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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."
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!
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
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
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?
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.
Why keep MacOS X backwards compatible? It's killing efficiency
Is this from personal experience or are you just pulling this out of your hat? Note: Unless you have personal experience with OS X and know that this is an effiency issue, then you shouldn't proclaim it as such.
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...
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.
Could I use a free compiler a la gcc on OSX?
... but Aqua is itself basically one big theme file; if you remove it (or even switch resolutions on the fly ;) you get a DP2-ish Platinum appearance. I deduce that theme implementation will not be a particularly challenging task. Check with the Kaleidoscope fellows.
An Apple-extended gcc is what builds OS X. Project Builder is the looks-too-damn-much-like-VC++ IDE front end to it.
Is one likely to ship with OSX?
There will almost certainly be no standard BSD kit shipping on the Consumer distribution CDs. It will almost as certainly be a free download in the same fashion as MPW is now, since it is the development environment, as mentioned above.
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?
Officially no
I'd love to be able to run OSX on my P3 machine
Give it up. Apple makes money on hardware. It is remotely possible you will see specific preconfigured x86 systems, but there will be no shrinkwrap OS X for Intel. Ever. Anyone who thinks different (hee hee) either is utterly ignorant of Apple's business model, or is on crack.
Now, the open-source Darwin runs on Intel. But Quartz, Cocoa, etc. won't. Even Yellow Box for Windows is being EOLd in September, which I think is a mistake, but whatever.
Is there a particularly good Mac site I can get this information from
You could always try the mothership.
"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.
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).
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
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
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
The Classic environment is just a modified version of Blue Box (a.k.a. MacOS.app in Mac OS X Server). Apps run at about 95% of the speed they would on a native Mac system. This is on the developer previews, of course, performance may change...
The cool part is that Classic takes advantage of Mac OS X's superior (to Mac OS 9) memory management, so the Mac OS 9 running in Classic thinks it has a gig of RAM or something crazy like that (exactly how much depends on a bunch of factors).
I think Apple's UFS is a bit different that the normal UFS. HFS+ is the default filesystem for Mac OS X, but, if you're a developer, you want a UFS partition because a few Unix programs break when compiling on HFS+ (due to case issues: HFS+ preserves case but is not case-sensitive, so moof.c and Moof.c cannot coexist).