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Merging Unix And Mac OS
martin writes: "Here's an interesting article on 32bitsonline writing up one of Apple's chief O/S engineers talk at Usenix2000 on how they produced Mac OS X. Interesting to see how the design elements of Mac OS have been merged into BSD to produce a hybrid of the the two OSs."
Could I use a free compiler a la gcc on OSX? Is one likely to ship with OSX?
Can the gui (shell?) be altered to make an OSX desktop look like, for example, KDE? Is there support for themes, and does the word themes even apply?
I'd love to be able to run OSX on my P3 machine, but is S3 even going to think about putting out a driver for my Diamond video card? More succinctly, are hardware manufacturers going to be willing and/or able to ship drivers for PC hardware?
Is there a particularly good Mac site I can get this information from, so I can stop trolling /. for it? :P
Thanks in advance.
Seem like it could be automated. A simple PERL script would probably do it. Filter out the fluff words, then try to match long words and phrases common to both stories. Anything above a certain threshold would bring it to a human's attention for further review.
But since it is here, I did think it was rather interesting that they use their layers to deal with many of the problems. It sounds like the carbon layer is the one that will deal with some of the issues between aqua / cocoa and darwin. I am not sure about this. I know that in Linux the filenames that have spaces in them are quoted strings when used on the command line. I don't think that this should have been such a big issue for BSD or OS X. I am looking forward to seeing the finished product and it will be interesting if they have a version of OS X that runs on Intel as well. I have heard that darwin has been ported, but the question is will Apple port carbon, cocoa, and aqua to Intel as well. If OS X runs on Intel, I'd be interested in trying it out. I am not inteested in buying a new Mac box only to find out that I do't like OS X because of some reason.
send flames > /dev/null
Only 'flamers' flame!
Actually those themes were never publicly released but leaked out, probably by unnamed Apple developers violating their NDAs. I've used them myself and I can see why they were steved. The Platinum theme was designed so that applications that weren't Appearance savvy wouldn't look too ugly within the environment. However put those non-Appearance savvy applications in with the more extreme themes like DSG or Hi-tech and things get ugly very fast. Jobs made the then sensible assesement that it would take at the very least a total rengineering of to beat this problem, which would take resources needed elsewhere.
This problem shows up to a lesser extent when running Classic apps with Aqua. When OS X does come out, I wouldn't recommend running Kaliedescope in the Classic environment until a complementary X version of it comes out.
It isn't just you. I can't wait to move 8 G3 powerbooks I'm managing over to OS X
DB
Interesting proposal. Personally, however, I love the Unix console. If the managed to have the option of using a Mac/Unix console, then that would give me a reason to buy a macintosh.
But it would basically merge 2 separate operating systems together. The Unix/Linux world and the Mac world would no longer be separate identities. I admit that they both seem completely opposite, but it is possible. [Using the Mac interface instead of X or something].
This might even unite many users on the internet. Those who love macs for their simplicity and ease of use and those of us who value Unix/Linux for its stability and robust nature.
They'd just have to do something about the hardware on the macintosh before I would have no problem buying either one.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
But as of Mac OS 9, "Eject Disk" ejects the disk and removes it from the desktop.
Works in good old 8.x too.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Quite literally over Apple's deceased corporate corpus.
Apple's in the hardware buisness. Just like iTools main purpose was to sell OS 9. OS X's main and sole reason for existence is a sustainable market share for Apple hardware.
For Intel and maybe some other hardware platforms in the future the most you'll ever see is Darwin.
Okay, my sister recently bought a top-o-the-line Powerbook G3, and I was really impressed (and jealous). I played with OSX for a while, and it is really cool, although it seemed a little slow. I think the new graphics system is a lot, even for a G3.
I also got to see Virtual PC. From my last experience with it (several years ago) it was a dinosaur and hardly worth using. But now it is fast as heck, and I think you can even install other OS's (Linux, BSD's, etc) under it as well.
Question: with OSX, will Virtual PC still be around? I would think that the challenges of getting a Windows system running when the entire underlying MacOS has changed would be formidible. Will OSX use something like WINE instead?
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
OS X is based on OpenStep which was based on NEXTSTEP, which was based on BSD. My ancient NeXT cube running a circa 1992 version of NEXTSTEP came bundled with an ad hoc clustering utility called Zilla. It's pretty cool. You can choose to donate idle CPU cycles to a shared process which is advertised via NetInfo.
This tool is nearly 10 years old and it is by far the simplest clustering tool I have seen yet (I don't suspect it is necessarily the most efficient, but it does work). I really hope something like this makes it into the final release of OS X. It would be very handy for tasks like rendering that parallelize well.
Indeed, you are (technically) correct.
I was keeping the proceedings recent for simplicity. Eject Disk does indeed eject the disk. It's the *image* you need to trash... I know that's cheesy, but the disk is ejected. The image must be "disposed of" and the whole thing fits the desktop metaphor just that much better.
What you assume "Ejecting the Disk" is is actually removing the disk from the desktop. Slightly different, but it's still different.
Of course, I'm not usually this literal and I apologize. It's just one of those things people always bring up and are (even on a technicality) wrong.
The Happy Blues Man
The Happy Blues Man
I accept on blind faith that Cincinatti exists.
Besides, I didn't get moderator today, so I had to do something....
sig not found
[sarcasm] Maybe we need to be told to plug our computers in, but at least we know the name of the company that makes them is Apple, not Mac.
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dman123 forever!
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dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
The "opaque folders" are bundles, basically a special directory containing a bunch of files, displayed as if it were a single file. You can use "cd", "ls" etc. to browse around inside them if you want.
What you're talking about in System 7 are called Suitcases. A suitcase is a single file that contains resources; when you open a suitcase the resources are displayed as if they were files within a folder. You can move a resource out of a suitcase, and it will be moved into its own stand-alone file (something that wasn't possible prior to System 7), and if you move it back, the resource will be copied back and the stand-alone file deleted. Prior to System 7, suitcases could not be opened in the Finder; their contents could only be managed using the Font/DA Mover utility. Trivia note: while moving files into/out of suitcases is the only time you will ever see a "Move" progress dialog box in the Mac OS 7-8-9 Finder.
Bundles are basically the opposite of suitcases.
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Without replying directly to the article... Does anybody know if Mac OS X definetly supports PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules)? Or do the user and group management of Mac OS X support LDAP? In the whole world I havent found any hint on this. For me (and thousands more, I assume) this is very important, because it would be the most convenient way to integrate Macs into a heterogenic environment of Linux and Mac OS X servers. What a dream...
My experience with NeXT was as a user on a pretty hodge-podge (but nifty) network. Apps generally went in one of several locations, which annoyed me--there were the traditional /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin apps, but then there were other directories for the GUI-ish applications, and yet another directory in which 3rd party-ish apps went, and a few others to boot. Now, while I prefer a Mac-ish feel to my filesystem, I'd much rather have the old-school UNIX system if it meant keeping everything in order. If they keep everything in order and pretty much in the right places, I'll be happy, regardless of whether it feels more like Mac or UNIX.
But that aside, I don't really think that it's disconcerting that Apple has designed it's filesystem in such a manner as to make it familiar to their existing user base. Doing so doesn't sacrifice any real functionality, and I'd argue that it's more in Apple's interest to cater to the familiarities and desires of their existing user base than to those of the UNIX community at large.
Remember, kids, it's only premarital if you plan on getting married.
It's in the process of being synced with the most current BSD, though it is written as a user-mode process which runs on top of Mach. You could run several such processes simultaneously. In short, no, the NeXT stuff wasn't dumped at all...it's just totally revamped.
Couple of corrections:1. s/BSD/FreeBSD,
2. Mach and the BSD kernel live in the same address space. The BSD kernel still calls all of the Mach interfaces, but does so directly and not through Mach messages as a user process. The "BSD as a user process" was brought up in the BSD kernel session at WWDC this year, and the Apple guys made sure everyone understood that BSD and Mach share the same kernel address space for performance reasons.
Remember, this is Apple. The average Mac user won't even realize that it's running on UNIX underneath - it'll just be a Mac with a very pretty GUI that never crashes.
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I've heard of OS debates being refered to as "religious issues", but that might be getting carried away.
Then again, a lot of Microsoft techs tend to favor the goatee style that people used to call a "devil beard". Hmmm.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I think if I had a nice G4 based system to be my server I'd be installing Yellow Dog instead of a schizo Mac. Oh well, that's just my personal preference. It definitely looks like a step in the right direction for Apple. I'm sure it'll be a hit.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
first pos
Interesting typo.
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MacSlash: Your Daily Dose of Mac News and Discussion.
On the UNIX side, how are the problems of UNIX system administration handled? Are all the text configuration files gone, or did Apple just put GUI wallpaper over them?
For that matter, is it really BSD underneath? They don't mention Mach at all. Was the NeXT stuff dumped completely?
You apparently fail to grasp the concept of a troll. They are not a rational thought. They are not meant to be taken seriously, and are to be ignored (or moderated). Enjoy!
Why keep MacOS X backwards compatible? It's killing efficiency: Another difference in the path separators used by the file systems was also an early issue. HFS+ uses a colon (":"), while UFS uses a slash ("/"). This is now handled transparently by transforming the strings automatically, so that Carbon and Classic applications see the colon they're expecting while all other portions of the operating system see the slash. Yay! Now we have to s/:/\//g everytime we run an older application. As for the file permissions when we create a file on an app that was meant for OS9, how it's relative to the dir that we're in, doesn't that pose some kind of security hole (IE, someone saves in :documents, documents is 777 so that every user in OS9 can read/write, now that means that anyone else who runs the same app can now read in :documents?
hlag
The purpose of OS X is not to sell a package for Linux gearheads, it's to provide an improved OS for the existing Mac market. It's to provide an OS that's first and foremost easy to use with the inherent advantages of a 'Nix based operating system, mainly protected memory and multitasking, something that Apple tried and failed to accomplish by merely updating MacOS as the Copland project sought to do.
To do what you want, all they needed to do was to buy Yellowdog or LinuxPPC and make an appropriate theme for a window manager of choice.
The problem would of course that this would effectively maroon the existing Mac community and ultimately bury Apple as well. Like they say on Pokemon, a lot of dotters don't seem to "get it." Right now, for the most part the only people who use Linux, are sysadmins, programmers, and other types of gearheads who live to take apart their OS day to day. Apple's core market are people who USE computers, primarily for creative/publishing work. OS X is going to have to sell to the people who've used Quark, Photoshop, SoundEdit, and a bit of Office. They're not particurlarly interested in gcc or the Gimp, nor would they look forward to recompiling a system kernal just to make network changes.
There are things that need to be done with Aqua and the public beta should generate some useful feedback in tuning the Consumer Release.
Sounds like you didn't bother to actually read up on it. There are no dotfiles involved. Speaking as a Mac OS X developer, it's a very good solution. Not perfect, but given the constraints, very good.
For changing settings, this is true, but for, say, installing an application into /disk/Local/Applications rather than /disk/Local/Users/username/Applications, it's not -- you simply get permission denied, with no opportunity to su to root. You can go to the shell and su to root, and move things by hand, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the nice GUI. But it _is_ just a preview.
Given how much work Apple has done with Classic integration into DP4, particularly the fact that Classic apps show up in the dock along with the native apps, I expect VirtualPC for OSX to run very smoothly. And I'd really like to see Windows apps show up along with Mac apps in the dock. But we'll just have to wait and see.
And btw, Office98 runs just fine in Classic.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
No kidding. I just started a Unix sysadmin job and after one month I found a little pot belly forming around my skinny body. I've since stop snacking with the other admins in my group (they've got full Unix guts) and started drinking water anytime they want to take a break. The weight is staying off and I don't plan on putting it on anytime soon.
As for the comment on facial hair, when I interviewed for this job the first thing the interviewers pointed out was my goatee. "He's got facial hair, he passes the first test for new admins!"
From the GPL:
You don't have to release the OS under the GPL just because you bundled a GPL utility with the OS, unless the OS and the GPL'd app are released together in the same package.
Sorry that I was unclear. I meant they could write their own package manager using the concepts and features of previous systems - not the code of the previous systems.
Sorry that I was unclear; you're correct, but Apple would have to take steps to ensure that they weren't inadvertently including code from dpkg when they wrote their own package manager, by giving a group of programmers who'd never seen the source to dpkg (and who could sign an affidavit to that effect) a specification of what it's supposed to do and having them write their own version. This would probably be a rather annoying undertaking, I would imagine.
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Doc Martins or sandals. Hiking boots are for mainframe guys.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Must be a slow news day, this has been circulating for weeks...
"Didn't you ever listen to your mother..."
Apple's problem is the viral nature of the GPL. This topic has been bludgeoned to death far too often. Here's the gist - the GPL's definition of "derivate works" is too vague. If the Operating System relies on the package management system to work, it might theoretically be construed as a "derivate work". Yes, it sounds idiotic, but what matters is how it can be cast legally. And the GPL has never been tested in court. Apple, understandably, is reluctant to use an install system that might cause their entire product to be placed under the GPL.
So Classic is like Wine for MacOS? If this is the case, would it be possible, at some point in the future, for Apple to release the source and/or port it to Linux, so as to run MacOS (9, at least) apps from LinuxPPC?
It does have Mach and 4.4 BSD at the bottom. You can download all of the source to this, known as Darwin, from the Apple web site. It's the same source being used in OS-X. Since OS-X is still 'alpha' I'm not sure how current it is, but they are making efforts to keep it up to date with what is currently shipping.
The important thing to remember is that despite having a Mach/BSD core, Apple stresses that it is a BadIdea(*TM) to write anything that relies on Mach or BSD interfaces. Apple has created an operating system independent abstraction layer on top of Mach/BSD known as "CoreFoundation". CoreFoundation provides basic operating system services such as process control, file system access, networking access, etc... and also provides primitives used for foundation level API's such as string handling and file package stuff.
Built on top of CoreFoundation are all of the NeXT frameworks such as Cocoa (formerly AppKit), Foundation, EOF, etc... as well as Quartz. Also built on top of CoreFoundation is Carbon (the legacy MacOS "toolboxes"). Apps built to the Carbon API's will run on either MacOS 9 or X! There is also "Classic" which is an emulator for old apps that use the old Mac Toolbox API's. Any existing ISV's are strongly encouraged to port their apps to Carbon. Classic is for old orphaned apps that people still need to run (but can't port to Carbon since they aren't Open Source).
So while Apple is building OS-X on top of Mach/BSD, they are not tied to it. They can port everything to a different OS with relatively little pain. Apps will just recompile unless they do sneaky stuff like access Mach or BSD api's directcly. Even drivers will be semi-portable since Apple has a very advanced driver achitecture known as "IO Kit"...
Mac OS-X is way cool, Linux folks would be wise to learn more about it and borrow the better features. I would especially look at the Framework system which are the coolest shared libraries around.
Burris
I can't believe the number of people that have themselves convinced that OS X is going to be running on x86's.
I've been keeping up with the development of OS X (as I will probably at least consider buying a Mac when it has matured a bit) and everywhere I see the same statement from Apple. They say that while Darwin (the open source underbelly, so to speak, of OS X) will run on x86 (already runs on ?), the Aqua interface and APIs will not run on x86. Apple wants to sell Macs, making OS X on x86 just doesn't make sense to them (well, at least not to Jobs, maybe to marketing). They don't want to support all of the hardware in the x86 world, and they don't see the point in porting Aqua to x86.
While speculating about x86 MacOS X is all well and good, let's not jump the gun and say that they have confirmed it. They haven't confirmed it, in fact, they have flat out denied it. While it would probably be trivial for them to compile Aqua on Darwin once it is reasonable stable on x86 (a distinct possibility later on), I don't think they are going to do so immediately. They probably want to see Darwin bring in the hardware support first, then see if porting the commercial parts of OS X is worthwhile. For a business, this only makes sense.
Don't let the occasional "OS X on x86 would rock!" comment throw you off. It isn't confirmed, and as of this moment, it isn't even publicly acknowledged as an idea (from Apple).
Bite my yammer.
In any case, the GPL is not about interoperating with other licenses; it is a strong political statement about rights and freedoms -- use accordingly!
We'll see OS-X working on x86 architecture? As much as I'd love to check the whole thing out, I'm sure as hell not spending the duckies necessary to acquire a G4...
There are two major products that come out of Berkel
I would consider myself an "Intermediate to Advanced Unix Guy", and I have no facial hair whatsoever. Almost all of the geeks I know have no facial hair. Maybe it's a (US) west coast thing.
p.s. no offence to anyone, i'm a fat unix guy with a beard. aren't we all?
sig:
See the "..for smart people" banners Wired runs here? Look elsewhere guys.
Got to laugh a little of 32bitsonline's image filenames:i phardreview.gif] ;). Anyhow on the article - "Opaque folders", isn't this really much like a .tar / tar.gz / zip whatever?. I think MacOS 7-8 had something like - like "baskets"(sp?) of fonts etc. New concept? Don't think so - Anyhow I think they did a very good job - and they absolutely deserve any fame they can get from it. Btw! I got the dibs on the first graphical kernel panic!
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[str
[striptechnical. gif][striphumour.gif][stripcontacts.gif] and stripcontest.gif too
-Stskeeps, http://unrealircd.com
perhaps i should've added: the installed user and application base of MacOS?
-Bill
I think the most ironic part about the whole OS X thing is that the people who are angriest and the people who are the most excited are the same group, the power users.
I don't think most average home imac-owning types are really aware that there'll be that much of a difference in the underpinnings of their OS. Nor do I think they'll care really.
All of the interface complaints and the mouse button battles et. al. don't really matter to most of Apple's target market. they just want to be able to email thier kids at college on something that'll be easy for them to use.
As for the hardcore, the sysadmin's are psyched and the graphic designers are pissed. You get used to all the shortcuts and crap in an OS and it's a huge, time-consuming pain to relearn them all. Just listen to the whining about the loss of the Apple menu.
I'm going to lose a handy little add on (GoMac) that puts a windows-esque start bar on my Mac. I can guarentee you I'll be wasting valuable mouse time wondering why nothing's popping up when the cursor's sitting in the bottom of my screen, but you know, whatever. Muscles are retrainable, habits are breakable and power users are notorious cry-babies.
Actually, the graphical tools already do that, as far back as Mac OS X Server 1.0. There is a little lock icon on the control/preferences panels that require super-user access to change things. Changes are only allowed if you click on the lock icon and enter the root password. If you are already logged in as root, the lock is automatically open.
--Paul
Very well, I stand corrected. I got the impression from the article that BSD was using Mac components. My knowledge of Mac/BSD is somewhat limited, so you'll have to forgive comments such as this. I've been spending the better part of the day writing computational geometry code, so my brain has taken quite a beating in the last couple of days...
/* TNW */
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
As an aside, A/UX isn't quite dead. It's partition type is used by the PowerPC Linux distributions on which to lay down their ext2 and other filesystems.
John
1. This rumor is so old, even /. has already covered it.
2. It is only a rumor. Apple Insider is not a news site, and I have yet to see a single sketch, "lab photo", or bit of gossip that "leaked" to them turn out to be true.
(The wild inaccuracy of the Mac rumor sites is not entirely their fault. Since Jobs took over, Apple has slipped out disinformation to make their actual product announcements more interesting. Shortly before the iMac DV edition, the "leaked" specs for a "17 inch iMac", complete with "business colors" and a CD-RW drive... then went through the motions of a cover-up so the rumor sites would be positive it was true.)
The moral of the OT story: treat all Apple rumors as entertainment at best.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
sudo compiles painlessly on DP4. So does ssh (check out http://www.stepwise.com for detailed instructions on how to make it work properly with the new OSX init scripts)
You're forgetting something: X sucks. It would be very difficult to make an operating system that works as smoothly and easily as a Mac if it were tied down to compatibility with clunky old X Windows. And the three-button mouse thing would kill them.
If you want something that uses X and uses standard GNU software, why don't you just run Linux?
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I'm interested to know whether there is acutally a market for a UNIX/MacOS combination. I agree that it sounds like a neat idea in general, and would definitely raise my opinion of the Macintosh, but will the average (even the above average,) Mac user welcome such a thing?
It is not being touted as UNIX. It is being touted as something that gives you a more stable, more modern Macintosh. Trying to explain exactly how it is more stable and more modern is the difficult part, and understandably so. Most Mac owners are content with what they have.
In case you haven't been paying attention, this has already been addressed in a paper linked to on Slashdot a few weeks ago. When you drag a file from a UFS partition to an HFS or HFS+ partition, colons are converted to slashes. When you drag it back, slashes are converted to colons. The Carbon layer sees path seperators as colons (like Mac apps expect), and the Cocoa layer sees path seperators as slashes (like NeXT/UNIX apps expect).
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(Slashdot needs to allow post editing to correct typos.)
Check out this article posted today at MacCentral. This is the second of two article covering "Road to Mac OS X: Unix and Mac OS X Part II." The first article is here and contains some more details regarding how this merger is going to take place.
There is also a LOT more information at MacSecurity.org which goes into much more detail regarding all the ill-informed posts here on permissions and questions regarding security.
The optional installs will make the box as secure, or open, as you would imagine. But like an true server, the knowledge of the admin/user is the crucial part in the safety of the system.
All in all, these two articles and one site will give you the answers to most of the questions regarding how this project is coming together.
I think we may be in for a surprise when OS X comes out. Good or bad is yet to be determined.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I'm interested to know whether there is acutally a market for a UNIX/MacOS combination. I agree that it sounds like a neat idea in general, and would definitely raise my opinion of the Macintosh, but will the average (even the above average,) Mac user welcome such a thing?
The Mac users I've talked to seem to range from skeptical to downright hostile on the subject, declaring that they'll stick with an outdated OS if necessary, but I'm not convinced that they adequately represent the Mac community. Any hardcore Mac users lurking here who have thoughts on how this will be recieved by the Mac community at large?
"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." -Isaac Asimov
Ars Technica has a good review of OS X Developer Preview 4, and another Q&A article that explains in detail questions about the BSD-ism/Mach-ness of the new OS.
I am an admitted compleat Unixhead, but I've long felt that case-sensitivity is more of a problem than an asset on Unix filesystems; people simply don't tend to think of case as a distinguishing feature, and it bites them more often than it serves a useful purpose. Those few cases where case is the sole distinction between two filenames generally just represent someone's bad judgement. Note that this isn't the same as case preservation, which is important (and as mentioned in the article, has always occurred on HFS and HFS+ filesystems).
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
Let's see. Most MacOS users are smarter than you'll ever be judging by the stupidity of your comment. And as for MacOS itself, when another operating system comes near to the power of MacOS for destktop publishing and art, then please let me know. Meanwhile, I think the MacOS users will be sitting there enjoying an inredible imaging engine (Display PDF) with color matching, flexibility and special effects that other OSs can't touch.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I've used the Classic Environment in the latest release - DP4, and it performs quite well, in fact. I could not see much of a difference between running OS 9.0.4 natively or through Classic. So, yes, it does perform the same job as in Rhapsody, although I would say that there are many differences between the two environments.
The only downside to it is that Classic apps are unable to access the hardware directly, so many games do not work (yet), as well as audio/video applications.
If you are interested in SERIOUS security why don't you go take a gander at KERBEROS.
...that runs Mac OS applications, looks and feels like a Mac, and hides the BSD layer from the user completely, unless you go out of your way to get to it.
I was reading somewheres at Apple that you can open a text editor and actually access the command line. now hwo knows what shell it's useing.
Yes, Terminal.app (optional, not installed by default) gives you full CLI access, and it runs tcsh by default, although of course you're free to install bash, zsh, or whatever else makes ou happy.
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If you read the article that this thread was linked to, it covers what will happen in regards to file systems, and also the use of colons and / within OS X.
So... they have already covered the colon and slash difficulties. In regards to the 'design over functionality', I must admit that Quicktime 4 wasn't all that functional, but the preview of Quicktime 5 (I think it was) in DP4 has put in Aqua buttons, and instead of the Scroll Wheel for volume, there are buttons, I think.
Perhaps it wasn't a typo, but rather an insightful self-reflection?
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Could OS-X be the mythical middle ground in computer operating systems? Could it truly have the power of UNIX that every sysadmin demands, with the ease of use that every stupid end user requires?
Isn't this what Billy G promised us in Win2000? Not sure if I should believe Apple either, but you must have faith.
Thye jack of all trades master of none OS is just around the corner!
Beware the Whyte Wolf.
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels...
According to rumor, LucasFilm has a special deal with SGI: SGI gives them lots of really cool free hardware, and in return, LucasFilm never mentions that they run Macs. Apparently LucasFilm is using prototype quad-processor G4 systems running Mac OS X and Maya for many of the special effects in Episode II, and some of the rendering in Episode I was done on G3s.
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Actually this might interest you.
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Whenever I mentioned Unix/Linux, I keep on hearing that Linux is just another remake of the 70's technology, and Microsoft is the real innovator, blah blah blah... But meanwhile, how come I keep on seeing people or company who 'borrow' from that old technology? Sounds weird.
"We have all been here before..."
Dammit, you got me whistling a CSN song!
Anyway, this story has already been posted, as "The Challenges of Integrating Unix and Mac OS".
Suggestion to the Slashcode developers: add something like this in the next release!
$rh = $db->query("SELECT s FROM stories WHERE s.category = $newArticle{category}");
while ($rh->fetch()) {
$c = isect(@{$newArticle{keywords}}, @{$_{keywords}});
warnMsg("This article looks like $_{name} (at $_{url}), with $c matched keywords.\n") if $c >= $SOME_ARBITRARY_CONSTANT;
}
(Ghod, I still remember some of this stupid database programming... I've been trying to forget the horrible memories for half a year now. Urgh.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
------------------------------------------------ -
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
The Macintosh experience is _way_ more than the look of the interface. It is not simply a "mac-looking" windows manager. It's not a theme or a skin, it is how the user interacts with their computer.
this is what people who haven't _used_ a mac don't understand.
> at least some facial hair
:-)
------------------------------------------------ -
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
Y'know, that would be nice. Mac's carved out a fairly strong niche as the multimedia platform of choice for graphic/video developers, and with the recent rush of super special effects and full-length 3d animated films, a bunch of the systems crunching away wouldn't be a bad idea.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
As crazy as this sounds...The place to find the answers to alot that is in the August edition of MacAddict magazine. They do a big ting about how it all works. yup yup.
~Donald / Just RTFM
We experimented with clustering G3s early last year, right after Mac OS X Server came out. The results at the time very not too good:
1. The only interconnects supported by OS X Server were Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet -- no Myrinet, SCI, Fibre Channel, or anything else even somewhat exotic/interesting/fast.
2. None of the compiler vendors would commit to making a Fortran compiler for OS X Server, which is critical for getting scientific apps running.
3. The C compiler shipped with OS X Server (an Apple-hacked version of gcc) had severe and sometimes bizarre problems compiling anything other than the simplest C code; it barfed on ssh1, lmbench, and a number of other relatively standard ANSI C codes.
4. The benchmarks we were able to run were not that impressive. Floating point performance on Linpack 100x100 was about 83 MFLOPS on a 400 MHz G3, almost exactly the same as on a Pentium II 400 MHz. Sustained memory bandwidth using stream_d was around ~150 MB/s, about half what it was on our PII nodes, because memory copy operations were apparently double-buffered through both the BSD layer *and* Mach. UFS filesystem read performance was an abysmal 0.25 MB/s on a 10k RPM UWSCSI drive, whereas an ext2 FS on the same drive model in one of our PII nodes running Linux could sustain ~10 MB/s write performance.
Given that a G3 with 1 GB of RAM and an 18 GB UWSCSI disk was about 40% more expensive than a comparably equipped dual PII system at the same CPU clock, we gave up in very short order. The problems we ran into may be fixed now, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Virtual PC makes the mac emulate standard PC hardware. You can install linux on it (I have suse linux on one virtual PC harddrive.)
This makes it a very different beasthan WINE.
I think much of Virtual PC is written in assembler by "old school" coders at connectix so don't think the new api will make much difference at all.
I think Apple's solution to this problem was described in a recent article on maccentral.com. If a user tries to change a setting that needs root permission to change, the configuration tool asks for the admin password, transparently logs in as root in the background, does the necessary changes and logs out again. No need to manually log off and login as admin to make changes in the conbfiguration, like on a nt box. Stefan
No. Now it'll take three.
Genius, pure genius.
Apple employees have discussed this issue several times on the Darwin-Development mailing list. Here's the latest, which was in regards to the GPL licensing of dpkg and why Apple couldn't use it for their installer.
Peter Bierman wrote:
Later in the thread, Wilfredo Sanchez also followed up:
- Mali
Of course a utility like this needs a catchy name. How about slashbot?
GPL is kind of an 'all or nothing' license - the BSD license is much more liberal, which is no doubt why the article mentions debian and gnu as a potential problem, but doesn't say anything about freebsd and the bsd license.
It's not an aversion to the GPL; Apple would love to use tons of GPL'd apps. However, the GPL mandates that if you include GPL'd code as part of an operating system, the entire operating system must be released under the GPL. Apple's not willing to do that, for obvious reasons.
And if they don't like the GPL, can't they just implement package management themselves, copying their favorite parts from deb, rpm, Sun's pkg, *BSD's ports, etc. Sure, setting up their own packaging system would be a lot of work, but I think it would be pretty small compared to some of the other stuff they're putting into OSX.
If they use ANY code from any GPL'd program, they have to release the whole thing under the GPL.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
hell, make it all a desktop, with a Mac-looking window manager(or ditch the whole mac look altogether).
that would at least be an improvement over the 10 percent CPU utilization that Aqua uses. compare that to 1 to 2 percent for Windows and about 3 or 5 for X.
P.S. check me on the X figures, i am not sure how much it differs from machine to machine.
You should be able to use gcc. You will be able to access the unix command line, though the utility for this will not be part of the standard install. Being able to drop Aqua and interact directly with Darwin would be cool (at least to most readers here).
AFAIK, Apple is not making OS X skin-friendly. You may see themes comparable to what currently exist in OS 9. You can bet on a third party coming out with something, though. Kaleidoscope is very popular with Mac users.
Darwin can be compiled for x86 hardware. Apple has never made any claims about OS X being available for x86. Don't make any assumptions any time soon.
Constitutionally Correct
I may be mistaken, but this sounds a little scary.
Are we going to see boxes always logged in as root/administrator like I see on way to many NT boxes? I wish I had a dime, I walked into a client's NT server room and found every machine logged in as administrator without the screen locked.
I hope Apple has/puts in a su/sudo facility so that lazy admins don't fall prey to this vile temptation.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
What people keep saying is that BSD and the Mac OS have been merged...and that isn;t the case.
<BR><BR>
The OS is the Mach Microkernel and BSD. The User Interface is Aqua, so you have a UNIX system with a Mac-like GUI on top.<BR><BR>
I was reading somewheres at Apple that you can open a text editor and actually access the command line. now hwo knows what shell it's useing.
~Donald / Just RTFM
Disclaimer: it's been a while since I sat down behind a box running OS X Server, so I may be remembering some stuff wrong . . .
I've dealt with OS X Server a bit, and some of the standard text config files are still hanging out, but not very many. Almost everything you need to configure (well, that I needed to configure) was configurable through relatively intuitive GUI tools. From what I've heard, there are ways to accomplish administration from the command line, but I never played around enough to figure out how to do so. Documentation is scarce.
What I found most disconcerting about OS X Server was the way they "Mac-ified" the filesystem . . . by default, hard drives are mounted on the root with terribly descriptive names like "Server_HD3" instead of putting them somewhere really useful (i.e., make the second drive /usr/local/share or /usr/local or something . . .). Stuff like Apache ended up in /Local/Library/WebServer, CommuniGate Pro was in /Local/Communigate . . . apps were not installed in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, in some cases. It was just weird.
If there's anybody out there with NeXT experience, is this the way things were done? I know that OS X (from what I understand) draws heavily on NeXT (i.e., retaining the NetInfo stuff).
To keep tossing stereotypes around, that would be straight hair to the waste, and crinkly ankle length skirts.
:)
OT: have you seen apple's new mouse yet, no buttons!
Yes. It sounds a bit weird (and not really intuitive) to just apply pressure to the front. Following in this general OTness, has anyone ever come up with a button free mouse gui?
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
So what's Apple's problem with having a GPL'ed package management system? I know many companies have an aversion to the GPL, but how does having a free and open package management system hurt them? The GPL wouldn't infect the packages. This isn't a flame - I really don't see where what the catch is from Apple's point of view.
And if they don't like the GPL, can't they just implement package management themselves, copying their favorite parts from deb, rpm, Sun's pkg, *BSD's ports, etc. Sure, setting up their own packaging system would be a lot of work, but I think it would be pretty small compared to some of the other stuff they're putting into OSX.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
My understanding is that you'll be prompted to create a non-root account during installation. Various control panels and things that require root privaleges in order to change settings will prompt you for the root password in order to save your changes. Of course, from command-line there's always su.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"the power of Unix , the ease of the MAC" If that truely is the case we might be on to something here, we'll just have to wait...
public beta in two weeks and MWNY!
OT: have you seen apple's new mouse yet, no buttons! www.appleinsider.com for 3-d sketches
-rschroed
Connectix have already officially said that Virtual PC 3.x won't ever run on Mac OS X ... that's what Virtual PC 4.0 is for. Virtual PC uses every undocumented and sneaky, tricky thing it can to improve performance, so it needs to be updated for Mac OS X.
...
Another interesting item is that around the time of Virtual PC 2.0, Connectix said they hoped that by 4.0 they would "un-box" the emulator, sort of like what happened to the "Blue Box" in Mac OS X, so that Windows apps would appear for all intents and purposes to be Mac apps. Who knows whether they still plan to do this
Virtual PC really is amazing. Incredibly fast and a lot of fun to use. Very satisfying in a geek way. I wrote a computer book recently where we had Windows screenshots in odd-numbered chapters and Mac screenshots in even-numbered chapters, and I did all the screenshots on the same Mac, thanks to Virtual PC.
If you're not a Mac user, but you have a chance to play with a Mac with Virtual PC for a day sometime, take it. Lots of fun. You can run DOS, Windows 3.1/95/98, Windows NT/2000, Linux, OS/2, and switch between them anytime. Each lives on its own virtual hard drive, which are just disk images. With Windows or Linux, you just drag files from within the Virtual PC window (from the Windows desktop, for example) and drop them on the Mac desktop.
The Classic environment in Mac OS X creates a virtual machine inside of Mac OS X which boots a largely unmodified version of Mac OS 9. Applications which are built for Mac OS 9 and have not been "Carbonized" run in this environment. The Classic environment replaces the hardware abstraction layer in Mac OS 9 with a series of shims that pass requests to parts of Mac OS X. For example, a memory request in Mac OS 9 gets fulfilled by a memory request in the Darwin kernel. Mac OS 9 can thereby use resources managed by Mac OS X.
What's the speed of running an app in the Classic environment? Does the environment work roughly the same way that the Blue Box did in Rhapsody?
It's interesting that Apple chose to keep the historical UFS instead of basing it on a newer FS or advancing their HFS. While HFS+ was designed to bridge between HFS and UFS, it still doesn't make sense to use a pure-unix filesystem when you don't have a pure-unix OS. Instead, IMHO, they should have used something like the BeOS filesystem, so they could keep resource forks, etc.
For the record, prior to Mac OS 8, the "Eject Disk" command (Cmd-E) would eject a disk without unmounting it (leaving a grayed-out icon on the desktop and constantly asking for the disk back due to some annoying bugs they never bothered fixing). The "Put Away" command in the File menu (Cmd-Y) unmounts and ejects disks, and does the same thing as dragging a disk to the Trash. Note that when you put away a file, it moves it back to wherever it came from, sort of. Useful for pulling things out of the Trash if you've accidentally thrown them away, but not much else.
The "Put Away" command was introduced with System 7. Prior to that, you had to drag the disk to the Trash, and since many people didn't know about the Put Away command before Mac OS 8, they had to do it then too.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Oh the sharpness of slashdot....
7 255&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/24/211
Phroggy said:
/usr/local/bin is there. In fact, Mac OS X uses perl to install itself.
"The BSD layer won't be installed by default, but when you install it, it should come with gcc"
Which isn't quite accurate. Mac OS X is a BSD os. The all the BSD filesystems are there, all the BSD kernal calls are there, and everything you'd expect to find in
What's *likely* is that the terminal app won't be visible to the luser if the luser doesn't go and hunt it down, but whether he does or not, you can type "console" at the login window, the GUI will go away, and you'll be looking at a BSD (darwin) login prompt.
As for GCC, (actually EGCS) it is the basis of the native development system. Objective-C is implemented as extensions to the GCC parser and code generator. Apple has been vague on pricing for the development system, but all of their registered developers have been getting it with every developer preview release of Mac OS X.
Noting that Apple has just dropped the price of WebObjects from fifty grand to $700, I would expect the Mac OS X development system to be either free or cheap.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There's two things that Apple needs to do to get OS X into a state worthy of their name:
/. Applications generally expect the colon, so an intermediate layer converts the path on the fly. File names that include a / are also converted to colons. Colons are converted to /s. And so it goes... if they don't watch out, they're going to end up with a mess like DOS filename conversion in OS 8 (which really sucked; System 7 had better compatibility).
1) Quit the "design over functionality" bullshit and get back to basics. They have been listening (somewhat) to beta users with regard to things like the Dock, but they need to do more. Please, no more disasters like the Quicktime 4 player!
2) Figure out how to handle the various file systems that people are going to be using. HFS can't handle filenames over 32 characters, HFS+ can, but they both use colons as path separators, while the OS X standard filename uses the UNIX
Beowulf is a knock-off of a NeXTSTEP program called Zilla. Richard Crandall noticed that at any given time, there were about 50 idle machines at NeXT, and he wrote Zilla as the first implementation of a "community supercomputer."
The Zilla code is all written to the NeXTSTEP 2.0 API, but it wouldn't be very tricky to port it if anyone still knows where the code is.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Crashing BeOS is very easy.
# killall kernel_team
:)
--
Apple(tm) is about to capitalize on the hard work of thousands of us BSD hackers around the world and, yes, can keep the code closed forever ... but they'll make millions doing so. Hooray for BSD! And Hooray for Apple shareholders! You GPL losers with your "always open source" crap can eat our dust! We're the ones people are making money off of! Mwahaha!
Grow up and use brain pills.
The BSD code still is open source. And Apple has made a lot of contribution over the years into BSD. And the BSD/Mach kernel work is all open sourced and available. It's called Darwin.
And dont fscking talk about Apple capitalising on BSD hacker work. What the hell has Red Hat, SUSE, Corel and every dang Linux distro companies do, ya think?
What Apple will sell is all the additions on top of BSD they did (Quartz, Mac OS 9 compatibility, FireWire, Cocoa, AirPort etc etc).
What Corel sell in their Linux distro is their easy installer. Wipee!
Moderate me down, and the original poster.
Actually, the problem is related to the BSD roots. In all the *BSD's I've used, you have to be a member of the wheel group in order to su to root. So, you just need to make your user account a member of the wheel group and su will work without difficulty. Most likely, though, the average user won't run into this, because if I were Apple, I'd make it so the graphical config tools used a graphical su app that dealt with all of those things.
Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity
It gets odder and odder
No mention of NP, though?
*Darwin* already runs on x86. The mac interface is another story.
Apple is a hardware manufacturor. You'll see MacOS/X running on x86 the same day Apple demonstrates an x86 Mac--and even then, they're unlikely to offer it for non-Apple machines.
Oh, piss off, you floater!
Check out Computer Stupidities if you think Mac users are the only ones who need to be told the obvious stuff. In case you don't realize, stupid people do use computers, and regardless of the platform they're on, they tend to get lost.
And for the record, you never *had* to drag the floppy into the trash. There is a menu item "Eject Disk."
And I haven't had to use a floppy in years. And honestly, I don't think you have either. Don't tell me it wasn't a bad idea to get rid of the floppy drive for a new user's computer.
The Happy Blues Man
The Happy Blues Man
I accept on blind faith that Cincinatti exists.
Perhaps that's why there aren't many women in the Unix technical arena, especially further up the chain. They can't get the beard...
Myself, I'll be stereotypically stuck near Number 2; Acid burns have left me unable to grow a beard, so I'm stuck with a rather pathetic goatee as my only option.
Perhaps I'll become a MCSE. I've always considered most Microsoftians bald-faced liars..
.sig: Now legally binding!
>Why keep MacOS X backwards compatible? It's
>killing efficiency:
It's not quite backwards compatible; certainly not in the was that windows and system 7 were. The "compatibility stuff" isn't generally around or loaded; it's done by an artificial environment.
hawk
Parts of it have even been open sourced too.
Linux is only Free if your time is worth Nothing
Linux is only free if your time is of no value
Be in Your Senses
If only they were all like this. Insightful and intelligent, witty and wise.
Was there a class where you went to school on how to write like this? Can you send me a copy of the text you used???
But seriously,
I like Macs. I really do. This may be uncool, and totally unSlasdot, but the less fiddling around with command line stuff I have to do, the happier I am. Plus, I don't have to go through seventeen levels of crap to make changes to things in the OS. Does this make me a goober? Or just someone who thinks that computers should fulfill their basic design concept (namely making life easier)?
sig not found
What longfalcon doesn't seem to understand is that Apple survives on those people who use QuarkXpress, Illustrator, Freehand, and Photoshop et. al. The recognition of this fact was the creation of the Carbon interface when developers balked at the total rewrite that would be neccessary for Yellowbox/Cocoa. And Apple simply doesn't have the clout to force the issue beyond a given point.
If Apple was just a startup company with a small die-hard community of users who were primarily developers/programmers than what you suggest would be valid. But the Apple of today simply can not take that approach they are where they are today, for good or ill and have to work from there.
I myself will purchase OS X when it comes out but deploying it on Copytone's machines is largely out of the question until what we use on a daily basis is Carbonised. That also includes the question of our substantial investment in the Adobe font library.
Darwin is out there, with an open source license that the OSF has given at leaset a grudging approval. Apple has dls for PowerPC and Intel platforms. Now if those ex-Apple guys at Eazel come up with something who knows?
I found this .sig with the fortune program that came with my Slackware Linux. Isn't that fortune program _written_ by the BSD guys? Or is that particular fortune added only in the Slackware distribution? This is the second time in as many weeks someone's wanted to "correct" me on my .sig.
There are two major products that come out of Berkel
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
It's not.
A lot of people (especially here on /.) see the letters BSD in an Apple press release and immediately assume that MacOS X is just going to be another Unix shell with quicktime and a few other bells and whistles on it. This is simply not the case.
Those who used the old NeXT cube probably have a better idea what to expect. OS X is going to be a hybrid of the NeXT environment (which was built on a Mach kernel) and the Macintosh desktop (which was not). The result will be an awsome OS, with most of the advantages of both Unix and the older Macs, but it is not really one or the other.
If you are a fan of the idea of putting a Mac-like front-end on your *n?x box, there are several open-source projects out there trying to do just that.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Apple's modified BSD i.e. Darwin is the core underpinnings of the OS. What Apple aims to do is to insure that the average user will never have to deal with the command line unless they want to. As I understand it Terminal.app itself won't be installed but will either be an extras type item on the CD or downloadable.
Intel Darwin is out. And I beleive there's at least one person working on an X11 server for it. Whether your run your Diamond Video will depend upon someone coming up with a driver. Diamond has had a history of being uncooperative with alternative os coders though, so don't hold your breath.
And I think that he, as sysadmins often do, believed he could walk on water.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
While unifying the 1001 different text file configs sounds with XML sounds like a good idea, what does it do to compatibility with other BSD-based systems?
Does it lock users into the Apple-supplied OS tools and applications or does a home-rolled upgrade simply kill the GUI config tools?
Or am I missing the point, and the BSD integration is at the API level? I keep wanting OSX to be more of a GUI on top of BSD, but from what I've read it doesn't seem quite that simple.
Burris
... I ended up being shock at the dismay and naysayers of the up-and-coming MacOSx.
Quotations like "what will the Mac people think" and "how can the Mac people possible learn how to run MacOSx".
Professionally I started on the Mac with a Quadra 800 AV when I was doing professional graphics and photography while in the military 5 years ago.
I have since then move through Windows and then into Linux for most of my computing needs.
I know that I do not speak for the rest of the gang here but an OS with the most user-friendly interface in the world with the stability, security and speed of BSD... that has to be the best OS in the world.
[flame type="protection"]
I can't wait to get my hands on a G3/4 just to tinker with MacOSx.
As a non-Mac user, I am looking forward to the final release. I wish I had a G3 so I can tryout the beta releases.
Please tell me why I shouldn't look forward to MacOSx as a non-Mac user.
ChozSun [e-mail]
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
MacOSX is using parts (lots) of BSD, not the other way around.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
...A Beowulf cluster of these?
No, seriously - I've always been a big fan of MacOS, even though I'm usually a Linux geek on a Windows box. I'd like nothing more than to finally be able to run OSX on my PC. The article gave me a new kind of vision on Apple, though - the ties with BSD are something that I had been very vaguely aware of, but not to the extent it appears to be. Maybe Apple was ten steps ahead and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up before they took off again...
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
It's not exactly a pretty thought. Think about it. Imagine the software that runs on UNIX now - like zombies - and put them on the speed of a G4 with the knowledge of a Mac User.
JHK
Makes you wonder, eh?
Its interesting to see the way they approached these kinds of problems, all of which make sense when you look at the ways the two "parent" OSes differ. As far as I can see they took what appears to be an intelligent and practical approach to resolving them too. If they really manage to make it work its certainly going to attract users but whether it lives up to its obvious potetntial remains to be seen. There are compromises that have to made here that MacOS aint used to handling - the hoops they had to jump through to get backwards compatibility illustrates that very clearly. Lets just say that if somebody was to hand me one of those machines I'd not object to beating on it and finding out what it can really do, but I'm not paying for one until lots of other folks have tried it first :)
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Looks like Apple is taking pains to make sure the end-user isn't exposed to *nix "yuckiness." And while projects like Gnome and KDE do this to a great extent, Linux/xBSD won't catch on at the desktop until the OS becomes almost entirely invisible to the end-user. Not that your average /. reader would be caught dead using a system like I'm describing, but then World Dominance comes at a small price. :)