Mac OS X replacing Linux at Tokyo University 93
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."
mega (Score:1, Funny)
(ref [megatokyo.com])
Re:Out of earshot (Score:1)
Re:Out of earshot (Score:1)
Shame on you.
Re:An odd change! (Score:2)
After all - the way a computer looks is the most important thing - right?
Re:An odd change! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An odd change! (Score:4, Interesting)
So this progression for Japan is not that Odd. They were probably using Windows first and the instability viruses etc got on their nerves so they switch to Linux. Linux probably ran pretty good but they ordinary users were afraid to use linux. So OS X is a good combination of both.
A Windows-Linux-Mac switch story (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the late 90s I was using a mixed network with SGI for web development, some Linux, and a Windows machine to run commercial software such as Photoshop.
Then I struck out on my own for a while, and for financial reasons I used Linux for my own stuff and Windows because clients demanded it. (I still really liked the SGI GUI design a lot more).
An interest in video production and editing got me my first Mac in 1998, a beige G3/266. I upgraded to a G4/450 dual processor in 2000. I found MacOS 9 very appealing, but since it didn't run emacs, it could not be my primary development machine.
When MacOS X came out, I started switching all my personal computing to MacOS X, because I loved the look and feel of it, and it still ran all my web software developed for Linux. At that point, I could do all the development I would ever need on one machine. I was sold on the Mac environment at that point.
When I switched jobs in 2000 to a company that let me develop web software for Linux, it looked like my situation was pretty stable. But in 2003, after one too many security breaches, I got the okay to switch our web system from Linux to MacOS X.
To bring us bang up to date, I took delivery of my personal G5/2ghz dual processor machine last Wednesday. Wonderful system.
Of all the operating systems and environments I've used, from Sun and SGI to every version of Windows imaginable (most of them, of course, better left unimagined), MacOS X is by far the best. It's lovely to look at without tweaking, it has a designer flair that's extremely appealing, and it runs all the software I could ever need (Unix + Macintosh).
I'm not saying it's flawless; nothing is. But it's the closest thing I've seen yet, and I don't see any major threats to it as the best designed and conceived operating environment around.
Hope that helps.
D
Emacs on MacOS (Score:2)
Emacs runs under MacOS. [sourceforge.net] Last I looked there were two ports of GNU Emacs and one of Xemacs. Moot point now of course.
Re:Emacs on MacOS (Score:2)
Of course if you know of a MacOS X xemacs port that supports Cocoa fonts, I'd love you forever. I'm very disappointed with the continued fixed-font or ugly font (X-windows reliant) versions of emacs
D
Re:Emacs on MacOS (Score:2)
The bad old days before AltaVista?
DAMN YOU XEmacs HERATIC!! EMACS IS THE SHIZMIT!! OK, I actually couldn't care less. I am ambi-editorial. I just couldn't resist. :-)
Re:An odd change! (Score:1, Insightful)
Certainly this has no affect on science faculty and research staff. Like the rest of the world, they already use a mix of super computers, Unix workstations, and Macs with a few linux boxes for those on shoe-string budgets (eg http://www.ccsr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/jsouchi/eindex.shtm l ). A few scientists probably use windows as well as anyone doing GIS.
I'd hate to think that humanities faculty cannot choose their own platform, be it Mac,
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:5, Insightful)
The machines will most likely be set up in labs by administrators. Regular users will only be able to install things into their home directories. Thus it will be impossible for them to clutter up the system.
As long as the admins are competent and keep track of what has been installed there shouldn't be any problem.
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:1)
Just as there shouldn't be with Linux. My guess is the admins are not that great to begin with.
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:2)
I think this switch makes sense.
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:2)
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:1)
Ditto
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:2)
I think. (I haven't done the greatest deal of mac programming).
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:3, Informative)
OS X certainly has plenty of shared libraries, but there might be a grain of truth to the "simply not used" idea. The library set included with the core OS is remarkably rich, so in many/most cases there really isn't a need to install more support for the program [heh, this is reminding me of Ken Olsen's comparison of Unix and VMS, but now OS X is the "it's all there" OS....]. When libraries do need to be installed, they tend to
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:1, Informative)
Third party developers are welcome to create and ship frameworks, but their use is discouraged. Disk space and RAM are cheaper than the labor involved in maintaining shared code.
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:2)
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:2)
But it can't be any worse than my school's management of it's windows machines. It keeps track of installed software using (whic
Re:Ease of maintenance? (Score:1)
Between netboot and having users that can't modify system resources, I don't see how any system would be corrupted or would become untidy over time.
Wow.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow.. (Score:3, Informative)
See the Virgina Tech G5 Super Cluster for a good example of that...
Re:Wow.. (Score:2)
HAHAHA (Score:4, Funny)
Re:HAHAHA (Score:1)
Cheers, Ed.
PS Please send to lemonade@digidiesel.com
Re:HAHAHA (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Yes yes iMacs! (Score:3, Funny)
Oooo, if I had any moderator points left...
Anime is teh ghey (Score:4, Funny)
I had to SUFFER so much just because I was born in an anime series!
If I lived on reality, I could have had normal life, but living in the twisted, infernal reality of Love Hina really, really sucks. I only wanted to have fun with Naru, but the directors won't let me sleep with her. "You can't do that!" they say, "all the sexual tension will be gone from the series once you get to sleep with her, and the rating will drop". I tell them that J.D had sex with Elliot and it didn't lead to the cancelling of Scrubs, but that doesn't help. They keep bringing me all those strange girls (Mutsumi-san or that crazy step sister of mine) who pop up the minute I try kissing Naru.. grr........
I hate anime!!!
macs coming back in japan? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:macs coming back in japan? (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, when iMac debuted, it stayed the best selling personal compter quite a while.
Re:macs coming back in japan? (Score:3, Informative)
Step Three: Profit (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Step Three: Profit (Score:2)
This is Apple we're talking about... (Score:1)
re: ease of install (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:standard GIMP troll (Score:1)
*Understatement of year...
Re: ease of install (Score:4, Insightful)
"Another Mac User talking crap", like, CmdrTaco, Moshe Bar, James Gosling? All Mac users talking crap?
Sure, it's a bit of a blow for Linux adoption and a big plus for Mac OS X adoption but frankly I don't see a conflict here. If you would spend more time convincing people on Windows to go to Linux then wouldn't we all be in a better place.
GIMP is a great app - for the price. I've been using it for years but it is laughable to compare it to Photoshop. It's only comparable if you're not a designer. The tools in Photoshop are award-wnning as well as light-years ahead of GIMP. I use GIMP but, for a second here, can we be realistic. I personally don't use Photoshop for day to day image retouching (why use a 500 quid piece of software when a free one will do) but Photoshop is more than just an image retouching app.
As for quality of software. Some open source software is without par. We see them being used every day. Some of it is simply best of class. Some of it, on the other hand, bites.
Tokyo University switched because Macs are easier to maintain. The University of Virginia used G5s running Mac OS X because the Linux software "wasn't there yet". For these cases it doesn't mean you have to stop using Linux so stop being so defensive.
And if you had ANY conviction in your statement, you'd not be an Anonymous Coward.
Re: ease of install (gimp) (Score:1)
Re: ease of install (Score:2)
eg.
How easy is it to install trillian on mac os X ?
Re: ease of install (Score:2)
Re: ease of install (Score:2)
Re: ease of install (Score:1)
Re: ease of install (Score:2, Informative)
I use it. It is nice and all but it does not compare with the tools I have in Linux (and other Unices) so far.
For me to update 1 or 10,000 machines all I need to do is drop an RPM in a folder.... done.
*If the clients are turned on they will automatically update.
*If they are off (and I don't mean "sleeping") they will automatically be turned on and update and then shutdown.
*If they are laptops they will update as soon as they connect to the LAN.
*I can install system upgrades
Re: ease of install (Score:1)
In case you didn't catch it in my earlier posts... I USE OS X and have to support it for a large numbe
Re: ease of install (Score:1)
I am familiar with the tools that are available from Apple for managing their servers. Apple is just now getting up to speed with these tools that have been avail
Re: ease of install (Score:1)
Diskless would be a very new trick for the Mac... any more info on that?
Have you ever actaully used Netboot for more than a dozen machines? (for any machines?) When we tried it it sucked. Perhaps things have changed in the past year. If this were the case we could order our new Macs without HDDs. For TU that would save about US$100,000.
-DU-...etc...
The silver lining... (Score:1)
Re:The silver lining... (Score:2)
Even for those tools that call kernel routines directly, they ca
Re:The silver lining... (Score:1)
Re:The silver lining... (Score:2)
They aren't? [rpm.org] Then it is a good thing OS X is unusual. [astcomm.net]
Japan and Macs (Score:1, Interesting)
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)
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".
Re:Try Brickhouse (Score:1)
Re:Japanese language support (Score:2)
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
Developers know what they want (Score:2, Insightful)
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 a sign of things to come! (Score:2, Interesting)
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)
Not too shabby, from a sales point of view.
Clusters (Score:1, Funny)
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)
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.
Some actual specs on the Univ of Tokyo system (Score:2, Interesting)
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