Gnome Founder Miguel de Icaza Moves To Mac 815
TrueSatan writes "Miguel de Icaza, via his blog, has explained his gradual move to the Apple Mac platform. 'While I missed the comprehensive Linux toolchain and userland, I did not miss having to chase the proper package for my current version of Linux, or beg someone to package something. Binaries just worked.' Here is one of his main reasons: 'To me, the fragmentation of Linux as a platform, the multiple incompatible distros, and the incompatibilities across versions of the same distro were my Three Mile Island/Chernobyl.' Reaction to his announcement includes a blog post from Jonathan Riddell of Blue Systems/Kubuntu. Given de Icaza's past association with Microsoft (CodePlex Foundation) and the Free Software Foundation's founder Richard Stallman's description of de Icaza as a 'traitor to the free software community,' this might be seen as more of a blow to Microsoft than to GNU/Linux."
Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
Now he's going to try to clone all of Microsoft's clones of other people's technology for the Mac.
Lets see how far that gets him.
Re:I'll second that. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Gnome project was a disaster from beginning to end. It accomplished exactly one useful thing: Trolltech was forced to GPL QT. At that point, Gnome should have been promptly shut down, having accomplished its purpose, and Linux on the desktop would be much further advanced than it is. But instead we have this crippled zombie thing that shambles on and on. Somebody put a stake in its heart or something please.
Re:I'll second that. (Score:5, Insightful)
I stuck with GNOME from 1997 until the end of the 2.x versions, since it did what I needed it to do reasonably well. Meanwhile, the early KDE 4.x releases were unusable. Sadly, GNOME 3.x has followed suit (and appears set to stay that way), while KDE has re-evolved itself in recent versions as a really nice, feature-rich environment.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
Dang, I wish I had mod points.
Miguel has a massive track record of producing FOSS, way before Mono. He's (well, under his stewardship) actually done more with mono than I imagined he would.
He's also found ways to make the mono project profitable, and more importantly survive more than a few transitions over the past 12? years.
The trolls gotta be hating.
He's just moving to a platform that he prefers, I'd be saying the same thing if he had moved to windows 8 (hahaha) or (lol) Hurd.
I did this a long time ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I did this a long time ago... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I did this a long time ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
His issues are issues that users have been having for some time. My first Linux was Slack 2.4 I believe and I moved to Mac OS X in 2007. It is nice having something that just works. In a way OS X is FreeBSD finally getting the recognition it deserved.
Re:I did this a long time ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I did this a long time ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
I find this funny. I have been a Slackware user both personally for about 15 years and professionally for about 10 years.
I was recently given a Mac at work to test our stuff out on Mac OS. I have made a real effort to move all my daily work flow to the machine for the sake of really giving Mac OS a serious eval and trying to overcome the difference in familiarity.
First off I have had anything but a just works experience. I have had to find and delete cache files to unbreak the app store. Re-install various packages because something went wrong the first time, xcode, office, and java.
All in all my take away has been Slackware ever since version 13.0 or so has offered a better out of box experience than Mac OS X. XFCE 4.10 is much much better it terms of UI, features, and even eye candy. Having spent a month or so using a Mac 8 hours a day now; I can honestly say I'd never recommend one to anybody; not novice, nor expert. Truthfully the Aunt Tilly's out there and the I must have some proprietary closed application crowd are still better off on Windows and GNU/Linux/X.org/XFCE is better for everyone else. I would put Mac Os at the bottom of heap all around.
Re:I did this a long time ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
I migrated from the Amiga to linux and over a decade later I'm pretty happy with it. It's not a perfect world but it's better than the alternatives and it's free. Not bad at all. I don't mind having to fix things up on a free operating system but paying out a bunch of money for windows and then struggling to keep it going would piss me off. I do have OS X on a mini and strangely that just works as long as I don't want to do anything Apple doesn't approve of. Linux video tools are getting better though so I may pass on OS X soon as well.
So he is leaving... (Score:5, Funny)
So he is leaving the mess he caused?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly what I was thinking. He is running from the issues. The biggest problem GNU/Linux has is the communities insistence on cloning the competition. We should explicitly be advising people to replace hardware instead of “supporting” non-free drivers/firmware. It is not critical for user adoption. Linus was bitching about NVIDIA's lack of cooperation fairly recently and he is nearly a proponent of proprietary software.
The Trisquel distribution / community has had no problems with new users tak
Re:So he is leaving... (Score:4, Funny)
Miguel leaving for Mac: Action Movie Dude walking away from an explosion.
de Icaza (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm starting to think this guy just likes to read about himself in the news. I think his announcement is pretty funny - Linux Mint is a shining example of Linux as a functional desktop OS. It's still not as polished as OS X, but I do find myself using OS X less and less these days.
Maybe he's just butthurt that Gnome probably doesn't have much of a future. I mean, the older versions are great if, uh, your graphics card stops working or something. . .
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux Mint is a shining example of Linux as a functional desktop OS.
Did they ever get the man pages working on that?
Re:de Icaza (Score:5, Funny)
objdump -d exefile
Is far more complete than
man exefile
once you get past the learning curve.
Re:de Icaza (Score:4, Informative)
If you want a Gnome 2 type experience in Gnome 3 and know about Cinnamon I'm hard pressed to understand to what you are objecting to?
Re:Why not run OSX as a virtual machine? Why use m (Score:4, Interesting)
Mac hardware sucks compared to the PC. A PC running OSX on a virtual machine is better than a Mac and cheaper.
Once you don't compare "cheapest PC" vs. "cheapest Mac", but "the Mac I want" vs. "a PC with the same specs, bought from a reputable company", the Mac hardware will beat most PCs of the same price.
A PC running MacOS X on a virtual machine is running unlicensed software. First, it is running a modified VM that you probably had no right to modify, second it runs an unlicensed copy of MacOS X that has just enough copy prevention built in to make it a DMCA violation.
Whatever.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Been running Linux for 15 years now, and it's better than it ever has been. I guess this guy just lost whatever zeal he never really had in the first place for free software.....Read his blog post and it seems like he's just bored or lazy, or both. Oh well......
Re:Whatever.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Been running Linux for 15 years now, and it's better than it ever has been."
You're right, it is better than it ever has been. I cut my teeth on Slackware, back when a bad X11 .config actually fucked up your monitor. And I did just that. Through it all, there was never a better operating system that was as open or as flexible as Linux. I could run it on cobbled together parts from dead x86 boxes pulled from dumpster dives.
Now that I actually have some disposable income, I chose a Mac. Why? It let's me get shit done instead of fiddle-fucking with things that I don't honestly care about anymore. Back in college, I had all the time to compile and tweak libproffer0.2.3 from alpha to see if I could get it work. Now, I'd rather just pop in a DVD or download a binary blob and drag it to /Applications. My family time is limited and I'd rather be spending it with them. Does that mean the extra few hundred bucks was wasted? Maybe. I'd gladly trade that. My circumstances are my own experiences, but these are my opinions.
Re:Whatever.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whatever.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Whatever.... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a common trend at Google. Freshly hired students come in using Linux on the desktop and after a few months they switch to OS X because they don't want to waste time fucking around with retarded desktop problems when there are far more interesting things for them to do.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Same here. Hardcore Linux at home since the mid 90s. I work in Linux 24/7 on servers today, but everything at home is a Mac, as is my work laptop. Been that way for 5 years, haven't regretted anything. I don't have time to mess with kernels and tweak my window manager.
Re:Whatever.... (Score:5, Funny)
Now, I'd rather just pop in a DVD or download a binary blob and drag it to /Applications. My family time is limited and I'd rather be spending it with them.
That's what the Germans probably said. "I don't care about elections and a free press and all that stuff. I'd rather just have the NAZIS sort things out so I can spend time with my Kinder, Kuche, Kirche"
Now you may say the comparison between Apple and the NAZIS is a bit hyperbolic. But is it really? Both Apple fans and the SS wore mostly black clothes and are almost entirely Caucasian. Sure there are some Asians in there, but then NAZIS were quite keen on the Japanese.
The more you think of it, the more you realise that buying an Apple produced device is exactly the same as voting for the NAZIS.
Still it's better than using Linux or bloody Windows 8.
Re:Whatever.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Whatever.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Been running Linux for 15 years now, and it's better than it ever has been."
You're right, it is better than it ever has been. I cut my teeth on Slackware, back when a bad X11 .config actually fucked up your monitor. And I did just that. Through it all, there was never a better operating system that was as open or as flexible as Linux. I could run it on cobbled together parts from dead x86 boxes pulled from dumpster dives.
Now that I actually have some disposable income, I chose a Mac. Why? It let's me get shit done instead of fiddle-fucking with things that I don't honestly care about anymore. Back in college, I had all the time to compile and tweak libproffer0.2.3 from alpha to see if I could get it work. Now, I'd rather just pop in a DVD or download a binary blob and drag it to /Applications. My family time is limited and I'd rather be spending it with them. Does that mean the extra few hundred bucks was wasted? Maybe. I'd gladly trade that. My circumstances are my own experiences, but these are my opinions.
I'm right there with you; back in the day not only did I have the time to tinker with X11 .config or compile the latest kernel from source, but it was in fact how I learned about computers and was exposed to programming (I am not a programmer nor do I do anything related to IT for a living). These days it is way more important for me to have a fast, reliable workflow that is compatible with all the other software that my largely computer illiterate colleagues work with. I routinely send documents out in ODT format and have them returned in DOCX; at least I can fire up Word on my Mac and export it in DOC so NeoOffice can open it correctly. But as much as I love the MacBook Air, I hate Apple desktops, so I do run OSX on a hackintosh... I dunno, maybe to maintain some semblance of nerd cred.
At home I still run Linux because I prefer it and I'm not under time pressure. But I still keep an OSX partition for days when I work from home because, at the end of the day, I find that what I really like about OSX is the availability of software. There are some killer programs--most by small developers--that just don't exist on other platforms and that make my life easier. However, I find the direction the OS is headed distressing. Let's say I want to copy a Keynote presentation and then edit the copy; I'd better remember to first "Duplicate" and then "Save a Copy" because if I edit it first and then Duplicate it will ask if I want to Revert first, but if I don't, then I get two copies of the edited document and have to waste time reverting the original with the pointlessly fancy Apple-style graphics. Why? Because Apple unilaterally decided that "Save As" needed to go away (sounds familiar... GNOME!). And don't get me started on the disaster that is iTunes, the abomination that Apple insists drive my venerable and infinitely useful iPod Nano. At lest I can still use rsync to backup my Mac.
My hope is that something--maybe Linux gaming--will drive Linux just enough into the mainstream that the same sort of software that I like on the Mac starts popping up on Linux. Then I will probably migrate away from the hybrid iOSenstein that OSX has morphed into that ties you to the Apple Cloud and Appstore and actively punishes you for using Android devices instead of i-things.
Re:Whatever.... (Score:5, Informative)
Classy. This machine is working perfectly under Linux. I'm sitting 12 feet (3.5 meters) away from the *two* 50 inch TV's its running out to. Sound is perfect and it's been up for five months....... So yeah.. I like Linux. I like it a lot, and rarely have to fix *anything*. In fact my wifes I-Maxi_pad requires more attention than this machine.
i'm sticking with *nix. THANKSKBYE.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure what de Icaza is referring to in his article. He provides no specifics whatsoever when he complains about packages and software that aren't available, and really it just sounds like FUD because I have never experienced anything of the sort with Linux, nor has anyone else I've spoken to. I've used Arch, Ubuntu (Gnome, Xubuntu and Mint+Cinnamon) and Debian and have never had to chase down a binary package. Nor have I ever tried installing a Debian package on Ubuntu. If he's trying to install pack
He probably thinks his work with Linux is done (Score:3, Interesting)
As in, he's screwed it as much as he can. Now, it's time to screw up Apple.
Either that or he's just a complete plank who is self-aggrandising by stating he's going Mac.
Join the party (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Join the party (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a Macbook. It runs Linux exclusively. People might have diverging opinions about the price, but very few question that it's a very well engineered machine. Have you tried looking at their screens to see what OS they were running?
By the way, 10 years ago iBooks were still using PowerPC processors, and Macbooks didn't exist until 2006.
Re:Join the party (Score:4, Interesting)
Without question I can support this. My macbook pro was the best investment I've ever made, it is an excellent laptop.
I never run OS X though. If I want to be productive I use Linux, if I want to be compatible I use Windows. I'm just not sure what OS X does for me. I could take some time to learn it, I'm sure I could employ it as effectively as X or Win7, I'm just not sure why I want to as those other two are indispensable.
Re:Join the party (Score:4, Informative)
I see your story and raise you a survey [pcworld.com]. And another, from closer to the same time period as your story. [nytimes.com]
And then some [jdpower.com] a little bit [jdpower.com] more up to date [jdpower.com].
I went the other way, OS X - Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I went the other way about two and a half years ago. I'm sure someone will tell me I was doing it wrong; I wouldn't be surprised if they're right. But I found the FOSS package managers for OS X incredibly painful to work with. I remember it taking at least a day of mucking around with compiling and pre-built binaries just to get the tools I needed for web development. It took me ten minutes to get the same thing working in Ubuntu.
Still, there were plenty of headaches: sleep mode, hybrid graphics and synaptics. Even though I had been avoiding dependence on proprietary software since activation chased me away from Windows, I had to give up really useful Mac tools like Scrivener, Tinderbox and Screen Flow (I still boot the Mac when I need to do a screencast). I used to be a programmer. Now I'm a social scientist. These days I do mostly reading and writing, not programming; the loss of Scrivener was a hard blow. I smoothed the way by writing my own tool.
OS X was significantly better for all but the most ordinary end-user applications. My area of research is the online commons - copyright, FOSS, creative commons - stuff like that. I could make my peace with Apple when they were only a pipsqueak tyrant. When they released the iPad and it was locked down, I simply couldn't stomach it anymore: and I was tying myself to an ecosystem that could be progressively enclosed by Apple. A friend of mine - a social scientist, not a programmer - switched to Mint, proving it was finally doable. Also, XMonad is pretty cool, and my search for a decent editor finally led me to take vim seriously.
Linux isn't perfect, but it's come a long way since I first used it for development in 1993. It really is usable - and sometimes excellent - for everyday work. Using a platform is supporting that platform. I wouldn't tell anyone else what to do, but I'm content to use this one.
Wow, only 13 years after screwing up Linux... (Score:3, Interesting)
I was a HUGE Linux fanboi in the late '90s through about 2010. I agree with him, however, that Linux just doesn't work as a day-to-day end-user platform anymore. As it is, I'm mostly using my Nexus tablet and Galaxy phone for tasks, and then resort to Wintendo when I need.
Re:Wow, only 13 years after screwing up Linux... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nexus tablet runs Linux
Galaxy phone runs Linux
Wintendo what the hell is that?
Re:Wow, only 13 years after screwing up Linux... (Score:5, Funny)
Linux just doesn't work as a day-to-day end-user platform anymore
So, the Year of Linux on the Desktop finally came, and I missed it?
This is a true statement (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter his affiliation or if he likes or even works for MS or not. Judge the statement on it's own, and it's true.
It's something Linux geeks have trouble admitting, but it is the sole reason Linux usage has not skyrocketed in adoption. If the LSB worked anthing close to how it was envisioned, developers would flock to the platform and then so would users.
At the moment, people use the distro they like and defend, while non linux geeks use distros like Ubuntu or Mint, which are the only platforms commercial developers tend to target.
Re:This is a true statement (Score:4, Informative)
If the LSB worked anthing close to how it was envisioned, developers would flock to the platform and then so would users
LSB solves some bits of the problem, but not the most troublesome. It does not help you with libraries or kernel changing ABI in a backward incompatible way, something that causes packaging headaches when upgrading a given system.
What is a bit frustrating is that it could be done cleanly, if developers just took the time for it. For instance NetBSD base system is nicely backward compatible. A binary built on NetBSD-0.8 is still able to run 20 years later on NetBSD 6.0.1. And you can throw a package built for NetBSD 5.0 on NetBSD 6.0.1, it works... provided you have also installed the dependencies for it, which are provided in other packages outside of NetBSD base system, and this is where things goes wrong. Package A will need version 1.0.1 of package B, you have version 1.0 installed. You need to upgrade B. But B is required by packages C, D, E... Z, and you will have to upgrade them too. But they require new versions of others packages, and so on.
Re:This is a true statement (Score:4, Interesting)
I really like Android, but it is something of the exception that proves the rule. Every phone is locked into a version of Android and doesn't have much life past that stream.
Re:This is a true statement (Score:4, Informative)
Every phone is locked into a version of Android and doesn't have much life past that stream.
That's really not very true at all. Most popular devices have a CM port, as do many unpopular devices. There are many phones for which it is very true, and it is sad to own one of them, but there's also lots of options out there today that will likely be supported down the road. You can wait just a little bit before buying the latest and greatest, and then you know which devices will be supported, because you can see which shipping devices are already supported. Just stay away from AT&T, because they're bootlock Nazis.
Re:This is a true statement (Score:4, Informative)
In this case... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, asshole (Score:3, Insightful)
It's ironic that he complains about fragmentation, since he's largely responsible. Gnome is pretty shitty, but numerous distributions waste effort either supporting it or for some reason using it primarily instead of KDE which is a lot better. If it weren't Gnome all Linux desktops would have long ago standardized on KDE and we'd be better off for it.
Back in the day... (Score:5, Interesting)
I liked to tinker with configs and settings and libraries, but now I like my home computer to just work. They cost more, but are worth it. I still have a unix command line and most of the open source tools but have access to commercial software as well.
Yummy KoolAid.
Re: (Score:3)
Wait until you're only allowed to install software from the Mac App Store unless you buy a 'developer licence'. Don't think that's going to happen?
Linux works fine here with two kids, a wife (Score:4, Insightful)
seven cats and one dog. Four laptops running Mint 14, 1 netbook running Mint 11, HTPC running Mint 14 KDE and second htpc running Mint 14 KDE. AND guess what, they all just work after install. Weird how you can't get it to just work.
but now I like my home computer to just work. They cost more, but are worth it. I still have a unix command line and most of the open source tools but have access to commercial software as well.
Yummy KoolAid.
Gnome 3 so shitty (Score:5, Funny)
founder buys a mac and doesnt look back
Which Mono helped solve right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope. In fact, I think it made it worse.
And they are still advertising Moonlight even though it is a dead project (and they admit it!). Can someone PLEASE turn off this site*! http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/ [go-mono.com]
One of the biggest problem with Linux is people abandoning projects and not removing them from the net/distros. You were wrong, you've admited it, but you leave us the mess.
*In all seriousness, the few Silverlight websites redirect their Linux users to this page where it almost never works for them. This of course makes the Linux experience go from just "Unsupported" to building up the hopes of the users and then Unsupported.
de Icaza (Score:5, Insightful)
Please refrain from attacking de Icaza for these simple reasons.
Like Stallman, de Icaza has donated countless hours of organization and programming time to Linux. Neither got rich as a result. Politics aside, Linux is about superior engineering, even if only as a side effect. Because of the efforts of these two individuals, among many others, Linux is now the most popular operating system on the planet. By any stretch of the imagination, they were and are victorious. Android is closing in on a billion users, but regardless of what Google's marketing materials may tell you, Android is a Linux distribution, and GNU and GNOME have been perfecting Linux distributions for over two decades.
I understand that Android does not ship with much GNU or GNOME software, but GNU and GNOME are what built Linux. Without either, the foundations upon which Android runs would never have accreted enough functionality to even think about running a smartphone.
As mostly non-rich people, often not closely allied with specific companies, we don't have publicists or agents. We don't come off as polished. We don't have speech writers. Forgive us for seeming offensive, rude, obnoxious, conceited, full of ourselves, or some other adjective. We're people, and as engineers we're trained to traffic in the honest truth. Once you meet us you'll like us, for the most part. And even if you don't, enjoy using our software. Contribute if you like.
Re: (Score:3)
Please refrain from attacking de Icaza for these simple reasons.
I thought we were attacking him for a complex, varied, manifold set of reasons. It's not just "I hates teh Mono", it's "Mono served little real purpose and served only to assist Microsoft, if only by a trivial amount". Or whatever the pet peeve is.
As mostly non-rich people, often not closely allied with specific companies, we don't have publicists or agents. We don't come off as polished. We don't have speech writers.
Well then, if you don't want people to form an according opinion of you, shut the hell up. Obviously I don't care.
Re:de Icaza (Score:4, Informative)
But it's precisely his "contributions" for which he's being attacked -- he's drawn immense amounts of development effort into fragmentation, bloatware, and attempts to be nearly-compatible with something Microsoft is going to abandon and wreck as soon as they think the compatibility shims are good enough to be a threat.
Miguel's Broken Compass Strikes Again (Score:3, Insightful)
On reading Miguel's blog post I found myself thinking about a character who showed up on Gilligan's Island who was perpetually lost in his biplane. His nickname was "Wrong Way."
Ever notice how Miguel always seems to get involved in chaotic situations and then flees them by taking the wrong train, ending up in the middle of nowhere? Why does anyone even listen to this guy?
Increasing "GUIfication" to blame.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are going to change the desktop experience in order to make it "easier to use", you damn well better get it right, or else not only do you fail to capture a new audience, you end up alienating the current user base. That seems to be what Gnome has done.
For me personally I develop on a mac, and run my test and prod on Linux(I've tried OS X as a server, and ironically it seems to suffer the same problems as a server as Linux does as a Desktop, they tried to make it "easier to use", but didn't get the abstraction right and the result is a mess).
I was recently put in the unfortunate position of having to develop a PHP app, and I tried doing everything on Fedora 18 with Gnome, and.... that was just plain frustrating. The installer tried to be "easy to use", but often failed, the system got stuck in reboot but I couldn't figure out what service was failing because I couldn't get it to not show that stupid startup animation and instead show me the boot log etc. Eventually I got the machine booted and then just ssh into it from my Mac, much less frustrating.
Bottom line: don't make Linux "easier to use" by breaking a bunch of shit.
Publicity stunt. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh for fuck's sake (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, the fragmentation of Linux as a platform, the multiple incompatible distros
So he chooses to get his hardware and software from one vendor. Okay thats very neat and simple but he could get it from Canonical as well, or one of the BSD projects.
I find it entertaining... (Score:5, Interesting)
As I sit here on my MacBook Air running Ubuntu, working on Ceph (ie getting stuff done!) while browsing slashdot. I've tried OSX many times, and I keep coming back to Linux because it's so much *more* productive, especially when working on code. The only thing I miss is netflix.
So whatever. I still have a soft spot for Apple hardware, but I'll stick with Linux thank-you-very-much.
Excuses... (Score:5, Interesting)
I use serveral operating systems frequently due to work (and it used to be my hobby). I appreciate OS X's desktop interface a lot, but I don't realy understand Miguel's justification that Mac "just works" in terms of package availability and the quality of the base system.
It's no secret that OS X's base is lifted from FreeBSD. Is Linux too fragmented and chaotic for you? Do you long for a complete and and integrated system base in a single source tree, backed by unified development effort? FreeBSD has that. It also has very high package availability (better than most Linux distros).
On the Linux side, I use Fedora. I never have any trouble finding packages for Fedora. The quality that gets put into the base system of Fedora also leaves little to be desired.
I don't fault Miguel for his choice. OS X is nice--it gets the job done. I just don't think OS X is really giving him something special that he couldn't have gotten with Linux, BSD, or even Windows. If he misses the development toolchain of Linux, he should go back to Linux; that's totally understandable.
fragmented my ass (Score:4, Interesting)
I moved to a MacBook for the sole virtue of it being a well-designed notebook, but I have strong feelings regarding Mac OS's functionality and "administrability" when compared to linux distros. It bothers me that there is NO package system to speak of, and you basically have to scour the internet like a fool to find basic tools that are one apt-get away in Ubuntu. I mean, yeah, I know there's stuff like homebrew, fink and macports, but so far all of those gave me nothing but headache, for the sole reason they are third-party hacks not supported (or even acknowledged) by the builders of the system (i.e. Apple).
To top it in terms of silliness, he speaks of "the binaries just works", but he neglects to mention that you still have to look for them in really random places over Google - something that apt-get like systems have been doing securely for the last what, 10 years? I indeed find it very odd that, although there's only one hardware platform for the Mac OS to run, all those third party packaging tools I mentioned actually require you to COMPILE everything again; then you go to the Ubuntu/Debian world, meant to run on several platforms and there's BINARIES for just about anything.
I really want to know what this guy is on. Gnome was a great thing, and he let it rot into that sad piece of bad usability called Unity; then he started dabbling in the very proprietary, advantage-free world of .NET, and he just bows down to Jobs walled garden legacy? I don't get it.
Anyway, freedom not to use is one of the 4 fundamental freedoms, according to RMS. Nothing of value is being (newly) lost, so big effing deal.
Debian to the rescue (Score:4, Interesting)
After developing with Mac OSX for a year using the command line interface (i.e., lots of terminals), I found I needed some sort of ports-like package management which has its own headaches. After jacking around with seemingly never-ending updates to Ubuntu and it's resource hungry UI, I found Debian quite refreshing. Not on the bleeding edge, but this is a GOOD THING! Never regretted it.
Sounds like Debian (Score:5, Interesting)
"Machine would suspend and resume without problem, WiFi just worked, audio did not stop working, I spend three weeks without having to recompile the kernel to adjust this or that, nor fighting the video drivers,"
Interesting, that is identical to the experience that I have with Debian. Even people on Arch don't need to "recompile the kernel to adjust this or that." But I hope he enjoys his Mac.
Uh-oh, Apple's in trouble... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, so, the guy who basically pushed 90% of the bloat, incompatibility, and other such madness I've ever seen in Linux is leaving because of the bloat and incompatibility?
Dude, not cool. You made that bed, now lie in it.
de Icaza flees mess he caused. (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy who launched GNOME as a counter to KDE is complaining about "the fragmentation of Linux as a platform"? Tthe guy who made the decision replace GNUstep (which was the GNU project's official toolkit/framework in 1996) in favor of GTK â" he's fled to the Mac? He's got the chutzpah to say, "Linux just never managed to cross the desktop chasm"â"without admitting that his decisions are a major cause of that failure?
Good damn riddance.
Fanboys, fanboys everywhere... (Score:4, Insightful)
I just read at least a dozen "but OSX just WORKS!!" threads, "I don't have to do anything to make it WORK!#@!".
Well, guess what. What you spend your money on is *REAL* *VOTING*; more than any election.
When you *VOTE* for shitty, evil Apple Business Practices (that would be ALL OF THEM), you're supporting and proliferating Evil (tm). They're worse than Microsoft, just without as many of your Billions. Keep feeding the beast and see what happens.
Re:It's been decades. (Score:4, Insightful)
you can run it on your PC; Apple doesn't like it but you can do it
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Re:It's been decades. (Score:5, Funny)
Who are you trying to scare off with that?
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so what?
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You trade one slavery for another. The Cult of Macheads will mod me down, but Apple owns you as much as Microsoft does. Icaza trades one set of commercial business ecosystems for another.
Re:It's been decades. (Score:4, Insightful)
You trade one slavery for another. The Cult of Macheads will mod me down...
Choice of computing platform is not slavery. Liking things that work is not a cult.
Re:It's been decades. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you equate it doesn't make it fact. Slavery has a very strict definition and you're twisting of it does good for no one.
Re:It's been decades. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's been decades. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand this thought at all. I run a mixed environment at home, and it all works pretty well. I have a FreeBSD ZFS server in the basement happily running AFP and acting as a Time Machine target. I also have it running CrashPlan in Linux emulation as a target for my friends, family, and Windows PC. The Windows PC speaks happily to FreeBSD via Samba. Firefox works almost identically on all three platforms, syncing passwords and bookmarks. OpenOffice works on all three as well. CrashPlan client runs just fine on two Macs and the PC. Even Apple proprietary crap like iTunes and Airplay runs across platforms. As long as you try to steer clear of single-platform applications, everything works together pretty well. It would not be a big deal if I suddenly had to ditch Mac or Windows (and believe me, Windows 8 has made me consider the latter).
The truth is, there is no "ecosystem" if you are careful in your application and hardware purchases. That MacBook will happily run Linux or Windows if you get disgusted with MacOS. That Windows PC will happily run just about anything if you get disgusted at MS. Keep your data in an accessible format, and you are golden when you switch platforms.
Besides, as a geek your friends and family depend on you to be an expert at anything with electrons. :)
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netatalk is in ports. It's an AFP implementation. It worked well with Classic and old versions of OS X, but I've had better luck with Samba mounts in the last few releases. However, you still need it for TimeMachine.
Re:It's been decades. (Score:5, Interesting)
And here I thought that I was getting desktop-ready *NIX environment with a UI layer that wasn't a crufty piece of shit pretending to be something it's not. That I can still run native X11 apps on. Next to native MS office, indesign and photoshop. Without vitualization. And VMWare Fusion for situations where that's not enough or for when I want to stage a VM-based server before I deploy it.
I'll pay a couple bucks extra for that at work. And build a Hackintosh at home.
I love BSD, Linux to a degree and even X11. They are great tools. For a desktop workstation, OSX spanks Linux.... it just costs money.
Re:It's been decades. (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to open up OSX and allow it to be installed on any computer.
A tired response to a tired post. Apple is a hardware maker not an OS maker. They only make OSs to support their hardware. This explains the price difference between Mac upgrades and Windows upgrades. They make their profits off the hardware. They could potentially offer a version of the OS at a higher price that could be installed on PCs but people like you would complain about the price difference. They can't win this argument so why play the game? You want open there's Linux. You want Mac OS then there's Macs. You want everything your way, life sucks and get used to it! Christ when I was in my teens computers ran off Cassette drives! Be happy. 20 years ago Macs cost the same as a car. Cars got more expensive and Macs got cheaper and you're still complaining! Your average smart phone has a 100X the power of my first computer. My iPad would have probably been a super computer when I was a kid. If you were thrown back in time to the 70s or 80s you'd think you were in hell. Just imagine the 60s, as in pre calculator days when computers ran off punch cards. You're living in a time of miracles and you're whining about running OSX on hardware it was never designed to run on! My expartner bought a Mac clone off some one that claimed it worked faster than a Mac Pro. The damned thing was slower than a Mac Mini and crashed constantly. I made him take it back to the idiot that sold it to him. Is that what you want? A slower than hell OSX that crashes constantly? I'm sure you'd just blame Apple for not supporting PC hardware better!
Re:It's been decades. (Score:5, Funny)
Not allow what? (Score:3)
he would infest Linux with Microsoft poison
I'm not keen on .NET either, but that's quite overdoing it.
As for "allowing" anything, Apple lets you sue whatever language you like to produce iOS binaries - MonoTouch is one of them.
Re:Not allow what? (Score:5, Funny)
Apple lets you sue..whatever you like
Oh Freudian slips how I love thee.. .
Re:Richard Stallman is a shitheel (Score:4, Insightful)
bullshit, it's a very incomplete .NET 4.0 missing huge parts of the framework. and let's not forget Moonlight, now dead.
incomplete system like that is fit only for a trainwreck of a project, like say GNOME3
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Until Oracle decides to say fuck you.
Re:Richard Stallman is a shitheel (Score:5, Insightful)
Mono was a pointless waste of time and De Icaza is a quisling turn coat. Apple deserves that worthless pile of donkey shit.
Lets see:
Miguel's contributions to Linux:
1) Midnight Commander
2) Contributions to Wine
3) He worked with David S. Miller on the Linux SPARC port and wrote several of the video and network drivers in the port, as well as the libc ports to the platform.
4) They both later worked on extending Linux for MIPS to run on SGI's Indy computers and wrote the original X drivers for the system.
5) With Ingo Molnar he wrote the original software implementation of RAID-1 and RAID-5 drivers of the Linux kernel
6) De Icaza started the GNOME project with Federico Mena in August 1997 to create a completely free desktop environment and component model for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.
7) He also created the GNOME spreadsheet program, Gnumeric.
Your contributions to Slashdot:
1) Silly karmawhoring hatefilled anti-Microsoft rants on Slashdot
Who has made better contributions to the progress of Open Source?
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Dude's got more legitimate cred than ESR ever had really. People just can't get their heads around the fact that a Linux guy can like elements of other software ecosystems.
Miguel did not write Midnight Commander. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Richard Stallman is a shitheel (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically, Mono is great. Unfortunately, Miguel completely failed to establish it as a Linux standard by antagonizing much of the Linux community and failing to assuage licensing and patent concerns. Frankly, as an early Mono adopter and supporter, I feel let down by him. Let him be happy with his Mac; I won't miss him.
Re:Richard Stallman is a shitheel (Score:5, Interesting)
Technically, Mono is great. Unfortunately, Miguel completely failed to establish it as a Linux standard by antagonizing much of the Linux community and failing to assuage licensing and patent concerns. Frankly, as an early Mono adopter and supporter, I feel let down by him. Let him be happy with his Mac; I won't miss him.
Mono was also a *massive* strategic blunder: it would have been far more sensible if Miguel had built an open source clone of the JVM instead for his Linux GUI efforts:
My observation at the time was that Miguel seemed to be over-excited by the (nice but superficial) language features he saw in C#, and completely forgot that the real value is in the *platform*.
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I left Linux for the same reasons for the most part.
Of everything he mentions, the only one I've had problems with is the audio. My Wifi is rock solid, and I've had no performance problems on my thinkpad, and at work I'm using a 5 year old, cast-off desktop that was deemed too slow for Windows, but it runs quite well with Kubuntu including 3D desktop effects.
But audio is a bit of a problem, I've started to kill -9 the pulseaudio daemon before starting up my audio player, otherwise the player just hangs while waiting for the audio device. This happens on my
Re:I was expecting Windows, but Mac?!?! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Philosophy is nice and all... (Score:5, Interesting)
The ends justifies the means. Uh. No.
Not that i disagree with you, with respect to using OSX or Windows when it makes sense to do so. But I don't think using either is particularly "evil".
But if I thought Apple killed children and unicorns then I wouldn't use OSX, even if it was the best tool for a job.
Re:Philosophy is nice and all... (Score:5, Funny)
/* But if I thought Apple killed children and unicorns then I wouldn't use OSX, even if it was the best tool for a job. */
Shit, that'd probably get me to switch to Apple.
Re:Philosophy is nice and all... (Score:5, Funny)
If someone can provide proof that Apple has been killing unicorns, then I will become a true convert and switch to OSX.
Have you seen a unicorn anywhere in Cupertino recently? No? Here is your proof.
that's my fantasy, too (Score:5, Interesting)
But I almost immediately tripped over the same old minor glitches I've seen on every other platform I've ever used. In this case, the problem is that Ableton perversely installs itself in such as way that only one user can run it (though the license is for the whole box). So, I dutifully tracked down the arcane procedure for making it available system-wide (just as you get with Linux apps by default, I might add), and a couple hours later it's doing what it should have done in the first place. Yes, it works, but it doesn't "Just Work".
Re:that's my fantasy, too (Score:5, Insightful)
>My guess is that in this case this is an Ableton Libe problem and not an OS X problem.
Hey if Linux can get blamed for the misbehaviour of proprietory apps, and indeed if proprietory app-makers can complain that they cannot build for every linux system (when NO free software developer ever has that problem - it comes from not playing by the rules, if you give us the source, you never have to build for ANYTHING - each distro will build it for itself and you need not know how ANY of them does it) then blaming apple for the behaviour of an application sold for apple is simply tit for tat.
Linux people always hear Linux being blamed for the faillures of third parties. But oddly, software in the repo almost always "just works" - the problems almost always comes in from stuff that are't in the repos and are not in fact maintainable by the community whom you are blaming for it's failure. People have tried and failed to solve this for years (the gaming companies almost all went for self-extracting archivesin uuencoded shell scripts for example).
A user's experience of working on a platform is determined just as much by the platform and those who develop well for it, as by those who develop badly for it. This is utterly unfair and irrational but it's nevertheless true.
How much better would some of the GP's have rated the linux desktop if they limited themselves to ONLY the stuff in the repos (and that's without getting into a free software only argument - which I personally DO believe in and stick to).
People actually feel their linux experience is harmed because skype on linux is so inferior to skype on windows - but that is not only skype (or now microsoft)'s fault, it's not something linux developers CAN do anything about whatsoever. The best we could do is offer ekiga - but that has so little market-share that it doesn't solve the problem.
So tit for tat I say.
That all said - whenever I have to use any windows platform it irritates the living daylights out of me, which is why I stick to mint+KDE. I tried a Mac a while ago... yuerch... it just didn't want to work the way *I* want to work.
Nobody tells me how my desktop should function, that's MY decision, because I am most productive in a system set up and customized to my particular workflows. The only desktop that actually respects that is KDE.
Re:Philosophy is nice and all... (Score:5, Funny)
So Linux is like a shop full of tools and MacOS is like an angle grinder?
Re:Philosophy is nice and all... (Score:4, Informative)
Even more interesting is that the kernel for OSX is FreeBSD - you know, UNIX.
Its not. Its based on Mach. It has some FreeBSD and NetBSD parts, but the kernel is not from FreeBSD. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X [wikipedia.org]
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo.
This has ALWAYS been the basic dichotomy that the Linux faithful (which definitely included me at one time) fail to grasp: One group of people see computers as a fun thing, something to be explored and tinkered with, even if they use them for real and serious work. The other group considers computers,operating systems, apps, etc. as a big, steaming pile of inconvenience they have to tolerate to do something else -- work, listen to music, whatever. This is why do-nothing tablets are so wildly popular -- they manage to eliminate a lot of the hassles of running Windows while spoon-feeding users e-mail and the Web and media. Most people here (including me) consider them pretty toys and nowhere near capable enough to replace even an old, painfully slow laptop.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: what do you actually "get done" with Linux?
Pretty much everything.
My day job is Linux. My home systems are Linux, other than one new Windows PC for high-end gaming and an old one for iTunes. I can see four Linux systems from where I'm sitting on the sofa, not counting the Android tablet and four to six embedded Linux devices (I'm not sure exactly which of my Blu-Ray/DVD players are running Linux).
Because I'm willing to bet that whatever it is you're doing on Linux could be done just as easily on OS X without fucking about maintaining the operating system.
Wow, yes, because running apt-get upgrade or the upgrade manager every few days is just _SO_ demanding.
That would totally have been worth paying 2.5x as much to buy an Apple laptop with less powerful hardware than this one running Linux.
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