Unix Pioneer Ken Thompson Announces He's Switching From Mac To Linux (youtube.com) 175
The closing keynote at the SCaLE 20x conference was delivered by 80-year-old Ken Thompson (co-creator of Unix, Plan9, UTF8, and the Go programming language).
Slashdot reader motang shared Thompson's answer to a question at the end about what operating system he uses today: I have, for most of my life — because I was sort of born into it — run Apple.
Now recently, meaning within the last five years, I've become more and more depressed, and what Apple is doing to something that should allow you to work is just atrocious. But they are taking a lot of space and time to do it, so it's okay.
And I have come, within the last month or two, to say, even though I've invested, you know, a zillion years in Apple — I'm throwing it away. And I'm going to Linux. To Raspbian in particular.
Slashdot reader motang shared Thompson's answer to a question at the end about what operating system he uses today: I have, for most of my life — because I was sort of born into it — run Apple.
Now recently, meaning within the last five years, I've become more and more depressed, and what Apple is doing to something that should allow you to work is just atrocious. But they are taking a lot of space and time to do it, so it's okay.
And I have come, within the last month or two, to say, even though I've invested, you know, a zillion years in Apple — I'm throwing it away. And I'm going to Linux. To Raspbian in particular.
SoC FTW! (Score:2)
though shalt burn (Score:4, Funny)
Umm, I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
But choosing Raspbian (now called Raspberry Pi OS), a Raspberry Pi-specific Debian distribution, leaves me scratching my head.
There is simply no comparison between a modern Mac with an M1/M2 processor and any current or soon to be released Raspberry Pi.
My MacBook Pro is orders of magnitude faster than the fastest available Raspberry Pi.
Which leaves me to wonder what computing work Ken expects to perform with a Raspberry Pi.
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
He's either trolling everyone, or if he's actually serious, he enjoys the challenge of using underpowered hardware as a daily driver. Don't get me wrong, the RPi4 is neat for what it is (and I own a few of them myself), but it absolutely will try your patience as a desktop PC replacement.
As for me, I think life is too short to spend it waiting on a slow computer (or slow smartphone for that matter). I have other things I'd rather be doing than watching a progress indicator spin.
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe don't use slow software is the point?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe don't use slow software is the point?
Is it a good point? I use my Macs (Which is Unix BTW) to do video work. Trying to do that on a pi, or say a 286 computer running DOS - well aside from finding the software - there is a lot of horsepower needed to render that stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe don't use slow software is the point?
Is it a good point? I use my Macs (Which is Unix BTW) to do video work. Trying to do that on a pi, or say a 286 computer running DOS - well aside from finding the software - there is a lot of horsepower needed to render that stuff.
Are you doing video work all the time on that mac or for a small subset? IMO the vast majority of the time people could be using a rpi to type out social media comments or edit code. Depending on the IDE you may want a better CPU, but if you're vim + compiler then maybe you don't care much. YMMV.
However, some people offload the compilation to other machines elsewhere because they want to exist in a quiet room. It was a bit hot here in the summer last year, I thought several times of ordering a rpi to replac
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
He's 80. His daily driver probably doesn't need to run games at 120fps in 4k.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe he isn't doing anything intensive so it doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you know, when you begin to slow down in life, you need a computer that matches your pace.
Re: (Score:3)
I have other things I'd rather be doing than watching a progress indicator spin.
You're making a lot of assumptions about how a machine is used. I have some raspberry pi 4s in the house. I don't know what you mean about watching a progress indicator spin. Are you trying to run Windows 11 on them? If so that may be your problem rather than the power of the hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
The RPi4 runs out of grunt emulating some of the later DOS games, and kind of struggles a bit with N64 emulation on some titles. Also, as I've said in my other post, web browsing on one isn't exactly a pleasant experience.
For reference, my desktop PC is a 10th gen Core i7 with 16GB RAM and a relatively non-crappy 1TB NVMe, and 8TB of spinning rust. So yeah, as a matter of perspective, the RPi4 is painfully slow. They're neat for what they are, and I use one of them to control some Christmas lighting arou
Re: (Score:2)
You are making the same mistake everyone does, attributing slow performance to slow hardware when it is bad software that is to blame.
Yes, but while one can easily control the former (buy more powerful hardware), it's more difficult to control the latter (what are you going to do, refactor software to use less hardware resources?)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To emulate an Beowulff cluster with half a billion instances of those 18-bit/16k-words machines to run a neural network simulating a CapTChat Pro - or wha was the silly nam of this AI thing ... ?
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It really wasn't Unix till it was on the PDP-11
Re: (Score:2)
It's just dishonest to say that. You need faster hardware to compensate for that bad software, it's not about who's to blame.
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes, it's the complexity of the problem that's the issue. Back in the '80s, I was working at JPL with the man who'd written the current version of TRAM, the TRAjectory Monitor, that's controlled everything the US has sent past the Moon. It was running on a UNIVAC machine (don't remember the model) that was one step down from a supercomputer. I've been told by thos
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Which leaves me to wonder what computing work Ken expects to perform with a Raspberry Pi.
Well, he's done a ton of amazing work during his lifetime... but he is 80 years old. How much general computing work do you expect he's actually doing nowadays?
He's done more than enough... if he wants to play with a Raspberry Pi, let him.
Re: Umm, I don't get it (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see where heâ(TM)s coming from on the Mac (even though I have a new m2 mini.) Iâ(TM)ve been using *nix based systems since the mid80s and I run MacOS, Linux and occasionally windows and have used all of them since their earliest inception. MacOS (OSX) really peaked as a stable, reliable system about 10-12 years ago. Almost every âoefeatureâ Apple has added to MacOS since then has made it less dependable. I used to have macs that ran as long as my Linux boxes (read years, not hours) without restarting. Those days are long gone for the mac.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesnâ(TM)t take a lot of cpu to edit code in vi(or God forbid, eMacs) or to read mail or surf a few websites. I can see where heâ(TM)s coming from on the Mac (even though I have a new m2 mini.) Iâ(TM)ve been using *nix based systems since the mid80s and I run MacOS, Linux and occasionally windows and have used all of them since their earliest inception. MacOS (OSX) really peaked as a stable, reliable system about 10-12 years ago. Almost every âoefeatureâ Apple has added to MacOS since then has made it less dependable. I used to have macs that ran as long as my Linux boxes (read years, not hours) without restarting. Those days are long gone for the mac.
What are the symptoms of MacOS becoming unstable? I use mine pretty hard, the entire Adobe CC suite, some intensive Software defined radio Programs, and I'm not having any issues. Not trying to say you don't, but our experiences are a lot different, and I'm curious.
Re: (Score:3)
The symptoms are: it crashes or you have to restart it.
But one who shuts down his comp after work and boots it in the morning: does not notice that.
try open a terminal and type: uptime
The answer used to be 6+ months, until a majour system upgrade forced a reboot. Now you barely get a week.
I'm disappointed.
$ 0:17 up 6 days, 14:44, 7 users, load averages: 2,75 2,85 3,03
Disappointing. Actually Embarrassing.
Re: Umm, I don't get it (Score:2)
My MacBook Pro shows 32 days uptime right now, which I think is since the last OS update. I can't remember the last time I restarted it due to instability (if ever), and I work it pretty hard.
Your hardware may be getting old and giving you memory errors or something. (I had an iMac that had increasingly frequent kernel panics once it reached 7 years age or so. But they continued even with a new OS and no workload, so not an OS problem.)
Re: (Score:3)
Which leaves me to wonder what computing work Ken expects to perform with a Raspberry Pi.
Why? What work are you doing that needs the full power of an M1 or M2?
Re: (Score:2)
Why? What work are you doing that needs the full power of an M1 or M2?
The Pi4 is only barely adequate for web browsing, provided you keep the number of open tabs to a minimum. It takes awhile if you need to compile any large programs, and forget about using it for any sort of video editing tasks. For that matter, even trying to watch Netflix on it requires jumping through a few hoops to get the DRM working (the last time I tried - the situation could've changed since I last messed with it) and then it's still a pretty pokey experience overall.
For the price they used to sell
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
And compiling large programs is only a problem for people who have to use a bunch of frameworks and other bloated nonsense. Ken mostly uses C and AWK and can probably do in a small program what your average Mac using developer needs a whole suite of bloated tools to write.
One of my old team leads had a good point - if developers developed on slow machines, then modern software wouldn't be so bloated because they'd be the first to subjected to their own dogshit programming.
But it's too much to expect people like ArmoredSkink to know how programming languages work.
Re: (Score:2)
Web browsing is a processing intensive task. Ken's development process probably doesn't depend upon a bunch of bloated GUI tools. And compiling large programs is only a problem for people who have to use a bunch of frameworks and other bloated nonsense. Ken mostly uses C and AWK and can probably do in a small program what your average Mac using developer needs a whole suite of bloated tools to write.
One of my old team leads had a good point - if developers developed on slow machines, then modern software wouldn't be so bloated because they'd be the first to subjected to their own dogshit programming.
I for one, am looking for video processing and editing on a Pi, and calculating intermodulation of say, 100 closely spaced transmitters.
But it's too much to expect people like ArmoredSkink to know how programming languages work.
That software can become bloated is very true. Many years ago, I did a bit of programming in direct machine language on an olde Commodore 64 just as a lark and was shocke
Re: (Score:2)
One of my old team leads had a good point - if developers developed on slow machines, then modern software wouldn't be so bloated because they'd be the first to subjected to their own dogshit programming.
Depends how slow. Is it slow enough to have a short break from programming while it compiles, so you can catch up and do a manual test. Slow is not so bad.
Is it so slow that you go for a coffee break and shit chat and lose context: it is bad.
And: how slow it compiles (and that is the problem of slow compute
Re: (Score:3)
One of my old team leads had a good point - if developers developed on slow machines, then modern software wouldn't be so bloated because they'd be the first to subjected to their own dogshit programming.
True to a point. I've done a great deal of optimisation of the software here because I'd rather figure out how to get queries down to reasonable execution times on the hardware that's there than deploy a new fleet of servers. I'm lazy in one direction and not the other. However if your developers have to prematurely optimise just to get stuff done in reasonable timeframes you wind up with poor quality somewhere. I know when I did graphics programming on old consoles sometimes I'd discard an idea because the thought of ripping out and redoing a meticulously optimised chunk of code to accommodate a new idea just didn't appeal. If I had been able to delay the optimisation step until closer to the end things might have been better. But sadly the nature of the consoles was that if your code got too slow things didn't just run slow, it wouldn't do anything useful at all. Give them the fastest development environment you can get them but force them to dogfood the release builds on bottom end hardware? Dunno.
Software has a lifetime. And the tweaking process to produce nearly perfect software would have the competition releasing possibly bloated, but available software a generation or two newer while you tinker trying to produce a masterpiece of optimization.
It is an example of perfect becoming the enemy of good enough. Sometimes the project manager has to declare the project finished and move on to the next version.
But is that the presumed bloat of programs we're worried about? Certainly Windows is pretty b
Re: (Score:2)
Ken mostly uses C and AWK and can probably do in a small program what your average Mac using developer needs a whole suite of bloated tools to write. ...
C and AWK on a Mac is just the same as on a Pi. On a Mac you do not need a "bloated" tool or frame work to write C
One of us is an idiot. Either you wanted to write something I do not grasp, so 'Im the idiot. Or you are. I'm at least such an an idiot that I have no idea what you mean.
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Umm, I don't get it (Score:2)
Re: Umm, I don't get it (Score:3)
Did you pocket the rest of the money?
Re: Umm, I don't get it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Which leaves me to wonder what computing work Ken expects to perform with a Raspberry Pi.
Why? What work are you doing that needs the full power of an M1 or M2?
My own use case is the Adobe CC suite, and Software defined radio. A goodly bit of video work, large photographs, Computing RF coverage patterns and Intermodulation interference work with hundreds of transmitters.
Not going to do that with a Pi period, and with a slow computer it can take a long time for some of these things.
Re: (Score:2)
Which of those do you think Ken Thompson is doing?
Re: (Score:2)
Which of those do you think Ken Thompson is doing?
Absolutely none of them. I was merely answering the question.
People are saying some incredible things in here - like software bloat is the reason that modern computers have to be faster. It isn't.
Thompson's work case is something that the Pi is capable of doing, so of course he should use one. A really cheap computer, that suffices, that he can tinker with. There's a solution. It doesn't make the Pi the equal of my Mac or Dell Workstation laptop.
I think this is one of those things where everyone brings
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
He's fed up with Apple's workflows, not the performance of their devices it seems.
Frankly, most of the time my Ryzen 5800X and the RX 6700 XT in my rig aren't doing much either. Most of the time my PC is turned on, its tasks could very adequately be done by Raspberry Pi as well.
Re: (Score:2)
The kind of development Ken does is streamlined through decades of experience and fad-agnosticism.
Re: Umm, I don't get it (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Macs are ordinary computers like any others.
There are no Apple "work flows".
Re:Umm, I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
There is simply no comparison between a modern Mac with an M1/M2 processor and any current or soon to be released Raspberry Pi.
My MacBook Pro is orders of magnitude faster than the fastest available Raspberry Pi.
Which leaves me to wonder what computing work Ken expects to perform with a Raspberry Pi.
It isn't about the hardware. He's talking about the hoops Apple's OS makes you jump through in order to get anything done. Unless you are an ordinary office worker, in which case you just use what's in front of you.
KT isn't that, any more than most people here are. He actually needs to use low-level stuff, not just the latest office suite or cool video editing 'app'.
Re: (Score:2)
He's talking about the hoops Apple's OS makes you jump through in order to get anything done
Please elaborate ...
Re: (Score:2)
For a programmer/software developer there is no difference between Mac OS, PI or Linux.
Which loophole are you talking about, dumbass?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a perfectly happy Mac user, for the most part. But I have noticed that, every once in a blue moon, I've had trouble building some program or other. However I don't think it's because of the Mac, per se... it seems to have more to do with certain differences between a Mac's BSD underpinnings and Linux.
The only example I can remember off-hand is trying to build mlocate (don't ask me why), a few years back.
It's pretty atypical, though - although I haven't done as much of that on my work M1/M2 Mac as on my
Re: (Score:3)
Although Raspbian was born as a Debian fork targeting the Raspberry Pi, you can run it also on x86_64. As for why would anyone prefer using Raspbian over any other distro on x86_64 hardware, who knows.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because Ken is 80, not 8.
Re: (Score:2)
> My MacBook Pro is orders of magnitude faster
Now compare a RPi 400 or both to a PDP-8 or some old Honeywell Ken used under MULTICS and knows how to write efficient code for.
95% of computing energy today is wasted by sloppy code.
Re: (Score:2)
> My MacBook Pro is orders of magnitude faster
Now compare a RPi 400 or both to a PDP-8 or some old Honeywell Ken used under MULTICS and knows how to write efficient code for.
95% of computing energy today is wasted by sloppy code.
I'm looking to be convinced that the Raspberry Pi can do everything my Dell workstation laptop or my New iMac can do.
I've played with the Pi's, I haven't been able to do anything like that.
Maybe someone could show us by writing say, a video editing system for oPi, then having a runoff with the presumed bloated software I'm using.
I do have to note, I've been using things like the Creative Suite or cloud since they existed, and each update in the machine and software has been faster, sometimes dramati
Re: (Score:2)
Well, nobody really gives a good goddamn whether a particular machine can do everything that your Dell workstation laptop can do.
What's important here is whether a particular machine can do what Ken Thompson actually does.
I'm sitting in front of my 12-core, 24 thread Ryzen 5900 with 64 Gb of RAM and PCIE-4.0 SSDs that I built last year. And you know what? 95% of the time it's just as snappy, just as responsive as the 12 year old AMD Phenom II X4 that it replaced. Sure, when I ask it to unzip a large sour
Re: (Score:2)
> There is simply no comparison between a modern Mac with an M1/M2 processor and any current or soon to be released Raspberry Pi.
Yes, but imagine a Beowulf cluster of Pi-s :)
> Which leaves me to wonder what computing work Ken expects to perform with a Raspberry Pi.
SSH into a Mac :)
Re: (Score:2)
So, I get Ken choosing a Linux distribution over MacOS for whatever reasons. That's understandable.
MacOS is a Unix-3.0 compliant system though, so it is a tad strange. If the old guy wants to live in terminal both will work.
But choosing Raspbian (now called Raspberry Pi OS), a Raspberry Pi-specific Debian distribution, leaves me scratching my head.
I suspect he's just more interested in the hobbyist mode, enjoying tinkering.
A comparison is I know some people who build and use crystal radios, and they like old school cat's whisker and coils wound on laquered Quaker Oats containers, while we now have incredible Software defined radios with performance many orders of magnitude better than the lowly crystal radio.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bear in mind that for the most part Unix-compliant means "We paid the fee". It's pretty meaningless.
It means enough that terminal is really similar. So I don't have to learn another Bash or command line.
But we still get people who'll advocate for macOS purely on the basis that they licensed the trademark and are unfamiliar with the history of BSD and GNU...
And that would not be me. Although terminal in both is nice, I do something different than many of the zealots in here.
I use the best tool for any application that I need to work in. And unlike many zealots in here, I spout the heresey that each OS platforms has strengths that the others do not have.
Which is why I have sitting before me a Mac on which I am typing, a Windows workstation laptop, and off
Re: Umm, I don't get it (Score:2)
Everyone on here is assuming he's switching to a Raspberry Pi for daily use, but that's not what he said.
He said he hates what Apple is doing to their OS and is switching to Raspbian. He said nothing about hardware.
I would guess that he's annoyed by the way Apple is locking down access to core OS components and switching to an app-store model for software. Raspbian can run on any x86 PC, so my guess is he's running on normal desktop hardware and just likes having a lightweight, easy-to-tinker OS.
Re: (Score:2)
There is simply no comparison between a modern Mac with an M1/M2 processor and any current or soon to be released Raspberry Pi.
If you only have a mail client and a browser running on your local machine and everything else is a terminal session, may it be local or not, in a shell with an vi or emacs - who cares about the host OS?
Only I would as I really like Apple Mail.app.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because he doesn't need the performance. He wants to code. Performance is wasted on a Mac or PC anyway, the vast majority of it is wasted doing basic stuff - email, web browsing (big cpu waste mostly because of scripts and ads though), spreadsheets. And much of the time those activities feel slower today than they did in the 90s (continuously doing a bad job of spell check and grammar check; or atrocious program design because no one knows how to be efficient anymore).
I remember when programmers
There was no announcement. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
He was asked a question and he answered.
Perhaps as a joke?
what is he referring to (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Being Apple. Isn't that enough?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, can't speak for him but what I hated was that it seemed to me Apple was dictating workflows and you either had to find an app to make the OS do what you bloody wanted it to do (often at 5 bucks a month subscription for even the most simplistic functions) or you just had to live with it and adapt.
And quite frankly, neither seems acceptable to me at Apple's usual price points.
Is this a change? (Score:2)
I thought that was how it's been for long while, maybe forever.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but even when you're aware of that anecdotally you need to experience it to truly understand the annoyance.
In my case, it was a several thousand bucks worth of MacBook Pro my employer expected me to use for four years. After that I switched to a 10 year old Toshiba because it was less of a hassle.
I even upgrader RAM and got a US keyboard for the thing on aliexpress.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but even when you're aware of that anecdotally you need to experience it to truly understand the annoyance.
In my case, it was a several thousand bucks worth of MacBook Pro my employer expected me to use for four years. After that I switched to a 10 year old Toshiba because it was less of a hassle.
I even upgrader RAM and got a US keyboard for the thing on aliexpress.
What is your workflow? What are you doing?
Re: (Score:3)
I still don't know what that means. I install MacPorts [macports.org], iTerm2 [iterm2.com], Xcode Command Line Tools, and just use vim. My "workflow" is edit in vim, "make", repeat. Works for me just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I have a 2018 i7/32GB iMac that I use periodically-- it is an old workstation from my office that is now an extra computer at home. I used it last week, and it felt like I was fighting it the whole way, from it not letting me access some things to running dead-slow (it had updated itself to the new OS a couple months back). I needed to run a Java app, and after 20 minutes I was dangerously close to installing Mint on the damn thing. So I kind of get where he could be coming from...
It used to be that a mach
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that is my expectation. I just need to inventory the applications that I have on it and figure out what I might not be able to live without even if it is dead slow.
Re: (Score:2)
"It used to be that a machine like mine would be solid for nearly 10 years..."
Sounds like what has changed is your faith. Computers has never changed at a slower rate than they do now.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, my previous computer worked as a work machine (heavy engineering applications) for at least 6 years; it was about 10 minutes from boot to be able to load the java app... or at least to load java so I could deal with the security complaints from the OS and Java... Actually running the thing took me a half hour for what should have been 5 minutes.
I wouldn't even force the receptionist to use my machine with OSX|MacOS today.
Re: (Score:2)
Then there is obviously something wrong with your computer.
If nothing has changed the last 10 years it obviously should perform like ten years ago.
Can not be so hard to grasp how computers DO NOT WORK - or - SHOULD NOT BEHAVE.
So suddenly it is behaving odd, but it is "Javas" fault. or "the OS fault" - why not try to find the falt and fix it?
Re: (Score:2)
It is called Apple wanting you to buy a new computer so they throw in optimizations for new processors at a cost of older equipment's performance with new OS updates that are pushed out to you even if you don't want them.
FOSS wins!!! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe it's time for open hardware smartphones that can accept either BSD based or Linux based operating systems, simple to install and run, just copy over to a MicroSD card plug & play style
It's way, WAY past time for that. But fully open hardware has been an uphill battle, and the forces of Open aren't that close to the top. For example, the Pinephone drains the battery really fast, isn't ready for use as a daily driver for anybody who needs stuff to just work consistently and reliably, and still relies on some closed blobs, including one for the LTE modem. And as far as openness goes, it seems to be the best of the lot.
What I think he means (Score:4, Interesting)
He doesn't want to switch an Apple for a RasPi. He wants to switch Apple's operating system for Raspbian.
This sounds to me like he doesn't care about the bells, whistles and blinkenlights and instead wants a system that is lightweight, doesn't consume a lot of resources and gets shit done.
I can second that.
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost as if you don't know who you're talking about. What you describe is the defining characteristic of the man's career. Duh.
Re: (Score:2)
He doesn't want to switch an Apple for a RasPi. He wants to switch Apple's operating system for Raspbian.
This sounds to me like he doesn't care about the bells, whistles and blinkenlights and instead wants a system that is lightweight, doesn't consume a lot of resources and gets shit done.
I can second that.
Gets shit done.
For extremely limited values of "shit".
Re: (Score:2)
You can run Raspian on a normal PC. Ponder running a lightweight system made for systems with limited resources on a beefy system.
Re: (Score:3)
Also with an approachable kernel space that mere mortals not only have control over, but can extend. macOS is among the OSes that have almost eliminated access, requiring all loadable kernel extensions to be signed by Apple. Building them yourself isn't as easy as it had been only a few years ago, even with a dev account. (newer macOS even prefers a userspace solution with better security, but i digress)
Linux, on the other hand, rather straight forward to compile and load. And for hardware tasks, a Pi actually does provide a lot of surface area for a hardware engineer to work with.
There isn't as much performance as mainstream machines, but there's plenty enough. Heck, there is H.264 acceleration in the Pi, and it's exposed by the V4L2 apis for any userspace program to use (ffmpeg, etc).
I think "open" is the word to describe this.
I think "security through obscurity" is the word.
Apple has to tightened macOS down, because fucking subhuman cyberterrorists relentlessly and viciously poke and prod at every conceivable framework and OS command to the point where it gets harder and harder to have a system that harkens back to a time where you could just depend on simple Unix permissions to keep curious paws out of dangerous places in the OS.
Unfortunately, macOS has gotten to the level of popularity that it just can't be as Dev-friendly as
linux and Mac OS (Score:2)
Re: linux and Mac OS (Score:2)
It's a bit late for an announcement (Score:4, Informative)
> Programming setup
> According to a 2009 interview, Thompson now uses a Linux-based operating system.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
> Programming setup
> According to a 2009 interview, Thompson now uses a Linux-based operating system.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Give him a break! He's 80. His clock speed isn't what it used to be. It just took him awhile to get around to announcing this.
BTW, if he switched to Linux in 2009, he would have been doing so at a time when most Devs. and many Users, thought that Apple had pretty much perfected OS X; that is, when OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" debuted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Seems a very odd time to declare Apple to "be on the wrong path".
The UX is going to drive him nuts (Score:3)
As someone who works regularly in all three major OSes (five if you count iOS and Android), I can tell you that Apple spends a great deal of time on their user experience. For example, on the Mac, I expect to be able to triple-click on a word and have it select the entire sentence. This doesn't happen anywhere else and it slows me down. I also expect Copy & Paste to work with the standard keyboard short cuts and I don't give a damn about maintaining formatting. When an app developer decides to override Apple standard, it pisses me off. When I want to find a file or get the size of a folder, I don't want to have to wait 20-30 minutes or longer for the OS to perform a search or add up file sizes recursively. I don't want to have to mess with low-level command line crap to connect to a bluetooth device or a wifi network. If that turns you on, knock yourself out. Me, I have to get things done.
That's not to say that Apple does everything perfectly. Spotlight could use a redesign, perhaps with an expert mode.
Good (Score:2)
Enjoy your faster loadtimes and less annoying security features
Linux is laudable. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Although he deserves all praise for his contributions, other than Go, I don't see much in the way of contributions past the early 1990s. He seems to be resting on his laurels. Understandable at 80, to be sure; but then don't put him on a pedestal when it comes to modern OS or Application Design or Development.
Not to mention a platform choice made a generation ago is hardly "News for Nerds" nor "Stuff That Matters"; no matter who allegedly made it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)