a lot of time working on Lux. If you like it enough to ask for freebies on slashdot don't you like it enough to purchase a registration code. It's not very much money in the grand scheme of things. Plus it helps support independent software developers.

  • macs coming back in japan? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by redJag ( 662818 ) on Saturday September 27, 2003 @07:34PM (#7074823)
    Used to be they laughed at Macs over yonder. I wonder if this is an indication of changing perspectives. I admit I don't keep up with Japan's current events, so maybe this isn't such a new perspective after all.

    • Re:macs coming back in japan? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by KH ( 28388 ) on Saturday September 27, 2003 @09:39PM (#7075235)
      I'm not keeping up with what's happening in Japan, either. But Macs were admired 10 years ago. Japan was the country where the Mac had the biggest market share in those days (15%?). Things changed in '95. Perhaps you are talking about that period?

      Still, when iMac debuted, it stayed the best selling personal compter quite a while.
    • Really, I always had the impression that there were lots of mac lovers in Japan. They have a MacWorld over there every year I believe.

  • Step Three: Profit (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Randy Wang ( 700248 )
    This kind of thing is probably why Apple is one of the few computer companies making a profit these days: so many universities are changing, who needs the housewives' money?

  • re: ease of install (Score:5, Insightful)

    by computerme ( 655703 ) on Saturday September 27, 2003 @08:49PM (#7075087)
    A well run Linux system with OS maintenance using RPM, debian's APT or Gentoo's ports is going to be a lot cleaner system in 12 months than an OSX machine.
    Really?

    How easy is to install Photoshop via RPM?
    Office via Gentoo?
    Final Cut or any iApp via curl?

    Let me guess, Gimp would solve my first question... cough..cough...
    not. Did anyone ever think that part of the reason why they switched is because of the lack of quality commerical software on linux?
    • How easy is it to install applications that don't belong on that os anyway ?

      eg.
      How easy is it to install trillian on mac os X ?
    • Pretty tough to install something that doesn't come as an RPM, dpkg, tarball, or whatever. But since you brought it up it is extremely to maintain thousands of machines based on those package management systems. Is it is easy with Mac OS X? I mean it is all very well that you can simply click on this and drag and drop to that... but do you want to have to visit ever single machine? Is there a remote package management system for Mac OS X that does not require visiting each machine or rdesking to each machin
  • I have never seen what tools there are for Mac networks but I am a little surprised that they are well developed enough that this decision was made. This tells linux developers (and distros) what they have to concentrate on to improve the adoption of linux. Up2date is OK as a replacement for "Windows Update" but it doesn't quite rise to the level of a solution for wide spread site management. Apt-get, urpmi, they all could do with a little work to make a real turn key solution for large scale management. I
    • You (like many) are confusing the kernel "Linux" with an Operating System and applications. If there's a network tool written that runs under Linux, that means that it probably runs under GNU and BSD libraries, the kernel is mostly irrelevant. Other than user-space tools that enable/control kernel tasks (like IPTables and qdisc) I'm hard pressed to think of any network tools that are tied to the Linux kernel and not general *nix based sysstem.

      Even for those tools that call kernel routines directly, they ca
      • No, I'm not confusing the Linux kernel with the OS. While I am sure up2date, urpmi, and apt-get can be ported to *BSD, and various flavors of UNIX they usually aren't. Like many, I used (not confused) the word Linux to refer to the operating system, perhaps you would prefer I say GNU/Linux? Unix vendors usually have their own ways of dealing with the question of mass/remote administration and updating. The BSD's are welcome to develop strategies in concert with major GNU/Linux distributions or roll their o

  • Japan and Macs (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That hardly seems surprising.

    Everytime I see a personal computer in any Japanese media (TV, film, etc) that isn't SciFi, it's a Mac, and always has been.

    Ofcourse it's still Unix, BSD...
    So... it's just a horizontal shift, instead of a jump into the jaws of Microsoft.

  • Japanese language support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by b1t r0t ( 216468 ) on Sunday September 28, 2003 @01:29AM (#7075980)
    The support under OS X is excellent, and it even breaks away from creaky old ShiftJIS. I'm not sure how hard it is to get Japanese language support running on Linux, and it probably is distro dependent too. (I heard Turbo Linux was a favorite in Japan back in its 4.0 days.)

    But on the Mac, it's built-in and working by default. On all Macs running OS X, not just ones running the special localized version of the OS, which used to trail U.S. releases by six months or more back in the System 7 days.

    Any chance that's got something to do with the switch? Meanwhile, I'm looking long-term to replace my last Linux box with OS X. Right now the main obstacle is to get the equivalent of IP Masquerading working with a proper DHCP server that lets me configure fixed IP assignments, instead of the one built into "Internet Sharing".

    • Japanese support on Linux is... er... possible.

      KDE and Gnome both boast about their i18n efforts, and indeed it's possible to get their applications displaying Japanese menus without any hassle at all. The problems are little things like Japanese input and poor support for Japanese fonts (for starters, the common TTC format isn't supported at all AFAICS). Even installing a distro in Japanese mode, I've never seen these things working out of the box. In the cases of Red Hat and Mandrake, I've never seen
  • Actually, maybe its just people in the know who buy Apples?

    Put it this way: your average consumer would only usually be looking for price, compatibility, and performance.

    On the other hand, organisations, or other people who rely on computers or who use them regularly for relatively nerdy purposes (software designers, or universities, in this case) would be looking beyond what your average person would see.

    Perhaps that explains Apple's success in the educational market: for universities and schools, a

  • Hopefully this will mark the start of a number of educational institutions and enterprises making the shift from MS, then Linux, to the beauty of OS X.

    Bring on Ford and the city of Hamburg, once they realise that there is a system which carries the power of *nix, but doesn't need as much fiddling as Linux (unless you really want it to).

    There is a course at one of the Universities in Western Australia which hands out iPods to the students, for them to store their course work on them. And who could forget

  • 20'000! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Randy Wang ( 700248 )
    And yea, children, let us not forget Apple securing the sale of 20'000 iBooks to the public schools of Henrico Country, Virginia. That's one iBooks per student and another for each teacher.

    Not too shabby, from a sales point of view.

  • Clusters (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.

    Or maybe the university is going to create an older (G4) sibling of VT's 1100 G5 supercomputer. :)

  • The truth about OS X versus Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by piecewise ( 169377 ) on Monday September 29, 2003 @11:20PM (#7091243) Journal
    There's been a lot of discussion about Linux being better.. OS X being better... what one can do on either platform.

    The truth is, this shouldn't be an argument. First, it's unconstructive. Second, it's inherently wrong.

    The truth is that Mac OS X wouldn't exist without Unix, and all of us Mac users should be damn grateful to the Unix and even the Linux community as well as the entire open source community.

    Xserve's a wonder, OS X Server is getting better all the time. But Linux has its place -- as does Windows (for now.....)

    We all have a common goal. The spread of creativity and community work via open-source, and the improvement of enterprise, office, and home productivity with the best computers and operating systems in the world.

    Unix gives OS X enterprise viability and a rock-solid foundation. OS X gives Unix commercial viability and longevity.

    That's why there's an Apple section on Slashdot. That's why Apple went (semi-)open-source. That's why OS X is Unix and based on BSD. And that's why we're on the same team.
  • The statment "Mac OS X replacing Linux at Tokyo University" is misleading on so many levels, I won't even begin. The discussion has further degenerated around inaccurate speculation. Let's touch briefly on reality:

    The University-wide system is described here [u-tokyo.ac.jp].

    The new system, which includes the Macs and is provided by NEC, is described here [u-tokyo.ac.jp].

    These are "located in the Information Education Buildings, the Information Technology Center, and the main library" (ref [u-tokyo.ac.jp]) to be used "for general computer literac

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