Slashdot Mirror
More On The Mac and Unix
acaben writes: "On MacSlash, we're running a story that gives more information on the Unix-ness of MacOS X, expounding on recent articles from MacWeek and Slashdot. With insightful commentary running from packaging applications to using X-Windows on the MacOS X Beta, we hope to shed some new light on the Unix aspects of the Public Beta."
mod up for fucks sake! this is the most insightful post ive seen all week.
If you have ever used NeXTstep or OpenStep, from which OS X is derived, you would know that there is much more to a GUI than 'slick skins' NS and OS had integrated services that enabled you to write applications that could provide new services to existing applications without any code changes to those existing applications, and it provided drag and drop of files and objects that really helped you work faster. Stuff that still hasn't appeared in X or Windoze or old-style MacOS, ten years later.
> At the same time, it's disturbing to me because the 'usr' and 'etc' directories do exist and presumably are critical to the operation of the system, and hiding them from the users is bound to cause problems if for some reason it's necessary to access them.
.hidden file of root directory contains:
/etc, /bin, etc in your File Browser is in reality a real plus.
You probably haven't seen NeXTstep. The workspace manager and open/save panels hides whatever is located in the '.hidden' file in current directory. It is the same thing on Mac OS X Server, where the
bin
cores
dev
etc
lib
local
lost+found
mach
mach_kernel
Net
private
root
sbin
tmp
usr
var
mnt
If you want to access them, no problem. It is just a user-interface issue. Terminal.app will show you the real content of your disk. And, those files are here (ie: if you type '/etc/inetd.conf' in an open panel, it will do what you want). If you type '/etc', it will temporary switch to 'expert' mode, where the '.hidden' files are ignored.
And there is an option to switch to Expert mode, but you won't want to use it...
I used that for years. Very simple and effective. And not seeing
Cheers,
--fred
I don't know many Mac users who 'boasted' about Macs being secure servers - most could really care less. Yes many have used them, like the military, but few Mac users ever even bring the subject up.
However, secure is secure. It really doesn't matter what your opinion of the classic MacOS is. It -IS- very secure for a server. The fact that you wouldn't or couldn't use it for a high bandwidth site doesn't matter.
"OSX definitely means that the Mac is coming in from the cold but will some/many Mac users decide they were better off on their own?"
I have no idea what this sentence means. The vast majority of Mac users won't really notice any difference when running MacOS X. It will have a new interface and other differences, but by the time most Mac users have a crack at it most apps will be carbonized and it will be no different than the System 6-7 or 68k-PPC transitions. I'd guess that 90% of Mac users won't know or care that there is a BSD layer underneath.
"I can see plenty of areas for friction between Macintosh (the company as opposed to the users) and the freenix world."
Apple and Steve Jobs care nothing about the Linux community. The Linux community has nothing of value for Apple. Apple has a great relationship with BSD camp and will continue to.
"How will they react to the *nix world
demanding that OSX stay compatible and open?"
You mean the tiny open source Linux crowd? Why would Apple care about their opinions on Apple's OWN OS? The majority of the Unix market is not made up of open source/Linux fanatics.
Middle button paste is evvviilll!!!!!
stupid select-to-put-it-on-the-clipboard... grrr...
command-c command-v my fine furry feind...
I got my Mac and it as the first computer I ever had.. After 1 month it died and I had to re-install the system.. I did this 3 times before realising that system software is very fragile. Now, 8 years later, I bought a PC.. I've never used windows before and installed it from scatch. It's easy. In fact, I find it somewhat ironic that people go out and buy a game like Myst or riven when the same types of puzzles can be found simply by fiddling around with your computer.
Moral: Personal computers are evil.
Did I say "Darwin"?
I believe I said "MacOS X".
If you don't know the difference, well, please go elsewhere.
Do you know if Apple has any plans to release "MacOS X" on the x86 platform?
If so, please post a trustworthy link, and I will admit to either being a troll, or not knowing that fact, dealers choice.
If not, please go somewhere else...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
No, I'm running an *awesome* system, with a top-notch Unix re-implementation, with support for kernel modules, and tons of hardware and software. My system is decently integrated with a heterogenous realm of different computers, and I still manage to run development level stuff, and stay more stable than Windows or MacOS. But that wasn't really the topic anyhow.
I'm sure Apple doesn't need people who know they aren't the only game in town. I'm not supporting their price-gouging for hardware, and I don't like how often they fall victim to NIH ("Not Invented Here") Syndrome.
I think MacOS X is a chance for them to repent, and show what they can really do, but that obviously hasn't happened yet.
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Actually, I only need one of each, but I'm pretty happy with what I have available.
:)
I generally use Mozilla for web browsing, (because the latest builds are awesome!) everybuddy for chatting, (because it supports ICQ, AIM, and the lot) elm for mail, pico for text editing (although I do like nano better), and I generally don't use anything Office-like if I can help it, but if I have to, I'll try those out too. (last I saw, StarOffice is just like MS-Office, but I'm not sure if that's a feature)
As to widget sets, well, that's generally up to the application developer, but they're all usually fine with me, and better than Motif. Mozilla is themeable, and I tend to use fvwm2 for a window manager; I love my virtual screens. None of the apps are half as annoying as the Windows Explorer or the MacOS Finder, with its cryptic negative error messages, and bizarre Trash Can behavior.
And yes, it also makes a great server, and I'm currently reading slashdot from w3m, which is a great browser even on a server.
I gather Mozilla at least would be available on MacOS X, and some of the rest might build there too, but why bother? It all works great on Linux, and my (non-Apple) hardware platform works great too...
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I didn't, I was comparing PowerPC to PowerPC.
IBM can make a 1Ghz PowerPC processor.
Apple can't get them due to fabbing agreements (IIRC).
Is that so hard to understand?
And yes, the PowerPC is a different architecture. But it isn't so fundamentally different that it's twice as fast as my Athlon, clock for clock, for general purpose apps. So even given some benchmarking, they still need to catch up a lot.
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I think Apple is missing the boat; yes, I think their boxes are more expensive. However, I could be wrong, so let me check real quick...
Yep. The base price on anything except for an iMac is more than I paid for my system. For $200 more than I paid for my computer, I can literally get half the computer I have. If I paid ~$1,000 more, I could get something roughly equivalent.
The difference between my statements and yours are that I can quantify mine; if you want the details, I'll go into it for you, but suffice it to say that Apple's boxes are massively more expensive than what I can get in x86 land. Sorry, it's still true. If the opposite were true, I'd probably be running Linux on PowerPC, and think about trying MacOS X.
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I've tried Be; it is indeed very cool. I didn't run it before because it didn't support my video card. (grayscale sucks)
Now that I have a new computer, BeOS supports my hardware just as well as Linux does; I tried the free version, and I liked it. Maybe I'll play around with it some more after they have more cool apps for BeOS.
But I completely agree: they put the friendly interface on top of Unix first. BeOS detected all my hardware easily once it was supported, it was very friendly, and it wasn't even hard for me to get to a command prompt.
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Sorry; I can't get an equivalent Mac for less than $1,000 more. Unless you know a place that's cheaper than the Apple Store? I'd be happy to spell it out for you, but the equivalently priced macintosh would have less than half of the specs my machine does. Half the RAM. Half the Hard Drive space. A crappy video card with half the Video RAM.
I didn't even compare the Mhz; that's why it's as low as $1,000. But if you want to send me an appropriately specced Mac, I'll benchmark the two.
If no one cares, then why did you reply? Obviously I struck a nerve. I can tell you weren't interested in the details, either, or we'd be discussing those instead. Could it be that you don't agree with me, but have no valid argument, either?
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Gosh, I wish; I could have gotten it all cheaper through Pricewatch. But instead, I bought it all from my friendly neighborhood local computer store, and indeed have tech support, warranties, and a return policy. I bought the parts and put it together because I didn't want to wait, but they would have assembled it for me if I had needed it...
That $799 iMac is pitiful; I've looked at the specs. In fact, anything with a built-in monitor is downright archaic, regardless.
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Since I don't have a PowerPC, I'll wait until someone ports Darwin to anything else, and then see what happens.
:)
1) If Apple graciously incorporates the code and releases versions of MacOS X for other platforms, maybe I'll try it out.
2) If Steve Jobs curses them and doesn't release anything for those 'renegade' platforms, I'll sigh as I always do when Apple doesn't get it.
3) I'll wonder why people didn't make a fuss like this over BeOS. It is also rather easy to use and Unix-ish, and at least they "get it" somewhat.
However, *BSD has accomplished something big: at least we won't have people tortured by MacOS anymore. Hopefully. Now let's see how long it takes for Win2k to turn into a *real* Unix.
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>What on earth for?
1) LyX
2) focus follows mouse
3) moving between windows from the keyboard
I wouldn't consider switchin without *all* of these.
> Who the hell is asking you to *switch*?
Reality says one OS on my desk. I need access to all my files, all the time, and when I'm running servers for my students, they need to stay up.
This means that I either run FreeBSD with X, or that I run OSX--running both isn't an option, meaning that either I stay, or get a mac and switch.
hawk
>You like the focus to follow the mouse?
:) It took getting used to, but I find it wonderfully convenient. I can type things in another window while leaving what I'm interested in up front, and I can click widgets in other windows like you mention. However, I *don't* like the settings that cause windows to come to the front as the mouse crosses; that just drives me nuts . . .
yep
It certainly shouldn't be the default on the mac, and certainly isn't appropriate for new users. However, it *is* something I use all the time
Also, my mouse doesn't move aruond much; I don't have to worry about where it is . . . About the only thing that regularly leads me to mousing around on a regular basis is making graphs with xcircuit and sorting through large quantities of mail (I use the command line for small quantities).
hawk
the Be kernel is the Be kernel, not BSD. It's very UNIX-like in the way it works. Saying that Be has a BSD kernel is like saying my Linux-Mandrake kernel...I mean, it's very *nix-like.
Let me know when they have file permissions nailed down in BeOS, wouldya?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
People like you.
Seriously, WTF were you thinking? Personally, I don't read MacSlash. I'm not a Mac luser (at least, not right now; once the semester is over and I go back to the papers, it's all Mac, baby!) but I find this sort of story interesting. MacOS X is basically a BSD box with a technologically-updated OpenStep. While I don't own one, I know a few folks who were fortunate/smart enough to pick up an old NeXT box and love the things to death. Regardless of what you think of, say, Display PostScript (now Display PDF) or Objective C, the old NeXT boxes rock. If the new OS X boxes come even close...oh, baby.
So shove off. If you don't like the story, you can filter this kind of crap out. Don't bitch about it. Your opinion isn't the only opinion that counts. Neither is mine, for that matter. But it's a simple matter for you to simply ignore the story.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
>Of course! Everyone needs a G4 cube to prop their
>feet up on while working on their Wintel boxen.
Obviously you've never worked in the print business. Or held a creative job in your life.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Yeah...I agree that the slick look-n-feel is a poor indicator of usefulness. However, the real deal is that this is a *BSD box with a hopped-up OpenStep...while I've never used OpenStep, I know oh-so-many people who rave about it that I just have to see what all the hubbub is about.
:^( I seem to recall that the folks who wrote OmniWeb actually wrote a PostScript viewer that didn't use Display PostScript because of this sort of problem on NeXT machines. Anyone care to comment on this?
:^)
OTOH, I don't look forward to the day when I'm working away at a machine and, say, a bad PDF causes me to have to reboot.
BTW before you say "what good are PDFs?" you'll just expose yourself as a moron for doing so. PDFs are used in the printing business to ensure portability between different platforms/packages. The last newspaper I worked at actually took to sending out jobs to other printers exclusively in PDF because using the PDFs elsewhere was so brainless:
1. Start QuarkXPress 4
2. Pull in PDF as image
3. You're done; no loading in of fonts/other images necessary. Check the colors & send it to the imagesetter!
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
'Nuff said...nah, I'll say more. :^) That's absolutely true. On my home machine, I've installed both Win98 and Linux-Mandrake (for that matter, also BeOS 5 PE, SuSE, Slackware, RH...) and I've gotta tell you that Linux-Mandrake was by far the easier install. I've had a number of people simply say, "I don't understand why you run that Linux crap; Windows is so much easier." No. It's easier to them because they unpacked their machine and it worked, like a toaster.
On another note, I've had a few people rant to me about how bad Linux "sucked" because their scanner didn't work or their weird soundcard didn't work. Hell, it's all PnP; why wouldn't it work in Linux?
Support, man, hardware support.
Why is hardware support so bad under Linux? Thank Microsoft. They're the ones that pushed for companies to release standard drivers instead of documentation. Now, instead of companies releasing program info, we have companies that release drivers and, if you want hardware info, oft times they want an NDA signed/agreed to. And we've seen a proliferation in the number of different chipsets/instruction sets. Remember when printers were ProPrinter, Epson, or PCL compatible? Or video cards were compatible with whatever IBM/Microsoft were touting as the latest-greatest standard?
*sighs* man, I'd love to see a tech manual for my HP DeskJet. Or, for that matter, my parallel-port cheapo scanner.
>How many windows users know how to partition, and
>format a hdd, then install an OS on it? Not many.
Ah, but it's worse than that. There are users that feel like something's gone wrong if, say, their kid changes the background image in Windows. Once they decide to change it back, they have no idea! My wife still doesn't understand the Windoze taskbar. For that matter, I was trying to help her through something, and I asked her to minimize the window that was in focus. Minimize? God, you would have thought I asked her to produce final results for the Human Genome Project. This from a woman who is light-years ahead of me in music theory. I've tried to get her to go through the nice little Win98 manual that comes with Windows (it's true! the book is good for something other than the serial number!) and she won't do it; it's too confusing. Confusing, yeah, like Curious George is confusing. Heh.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Well, I know Apple hasn't exactly hidden the UNIX origins of thier new OS, but they also haven't made a secret of building a lot more on top of it. I guess I'm skeptical that OS-X will convince people that UNIX is consumer-ready.
In fact, I predict the opposite - the corporate world will, IMHO, see the OS-X story as "well, UNIX seems to be a good foundation, but look how much work Apple had to do to make it useful." Now, I'm not saying that's an accurate conclusion, but it does seem a likely one.
Besides, I would wager the majority of (non-geek) computer users, at least outside the Mac Users' domain, probably couldn't care less about OS-X. And I'd wager that most of the folks who care about OS-X as end-users don't care that it is based on a UNIX-like OS: they just want thier Mac to run. The credit for the stability of OS-X will go to Apple, not to BSD, for the most part (even if that is inaccurate).
--
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Apple did release the source to the BSD parts of OSX. It's called Darwin. Everything that Apple used that was Open-Source is still Open-Source, albeit under a different license.
Apple didn't have to do that, of course. They could have kept the source to themselves (If I remember right, NeXTStep did this; the only thing the community got back from them was GCC's Onjective-C compiler, and even that came only after a rather little-known court battle). Perhaps that's why Apple is Open-Sourcing Darwin; Steve hasn't forgotten his last tangle with the OSS community and doesn't want to risk another one.
Speaking of compilers, have Apple's modifications to GCC gotten back into the main or devel trees yet? I know they were going to contribute back their changes, and given Apple's history with MrC I would imagine this could help towards a truly kickass compiler on PPC.
----------
Dunno about whether hiding parts of the system is a problem. MacOS already has hidden directories and files you shouldn't play with, such as the Temporary Items Folder in each directory, or the Desktop DF and DB files. These do not normally lead to maintainability nightmares - the worst problems I ever saw were when "bad" apps revealed them in file dialogue boxes and allowed users to manipulate them.
Heh. We used to loathe getting PDFs for jobs back when I was in pre-press. It invariably meant that there was going to be a typo or something that we couldn't fix when the client saw it in the proofs, and that the job would just come back and waste more of our time later. ;)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Of course we charged them. It was a pre-press department; our policy was "The customer is never right." ;)
;)
Sadly, there was a large sales department in between me (and the other operators) and the clients. So I never got to find out if the people who sent us botched jobs were worth being nice to.
OTOH, when you work at a factory that makes PVC cards (e.g. driver's licenses, library cards, hotel keycards, transit cards, phone cards, all kinds of free passes, frequent flyer cards, etc.) it is useful to keep a few... ahem... production proofs around for a rainy day
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Otherwise I see little visible effect of the underlying Unix on the user experience.
In fact all this problem about being "unable to select what to replace" is also true of Drag&Drop, except because you have to hold the stupid mouse button down people don't think about the fact that they can't select what to replace. (I have tried using middle-mouse-drag to select the replacement but it does not seem to be user friendly).
If you treat it this way, it should be clear that middle-mouse-paste should work for any data type, as long as drag&drop works.
It would be nice if Apple, having much more control over the gui, might consider adding some ability like this.
It would be nice if they allowed X applications to work (not window managers, though!). This could be done by either making a dummy X server or by replacing Xlib. I expect several third-party solutions for this will show up quite quickly.
Only during the summer - during the winter I prop my feet in the Wintel box to keep my tootsies toasty warm!
=tkk
And I only have to reboot three or so times a day!
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
Mathematica has it's own protocol to the kernel, it doesn't use X. I can run Mathematica on my wife's iBook in the living room and have it connect to the kernel running on a cray in the SDSC (had I the privlidges).
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Do you want 'X', because you want to be compatible with the huge volume of 'X' application out there, or do you want a 'remote display architecture'?
MacOS X Server has a 'remote display architecture'. It came from NeXTStep, and all you had to do to run a host remotely was throw a -NXHost flag on the command line. There is even 'OpenSesame', a graphical app which would let you select an application in the workspace, then select the host on which to run it.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
http://www.darwinfo.org/howto/x.shtml How to get, compile, and install XFree86 4.0 on Darwin.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
How about for people like me who have never heard of MacSlash, let alone read it.
NOT control-v, COMMAND-v. It's a different key, and causes no problems if it still works in the console.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The key thing that Apple needs is serious hardware. Not to discount the PPC processor, but there's more that differentiates N-way SMP Mac systems and an SGI Origin. Bus and memory architecture on the high end stuff is much more sophiticated, plus SGI does a fair job with hardware video acceleration, something Apple has been relying on commodity Wintel vendors for lately, and taking a little heat for (Rage 128 on the Cube, for example).
An SGI acquitision would give Apple immediate access to SGI's high-end hardware design experience as well as credibility in high-end visualization markets that might like an Apple GUI but don't believe it can cut the mustard on the rendering jobs they do.
I imagine Apple would LOVE to offer a high-end Apple branded 3d video solution. Apple loves to sell proprietary hardware where the margins are tasty, and its users love to pay the money for it as well. SGI could be the source of that technology.
I can also imagine complete product solutions that merge Mac desktops with Origins and a seamless, networked GUI that can tie them all together.
I can't believe that all the time Steve spent doing animation he didn't seize upon this idea..
Ideally Mac applications would be X-windows aware (if that concept exists) so that they could be displayed on an X term elsewhere.
Totally off-topic, but I'll reiterate that I *still* think Apple should buy SGI. It'd give them the high-end visualization market that SGI still has and give them an instant entree to the enterprise-scale hardware which they very sorely need.
Now that they're dedicating themselves to OS X, think of the low-end SGI apps that could fairly easily be ported to the Mac *and* think of the Mac stuff that could go to the SGI.
By adding X support to OSX they could make this kind of marriage really fly.
If Sun can buy Cobalt to get into the applicance business, why couldn't Apple do it the other way around?
X Window Server for Mac OS X
http://www.tenon.com/products/xtools/
From the Tenon Web site
"Tenon Intersystems announced today that they will offer a fully integrated X Desktop for Mac OS X. The new X (pronounced X) for OS X (pronounced 'ten') will not only allow remote X applications to be displayed on the Mac OS X desktop, but will also include complete set of X tools and libraries to support local execution of X applications and X games on OS X."
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Heh. That's like using hex numbers when you're working with base 10 or something. "Err, (1 + 2) * C..."
:)
What's wrong with either using OS10 or being unashamed to pronounce it "X"? At least in those cases it'd be consistent
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
If they're going to put an "X" in there, I'm calling it OS "X", not OS "ten"!
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
There seems to be a group of developers that both MacOS and general *nix fans leave out -- and that's the NeXT/Openstep community. Not incredibly large, but many die hard fans who learned to love using the dev tools/object framework that is still part of OS X.
I think the enthusiasm has waned a little bit -- back when Apple first released Rhapsody DR1, there were already apps from many NeXT developers. TIFFany -- which claimed to be a photshop killer -- comes to mind. I think, however, that time to market for the consumer version of the OS and probably Apple's tendancy to support/favor big names (like Adobe) and mistreat *step'ers probably made some of these guys drop off the radar. It's certainly made some of them less than enchanted with apple
Omni Development (among others), though, is still going at it, daring to stand up in the browser market among others. If you're interested in a peek at the community I've been talking about, check out Stepwise.
Tweet, tweet.
Any Mac that is sold with USB support standard supports MacOS X. if it has a PCI bus, but not USB, then it probably supports MacOS X even if not all models are listed as being 'supported' - but I would wait and let someone else break their teeth first before attempting brain surgery.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Just pop open a command line and poke around to your hearts content.
Stagger down to your local CrampUSA and buy a $29.95 Logitech optical mouse, and you will be in hog heaven.
Or is it $39.95. Whatever.
You must be a Windows user, you are making it harder than it needs to be.
photosMy Photostream
I remember when Apple wanted to do away with that little smiling Mac at boot. We raised holy hell. that is our ls.
I still love HyperCard, and mourn the fact that it was abandoned.
We have our history, and if the Mac user is introduced to the history of the UNIX underpinnings of their OSX, they will understand and appreciate. Artists are, at their core romantics. I think you will find more in common between the Mac user and Unix user than the bean counter Wintel user.
Watch a graphics pro work his Mac. You will be impressed. It is like a dance. The speed and grace of the graphics artist, is what we need in the Nix world.
Most businessmen use just three applications, wordprocessor, spreadsheets, and solitaire.
A few still play minesweaper, but we don't talk about them. They don't care about the machine, but just the money they are making. the UNIX and Mac users care about their machines, and become emotionally attached. That is one reason Jobs made sure he sold beautiful machines because he understands the role of beauty and grace.
the UNIX user sees the beauty in the function of the machine, the characters flashing by when a command is typed, The Mac user is transfixed by the soft curves, the clarity of the graphics, and inviting UI.
photosMy Photostream
Repeat after me, dual boot. If you want X, you can always boot into linux.
We all know that gcc and other cool CLI tools are ready and waiting for us when we get our OSX box. For many, that is the reason for Linux.
Yaboot, for sure!
Al
photosMy Photostream
As far as an X11 -> Quartz compatibility layer, that would be great. Tenon (www.tenon.com) has created an X server that runs on OS X and sounds like it integrates pretty well. They have a description & screenshots here.
Check out DRM-free movies at http://www.bside.com
Why not?
Are we to post our comments on both MacSlash and Slashdot?
Last time I heard, it doesn't really matter. You can shut up too for either sites if you want.
Or post reactions to the article on MacSlash and reactions to Slashdot's article on MacSlash's article here?
If you're that bored, and that's your cup of tea....
What's the point of providing two discussion forums for the same story?
So maybe just because /. links over there, we should shut down either sites' discussion forum, just because vertical-limit can't take the duality?
Maybe you haven't figured it out yet (ie you didn't bother to click the link), but the opinion article is IN MacSlash. It's not like MacSlash linked to some story, and Slashdot linked to MacSlash, just so users can find the link on MacSlash.
Why just Slash? Maybe we should exclude all ZDNet stories too from now on, and scurry over to their "Talkback" forums.
UNIX has had a mythos from long ago.
Which is, I'm going to venture, its most important feature -- the thing that REALLY distinguishes it from the Mac and Windows worlds. These commercial PC OSes try extremely hard to make the past invisible, so that you're always living in the now, or the future, looking to the next upgrade. UNIX, on the other hand, embraces its heritage. When you type 'ls', you're tapping into parts of the OS that are decades old. They're not just part of the functionality of UNIX, they're part of its *culture*.
The strength of the Linux movement, to me, is that it is a forward-thinking project that takes its heritage and culture seriously. It's that heritage that ties the community together.
The strength of the Linux movement, to me, is that it is a forward-thinking project that takes its heritage and culture seriously. It's that heritage that ties the community together.
... and that's why I am sceptical about Apple's aproach to UNIX being anywhere near as successful.
When I was working in the terminal in the Beta (and enjoying it immensely, I might add), I found myself trying to use the middle mouse button to paste frequently. There is a convenience factor to middle-button paste, certainly, but command-c copy and command-v paste has the advantage of working across different applications without the disadvantage of losing what you want to paste when you highlight what you're pasting over. ;) I'm also not sure how effective middle-button paste is for copying and pasting things like images and sound/movie files across applications.
Naked.
So yes there may be some very confused Mac users. I need to do more exploration as I just loaded it last night.
Look for a review on my website which may be up late tonight or tomorrow. >> uJoda.com
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I assume OS X should be able to compile and run BSD apps 'out of the box'. However, the lack of X compatibility is a bit of a shame... Is anyone able to provide answers to the following questions:
(1) Is anyone working on XFree86 for Darwin?
(2) Would it be possible to create some kind of 'X compatibility layer' for porting X11 apps to OS X?
(3) If (2) is not possible, how about porting GTK+ or Qt to OS X/Carbon/whatever?
It would be a *huge* bonus for Apple if they could have easy access to the vast array of Unix/X applications already out there; I'm surprised they haven't given more thought to this concept, especially with the current community and media interest in Linux.
-- briggers
-- briggers Remove blinkers to email me.
You like the focus to follow the mouse?
Ick. That's the first thing I change when I get X up and running on a new UNIX account. It's a major annoyance to have to keep your mouse in the way of your window when typing on it. It also requires you to manage your window positions carefully so that no two windows overlap in a major way. Most new users I've seen run into it get confused or frustrated very quickly.
There's no way in hell Apple would ever switch their GUI behavior to that. They just recently gave in to allowing you to click on widgets in a window that did not previously have focus. Personally, I'm against that behavior since it makes it to easy to accidentally close a window, but it's not nearly as bad as the danger inherent in mouse-based focus where you could accidentally click anything in a nearby window.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Ideally Mac applications would be X-windows aware (if that concept exists) so that they could be displayed on an X term elsewhere.
Not necessary at all. Theoretically, Apple could begin using the Quartz Display PDF layer to perform the same functions as the old NeXTSTEP Display PostScript engine. Both technologies are much more efficient than X. While they wouldn't be as easy to view from other machines due to the wide market penetration of X, that's no reason to have to cripple your architecture by wedging in a hacked up protocol to an existing clean architecture.
As for the SGI comment, I'd love to see NUMA-based high-end Mac servers, but other than that SGI's hardware business is suffering. The typical strength of SGI was in the graphics market, where NVidia, 3dfx, and others are chewing them apart in the race to be the best card for gamers. The rest of what they do is done better by people like Sun.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Knowing the history between Apple and Micro$0ft Apple probably only went the *nix route to annoy Micro$0ft.
Actually, no. There's a good bit of history you might have missed if you weren't paying attention 3-4 years ago. Apple saw that the Copland project was going nowhere, so they axed it. They began to shop around for other OSes to buy and convert to Mac. BeOS was the first contender way back in the days before it even had basic things like printer support. In fact, this is what got Be the national limelight.
However, Apple saw that they were looking at a company with some really good ideas, but their current work-in-progress was very raw and unfinished. Plus, the head of Be, Inc. was an ex-Apple headknocker who left under less than amiable terms. He wanted to stick Apple with a huge bill for buying out Be.
Then Apple was pointed the way of NeXT, Inc., which was formed by Apple founder Steve Jobs. It was a product that had over a decade of maturity, and established customer base, and a series of visionary technologies that were years before their time. It also had a staff of top-notch, well recognized engineers, such as the head developer of the Mach microkernel. OPENSTEP, the cross-platform version of NeXTSTEP, was powerful, stable, and had a great interface that could be built off of. The fact that UNIX was the source of its stability wasn't a big deal. It was just another bonus.
Still, why didn't they just go all out and run Linux on it. They could cut a load of their development staff and save money if they did that.
No offense, but this one is a serious no-brainer. Mac is strong everywhere Linux is weak. The interface and ease of use is what makes Mac beloved by all its users. To move to Linux would be a slap in the face of the Mac faithful who don't like tinkering with their system because they have to to get something to work. To go from the eligance of the Mac GUI to any X-Windows based solution would be to fall behind Microsoft in terms of UI. Also, it would mean completely abandoning all of their developers who would sooner turn to Windows-only solutions than try to rewrite for Linux/X11.
Furthermore, moving to Linux as the OS would destroy Apple as a hardware company. Why pay twice as much for only slightly better performance than an Lintel system? The reason why people buy Macs is for the Mac OS. Seperating the two or destroying one half of the software/hardware marrage would destroy the entire company. Some common sense should let you see why they wouldn't move to Linux.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
GIMP
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
They did NOT rename the major directories like /usr /var /etc.
Why does it seem like Linux fans (is that the right word?) love choice, as long as it is the choice of Linux distros?
It is something different. Alot of windows users tried linux, for something different, not for some great longing to use a unix like system.
I think months from now, alot of people will be changing their tune, if they get a chance to try OSX. But far be it for anyone to give apple credit for trying to do something bold, and incredibly difficult, that involved making tough choices, and (from most reports on a BETA) doing an great job.
Zealots never see the whole story, and suffer for it. Mac, Windows, Linux,BSD, Sun anyone who is TOO into one thing is missing alot.
Open Source != Open Mindedness apparently.
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
As far as I recall, all OSX configuration files are going to be valid XML. Thus, when the system tries to use a config file, it checks to see whether the config file conforms to its DTD or not, and responds accordingly.
Why is this relevant? Because well thought up XML schemes can be used to dynamically generate neat windows in which the user can see what possible actions there are with the current config file, ie. the user does not have to be able to see the /etc dirs directly, because some generic admin tool can be made, to transform all the nasty looking config files into pretty drop down boxes and what have we.
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
No. Mac OS X don't use use an X window compatible window manager. Their window manager/2D graphics system is much more related to Display Postscript. Although it is based on PDF and not PS. And it does not (I think) have any space between the system and the window that makes it possible to run the interface of an app on another machine (Display Postscrip on NeXT did that).
;)
So yes. They are Apple and oranges
My question is, isn't OS X essentially the answer to the question of "where is a unix my mom can use?". I mean, haven't Gnome and KDE always wanted to eventually have a seamless GUI that "hid" the complexity of unix from new users (and exposed it to power users)? Seems like OS X has trumped both Gnome and KDE in that respect. Of course Gnome and KDE have trumped OS X in the "Free" respect.
Is everybody out here in geek-land who was supporting Gnome and KDE because they wanted unix brought to the general user, going to go out and now recommend OS X?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Those directories are still there. The package structure is for installing high-level programs, drivers, and so on, but you're certainly free to slap things into the hidden directories as well.
You can see the /usr, /etc, etc. directories if you select the Unix Expert setting in the preferences. A sysadmin or a geek will most likely want to do that.
An article worth reading is Ars Technica overview of MacOS X DP4. It explains why they changed the paths compared to other *nix and why it's good. (Normal *nix paths are available via symbolic and hard links I think)
"How will Mac users react to that? If Macintosh do lock down the security, I bet it won't withstand having a load of freenix tools and services added."
As far as I remember, MacOS X (DP4, beta, etc.) ships with all network services (including file sharing) off. You have to login as root and enable them in the system control panel. Also Apple has developped IPv6 and IPsec support for MacOS X, i don't know if it will ship with the final release or if it will remain an add-on. MacOS (9 and X) comes with encryption services built-in the OS, it lets you encrypt files, folders and store all your password in an encrypted keychain.
Note that MacOS X is marketed as a client OS, not a server one. So users are not supposed to run many network services, if you enable them it's assumed you know what you are doing. Also I can easily imagine they could set all the users shell to something like nologin by default (tho rlogind, sshd, telnetd, etc. are off by default.)
So hopefully the security should be pretty good.
Janus
Hey Mr 'Linux Poweruser', why don't you just install Linux on your Mac then???
No-one is forcing you to use OS X.
Interesting.
Could someone with hardware insight comment on the feasability of phasing in PPCs inplace of MIPS. Does the MIPS architecture have a justifiable reason to exist, or is it around just for legacy reasons?
IMHO all this "OSX is really UNIX" business totally misses the point. There are 18 gazillion falvours of *NIX already - who the hell wants another one?
Instead, we should regard OSX as a continuation of the great Mac tradition of being different. Stop treating it like it's some long-lost cousin coming back to the fold and look at it like we look at BeOS, etc. New, different, probably riddled with bugs but in the end, wonderful.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
I think the right conclusion is very close to this: UNIX is very good
at solving a lot of low-level technical issues, and the best
cross-architecture platforms out there are UNIXes. But they have
awful, unforgiving user interfaces. It's roughly the conclusion I
take from the Unix-hater's handbook, etc.
the middle one is there.. it's the left and right that are missing..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
--
Common sense is not so common - Voltaire
Darwin is open source, and I expect the source to be available from somewhere of that site. They made a big thing of the OS being open source recently, but it appears just DARWIN is Open Source. Also, that have their own Liscence you have to agree to in order to working on Apple open source projects.
Parts of it have to be because of the origins of Darwin (FreeBSD, Mach 3.0, and Apache). I glanced at the Apple Public Source License, and I wonder, does this conflict with and of the projects they took code from? I reorienting myself in the linux world, but I would think that some of the code in Darwin woudl fall under the license of the works in which they borrowed code from. This would probably be based on the extent to which they borrowed. Anybody ever look furthor into this?
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Plus, they have $699 iMacs in the refurb part of the Apple Store right now.
Those are not high prices for all you get, which I won't list.
Go Purdue!
I didn't change the context of the incorrect statement that was made.
NuBus is not proprietary. Simple as that. There is no room for argument.
I stand correct.
Go Purdue!
I find that unix isnt actually that un-user friendly... if you stuck a person with no computer experience infront of a computer, and said, here, I've got these windows 2000 cabs n stuff over on this hard disk, on this computer over here... now, install windows 2000 for me from scratch... its just not going to happen. Stick someone infront of a puter and say, "here, here are the install files for linux, go for it", again, not going to happen. If you compare user experiences between windows and a full running gnome or kde setup, you're going to get similar experiences. What makes unix hard, is the fact that it doesnt come pre-installed... it makes you learn it from the ground up, instead of the top down - the way that most people learn windows.
People accumulate knowledge, and draw connections between bits of knowledge. If you have many bits of knowledge, and no connections, you're going to feel really dumb and confused. If you dont have a lot of knowledge, but really know how it all fits togeather, you dont feel really stupid, and you feel comfortable. When you learn something like windows from the gui down, you get to learn the most basic behavior of software. Just like you can be familiar with your body, without having a PHD in biology. A preinstalled OS lets you get comfortable before you go rooting down in the more technical areas. When you start from the bottom, you are exposed to a huge amount of information - you dont understand the context of it, and thus cant draw relationships. You get confused, and feel stupid, and blame the OS for being complicated and not user friendly.
How many windows users know how to partition, and format a hdd, then install an OS on it? Not many.
Have you even tried Be?
Have you ever tried being on topic?
Good point. Steve, are you reading this?
I think the plan is to conquer the SGI market, not buy into it. I wouldn't be suprised to hear about a deal in the works for many of the reasons you mention, but SGI has been on shakey ground recently and their market might be ripe for someone like Apple to come along with a hot new OS and multi-processing hardware at an attractive price.
I would want to put X on OS-X so I can run X-windows programs. It is kind of frustrating knowing that you are so close to running everything you want on a mac, but not quite there.
If X was on OS-X all of the programs written for X-Windows could run on OS-X, this would be very cool.
("kitten vs. puppy vs. baby vs. new video card") a simple summary of my life.
B1ood
Note to self: pasty-skinned programmers ought not stand in the Mojave desert for multiple hours. -- John Carmack
I played with Darwin awhile back(v1.03) and if you step through it, the new structure quickly becomes apparent. They just linked standard Unix directories(for backward compatability) and used names that have more meaning like /System, /Programs, etc.
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Da. UNIX vill make kountry stronk.
Thanks. I have long been fond both of UNIX and that quirky style of the Socialist Realism artwork - it's almost as funny as some of the modern corporate advertising imagery such as high tech, slim, withit, blonde HP power lady skipping over the floor polishing machine, no doubt working hard after hours and Getting Things Done (years before Carly Fiorina arrived); or the man with the Jeep and cell phone in the woods Being Individualistic but Getting Business Done on His Own Terms.
All that aside, as a UNIX user I've always noticed the peculiar skirmishes going on between two other camps of computer users: Wintel and Mac. LOTS of people would use Windows, of course, but the Wintel crowd was heavy on beancounters, people wearing suits that are NOT fashionable but rather purchased for large amounts of dollars and meant to portend power. Those folks didn't seem to have a very well-developed sense of humor. We don't know why it is ubiquitous, but then, so is television.
The Mac crowd was heavy on artists and academics, freethinkers that love birds and sushi, sometimes dressing in black shirts with the top button buttonned. Often, though, they didn't care much about clothes except as another decorative expression. We know the Mac users are in the minority and they know they're in the minority, and we never know if they'll be doomed two years from now. It reminds us of lovers standing in the breeze on the bow of the Titanic.UNIX has had a mythos from long ago. As a student in the late 1970's, strolling along a corridor in a physics building (Caltech had more than one physics building, but only one humanities building), I could see where some graduate student had plastered a printout with the word "Unix" on it, very much as a Statement. Just as now, in my large scale workplace, some of the Mac users don't have plain drab just the nametext nameplates next to their doors - they have an identifying colored rainbow apple next to the name text.
The myths live on.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Should all telephones still be black?
--
--
blinko - "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down"
I haven't heard if Oracle is prepping a version, but since Larry is on the Apple board and is Steverino's best buddy, it's more than an even bet they are going to offer it as soon as the new OS starts to penetrate the enterprise market a little.
OS X will be saved by its lack of security on HFS+ and ease of install. Ambclams has a good point about maintenence but, having used OSX for a week, I think I know how the typical user is going to address the issue. It's going to take them about 2 minutes to figure out that they can log in as root and configure the system the way they want using the GUI. Of course they can do things that will totally screw their system that way but Mac users have always been able to do that. They are used to it.
The saving grace of pre-X Macs was that you could do a clean install of the system and not loose any work. The cost of expermentation was low. With OSX the cost hasn't increased much because you can always reboot under 9, grab all your data files, and reinstall X. Eventually users will learn what does and doesn't work by messing around with the system. That's the way macs have always worked.
Step 2: Kiddie can't find /Usr, /Home, /Etc, gives up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The Mac also benifits from it's small user base. People unfamiliar with Macs might not have experienced some of the things that I've gotten to see some Mac people deal with. Stable it was, till it crashed. Then there would be days of bare metal and cursting from the tech staff. They did well, but bugs there were.
Unix needs no myth. Reasonable people will move to it as it solves more of their problems and the alternatives extinguish themselves.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
yeah, getting rid of the ZDNet stories would take some of the flame out of this place.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
My XT, bought in 1987, never crashed either. All 20 MB of hard disk under MS DOS 3.2 never had a problem.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That old board, it's hardware and software are archived. They will only come out of the closet in case of nuclear atack. It's box is now the home off a nice little Cyrix Media GX board running Red Hat 6.2. No problems there either.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So adding Unix-like capabilities to MacOS makes it a superhero's OS? Cool! It's like Zan and Jan, the Wonder Twins. Seperated, they suck ass. But together, they can rock da haus.
P.S. I am in no way, shape, or form saying Unix or MacOS suck ass, just noting that together they rockda haus.
It's X Window.
The first person (or team) to port X to MacOS X should be rewarded with the 'Dumbest Accomplishment of the Year' award!
May X die already...
Yeah, It would be great to run X programs on the Mac, but I meant inside the (Mac) GUI. That's what I meant when I said this: "I can understand trying to get X apps on top of the Mac GUI, but if you need all of X..."
I was thinking of an X emulator. I'm sure that you can get them for windows (maybe they are just remote X terms?) I read the article as replacing the Mac GUI with X, rather that just having it run along side it (okay, walk beside it *g*)
But, I guess that an emulator would be more buggy than just straight out X. It would probably break that many dependancies, that an emulator (that work well) would be as big as a full GUI replacement.
errr... Who knows what I'm talking about any more, I sure don't! Too late, too tired, no caffine!
I agree! One thing I hate also is when a new window gets keyboard focus in MS windows(internet explorer, dum dialog boxes). I'm like typing away, something pops up *bing* just before I smack the enter key. shit what was that? NOOOOOO!!!! stop stop stop stop stop....err... too late :(
What on earth for? I can't see any reason to put X on Mac OS. Its' GUI is fantastic, why would you want to replace it (unless you are some wierdo-S&M type hacker (or from attrition :-)))?
I can understand trying to get X apps on top of the Mac GUI, but if you need all of X, why not just install a linux/bsd distro on the Mac?
Does anyone see any reasons for doing this?
Three words: Run Microsoft Office.
I don't quite understand what all the hubbub about OS X is. What does OS X accomplish that cannot be sufficiently fullfilled by a solid BSD or Linux box? Ok, so it has the pretty GUI...However, I have seen some slick themes on http://www.themes.org that make the aqua GUI look average. Finally, why would I pay for OS X when I can get Linux and BSD for free? Somehow, I do not believe we will be seeing this open sourced anytime soon...so why is this so innovative?
Ok, I wasn't trying to be a troll. I was merely trying to understand (for real) what the advantages were. I have dwelled in the sinuous world that is '*N*X' for a long time. I love it down here in Middle Earth. If you look at my post history, you would see that I believe that the computing revolution should be open to all. However, sometimes access to information and knowledge is a higher priority than "dumbing down" how that information is represented. When books first started to be common...the folks who could read and write were considered elite. Now they are considered average. Why can't we raise the bar in the realm of computing also. I think this will benefit everyone in the long run. No, I am not an elitist. I just believe in the unlimited potential that resides in everyone. My conclusion, from the replies that I have read is...this is a middle ground to bring everyone into the highly expressive, precise world of the command line. This is highly empowering as the success of '*N*X' can attest. I am sorry if posed questions that seemed antithetical to people's various religions...err I mean OS preferences.
There's some good points in your post. I have used the public beta and have noticed several things. There's actually quite a bit of unix in there. They left in the Terminal.app prog which gives you a tcsh. Once you pull up the shell, you do have access to anything ie. /usr /etc I've already used it to enable telnetd for remote access to one of our computers. Although Apple didn't include gcc/c++ etc.. they did include Perl. Now, what they didn't do: They didn't have the network configuration include Appletalk by default. No problem, I'll just add it. Whoops! What do you mean I have to restart my computer for this change to take effect. I didn't have to in OS9? I've noticed that it appears that the emphasis was put on the interface with somewhat of a disregard towards configuration within a unix enviro. There's no reason why you can't use the Terminal.app prog and do it manually including a kill -HUP pid for reconfiguration on the fly. Why Apple hasn't written script files or something that accomodates this, I'll never know. Anyway, all in all, it looks pretty good so far.
No thanks. I don't smoke anymore.
Then NT 3.51 came out. It was stable. It didn't crash, even when some application did. And it ran Director even, granted the graphics weren't all that great.
A year ago I switched to Be. Its beautiful, it doesn't crash, and it has a BSD kernel! Now, 5 years after 3.51, that Macintosh has finally released a stable multi-tasking operating system based on a *nix kernel everyone's going "ooh, aah."
Have you even tried Be?
Because they didn't hide the *nix. They made sure that you knew where it was if you wanted to use it. They included emacs, and perl, and a pile of other tools.
So what I'd really like to know is why is everyone praising Apple?
Or is it like Neil Stephenson said in 'In the beginning...'
"Some people I know in the GNU/Linux world are annoyed with Be for going off on this quixotic adventure when their formidable skills could have been put to work helping to promulgate Linux."
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
I've been calling it "Mac O S Ex" since I read the name the first time.. I thought they were making some connection to the X windowing system... Although I use Macs almost dayly I never thought they ment "ten". To much unix i guess...
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
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Donate free food here
Of course, you're talking now about Win2k or any other Microsquish product. MacOS is *vastly* easier to install. You can pretty much run with the defaults on any Mac because the installer and the drivers are smart enough to know what is needed.
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
Actually, as I understand it, they all run on a Mach kernel. OS X doesn't run on BSD, it runs beside BSD and talks to it. It would be theoretically possible to make a port of MKLinux that ran on the same Mach kernel...
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither. - Thomas Jefferson
I used to be a hardcore Mac user (and still am) but I have to say, after playing around with the Public Beta, I am amazed, to say the least.
Aqua is cool, and Classic runs okay... carbonized apps are cool, but what I love is the USIX aspects of OSX. It is'nt that hard to grasp, and once you do, it transforms the MacOS into some sort of superOS.
I love being able to maintain my webserver (APACHE not WebSTAR) through a telnet client. And OSX is so damn stable, it's like a dream come true. BSD is the shit, and I think OSX is what sold me (and will a lot of other people) on UNIX as a consumer OS.
djsw
Actually I think the problem is worse than you state. What usually happens is someone with some windows experience (often quite alot) has been told that linux is a good operating system to have. Consequently - feeling adventurous they try and install it. For a first time windows user the result is usually either a failed install or a failed install and a trashed Windows installation (i.e. won't boot and windows user doesn't know about fdisk /mbr). This certainly happened to me and put me off Linux considerably. Now, things have got much better recently so most people can actually get the install going.
However, your typical user still has to deal with making all of the hardware work correctly - this is not a problem with a preinstalled computer because the user doesn't yet know that all the hardware doesn't work correctly - however our experience windows user is fully aware that the computer does not work as well under linux as windows. This is not a suprise, our user has spent some time making it work under windows, tweaking from the default buggered install. However, we now have to deal with the fact that - there is no control panel to fix the system with, none of the familiar commands work and we have no documentation. This is a major barrier to actually making the transition.
I made the transition from linux hater to linux user because I had network access to a machine I wasn't adminstrator on and found applications that were useful with no obvious windows counterpart (e.g. using cron to automatically email companies that don't respond). Then an experienced friend of mine led me through a complex RedHat 6 install making all of the network and modem go to route out the network on my house. Then I installed a simpler Laptop of my own and then did a reinstall of my server. Now I'm quite happy with command line + Linux and my laptop no longer runs X to give me more battery life.
To make the transition decent answers have to be given to
why use linux?
how do I install linux?
how do I make it work?
I think your best market now is Win2K users who can't burn CD's (adaptecs software is f****d under win2k). Show them a linux system that will burn under heavy load and they may be persuaded to try it out.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
The dock is based heavily on Cocoa and uses many 2D features from Quartz. Even if Apple released the source, there would be a great deal of the API framework needed to make it run. You're best off starting your own from scratch.
If OS X runs on BSD, and Microsoft apps run on OS X, doesn't that mean that they're running on BSD? And after that, how much of a stretch is it to have Office and so on running on plain BSD without the Mac layers?
(Imagine if Microsoft Outlook could run on OpenBSD. The holes would give Theo a heart attack)
Just and FYI, all of the standard BSD directories are available on OS X, they are just not accessible form the Finder. You can get at them via the Terminal app. UNIX applications can still access these directories if they need to.
You don't need to have a middle mouse button. The Mac has a huge number command key sequences for doing such things. The best part of the key commands is that they are all pretty much the same accross all Mac apps.
"I'd wager that most of the folks who care about OS-X as end-users don't care that it is based on a UNIX-like OS: they just want thier Mac to run. The credit for the stability of OS-X will go to Apple, not to BSD, for the most part (even if that is inaccurate)."
This is true, up to a point. But in some ways, a general ignorance of Unix seems to help drive a certain romantic ideal -- an ideal that keeps the word "Unix" in very active circulation even outside of geek circles. To the typical Mac end-user, Unix is mysterious, and ancient, and strong. It's made of cast iron and the bones of heroic programmers of old. Unix is like a brawny Soviet on a Constructivist poster, swinging his hammer for his comrades. We don't know why it's good, but damn if our hearts aren't stirred by the weighty, solidly angular goodness of it all.
For Unix to become "consumer-ready," it must first create for itself a certain popular mythos, the same way computers themselves did in the eighties. That's already happened among Mac people... it remains to be seen how far it spreads beyond.
Making something that's derived from a unix-like OS easy to use certainly seems no easy task. Apple seems to be addressing this issue by trying to completely hide the BSD layer from the user. From a user-interface standpoint, I can understand this, but I wonder if it's going to create lots of problems with system maintainance. Wilfredo Sanchez's USENIX paper gives a few examples of problematic differences between the Mac and BSD systems. For example, since the pathname delimiter is a colon in MacOS and a slash in BSD, filenames have to be translated, and different programs will see the same file in different ways; likewise, Mac programs will often expect a file to have a resource fork, and BSD programs won't normally be aware of the resource fork. Apple seems to have addressed these issues, but their solutions still strike me as somewhat ugly hacks to intertwine two drastically different systems; it seems like this could cause problems in certain cases.
Sanchez also writes, "although we use BSD as the core system software, we do not want to require our users to understand how BSD works. Ideally, the typical Macintosh user does not even know that BSD is there. The very presence of such folders as 'usr' and 'etc' on disk is therefore awkward, and we hide those directories and their contents at the application level". I understand the reasoning for this, and I agree that having cryptically named folders floating around wouldn't help ease of use. At the same time, it's disturbing to me because the 'usr' and 'etc' directories do exist and presumably are critical to the operation of the system, and hiding them from the users is bound to cause problems if for some reason it's necessary to access them. Apple claims that it'll never be necessary to see these directories, but I'm skeptical; perhaps you won't encounter them in normal use, but what if something in them gets corrupted, or something? Hiding parts of the system from users sounds like it'll lead to a maintainability nightmare.
Another point, less significant but still non-trivial: the internals of OS X are massively different from those of any previous OS. This presumably means that expert users are going to have to learn anew how the system works in order to maintain it.
Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Why is this innovative?
in two words, it's the user and the apps, dummy.
The unix beards and suspenders folk are a quiet mysterious set of gurus whose faces are hardly ever shown to the public.
In the other corner, we have the Jade iMac being advertised on the tellu with Joe Raposo's "It's Not Easy Being Green", a artfully crafted box with an equally attractive OS, and a whole world of commercially supported apps, like photoshop, etc.
OOPS-- Did I say the dirty work 'commercial?'
Some folks still can't or won't adapt to the notion that it's okay to use free (speech and beer)
apps, largely because they can't program, and don't want to
A) pester developers to fix bugs when they can't contribute code
B) tolerate crashy software while the baazaar gets it's act together.
C) spend the hours configging and maintaining/managing the box that could be used productively editing home videos of the kids over firewire for playback on Aunt Edna's tv.
So really, bridging the commercial and free worlds in this way is valuable to both our communities.
And besides, if you must have your devtools and such (and I want em too, this is posted from Mandrake/helix-gnome) you can put em back, along with X... but if there's a Aqua/carbon/cocoa'ed solution that runs native, am I gonna choose the crashy X version especially if the open source project is poorly managed and stagnant (too often the case)? not a chance.
A host is a host from coast to coast
but no one uses a host that's close
xeno,
Thanks, this is a well done, short and clear explanation for the masses of folks who view X windows as the gui for the Linux desktop.
There needs to be a Mac user angled FAQ for what a windows environment is, what KDE is what Gnome is and what exactly is X Windows. I believe most people don't view it as a server thing at all. Morgan
A sig?!? I don't think so.....
You mean the tiny open source Linux crowd?
Yeah, those pitiful little bands of raggedly dressed hackers huddled together for warmth, using an OS that actually emulates the widespread, large-scale UNIX system quite well. As soon as I see Oracle 8i for Mac OS X I'm going to give a rat's ass about Apple again. Until then they have cornered the market on shiny plastic toys.
Most of their major apps were ported to Windows years ago and the only thing keeping Mac users from switching platforms then was a basic dislike for Microsoft dependency and the fact that Mac OS hasn't changed it's basic look and feel for 25 years. Apple's strategy here is good in that it will allow existing hardware to function and make the transition slow and hopefully less painful (of course, I won't be surprised if any Mac over 12 months old is going to wish it had a major RAM upgrade and a 400+mhz CPU). They were successful in transition before and it seems like they'll be successful again.
But none of that changes the underlying fact that they have a fairly small market share, which looks even worse when you factor out the education market. In fact, Linux may have a bigger market share than Apple, and Linux is used by respectable businesses in a number of mission critical ways. Macs are used by schoolchildren and marketing consultants to play learning games and make shiny brochures. Last time I went to any of the major computer dealers or electronics megashops near me, I saw many machines that would never run Mac OS and they had at least three flavors of Linux on sale (although not pre-installed) for the machines they were selling. Heck, they even sell Linux at Target!
Daily Mac stories on Slashdot aren't news, they're free advertising.
I do not have a signature
If you can't tell, I'm a grumpy ex-Mac-zealot (and frankly, they are still an exciting company, but they feel no better to me, ethically, than Microsoft) and if they've finally got an OS that doesn't crash on me daily, won't break all my old apps, will run my stupid horde of USB devices, AND give me many of the advantages of Unix (like real Perl, gcc, a command line, etc), then maybe it's worth it just to get my iMac to be a usable machine. Still, the feeling will be more of relief than of sheer exhuberance at this. Like, "finally, damn thing works the way it's supposed to."
I do not have a signature
"Try ADB, Localtalk, NuBus"
All of these have been gone awhile. Jobs tried to bring Apple over to non-proprietary hardware to cut the costs. This is a good move but you probably hold that against Apple as well. Shifting hardware standards or some other crap.
Corporations often shift strategy. For god sakes Apple was dieing. Sending conflicting messages to the customers very well may have been one of the reasons why.
PDF should help in this respect.
NeXT showed us how. I hope OSX takes it further.
DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
While several people have noted that it should be easy to recompile and run many of the standard UNIX utilities, I'm very curious as to how OS X's new file architecture (using packages...noted on /. a while ago) will affect UNIX programs. It seems Apple's trying to standardize how applications are stored in the file system, and my guess is a simple recompile doesn't really do that. But maybe not? Also, will there renaming of certain directories cause problems? Like /usr to /User? Seems like this should break many applications....but maybe not?
Seriously, I like Slashdot, but the story selection really pisses me off sometimes.
You do know that you can customize your Slashdot account to filter our topics you don't want to see?
Well, because then they'll have an actual *reason* to call it MacOS X.
there was a port of x windows to mac... it was called MacX, and surprisingly enough was often accidentally used as a box shot in catalogs when they meant "Mac OS X Server." let's hear it for the gratuitously confusing apple naming scheme.
"this is our _new_ powerbook g3, hereby known as the g3-with-the-silverish-edging-on-the-hinges."
--saint----
When I asked how Mac users might react, I was thinking there would be childish reactions just like yours. But the posts on Macslash reassure me that there are many Mac users more mature than yourself. For a start, I was caref
Security: some Mac users like to boast of how secure Mac OS is as a web-server. But that security was partly because Mac OS simply doesn't do as much (in terms of network services) as an NT or *nix box and partly because Mac OS is less used for internet servers and so less known. OSX, though, is *nix. You can do more with *nix - and so can the cracker. How will Mac users react to that? If Macintosh do lock down the security, I bet it won't withstand having a load of freenix tools and services added.
Biodiversity: the Mac way of doing things has meant great uniformity amongst Mac machines and systems. From my *nix-geek POV that's not great but it has brought definite advantages to Mac users in terms of stability and ease-of-use. On the downside, IME because Macs work so well together I've found it very difficult to talk to Mac users who want to send/share files with our staff (Linux/Windows environment) because they have trouble with the idea that it might be difficult to get two computers/filesystems/networks to communicate, for them it just happens. How will Mac users (and Macintosh) react to an influx of *nix geeks who want to be able to change everything but still have it all work with the bits they haven't changed. How will they react to the *nix world demanding that OSX stay compatible and open? What will Mr Jobs think?
I can see plenty of areas for friction between Macintosh (the company as opposed to the users) and the freenix world. Steve Jobs' own dealings with the Human Interface group show how little time he has for awkward developers. If there is friction, how will the notoriously loyal Mac users react? Especially if adapting to the Unix world-view means some painful changes for them (viz. my comments on security above).
OSX definitely means that the Mac is coming in from the cold but will some/many Mac users decide they were better off on their own?
vertical-limit- What is the purpose of being so petty about the choice of story - simply because you already knew about MacSlash? Do you oppose stories that include (for example) links to Freshmeat, simply because you already check that resource on a regular basis... or are you simply opposed to getting maximum exposure to all the sites in the Slash family?
Debian: A distro with a great future! Of course that future is a year in the past for every other distro.
From a configuration 'point-of-view', UNIX has always been seen as an expert's system. It's much easier have a nice gui to lead you than having to use vi.
Modern UNIX/Linux distributions have gone a long to try and rectify these problems, and it's good to see another gui oriented UNIX coming along.
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator