Dumping LinuxPPC For MacOS X?

batobin writes: "In the PowerPC industry, MacOS is the mainstream OS. When a user needs features that the mainstream cannot provide, they seek alternatives. In the past years, many Mac users have sought out Linux for a number of reasons. Whether they were looking for a system that was open source, faster, or more reliable, Linux was a viable alternative. But now Apple is close to releasing MacOS X, and it solves many of the problems that drove Apple customers away from MacOS. Will these LinuxPPC users switch back to Apple's OS when OS X comes out? This article tackles the subject."

Comments

Jason Haas was just iterviewed..

[harlan]

Jason Haas was just interviewed by Slashdot recently:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/01/05/1622 25 2&mode=thread

It's too bad this question wasn't asked then!

It's not exacly the same thing...

[djocyko]

but if microsoft came out with a version of windows based on bsd, would you throw away your redhat or yer slackware, or yer corel, or yer suse, or yer mandrake...just because the big (big) boys developed something similar?

just a thought

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually there is a good chance that I would. I imagine that this may recieve quite a few flames, but it would solve most of my OS needs. I don't care who makes it, but if an OS can provide the following, I will use it. 1) Stability 2) Responsiveness 3) Mass market application support. (aka Diable II & MS Office) 4) Security Now I know Open Source is not in that list, but I'm not going to fool myself, I'd jump at the chance to use an OS that filled every one of those requirements. It is just a bonus if it has the source available.

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[jhol]

You're absolutely right, it's not the same thing at all.

Mac users (I've been a mac advocate until the year of 1996, the day quake came to PC ;-) ) and MacOS is loved, it is basically loved by every mac user out there, however due to its flaws (its multitasking is worthless among other things) the Mac community has always longed a serious update of the OS, but it never came. A long long time ago Copland should have come out, but Apple ran into problems with both the OS and its financial situations, and it changed CEO several times.

So basically the Mac community haven't had a proper OS for a very long time, but the community itself is _very_ loyal to apple and if they release something really good (Mac OS X is not a rip off of any of the distro's you mentioned for instance, it's something (almost, correct me if I'm wrong) entirely new) I would expect that a lot of them would switch.

Just my $0.02

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[hey!]

but if microsoft came out with a version of windows based on bsd, would you throw away your redhat or yer slackware, or yer corel, or yer suse, or yer mandrake...just because the big (big) boys developed something similar?

I would certainly increase the mix of Microsoft products I used and recommended in situation requiring Unix power. I develop windows software and have BASH, Perl and Cygwin installed on my Windows box so I have a decent toolset, but it still isn't as nice as being on Unix.

A full featured Unix with 100% binary compatibility with Windows would be worth paying for.

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[IntlHarvester]

A full featured Unix with 100% binary compatibility with Windows would be worth paying for.

Check out Microsoft Interix, which is a UNIX subsystem for NT (http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/display.asp?subi d=22&site=10464&x=32&y=15) Unfortunately, it looks like MS is burying this product in their website, so it might be going away.
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Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[IntlHarvester]

Whoops - try http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/interix/
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Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[ahknight]

I would expect that a lot of them would switch.

I won't, not entirely. There's another side to the story here, as well. Some of us like the nostagia of a big black console, and the quirkiness of seeing it on our Mac. Some of us actually like Gnome or KDE better than MacOS, or even OS X.

I, personally, plan on having, still, a dual-boot system on my G4. One side Linux, one side whatever Mac OS is current. I have a need to run my Mac software, but I really, really love Linux. There's just some element of power and control, that I don't think is in Apple's business plan, that I love about Linux. It kicks me in the ass sometimes (PPP, for instance), but it's completely a tinkering and learning experience, which is really what got me into it in the first place.

I still do my browsing and email and word processing and gaming in the Mac OS, but it's not rare to reboot into Linux just to fiddle, tinker, and see what makes what work. Setup local servers, learn how they work, etc.

Overall, I think there's two groups: Those using Linux as an ark until the waters clear for Mac OS, and those using it for the sheer geekiness of it all. I'm in group #2.
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Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[marmoset]

ahknight said:

There's just some element of power and control, that I don't think is in Apple's business plan, that I love about Linux. It kicks me in the ass sometimes (PPP, for instance), but it's completely a tinkering and learning experience, which is really what got me into it in the first place.

The power, control, and tinkering might not be in Apple's business plan, but they're certainly in the OS. I've been using the Pubilc Beta since early October, and you really can get as deeply geeky on it as you want. Want to replace the supplied sendmail with postfix or qmail? Go for it. Want to build and install kernel extensions? If your king fu's strong enough, have at it. Want to take Joe Blow's Java-based editor or Gnutella client and build a double-clickable newbie-friendly Mac-looking application out of it? Download the dev tools and go nuts.

I do this stuff at home on my MacOSX box, then go to work and do similar things under x86 Linux. I feel like an even more fulfilled geek because I'm learning this stuff on systems with very different ancestries.

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[Servo]

I've looked at this before, although never used it. To me, it looks just like a Unix-ish environment that runs under Windows... is that correct?

I think Apple is doing it right, BSD for the backend, and MacOS for the front end. Its the best of both worlds.

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[rhavyn]

WINE really isn't an emulator. Win32 is just a wrapper on top of the kernel32.dll system calls and provides some level of compatibility between Win9x and NT (two very different kernels). WINE is just taking Win32 and moving it to a new kernel. You can say all you want to about micro-kernels and whatnot, but it's all pretty much irrelevant since Win9x uses Win32 and DOS is a monolithic kernel. Furthermore, the only difference between a micro-kernel and a monolithic kernel is whether a "system call" is in user space or kernel space. Monolithic kernel, kernel space, micro-kernel, user space. None of this has any bearing, however, on Win32. Please check your facts next time.

And ... MS apps do use "undocumented features." Some of them are actual system calls (which are supposedly undocumented because you are supposed to program through Win32, but for some reason MS does). Some of Win32 is also undocumented and if you don't want to believe me read the WINE and Samba mailing lists to see all the fun stuff they dig up.

And lastly ... Win32 is horribly incompatible with itself. If you are trying to do anything the slightest bit non-standard you need to test on every revision of Windows. MS likes to change Win32 and kernel32.dll in every update and each one breaks some features and adds others in. For example, look at the thread scheduling functions in NT4 and how they winked in and out of usability between service packs. Just because the system call is still there doesn't make it backwards compatible. It also needs to *work the same as it did before*. And MS is horrible about that. If you'd like further proof, try using the same thread scheduling functions under Win9x and see how far it gets you (and 9x is Win32 so if you're correct about backwards compatibility, it whould work fine). I personally would have to say that Unix or VMS have a much longer history of backwards compatibility then Windows.

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[TummyX]

Win32 is horribly incompatible with itself. If you are trying to do anything the slightest bit non-standard you need to test on every revision of Windows.

Please check your facts.
Talk about FUD.
Almost all Win95 software runs on win98, winme, winnt and windows 2000. The only things that don't are platform specific things like realmode applications and device drivers.

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[rakslice]

Run on anything other than apple systems?

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[mr100percent]

The question on everyone's mind, when will Wine run on my Mac Linux PPC?

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[rhavyn]

Check your facts and read what I wrote. Look up how the thread scheduling functions work on Win95, Win98, WinME, NT4 and 2000 differ. That is merely one example but if you've ever tried to write a complicated multithreaded program, you know that scheduling can be important. And the fact that said scheduling interface is either non existant (stub functions on most of the 9x series) and works or doesn't work depending on service pack (NT and 2000) means that you need to test on every version. That is merely one example, and if you don't believe me, look it up.

Apache runs on almost every version of Unix and most versions of Windows. And the way they do that is with the preprocessor. Without ifdef's and being careful of what functions you call, you'll get burned on Windows.

Re:It's not exacly the same thing...

[Evangelion]

I don't know where this Anti-MS FUD that no games run on Win2k comes from. I've been successfully running all Q3-engine games, Unreal-engine games, Diablo II, BGII, numerous driving games - the ONLY game I've encoutered problems running under Win2k has been System Shock 2, and that was because the installer simply refused to try because it was written with NT4 in mind (it's my understanding that there is a patch released for it - I'm going to do a manual copy off of the CD when I get time and see what I can do).

Windows 2000 is a better overall gaming platform than Windows ME, in my experience.

--

Multimedia vs. Networking

[Bonker]

The main reason a non-Graphics professional would want to buy a Mac or other PPC machine would be because of the hardware. An intense speed boost given to certain kinds of math-intensive work: e.g. Run Photoshop or Premeire on a G4 500 and an Athlon 500. They simply run faster on the Mac. Anyone have experience with non-MM apps on PPC platforms?

I think that it can be sucessfully argued that while Linux in any incarnation is a powerful OS for servers, development and office work, it falls critically short for multimedia creation. If you install LinuxPPC, it's because you want the powers for the first three and not the latter. This is going to be LinuxPPC's chokehold over OSX. I'm not saying that they'll lose it to OSX's *nix parts, I'm just saying that that's what they got right now.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[Kwikymart]

Comparing an Athlon 500 to a G4 500 is not really fair. The amount of money spent on a same megahertz G4 compared to an Athlon will be much higher. If you want a comparison, try the amount of money spent. An Athlon 1GHz compared to a G4 500 (~ same price, me guestimates), the Athlon would kill the G4. Dont compare MHz, compare prices.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[poiu]

Also, I agree with the premise of the article. I think that when Apple comes out with a server version of Mac OS X it will start to get some serious interest in many places were Linux is currently used for servers.

WHY? Because, instantly overnight, Apple will become the largest vendor on earth. IT departments care about (1) support & (2) is the system stable. Apple is a big company that has a large established support system that just recently got rated tied with Dell for best PC support (shocking isn't it!).

Mac OS X 1.0 might not be 100% stable, but Mac OS X 1.1 will probably be. All of the non-GUI stuff is open source in Apple's Darwin Project and is constantly being improved. There is a growing ports collection. And, I personally think its fascinating. They are taking a few courageous steps by not doing things 100% the "old fashioned *nix way", but are doing some really cool things like bundles.

Also, believe it or not, a lot of people are looking for a TRUE alternative to MS. Linux is a true alternative, but frankly I've sen too many IT folks scared by it and fall backwards into the MS womb. Apple has had a big problem, because traditional Mac OS while great for a desktop, was a JOKE as a server of any kind. Mac OS X will start to address this. Also, for all you whiners that say that the cost of the server is a big detternent, rememver that a $1000 difference doesn't mean squat to an IT department as long as the system is stable and has a long uptime which Mac OS X has. POIU

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Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[swb]

WHY? Because, instantly overnight, Apple will become the largest vendor on earth. IT departments care about (1) support & (2) is the system stable. Apple is a big company that has a large established support system that just recently got rated tied with Dell for best PC support (shocking isn't it!).

I care about support, but even when I pay a LOT extra for support the best I get is someone who's half-intelligent and half-interested in doing their job. Couple that with Apple's complete lack of enterprise network/server support and I wonder who you think is suddenly going to start dropping Linux for servers.

Besides, "support" is often popular with IT departments because it bridges the gap between inexperienced, overworked and underpaid IT staff and management's goals, and even then it often means braindead consultants who show up on site and can get blamed when things go wrong.

The bit about Dell *is* shocking, since every time I've worked with Dell it's been awful. Morons that don't care coupled with 3rd-party service providers that *really* don't care.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[Brian Knotts]

Where do you get an Athlon 500? I don't think they sell those anymore. You're comparing apples and oranges, by suggesting that MHz is the single benchmark by which CPUs are judged.

It is more reasonable to say, how would $1500 worth of Athlon box measure up to $1500 of Macintosh?

I think we know how that's going to come out, though. :-)

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Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[um... Lucas]

Couple that with Apple's complete lack of enterprise network/server support and I wonder who you think is suddenly going to start dropping Linux for servers.

Ermm... Apple picked up this nifty little thing when they bought out NeXT, first called NeXTStep and later OpenSTEP. It's actually quite well regarded in the enterprize, although some of that might have died off in the past few years due to the uncertainity in the direction OS X was taking... But in the end apple's releasing an OS thats based on one of the most preeminant enterprise operating systems that ever shipped...

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[extra88]

Right, the PPCs are great processors but Macs are purely consumer and content creation boxes (which I happen to love).

Look at the Apple Store http://store.apple.com/ where's the word "server" anywhere? Then look at the hardware. Where's the hardware RAID card? Where are the hot-swap drive bays? Where's the redundant power supply? Where's the rack mount case? Where's the ECC RAM? Where's the tape drive? Where's the clustering options?

Sure, a lot of these things can be worked around but it all comes down to a lot more work, cost, and inferior support when compared to Win2k or UNIX systems which have it all in one neat package.

Apple should either certify 3rd parties to make mid and high-level Mac servers or work out something with IBM to make servers in that class.

BTW, dealing with consumer-level customer support is *not* the same as dealing with support for major accounts or servers. Most of my experience in those categories has been with Gateway and Dell and I've been happy with both.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[SpotBug]

An Athlon 1GHz compared to a G4 500 (~ same price, me guestimates), the Athlon would kill the G4. Dont compare MHz, compare prices.

You should take your own advice - don't compare MHz. That GHz Athlon would not "kill" the 500 MHz G4. I'd estimate them to be roughly equal in performance.

This is the bane of Apple right now. They've got comparable processors (speed-wise), but the MHz numbers don't look good at all. Motorola needs to trade instructions per clock cylce for higher MHz ratings to make them sound better (faster) to the lay-public.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[CyberKnet]

I'd very much like to know why it is that you think that Apple will all of a sudden be larger than particularly Compaq and IBM. The Compaq series of x86 servers (DL,CL and ML) is huge, their Alphas are great, and IBMs Netfinities are highly used. Why will OSX make these entities suddenly *disappear*? Both companies support linux.

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Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[kootch]

no. the main reason a non-graphics person (read anyone) would ever want to buy a Mac or PPC is USABILITY (a term many *nix users forget about)

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[AugstWest]

This is the bane of Apple right now. They've got comparable processors (speed-wise), but the MHz numbers don't look good at all. Motorola needs to trade instructions per clock cylce for higher MHz ratings to make them sound better (faster) to the lay-public.

I think Apple was doing a good job of this at first, but they seem to have stopped pushing the speed issue.

All they really need to do is get a coupl eof sentences into each ad that mentions the actual speed improvements, and make a mocking shot at the clock-speed race (there's nothing that Apple customers like more than mocking jabs at PC machines/people), and their job would be done.

Again, they're really just looking at problems with marketing issues... Nothing new to Apple.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[TWR]

Look at the Apple Store http://store.apple.com/ where's the word "server" anywhere? Then look at the hardware. Where's the hardware RAID card? Where are the hot-swap drive bays? Where's the redundant power supply? Where's the rack mount case? Where's the ECC RAM? Where's the tape drive? Where's the clustering options?

You can find the word "server" if you click the "Power Macintosh G4" link. There's a little box with the words "Macintosh Server G4". Granted, it's not much more than a relabeled PowerMac G4, but you asked for it...

About 4 years ago, Apple did sell a real server server. It had all the redundant, fail-safe hardware. It ran AIX on PowerPC chips with a bit of a Mac-ified interface and AppleShare software. No one bought it, because when you think Unix server, you don't think Apple. And that's OK. Apple doesn't have to be all things for all people.

-jon

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[CMonk]

Wasn't it AUX?

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[swb]

OS thats based on one of the most preeminant enterprise operating systems that ever shipped...

OK, I'll bite. Preeminent in the minds of Mac users waiting for OS X? I don't doubt that Nextstep was popular as a development platform, but really how much "enterprise" usage did it actually get compared to offerings from Sun, HP, IBM, SGI and so on? My guess is that it was preeminent in the mind of Jobs only, as Next really only ended up on the slagheap of once-great technologies.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[um... Lucas]

NeXTStep and OpenStep were very highly used in financial institutions/banks for one. The ease of development lent it greatly to use in a nubmer of vertical market apps, if memory serves.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[AArthur]

the OS 9 still doesn't use all the PowerPC features (sepcially the multitasking part!),

FWIW, that's a 68020 + MMU feature (or a 68030). So if you got your Mac after '88, it should be able to use it. Unforently, Mac OS still (12 years later) can't use it.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[jpgrimes]

Actually thats not really true. A 1ghz athlon is not only cheaper than a 500mhz G4 (significantly) it would blow away the G4 too in most tests. In most tests is the key, their are some tests (mostly photoshop) that they would be comparable. This is due to some unfair optimization for the G4 and the fact that the altivec processing unit is really well designed. If you actually look at the design of the athlon and the G4 you will find them amazing similar. However excepting the altivec the G4 can't keep up and runs at mcuh lower clock speeds. Now compare the G4 to the Pentium and the comparisons that the mac people do become slightly more fair but still its now double the performance that they talk about. Then when you add in other factors (bus speeds, memory) it looks even worse for Macs. As to the main part of this article, I currently run a heavily upgraded Mac using mostly yellow dog linux and some mac os 9 and X. If Apple ships a stable (currently aqua crashes regularly in the Public Beta I have) X with sound and if development of Xfree86 for X continues as well as it has I expect to buy Mac OS X and install it and possibly delete PPC linux. However, having said that, I expect my next computer purchase will be a PC and I don't expect Windows to ever touch it, go linux :) Part of my reason for wanting Max OS X instead of linux ppc is the fact that the current linux ppc distributions sucks (although I really should check out debian and suse, linuxppc has soo many bugs) and the application support, although improving, is not what I want it to be.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[Smokin Goat McGruff]

You should charge by the hour. That way the longer a project takes the more you get paid! Maybe you could start using a command-line graphics program! Imagine typing something like "circle radius=30 x=123 y=45" and then not being able to see the results. :)

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[TWR]

No, the Network Servers from Apple ran AIX, IBM's Unix for PowerPCs. Apple did sell A/UX for a while, which is in many ways kinda similar to what Mac OS X is now: a Unix with a Mac L&F that can run Mac apps, too.

A/UX was never ported to PowerPC; it was 68K-only.

-jon

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[KillerKane]

>>Apple has had a big problem, because traditional Mac OS while great for a desktop, was a JOKE as a server of any kind.>>

Not so. I run AppleshareIP 6.3 on a 400/256/36 G4 for file, web and ftp and it's a rock. 7 months now without a restart, and that was to drop in an update. This is in a heavy production setting (read: BIG graphics files accessed by LOTS of people).

That is not a joke server, not when I listen to my pals moan about Win2kAS having an uptime measurable in days, at most. I have no doubt that *NIX servers would handle bigger loads or more clients with some greater responsiveness, but ASIP is totally worthy.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[Kwikymart]

Well duh, you only assume that I was comparing by MHz because I made some "wild" assumption based on MHz rating. Well the truth is, my friend, that my decision was based on my biased opinion towards AMD Athlons, and nothing else. So, you can take your baseless claim that I am a hypocrite and stuff it up the ass of the guy from the goatse.cx pic. .

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[Bonker]

Uhhmm... No. I'm saying that Athlon's 500 mhz doesn't really get as much done as PPC's 500mhz. It's like comparing two cars that can both get 10000 rpm. Which one uses it better?

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[MaxwellsSilverHammer]

"The main reason a non-Graphics professional would want to buy a Mac or other PPC machine would be because of the hardware."

I'd have to question that...

I know for myself the main reason I bought and buy Macs is because of the OS and the overall user experience that encompasses: adding new hw, adding/removing sw, troubleshooting, GUI, how you actually perform some task,...in short, maybe everything that -isn't- hardware, specifically. Unless you count that: because the hw is more 'well controlled' there are fewer opportunities for driver conflicts, etc. Also, I think a main reason is personal taste. I really like the Look & Feel of MacOS over Windows, and even Gnome/KDE/Solaris/etc.

Granted,...the MacOS has been -sorely- lacking in what have come to be termed modern OS features.

BTW, I am posting from the Win98 side of my RH7 machine, and have an OS X'ed Cube by it's side. I worked with LPPC for some time, but went out and bought a PC/W98 so I could use it for an x86 Linux box -- I wanted to make use of all that was available for x86-based Linux.

Bottom line: I didn't stop using LPPC because of OS X. Instead I went to x86 Linux, and will use it along side OS X. I like and will use both.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[AArthur]

Mac OS goes for simpicity, and saving screen space, over speed. Remember, Mac OS was orginally designed for 512x384 Black and White screens, and it still shows it.

Mac OS is also designed for a simpler time, when only one process would be running, and you would only really want to do one thing at a time. Yes, Apple hacked multitasking in later, but it was more of an after thought then a core feature. Threading has became more popular as of the past 5 years, but many apps don't use it either.

Mac OS was designed, and works best for those of us with one track minds, who don't want a million different things going on at once. While they have hacked in the capcity to allow you to do multiple things at once (in some cases), it's not meant to be a core feature.

Re:Multimedia vs. Networking

[larkost]

Your guess is wrong.. here is a small list of WebObjects customers... remembering that most of these were onboard when a single deployment easily ran into the tens of thousands of dollars. For those of you who do not want to click over, the list includes AT&T, Toyota, and the BBC among many others. These are people who are still using NeXT's enterprise group (renamed Apple Enterprise, now becoming iServices).

LinuxPPC - not a hope

[Dan Hayes]

If anyone thinks that most of the people who moved onto LinuxPPC won't move back to Mac OS X then they're fooling themselves about the nature of Mac users. These are people that in the face of hardware superiority from Intel and software superiority from Microsoft have stuck by their Macs no matter what. Even when their Mac couldn't do what they wanted, they still tried to keep as close to their Macs as possible rather than doing the sensible thing and getting a Wintel box.

Of course they'll rush back to Mac OS X.

For most Mac users, the last thing they want to use is the "tech-savvy" requirements of a Linux desktop with its requirements to "grok" a bewildering array of obscure utilities, command line tools and text-based configuration files. They'd be much happier dealing with a smiling computer face and a single button on their mice, and being able to actually get some work done!

I think LinuxPPC is in serious risk of dying here. Who'd want to run Linux when there is a far superior competitor in terms of usability and power?

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people are running Linux/PPC fulltime on their fancy new G4s anyway? My guess is pretty few, and most of it's installed base is "Lets turn this old 7300 into an Apache server and a mail forwarder, and I know the cheap Unix to do it with."

With OS X, you get the "cheap Unix" in the box, so yes, there will be less temptation to blow the OS away and install something else. You can have Apache and procmail and Photoshop.

None of this really has much to do with "Mac users", btw. It's more "Unix users who also use Macs".

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[The Troll Catcher]

And there's also the fact that LinuxPPC is IMPOSSIBLE to set up on an iMac so that it runs decently!

My roommate at college has an iMac DV SE. I've been a full-time Linux user for 2 years, and he's just starting, but neither of us have been able to get it running with USB storage support and decent video, and we've been trying since September.

Until they get a better install, it's pointless, because it JUST PLAIN DOESN'T WORK!

Compared to installing LinuxPPC, setting up Debian is a walk in the park. (I'm not saying that Debian is terribly tough - it's the only thing I'll use :).

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[Darchmare]

I'm one of those people whose interest in LinuxPPC has waned somewhat since Mac OS X has hit the spotlight.

Before, my plan was to continue using my Mac for workstation and graphics type stuff, as well as coding (mostly PHP, Perl, etc).

I would then set up an old Mac clone with LinuxPPC and use it as a test server, which I did for a while. Worked pretty well.

Since I've been using Mac OS X (DP3, DP4, and PB) my plans have changed somewhat. Being a typical geek I'll probably play with each release of LinuxPPC, but I really can't get the same kind of productivity with Linux that I can get with OSX. Before, it was a choice between an OS with great user interface and lousy stability versus an OS with great stability and lousy user interface. Now, OSX appears to be on track to giving me both. Why stick with Linux?

Do I think LinuxPPC will die? Not really. By virtue of being open-source it doesn't suffer from some of the same uncertainty that 100% commercial products do, but I'm not sure it's going to get too far. Even now the media fascination with Linux has waned a bit.

So, I'll probably wipe my server's drive and use OSX once I give the final release a clear evaluation. But I'll check in from time to time, especially with Helix Code and Eazel in the mix.

- Jeff A. Campbell

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[94229]

Interesting point.

I don't believe Apple will keep everything "under the hood". I do believe they will have a graphical front end for pratically everything, but if you want to pop into a command line and configure things with preciseness, I doubt that will be removed. Remote administration is a requirement after all. So if we subscribe to your theory, you could "tweak every last element of your OS" with LinuxPPC and with OSX.

There is one problem though. The layout of the filesystems are different. One reason I don't like Linux, is that it's foreign to me (I grew up mostly on Solaris, with a bit of AIX for fun). Things aren't in my preferred location on Linux. The GNU-based commands actually have the gall to change what options are available and what some of them mean. It's frustrating, so when I land on Linux, I swear every half hour or so.

The same will be true with OSX vs. Linux (and vs all other Unices). The file system layout and the commands are different enough to annoy those from "foreign" systems. It will have an affect on the people willing to go from one OS to the other. Which they choose? I dunno. Whatever they're most comfortable with. Or just as likely, the one that get's their job done. If they have to run Microsoft products -- OSX, if they have to run the gimp -- LinuxPPC. If both, then both!!

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[TeamSPAM]

LinuxPPC will not die. Period. Don't just sweep LinuxPPC under the carpet and says it's going to die. As the article mentions not all user of LinuxPPC will rush out out to use OS X.

I own a PMac 7500 which was one of Apple's better desgins. I am on my 3rd processor in this computer. Not the number upgrades, but the number of processors (601, 604e, G3) and if I felt like spending the money I could upgrade to a G4. This computer has a decent amount of life left in it, but Apple doesn't plan to support OS X on this computer. There is a whole range of PPC hardware out there from Apple that they don't plan to have OS X run on. My read on OS X from Apple is: You should buy some of our new plastic with G4 processors to run OS X. LinuxPPC will continue to run on the hardware that Apple is leaving behind.

Now how will LinuxPPC development perist going forward? Support for newer hardware might not be as good as the abandoned hardware. User on the new hardware may stay in the Apple fold with OS X and reduce the number of users to test LinuxPPC. But as users upgrade, they may make these computers available for use with LinuxPPC.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[prwood]

There is no way I would switch back to MacOS with OS X.

1) Support - I have a UMAX SuperMac Clone. Apple no longer supports these, and they never will again. MacOS has not been officially supported on it for a while, and I am sure they will take steps to make sure that future OS's, such as OS X, will not run either. Linux will always be supported - the kernel doesn't care who made your hardware, and even if it did, we could change it so that it didn't.

2) Features Linux Lacks- I realize that I do not need most of the features that a MacOS-type OS provides. I don't care about the multimedia industry - digital video, video editing, composition, etc... Everything I want and need, Linux can do, and do it well.

3) Features Linux Has - With the 2.4 kernel, my system is running better than ever before. It's got efficient memory/virtual memory management, SMP support, etc. In the userland side, I have Gimp if I need to work with graphics, xmms for listening to music, mozilla for browsing the web, gaim for chatting, abiword for word processing, gcc, perl, python, php, apache, on and on...

4) Price - LinuxPPC is free. Why the HECK would I want to pay for an OS ever again? Support? If I do need support, and I rarely do, I can get support from the Linux community faster than I can get it from Apple's tech support. Documentation? All the Linux documentation I need is online. Media? I can just download the software and burn to a cd.

I used the MacOS from August 1991 through June 1999. Then I switched to LinuxPPC. In the end, I guess I have come to the conclusion that I never truly was a "Mac" user, as I have no idea to go back to the flaky, over-simplified, eye candy MacOS.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[Golias]

Yet another AC makes me glad that I still read with a threshold of zero. Your point is exactly right, and nobody else here seems to have caught on. LinuxPPC is a great way to breath life into those old boxes, by turning them into servers. And any remaining hardcore LinuxPPC users probably consider themselves to be "UNIX users" rather than "Mac users", and will be thrilled with the idea of using the best of both worlds without dual booting.

Personally, I plan on buying OS X and installing it the very day it comes out, 1.0 bugs and all!

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[um... Lucas]

It's funny how the "features" a modern OS should have contains items such as "preemptive multi-taksing", "protected memory", and "SMP support" (i know there's one other buzzword, but i foget what it is). Nowhere, in the "definition" of a modern OS is any mention of a usable, consistant UI.

I'll forever stand by the notion that even with Mac OS 9, Mac users are much more productive than counterparts on Windows NT/2000 simply because, even though they may crash more, the operating itself lends itself much more to productivity issues. Macs have much more consistant menus, keyboard shortcuts, and other interfaces between applications compared to any of the Windows family, let alone any linux distro/BSD/or other unix.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[ashpool7]

That didn't make a darn bit of sense.

Statement: People who switched to LinuxPPC will switch back to Mac OS X because it's easier to use.

If thats so, why in the heck did they move to LinuxPPC in the first place? Certainly you must be joking if you think people switched from anything below Mac OS 9.x to LinuxPPC for ease of use? PPC, by their own admission, is still a bit behind the main x86 branch too, making it a tad (perhaps more) unstable than it's big brother.

You assertation is ridiculous. The fact that you got modded up scares me, because that mean there are at least two people out there that this makes sense to. ;-)

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[slashbrent]

Precisely.

This jack-off says things like "software superiority from Micro$oft" and gets a 3?!

Do you moderators even *READ* these posts?

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[znu]

Personally, I plan on buying OS X and installing it the very day it comes out, 1.0 bugs and all!

Wimp! I've already replaced OS 9 and Linux with the OS X public beta. Having one OS that can run Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Perl and Apache is really a dream for anyone who does web development.

--

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[AugstWest]

You can have Apache and procmail and Photoshop.

That sentence alone strikes straight at the heart of this matter.

You've got BSD, and I've got shiny happy app support.

And, of course, a nice looking box to keep it all in.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[znu]

The OS X beta will run on some G3-upgraded machines. I've got a friend who installed it on a 7500 with a 300MHz G3 upgrade. There's a good reason Apple won't support that hardware; it's dog slow. A video card would probably make a big difference though.

--

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[AugstWest]

I don't believe Apple will keep everything "under the hood". I do believe they will have a graphical front end for pratically everything, but if you want to pop into a command line and configure things with preciseness, I doubt that will be removed.

I get claustrophobic on Macs. It's my main issue with them: "How do I get at my config files?" "Wait, there's no SHELL? NO SHELL?"

Just the thought of having a nice looking box with a sweet, polished, stable GUI (in which I can actually *gasp* copy and paste between different apps and still be able to drop to a bash shell....

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[ritlane]

I lost a lot of faith in the Slashdot community when I saw this had been moded up!

I am a Mac user, and in my third year studying Computer Science. A contradiction? No!

As a Mac CS Major I have constantly been exposed to this elitism of the other geeks. It always amazes me when Linux users bash macs on things like software availability and quality.

Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy Linux. On my Powerbook G3 I currently run Mac OS 9, OS X, LinuxPPC, and (under emulation)Windows 98, Windows 2000, and QNX . I use each of these various OSes when appropriate.

I am just trying to point out that for many, Linux is an ideology, and not another tool. As history has taught, ideologies can be contradictory and still justified in the minds of their followers. That is why in the same paragraph Linux is being described as requiring tech-savvy skills and the ability to remember obscure command, and then seeing it described as the only choice for being able to get real work done.

It is that kind of elitism that makes people think that an OS is somehow superior for requiring one to edit a file instead of clicking a button.


---Lane

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[ChristTrekker]

These are people that in the face of hardware superiority from Intel and software superiority from Microsoft have stuck by their Macs no matter what.

ROFL! Intel hardware superior to PPC??? Micros~1 software superior to anything??? You are such a kidder!

I have to agree with chrischow and slashbrent. Some moderators will up anything that disses Apple.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[mr]

Of course they'll rush back to Mac OS X.

There are 3 kinds of Linux users here.

1) Use GNU/Linux because they think its trendy/hip/geeky/some social reason
2) Wanting the power of Unix and didn't know that NetBSD or OpenBSD will work on the Mac
3) Want to squeeze performance out of the Mac

Users type 1 *MIGHT* decide Rhapsody^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMac OS X is hip enough. Effect: some movement to X

User type 2 has no reason to stay with GNU/Linux, given Mac OS X is a full-blown Unix.
Effect: most will move to X

User type 3 has machines with 680x0, or pre g3 machines. No way they can move.

So, there still will be a place for a PPC based Linux release. There are alot of old macs out there.

I think LinuxPPC is in serious risk of dying here.
If Linux is some magically portable kernel, so long as the effort exists on X86 and other processors, Linux on a PPC will do fine. A GNU/LinuxPPC company was never on the path to an IPO or mega-corporate profitability. So, if your metric of 'GNU/LinuxPPC success' was going to be a $250 share price...that ain't gonna happen. It is more likely that Apple will stop making PPC machines before there stops being a few people who want to hack Linux kernels on PPC chips.

Besides, if you get desperate for PPC based Unix boxes....go talk to IBM. I hear IBM has money, and likes linux. :-)

It is more likely that Darwin will overtake LinuxPPC in number of units running on Macs but so what? Isn't the 'richness' of the 'linux distro world' its strength? If one Linux disro fails, 5 seem to pop up, feeding on the corpse of the fallen.

But why is it the 'linux camp' thinks the game is a 'total markshare and nothing else'? Smacks of the egotisim of Microsoft. If Apple is able to make and sell a better unix on thier own box, more power to them!

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[PCM2]

Wait a minute ... who are these tunnel-vision Mac users you claim have moved to LinuxPPC, anyway? Have you ever met one? If they won't use Windows, what in hell makes you think they'd use Linux?

And since when has the sole purpose of LinuxPPC development been to let Linux run on Macs, anyhow?

I honestly don't think you have the slightest clue what you're talking about. But keep on feeling superior anyhow.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[iso]

LinuxPPC is a great way to breath life into those old boxes, by turning them into servers.

this is true, but if MacOS X becomes as popular as everybody says it will be, then in the very near future it may actually be more sensible to "breath life those old boxes" by using Darwin instead of LinuxPPC. why use Linux for this? if it's just going to be a server, probably with no X-Windows, why not use the opensource OS that's got the development dollars of Apple behind it?

see here's the thing: this year it'll make the most sense to run MacOS X as your Macintosh desktop OS, and in the near future, it'll also make more sense to run Darwin on your servers (many 3rd party developers have already put support for older machines in the Darwin kernel). where does LinuxPPC fit in this equation? answer: it doesn't. there is very little reason to run LinuxPPC.

if you want to run Linux, get an x86 box: that's what it's designed for first. if you have a Mac, MacOS X & Darwin are the best tools for that hardware.

- j

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[Golias]

"If PacMan had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to electronic music"

Sounds like a typical rave party to me. :)

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[haaz]

Let's see here..

1. The new kernel runs much better on newer machines. Have you tried that?

2. The new kernel is part of our new release.

3. The new CD boots fine on all the new machines. The old one didn't work well at all.

4. Video should be better.

5. USB mass storage support has apparently just recently started working.

6. Try the current release before commenting. :)

Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[bmeteor]

Forget not the elitism of the mac faithful. During apple's dark days, they ran the evangelist, which _promoted _ mailbombing journalists who gave even slightly ignorant info on the mac OS. It goes both ways dude.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[iso]

Sounds like a typical rave party to me. :)

yeah, that's the point. see my web page.

- j

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[algae]

...and still be able to drop to a bash shell....

OK, this is a pet peave of mine. You don't say ATM machine, do you? Or PIN number? Well, bash is an acronym for Bourne-again shell. Please.

Still, it will be super-cool to be able to drop into bash on MacOS X

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[david_nelson]

I have an iMac DV. Haven't needed USB storage but I did have problems getting the video settings to work right (including on the 2000 Q4 update.) I'd get something like 256 colors even when I had it set to do thousands or millions. I decided to try YellowDog Linux instead and it worked fine on the first try. Also, Ethernet didn't work right on LinuxPPC (maybe that issue was a problem with the user, not the computer... ;) but, like the video issue, worked great the on the first try with YellowDog.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[AugstWest]

"drop to a bash" just sounds.... incomplete.

maybe you shouldn't have skipped today's lithium :]

and often i do say ATM machine. and pin number.

I don't however, say "with au jus sauce" because nothing comes with with juice sauce.

Re:LinuxPPC - not a hope

[mr]

mea culpa Correct on the ppc/m68k

NetBSD doesn't have that problem however :-)

Maybe so...

[aussersterne]

If I understand correctly, there will be complete shell access for things like shell scripting, perl, and so on... Basically, a fairly standard BSD operating system under the GUI. And now, there's an X server for OS X so that X apps can be run as well, fairly seamlessly.

Basically, it sounds like a full-fledged Unix-like OS with the added benefit of a full-fledged Mac-like OS on the same display.

God knows I'd switch if I could afford the @(#%&@)*#$& Mac hardware.

Re:Maybe so...

[American AC in Paris]

God knows I'd switch if I could afford the @(#%&@)*#$& Mac hardware.

$799 for a complete system too rich for your blood?

...or even $1299 for a fully-fledged, non-iMac unit, if you can't stand the sight of an iMac?

Dig around the Apple store. A lot has changed there in the past few years.

information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.

Re:Maybe so...

[Syberghost]

$799 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $400.

$1299 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $800.

Get the point on price yet?

-

Re:Maybe so...

[happynoodleboy]

last i had heard they were planning a version for x86 machines so you won't have to worry about that expensive hardware. sweet. i'm sure i'll check it out when it's ready, but whether it stays remains to be seen.

Re:Maybe so...

[Imzadi]

What about the iBooks and PowerBooks? The PowerPC CPUs comsume a fraction of the power of their Intel equivalents, which means longer runtime. For me, one of the main points in a notebook.

Also, it's pretty damn hard to find integrated ethernet on Intel notebooks.

Re:Maybe so...

[American AC in Paris]

$799 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $400.

$1299 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $800.

Get the point on price yet?

The point at hand was affordability, not comparative pricing. I don't consider $799 for a complete system terribly expensive.

On your note, though, yes, you can get a similarly powerful Wintel box for $400. You can also be reasonably certain that the components will either be POS no-names thrown in a tin case or carefully hand-picked and self-installed by the buyer in question, an option that appeals to about as many computer users as building one's own car appeals to automobile drivers.

Show me a pre-built, ready-to-run Wintel box with quality components that work well together for $400, and you'll have a strong case.

information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.

Re:Maybe so...

[sethgecko]

depends on what you mean by duplicate...

if you mean Mhz and hard drive space and ram, then, yeah. in fact, you can't even buy a wintel box with a 350Mhz processor anymore. If you think systems are made on specifications alone, hey, go on living in your world. you go and buy that e-machine for $400. load it up in the back of your yugo while your at it. I mean, hey, you did buy the yugo, didn't you. At a top speed of 6000rpm it can easily compete with the corvette, right?

oh, you say the damn knob on the gear shift falls off on your yugo? And the cheap vinyl keeps cracking. oh, and you've had to pay out the nose to replace every damn part in it cause they all failed 1 day after the warranty expired?

if you're like me, you don't care about replacing cheap pc parts with other cheap pc parts--but some people actually like the machine to stay together.

by the way, i have yet to see a wintel system crank through 4 megakeys per sec of RC5 at the $1299 price point.

Re:Maybe so...

[American AC in Paris]

$799 is too much for a system for which I have no apps. I have thousands of dollars of Apps for Win32, and thousands of free apps for Linux and NetBSD. On proprietary platforms the hardware is the cheap part, ya know. Unless you're into warez.

Well, a good chunk of UNIX/BSD space can be readily ported to OS X; little problem there. Free/shareware for the Mac has always been part of the Mac lifeblood; visit Ambrosia Software (www.ambrosiasw.com) or dig through the download.com or mac.tucows.com for a few examples.

information wants to be expensive...nothing is so valuable as the right information at the right time.

Re:Maybe so...

[Darchmare]

If you want something dirt cheap, and money is your biggest concern, then go for the no-name Wintel box.

If you realize that a good system with a good UI will enhance your productivity enough in the span of a few months to pay for the extra cost, go for the Mac.

Like anything, it's all a matter of practicality. If you think the systems are 100% comparable and nothing will be gained from the Apple box, then don't buy it. But I humbly suggest that you don't base everything on price, as there are a number of other factors out there...

- Jeff A. Campbell

Re:Maybe so...

[b1t r0t]

Exactly. I'm a bit of a Mac bigot myself, but I make a point of complaining to people who ask me about runing Linux on Mac hardware.

If you want to run Linux, especially as a server, get a cheap-ass PC box. An old K6-2 300 makes a fine server. Don't waste Mac hardware on an OS that you can run just as well on cheaper hardware. I don't have as much of a problem with using pre-PCI Macs for Linux, but AFAICT the popular distros only run on PCI Macs.

Save the Mac for desktop GUI stuff, because I haven't yet found anything that compares in useability to OS 8.x-9.x in the Linux world. (FWIW, I was disappointed when Eazel finally came out with... Yet Another Freaking Browser.)

Re:Maybe so...

[Golias]

$799 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $400.

Bullshit.

Find me a $400 Wintel box that comes with USB, Firewire, 10/100 Ethernet, a monitor, 3D video, and gets anywhere close to MIPS. Can't do it? Didn't think so.

$1299 for a system you can duplicate with Wintel for $800.

You obviously have not read the specs on the G4 towers, or you would not say something as ignorant as that.

Mac hardware is slightly more expensive, but your numbers are way off.

Also, when it comes to laptops, nobody provides more bank for the buck than Apple (especially for Linux users). A Powerbook running LinuxPPC kicks ass.

Re:Maybe so...

[stripes]

Find me a $400 Wintel box that comes with USB, Firewire, 10/100 Ethernet, a monitor, 3D video, and gets anywhere close to MIPS. Can't do it? Didn't think so.

I think you can hit $500 with a lame monitor and ditching the FireWire. I havn't ever used the FireWire on my Mac (my digital camera is USB, and even if I had FireWire devices OSX-PB2 doesn't have support, and I'm running OSX-PB2....).

Don't forget that with the iMac you will be replacing the mouse, and if you have carpal tunnel the keybord (not a huge deal, but still...).

The big reason I dislike the iMac is the built-in monitor. The monitor is one of the few upgrade durable parts of a system. Get a good one an it isn't a big deal to keep it for a decade. The iMac takes that away.

On the other hand, as another poster said their notebooks are pretty good for the money.

Re:Maybe so...

[rodentia]

Sure. I'd be interested to see what I could get out of the new architecture. Funny, I was just asking myself this question this morning when a saw the nice price point on the Powerbooks: "Hell, what would I run if I bought one?"

The answer: "OS X"

Re:Maybe so...

[b1t r0t]

The iMac isn't a system designed to appeal to males. It's designed to appeal to females, who generally don't want to mess with hooking up pieces of a system. It has the same attractiveness as those TV/VCR combos. I personally would never own one of those, because I know that VCRs wear out a lot faster than TV sets, and now cost almost as much to repair as they do to replace, so therefore I consider them impractical. But my mom keeps saying she wants one.

Re:Maybe so...

[Amokscience]

Well, the optical mice are pretty nice to use, provided, of course, that you can stomach one button. The hockey puck is no longer sold with Macs.

The keyboard I do dislike (borderline hate) though.

Re:Maybe so...

[bmeteor]

It's pretty interesting you say this, because the only public reason that this is happening is because the Darwin OSS development community is working on it.

If I'm keeping up correctly, then the darwin distribution right now simply boots on a few select mobo configs.

even so, if it does get up and running, no Aqua, Cocoa, Quartz, QT, ColorSync. None of all the cool Apple technologies we Mac users are dying for or need. Still, it would be great if apple ported all these technologies to x86, but PPC is its priority numero uno.

Re:Maybe so...

[wchin]

God knows I'd switch if I could afford the @(#%&@)*#$& Mac hardware.

Expensive??? In 1989, as a very poor student, I scraped together $2500 for a 386 system. In 1991, still a poor student, I scraped together $3200 for a NeXTstation (at edu discount) and another $1500 for a 400mb hard drive and 16mb memory upgrade. I saw this as an investment in my future and it has payed off.

In today's dollars, that much money would probably buy a Sun Ultra 60. Plus, we have today's ludicrous salaries for people with no degrees and no experience, why are there so many people whining about the costs of a Mac? $5000 is what one paid for a decent entry level UNIX workstation, and I gladly paid the extra over a x86 PC for the difference in quality and capability (both hardware and software).

What's really expensive is time. And Macs can often save time and effort, as does quality Sun servers and the like. An hour of time savings == $150 to me. I can't tell you the number of freaking hours I've spent with what is supposed to be high quality x86 hardware (as I gesture toward the database server box based on a 1.1ghz Athlon, 1.5gb PC133 ECC SDRAM, K7T Master motherboard w/ on-board Adaptec 789x U160 SCSI, etc. right next to me for a client - and I've used the name brands too). You would think that starting salaries were under $20k for all the whining about price I've seen on SlashDot...

Re:Maybe so...

[LMariachi]

Don't forget that with the iMac you will be replacing the mouse, and if you have carpal tunnel the keybord (not a huge deal, but still...).

The big reason I dislike the iMac is the built-in monitor. The monitor is one of the few upgrade durable parts of a system. Get a good one an it isn't a big deal to keep it for a decade. The iMac takes that away.

You won't be replacing the new keyboards, as they're full-sized. The new mouse is better, but yeah, you might want more than one button. All new iMacs except the $799 one have a VGA port, so they don't take away the option of using a second monitor.

Re:Maybe so...

[sethgecko]

i never said there wasn't a premium on apple hardware. there is. just like there's a premium on bmw, mercedes, and ferrari products. thanks for responding so intelligently and anonymously. troll.

Re:Maybe so...

[aussersterne]

I'm a starving writer and journalist. My salary is well under $20k. Yeah I do some tech and network work for my friends and local community causes but it's all in the name of helping out. Mostly I'm just here for the free drinks.

I just paid $300 for my own personal machine: a ThinkPad 760xd and now I can't eat or go to the john for a month. No way I can afford $1500 for an iBook.

pppd is broken.

[cthulhubob]

I've got a friend who's beta-testing the current OS X beta, and we cannot get pppd up on his box. Apparently many other people are having the same problem, looking at the mailing lists.

I'm going to grab a tarball of pppd and try compiling it on his box tonight, and see if that works better than their included version.

Re:pppd is broken.

[subuni]

I had similar problems with pppd in both MacOS Developer Preview 4, and the Public Beta. pppd would connect to my ISP, but, never communicate with anybody. It required going into a shell, and manually setting the routing information. Works like a charm.

Re:pppd is broken.

[Pierre]

does os x have userppp available. i've had better luck with userppp than pppd on my freebsd box...

useless integral tools of mac os.

[saintlupus]

there isn't even a telnet client.

tell me about it... i do tech support for dsl, and it doesn't help that there's no damned _ping_ that comes with the unit. amazing how a machine built for networking since the beginning has none of the tools you'd expect.

incidentally, for telnet, i'd suggest either bettertelnet or nifty telnet ssh, both of which are available at pure mac. good little freeware apps.

--saint
----

Re:useless integral tools of mac os.

[b1t r0t]

I know it doesn't come with it, but do a search for "MacTCP Ping". It's old, but it works fine with OS 9.x. It lets you send pings, and it also responds to pings as long as it is running.

Re:useless integral tools of mac os.

[scrytch]

> I know it doesn't come with it, but do a search for "MacTCP Ping".

Irrelevant. He doesn't need the app, the users he supports do. Getting MacTCP Ping on all their machines is a somewhat non-trivial deployment issue even when they're not having problems with their nyetwork in the first place.

--

Re:useless integral tools of mac os.

[stripes]

tell me about it... i do tech support for dsl, and it doesn't help that there's no damned _ping_ that comes with the unit. amazing how a machine built for networking since the beginning has none of the tools you'd expect.

Eh? OSX (at least PB2) has ping, it also has ssh, and apparently a telnet (I've never used it). It also has traceroute. Oh, and vi (so it isn't a network tool, but it is funny to see it on a Mac...).

Unfortunitly it also seems to have a lame DHCP client (how do you get it to ask for a new lease? Down the interface, delete all addresses, and bring it up; what do you do if networking vanishes for no reason? Try flushing the ARP cache).

short answer

[realkiwi]

The short answer is "Yes".

But having used Linux since 1997 the long answer is more complex:

I would prefer using Dreamweaver/Fireworks on a Mac to running in VMware on NT. But I want X so that I can continue using the GIMP.

I would still run Linux servers.

I would still run M$ OS in VMware to validate web pages - so I still need an i386 Linux workstation.

Re:short answer

[0tim0]

But I want X so that I can continue using the GIMP

As I understand it, they've already ported an X-server than runs side by side with the Mac gui. So you'll be able to run the GIMP as a native OS X app...

--t

Re:Check this

[packphour]

I hate humans, they're so gross.

Dumping Linux

[cnladd]

Why dump Linux on MacOS?

Sure, the new MacOSX is based on BSD and everything, and it's already been proven that it's possible to port to it, but does that mean that it's time to dump Linux for it?

Why?

There are two main reasons to use Linux, depending on your personal beliefs. Either you feel that the Open Source way of doing things is better and should be supported or you feel that Linux has a better kernel.

This question is rather equivalent to asking if you should dump Linux just because Cygwin is available for Windows. Sure, you *could* dump Linux for MacOSX, but people aren't using Linux PPC just because they want a UNIX-like OS on their G4 - the reasons usually go deeper than that.

Nathan Ladd

--

Re:Dumping Linux

[Darchmare]

---
but people aren't using Linux PPC just because they want a UNIX-like OS on their G4 - the reasons usually go deeper than that.
---

Do you really think that?

I disagree. Those people most likely bought those G4s and old versions of Mac OS in the past, but needed Linux for various reasons (quite likely a stable server platform, development, scientific apps, etc).

While they aren't as vocal, I really do believe that there are more people out there attracted to Linux for practical reasons versus those attracted for ideological reasons.

The reality, I think, is this: If LinuxPPC is as good or better as Mac OS X for any reason, it'll stick around. It could even stick around in a limited form for those who use it for ideological reasons. But I don't think Apple will have to worry about it cutting into Mac OS X sales unless their OS either sucks or costs too much.

I don't know about the pricing, but for most people who just want to get work done and aren't part of any 'movement', I'm not sure LinuxPPC will have the same appeal it had before (unless someone wraps a really really good and consistant UI around Linux - good luck).

- Jeff A. Campbell

Re:Dumping Linux

[spitzak]

I use Linux because I want a Unix environment, not for any idelogical reasons. I would probably be using MicroSoft's stuff today if they were not so gratuitously incompatable with Unix

MicroSoft threw out fixes in OS design made by K&R in 1970, such as raw files, simplified file naming with only one reserved character (/), the ability to name objects other than disk files with the same interface as files. Then they took this stuff containing errors that were fixed over THIRTY years ago and have the gall to call it "new technology".

I actually believe that if MicroSoft had shown some technical class, humility, and a bit of respect for standards, then Linux would be for hobbyists only, and me and many other computer professionals would happily use their closed-source systems. However they blew it with their own arrogant and ignorant behavior.

Interesting, but...

[Fat Rat Bastard]

I think issue only effects a small subset of Mac users, mainly hackers (in the right sense of the word). For everyday users, like my mom, who I believe make up the bulk of the non-business market for Apple OS9 does everything they need it to do, and does it fairly well. She checks her e-mail, types a letter or two, updates Quicken, and surfs (oh... and watches the odd DVD here and there). The system is never really taxed and AFAIK has yet to crash on her. Now, on the business user end of things, beyond the multimedia market (who probably run OS9 for creation type stuff... maybe Linux/*BSD for rendering) If people are using Linux/*BSD on Mac boxes the stability/support/*nix nature of OSX may bring 'em back.

Re:Interesting, but...

[stripes]

The system is never really taxed and AFAIK has yet to crash on her.

Really? Does she use the web at all? OS9's MSIE crashed about twice a day for me, and Netscape made the system plenty unresponsave. Oddly enough OSX's MSIE crashes way way less offen (once in the week I have had it), which is kinda odd given that it is a beta of a product for a beta OS that it is more stable then their release product for a release OS.

I do hope Apple gets people to go from OS9 to OSX. If Apple can finish up device support for OSX and get the finder a little more usable I don't see much advantage to sticking with OS9.

Re:Interesting, but...

[Fat Rat Bastard]

Really? Does she use the web at all?

Not as far as I know. I give the box a good kicking whenever I visit and it seems to be pretty stable. MSIE has a bit of a problem rendering /. in nested form, but that's about it. Then again, my parents have installed nothing beyond what came with the machine so there are not a lot of weird extensions (well, weirder than average) mucking things up either. Plus, she never really goes to too many taxing sites. Yahoo, the BBC, CNN.

witless mac users.

[saintlupus]

For most Mac users, the last thing they want to use is the "tech-savvy" requirements of a Linux desktop

they wouldn't have used linuxppc in the first place, and the question is, after all, would they switch back. personally, the mac is my favored platform -- and i'm also running netbsd and getting together a linux box.

and no, i don't like graphics work either. see? we're not all poncy art students, just like linux users aren't all socially maladjusted virgins.

--saint
----

Re:witless mac users.

[Bongo]

we're not all poncy art students, just like linux users aren't all socially maladjusted virgins.

Feel very very sorry for those who dual boot... them poncy socially malajusted virgin art students !!!

Re:witless mac users.

[ahde]

poncy sure sounds like something an artsy type would say.

Re:witless mac users.

[Rhyn]

Well said!

For most Mac users, the last thing they want to use is the "tech-savvy" requirements of a Linux desktop

As opposed to most PC users, who are all "tech-savvy" and have no problem with being a 1337 linux hax0r, right? Seriously, just by using marketshare and the percentage of tech-morons to tech-heads in the general populace, there are a lot more morons using PCs than Macs.

Even when their Mac couldn't do what they wanted, they still tried to keep as close to their Macs as possible rather than doing the sensible thing and getting a Wintel box.

Ah, get over yourself already. Just because you might not be able to find the program or technique to do something on a Mac doesn't mean it doesn't exist. True computer gurus are comfortable and competent with all platforms. PC (or Mac) tech-weenie bigots can go shove their oversized heads in the toilet and flush. Repeatedly. I'm allowed to say this because I own and enjoy both a Mac and a PC. Have a nice day! =)

Rhyn

Linux vs BSD

[boboroshi]

Well, if OS X was running on the linux kernel, it would be pretty straight forward. I think it's the issue between people who use FreeBSD or BSDi vs those who use Linux and it's variants today. (or LinuxPPC vs. NetBSD). Are the apps avaialble? And "Can I work on this system?" I think people who use LinuxPPC because they wanted to use Linux on a mac will stay with it. Those that wanted to use LinuxPPC to get any unix variant on a mac will probably be more prone to switch mainly due to the following reasons:

1. backwards capability (classic layer)
2. large developers porting up to the BSD core (Alias/Wavefront porting Maya for example).
3. Possibility of payed tech support with Applecare

[This assumes that most LinuxPPC users use the mac because they like(d) the mac, it's applications, and it's hardware, but wanted to either outfit an older machine to serve as part of their network (OS X won't run without a g3/g4 chip) or have an iMac or something that they have linux on because, well, it's that good :)]

I don't think people will Leave linuxppc outright, but they might slowly migrate to OS X over the course of the next 2 years or so as the system develops further.

// john athayde
# x@boboroshi.com
# http://www.boboroshi.com/

Re:stop

[Cannonball]

Do you know anything about Mac OS X? It's been designed from the ground up to be more like WinNT in terms of features. The built in terminal application handles telnet, handles ping and other network tools, in otherwords, you're badly misinformed. Read up on OS X hereor here. Then come back and talk some more.

Re:stop

[realkiwi]

Better Telnet

There are some very good networking tools from Stairways software in Australia. Often better than open source ones...

my personal experience

[ragnar]

As a regular user of Mac OS X I can say that it has staved off any desire for me to jump ship to LinuxPPC. I'm aware of some limitations and quirks with Mac OS X, however it satisfies enough of my need for more power to settle my restlessness. Before Mac OS X I almost always had my mac set to dual boot into some other OS, but these days I live in comfort with one OS on my mac. Of course, I admin a bunch of other boxen so my fingers don't get rusty to other systems, but I think it is a good workstation OS for my purposes.

Interview with the LinuxPPC guy

[systmc]

For those of you who missed it: Jason Haas on LinuxPPC. It's an interview that was on Slashdot recently.

Ease of use? Hello?

[fhwang]

How can somebody write an article about the MacOS and not at all mention ease of use? That's the number one concrete selling point of the OS (as opposed to the marketing selling point, which is look & feel, a related but separate point.) This article just seemed so typical of the tunnel-vision that some open-source folks get. Tobin writes that since LinuxPPC et. al are open-source, "anybody can tinker and edit the entire system to their heart's content." Those words are positive to an experienced hacker, but to the average letter-writing & game-playing user, those words translate to "You will waste your entire weekend typing in commands you don't understand, just to get your video card to work."

But for what it's worth, I think the MacOS's lead in usability has shrunk drastically in the last couple of years -- Steve Jobs seems far more interested in marketing flash than actually aiding the user these days. I haven't used the OSX betas, but I don't have high hopes for them. That might be a reason for me to switch to Linux at some point. Usability is far more important to me that serious stability & scalability: Not every user wants to host a server in their home.

Re:stop

[simpl3x]

tis true. mac os has been a pain in the _ss from the ground up. but next was/is different, specifically due to the bsd underpinnings. i really do look forward to a mac that will play nice in the network neighborhood. but, given that osx "may" compete a little too well with linuxppc, i think apple should invest and finance a good outside linux and darwin development unit. 2c.

Slightly OS X centric?

[Faulty Dreamer]

Maybe it was just me, but didn't that article seem to be written by someone that seriously was just trying to say, "MacOS X will be your new operating system."

I know the person writing it wasn't trying to be biased, but in all honesty, it seemed like maybe he just didn't quite seem to have a middle-line grasp for why someone does use LinuxPPC. Not that there's anything wrong with that, to each his own and all that. But I don't think that his conclusions are complete correct.

Yes, MacOS X is going to give some nice features for open source advocates and Linux users. However, if you are a Linux user, there is that little problem that any "OS Conversion" attempt has to overcome. That being, the mentality in the to be converted that they already have a system doing what they want it to do, and they know how to get the job done. It's the same reason that Windows is still as prevalent as it is. And the reason that Linux didn't just disappear when Win2K came out (which the article touched on).

I think there is far more to people using LinuxPPC than just because of the Unixness of it over the 'old' MacOS. There is also the fact that some people just don't want to use commercial OSes (no matter how much 'non-commercial' stuff is in it). There is the fact that some people actually enjoy using Linux as it is. There is the fact that some people (that own older Mac hardware, or even newer) that disagree with the philosophies that drive MacOS development (the people that see ease-of-use as dumbing down). And there are countless other reasons that some people just don't want to use MacOS and would rather use LinuxPPC. Some people may even buy Macs just for the purpose of running LinuxPPC (I know a few that have done just that). Why would they dump the OS that they chose just to run the OS that is the most popular?

I understand the point of the article, MacOS X does provide a few of the same positive points as LinuxPPC. But I disagree with the implied conclusion that everyone should just dump LinuxPPC in favor of OS X. And I disagree with the stated conclusion that people "cannot" have an objection to MacOS X. The hardliners are still going to say it isn't Open Source (and they would be right for the graphical systems). And the Linux users that are out there aren't going to just roll over and say, "Well, I guess Apple is right." Just like the i86 users didn't just roll over and install Win2K when it came out. MacOS X may have a few more advantages than Win2K, but there is still plenty to be desired if you are a Linux user/advocate. At least, in my opinion there is.

Re:Slightly OS X centric?

[Darchmare]

Well, the thing to remember is those of us who have supported LinuxPPC may not be quite the same group of people who are seen in the mainstream Linux community.

From my (admittedly limited) observations and experience, LinuxPPC users tend to be pretty pragmatic when it comes to the technology they use. Many or most of us have had Macs for years, and are unencumbered by the ideological biases that seems a bit more common in the main Linux community. While there are certainly some open-source and/or free software advocates out there, most of us simply want to get the job done with the best tools available.

As I'm sure most of you know, the current Mac OS isn't exactly a high end server platform. Linux allows you to take your older Mac hardware and put it to use in such an environment. As it is, there's a whole lot of stuff I can do running PHP/Perl and MySQL on LinuxPPC that I wouldn't even bother thinking about using Mac OS. The latter is only of interest to me for workstation stuff (which is important too).

Mac OS X changes that. All of the practical benefits of Linux are pretty much there, but wrapped into an interface we can actually enjoy using and feel productive with. Rather than being forced to learn two user interfaces, we can focus on one that bears a strong resemblence with what we're used to (note that I have some reservations with the OSX UI, but it appears to be getting a bit better with each release).

Just remember, LinuxPPC users may not be exactly like the mainstream Linux community. These are people who at some point in the past have bought Apple's proprietary hardware and software, and didn't consider it blasphemy. We just needed something that Apple until now could not provide. :>


- Jeff A. Campbell

I've already switched!

[thaigan]

I've already removed my LinuxPPC and installed MacOS X beta. It gives me the power of Unix with the usablility of the MacOS. I can have the power I want and my wife and I have an extremely user friendly interface to use without rebooting. I'm a developer that lives in Linux at work and I'd dump my install of Linux for MacOS X in a heartbeat.

I dumped LinuxPPC for Debian

[alexgould]

It's much more well designed and now comes in ppc. Hooray for Debian!

OSX is great... if you want to buy new gear.

[tenzig_112]

For PPC systems, LinuxPPC and Be seem to be the only options. Without a G4, you are basically hosed.

Mac OSX Works Well - On Five Computers In US

Apple Investors Rejoice

ridiculopathy.com

Re:stop

[Golias]

There are plenty of Telnet and SSH clients out there for the Mac. I am using one on a Mac in my office today. I think the problems you hare having with the MacOS lie somewhere between the office chair and the keyboard.

Speaking as a Mac User

[Auckerman]

Couple years ago, before I sold my Performa 6116CD and bought my Rev C iMac, I tried installing MKLinux to see if I could breath new life into it. I found out, in a word, no. I could not breath new life into it. I didn't have the time to learn how to "properly" set up "linux". Then I tried LinuxPPC 2K on my iMac, just to see if that progressed. Nope, couldn't do that either. Then, 5 months ago, I built a x86 based PC to use as an additional web browser (MacOS X PB running NATD sharing PPP). I downloaded BeOS R5, Mandrake 7.1, RedHat 6.5, RedHat 7.1. I couldn't get any of the Linux distribs to what i consider a useable state. All supported hardware. I could get BeOS to a useable state in a matter of minutes.

Point of the story. I wanted Linux to work. I wanted to try it. I'm not uneducated. I work on IRIX 6.5 all day at work (3 years now). I just don't want to think about my home computer. Linux made me think significantly more than MacOS X (which by the way, the ONLY thing I set up was PPP, the rest "just worked").

So, I would expect MacOS users to choose MacOS X over Linux any day. I will buy a G4 to get the most out of MacOS X, even if it is more expensive than a PC. At least with a Mac I wont have to struggle to work with my computer, the computer will work for me.

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[b1t r0t]

I couldn't get any of the Linux distribs to what i consider a useable state.

If by a "useable state" you mean as a desktop machine with a GUI, I understand what you mean. For me, Linux is my OS, but MacOS is my window manager. Basically, I have a PC running Linux sitting next to my Mac doing all sorts of server type things, but I still use the Mac to do desktop type things.

Unfortunately, I don't find OS X to be all that useable as a desktop yet, in terms of its pathetic clone of the Finder, which throws away all the subtle aspects of useability. Plus that stupid dock, which takes up precious vertical screen space and prevents you from using the both lower corners of the screen when it is short. (An option for a vertical dock dangling from the menu bar would be a small improvement.)

Right now I'm keeping it installed on my Pismo 500 so I can show it off to some Linux folks over the next week or so. Then I'll probably trash it until somebody fixes the problem with the boot managers screwing up RAM Doubler 9.

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[spoonyfork]

A sound posting to be sure, but I have to take issue with the versions of Redhat you installed. 6.5 and 7.1? I thought they jumped from 6.2 to 7.0 and haven't release a 7.1 yet. Perhaps I missed a press release...

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[proxima]

I downloaded BeOS R5, Mandrake 7.1, RedHat 6.5, RedHat 7.1

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, or if this was just a typo. Last I checked, there is no such thing as RedHat 6.5, nor 7.1. The latest release of the 6.x series is 6.2 (which I'm running on my laptop), and the latest of the 7.x series is 7.0.

To deal with what the post is really saying, I have to agree, to some extent. Many people should just be able to stick in a disk and have it all work. However, those people should not expect the world out of their OS, be that in stability, usability, customizability, etc (enough ilities I think). Windows and Mac OS may be easy to install, but IMO Windows is unstable and Mac OS is a slow interface (easy to learn, hard to get things done really really quickly - no use of scripts or command line, etc). I'm forced to use Mac OS 9, Windows (95, 98, 2000, Me, NT 4.0, the works) on various computers, as well as RH Linux (which I run by choice on my server and now my laptop), and Mac OS. I far prefer Linux in terms of the OS, but I do admit that hardware support and application support just isn't there yet.

As a final note, I think it's pretty sad that you do not wish to think about your home computer. To expect everything to work and not know what your computer does and why it does it is just ignorance, and no one should desire that.

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[Auckerman]

"A sound posting to be sure, but I have to take issue with the versions of Redhat you installed. 6.5 and 7.1? I thought they jumped from 6.2 to 7.0 and haven't release a 7.1 yet. Perhaps I missed a press release... "

You didn't miss a release. This is called typing without thinking....I installed 7.0

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[AugstWest]

As a final note, I think it's pretty sad that you do not wish to think about your home computer. To expect everything to work and not know what your computer does and why it does it is just ignorance, and no one should desire that.

Like the original poster, I work in a unix environment most of the time, and I work in w2k the rest of the time. Lately I've been working 6 days a week, 12-14 hour days.

At this point, my machine at home is used for nothing but occasional surfing and email. It's an appliance, a communications device.

I shouldn't have to think about it. Once I've installed the OS and added DNS, and IP address and a gateway, I shouldn't have to think any further.

Most of the population isn't interested in hacking. Maybe on IRC and on /. they are, but outside, the people you meet in the Big Blue Room don't want to have to think about it.

I'm looking for a simple appliance to put into the kitchen which will handle email and looking up recipes and occasionally checking web pages. I'd like to plug it in, just like the toaster, to an electrical outlet, then plug in the ethernet cable, maybe set the IP settings, and be done. Plain and simple.

This is not sad. This is reality.

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[TWR]

As a final note, I think it's pretty sad that you do not wish to think about your home computer. To expect everything to work and not know what your computer does and why it does it is just ignorance, and no one should desire that.

Do you own a car? A washing machine? A refrigerator? A microwave? A TV? A blender? Do you know how those things work? Do you want to spend time fixing the blender's motor or do you want to make a milkshake?

A computer is a tool. It does stuff for you. Making the tool hard to use doesn't make it better, it makes it worse.

-jon

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[Auckerman]

"As a final note, I think it's pretty sad that you do not wish to think about your home computer. To expect everything to work and not know what your computer does and why it does it is just ignorance, and no one should desire that."

Right now, I'm stitting at our lab G4. Right next to me is an SGI indy, Right next to that is an Octane, behind me is an O2, in the room next to me are several O2's and an 1Ghz Athalon running RedHat. Day in, day out, I deal with bash, perl, nawk, and monitoring jobs (most of which are iteration scripts, so they can be stopped on error without loosing work).

The last thing I want to do when I got home is teach my fiancee who to launch and use the assorted Linux aps. The last thing I want to do when I go home is worry about what net services are running (by default), so that I don't have some l337 5cr1p7 k1dd13 jumping on my home LAN and Hax0r1ng my machine to do God knows what. The last thing I want to do when I go home is use those shitty open source Linux apps, whose usability are easily questioned. Last thing I want to do if read how to get X-Windows to be hardware acclerated. I don't want to figure out how to get 3-D graphics working. I don't want to figureout how to use that Gnome Panel . I don't want to figure out how to add something to the gnome menu. I don't care. It should work on install. If it doesn't, it's NOT my fault.

MacOS X lets me USE my computer with large uptimes and not have the pain on figuring anything out. Brickwall, lets me configure ipfw with the greatest of east. Sharity lets me mount Windows volumes. IE lets me browse the web. All my desktop apps work including Photoshop (which is infinitely better than GIMP). The user interface is not something to be challenged or tamed. It just works.

I do care how my machine works, I just don't want to know how to make it work because the installer is shit, because no thought was put into useability testing (as with the problem with Linux). My Mac is NOT a toy its something to get work done, my PC is a toy, its something to make work. As far as you comment on my versions I installed, well simply answered I didn't remeber the versions exactly. I use IRIX 6.5 (which is where the 6.5 number came from, although I could have swore I got an RedHat 6.5 ISO and not a 6.2...) and I installed Mandrake 7.1 (which is where Redhat 7.1 came from, although right after I clicked submit I knew that was wrong).

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[cvd6262]

When I first decided to build my own computer, most of my art friends thought I was crazy. They said my time was worth the extra expense to buy a pre-built compaq or dell. What they didn't understand, no matter how much I told them, is that I gain more in education from doing it myself than I save in money.

Dell D costs X, homemade box costs Y, knowledge Z > (X - Y)

It's been a few years now, but one of the art guys I know, who always said he would go for prebuilt, inherited an old 166 from his grandfather and was cuirous about upgrading it. Now he knows as much about hardware as I do and is happy he did.

Many of my firends wanted to know why in the world I would want to get into Linux. Surely, I'm not enough of a power user to justify the added frustration. However, in the short period I have been running Linux, it is amazing how much I've learned.

The power is incredible. StarOffice (which I prefer for it's foreign language capabilities) is now my processor of choice and I installed it on my Winbox. But I truely feel that the benefit Linux has been to me is the knowledge I've gained form using it. Getting my PCTEL modem to work is a challenge, but I came away from it with much more than before.

I for one hope that Linux does not make the main stream desktop market as it is. I do not want to fight through dumbed-down interfaces to do what I want. AND I want to be able to see what my computer is doing.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[daniell]

MKLinux a few years back was painful, it still is sort of. I actually had to low-level format my scsi drive or it would cause the kernel to crash at boot-time when trying to scan the bus.

Anyway, I would suggest 2 things when using a unix on the PPC.

• use NetBSD, particularly good if you're used to a more BSD way of life. Wasabi has a bootable CD
• use Debian. Granted it takes some reading to get a bootable CD going, but there are iso images available now. debian site

  The problems I've had with redhat based systems on the PPC (like Linuxppc2000 or YDL) have been numerous, ranging from default installs that don't install dependancies correctly (like kerberos for sshd) to a GCC compiler suite that cores when you try and build anything with a "warning! internal compiler error" message. It's sick.

  -Daniel

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[IanA]

You work on IRIX and can't setup Redhat 7.1?
what do you do on IRIX, XBill?
Anyone who considers themselves intelligent and cannot work with redhat = not as smart as they thought
I had redhat 5.0 working well when i was 12, IT IS NOT DIFFICULT

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[RedWizzard]

Do you own a car? A washing machine? A refrigerator? A microwave? A TV? A blender? Do you know how those things work? Do you want to spend time fixing the blender's motor or do you want to make a milkshake?

A computer is a tool. It does stuff for you. Making the tool hard to use doesn't make it better, it makes it worse.

Heard that analogy before and like most analogies it's obviously flawed. Here's a better one:

A computer is like a workshop. It can contain the tools necessary for the job at hand. You still need to know how to use the tools, where they are, how to plug them in and switch them on, what combination of tools are necessary to do the job.

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[RedWizzard]

What they didn't understand, no matter how much I told them, is that I gain more in education from doing it myself than I save in money.

Dell D costs X, homemade box costs Y, knowledge Z > (X - Y)

There's your problem: you tried to explain something to your art friends using logic, and worse, an equation. What were you thinking?

Re:Speaking as a Mac User

[LafinJack]

Wee! Stereotypical AC linux end-all be-all advocate!

Moderate me as you will.

More probable scenario IMHO...

[JCCyC]

...is people failing to do the jump from MacOS to Linux -- when OSX starts to come bundled in every Mac. Especially if it runs a few select *nix apps well (e.g. Apache, Gimp).

AFAIK it's impossible to buy a Mac without also buying MacOS... right? I'm not a Mac guy... is Apple still mercilessly crushing any and all attempt at cloning?

Re:More probable scenario IMHO...

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Yes, this is the real risk to MkLinux (which would be installed on my PowerMac 6100, if it were on a desk and connected to power. Never did get ppp running on it, though...) and LinuxPPC.

When OS X ships as the standard MacOS, there will be precious little reason to move to LinuxPPC. I am a unix geek (hey, it pays the bills), and a Mac geek (since I wrote my Master's thesis in 1986, on a Mac plus). I will have no reason to use LinuxPPC. I will buy MacOS X shortly after it is released.

I can already code in Perl, Java, Python, and Tcl/Tk on MacOS, sometimes with slight differences. MacOS X puts a real flavor of Unix underneath, so I don't have to take any steps (like saving and rebooting) to balance the checkbook, pay taxes, write letters, or get my snapshots polished and up on the web. In a few months more, I'll be editing video. Best of Both Worlds.

Would Linux i386 users pay $99 for a package that let them run the latest Win2000 applications on their Linux box, with full vendor support?

Re:More probable scenario IMHO...

[maggard]

Yep - cloning is theft of intellectual property. The only reason that it was possible on PC's was by clean-room reverse-engineering and an OS vendor willing to sell to anybody. There have been a few Mac attempts long ago but few met with any success.

On the other hand if you're referring to the former Mac licensees (a very fundamental difference) then you're likely also right. Apple went into that expecting it's licensees would go into markets it couldn't make money in like the low end, extreme high end, consumer products and some foreign sales. Instead they ended up costing more then they brought in then they started eating into Apple's own markets.

Apple did what anyone would do - shut down the projects that were both bleeding it dry and costing it sales. I hardly see how there's anything offensive about that.

Re:LinuxPPC - Will OSX work with clones ?

[BusterISK]

Whether I buy OSX will depend on whether it will work with my Power Computing PowerCurve system. This computer has a 350mhz G3 upgrade card and ATI XCLAIM 3D video card. . . So it should have the horsepower necessary to run Mac OSX . . . I now use MacOS 8.6 and LinuxPPC 1999. LinuxPPC is a great distribution but I would consider switching to MacOS X because there are far fewer applications written for non X86 Linux platforms. Does anyone know if OSX will run on non-Apple clone machines? i.e. (PowerComputing,Motorola,etc)

Re:stop

[localman]

Mr. Wray, are you trolling? Your comment is based on complete ignorance. We are talking about OS X here, which not only has a telnet client built in, it also has ssh, apache, perl, ftp, etc, etc, etc. 8.5 is ancient history. Windows 3.1 didn't come with TCP/IP. This millenium we're a bit further a long, thank god.

Since when does Linux run Mac software?

[Otis_INF]

...In the past years, many Mac users have sought out Linux for a number of reasons. Whether they were looking for a system that was open source, faster, or more reliable, Linux was a viable alternative.

Excuse me, but since years there are just a few reasons why people buy Apple Macintoshes and not other software: 1) some markets are mainly Apple: print, DTP etc 2) people like the ease of use of an apple and the logic and design of the OS.

Since when is Linux then an alternative? it's not, it cannot offer the same functionality just because it's a total different OS. So I find it very hard to believe 'many mac users' were looking for an alternative to MacOS.

Sure, the few die-hard macfans who ran their servers using MacOS server were perhaps changing to LinuxPPC, but than again... is LinuxPPC able to produce the same AppleTalk performance as MacOS server can? Dunno, but I think the ONLY people who ran LinuxPPC on a Mac were those who were liking the PPC hardware more than the x86 and didn't have the money to buy an alpha or sparc powered machine. I mean.. if you want to run linux, what hardware do you get? 1) an expensive G4 2) an x86 based PC (and very cheap compared to 1)) 3) an alpha workstation/server and 4) a sun workstation. I bet a lot will say: 2), because I get the most hardware for the least amount of money. I also bet not a lot will say: 1), because I think Apple makes the best hardware there is.

So LinuxPPC is not an OS variant with millions of possible users. If you think about the reasons why most macusers bought a mac in the first place, you'll also know that MacOSX is the nail on LinuxPPC's coffin, except for those (all 3 of them) who keep the G4 AND linuxPPC.
--

Re:Since when does Linux run Mac software?

[3.1415926535]

ease of use of an apple and the logic and design of the OS.

I won't get into the whole "ease of use" issue, but have you ever, even once, looked at the way MacOS works? The whole duct-tape-and-string toolbox-and-interrupts mess of it? It's TERRIBLE! It's a surprise the whole things works as well as it does, let alone works at all. MacOS X is a step in the right direction that Microsoft took when they went to Windows NT and Apple should have taken with Be or, failing that, NeXT. That Apple stayed with their crufty, awful, MacOS is a tribute to their stupiditiy.
</rant>

Switchover Re:Slightly OS X centric?

[kbs]

I'm one of those people who switched to Mac (in anticipation) for Mac OS X. The only reason I continued to use a Windows box was twofold: Professional music creation programs, and the fact I'm normally too lazy to deal with most set up issues.

After trying OS X beta (and giving away my windoze box), I have to say that I'm incredibly happy I made the switchover. It has been an incredibly expensive proposition, but at least it has everything I use, and for anything I *don't* have, I can (most of the times) grab some GNU stuff, and compile it on my own. Most of the time, though, I just sit there happily clicking the buttons.

Though the article might have a particular bias, I think the system addresses enough of the issues that the moderates had. Now, if only they had a native X server implementation... hm....


yours,

Re:Switchover Re:Slightly OS X centric?

[Faulty Dreamer]

That's cool for you, and seriously, I've considered purchasing a Mac just to try out OS X (but will definitely wait until it has been out a while first).

But, you represent another perspective from the people that use LinuxPPC. You are someone, as you said, that purchased a Mac just for OS X. I think that OS X will probably gain a lot more support from Windows/ex-Windows users than it will from the hard-core Unix/Linux crowd. Don't get me wrong, there will be some converts I'm sure (the ability to cross-compile easily will help a lot I'm sure), but I doubt we will see a massive migration from LinuxPPC users. At least, I doubt we will, but I could be proven wrong.

And, BTW, as the first "consumer" (god I hate that word) operating system based on Unix, I really hope that OS X takes off big time. I would love to see Unix become more of a mainstream OS, and less of a "Ewwwww, you use Unix!?" type of OS. But, that's just me I guess.

Re:Switchover Re:Slightly OS X centric?

[Faulty Dreamer]

OK, how about I say, as the first "consumer" OS of the late 90's-early 00's to have a Unix base?

a user's perspective

[pohl]

My family is probably an odd case, but all four of us have our own machines in the same room, and they're all iMacs or G4s. One of the reasons that I went this way is that the CPUs don't need an additional cooling fan, which really adds up when you're talking about four boxes in a room with wood floors. All of these machines have both a Debian/PPC partition and a MacOS/9 partition. When MacOS X is released, we'll switch over, and keep the Debain partitions. I love my Sawmill environment too much to give it up, and FreeCIV hasn't been ported to MacOS X yet anyway. Even if it were, the real game is the computer, and it's more fun on freenix than anywhere else, IMO.

if apple would outs ource their UNIX (Mac OS-X)

[peter303]

They'd get more developer attention like Linux.
However, Steve is not big open source fan.

Re:if apple would outs ource their UNIX (Mac OS-X)

[mattreilly]

Well, Apple did "out source" their Unix. It's called Darwin and it is released under an open source license that has just been made even more open and filled with goodness.

cheers,

Matthew

Linux vs. MacOS X

[Parsec]

I can't really speak for other Mac/Linux users, but I know I've been waiting almost desperately for X.

Not to knock GNU/Linux on things, but the vast majority of developers copy the poor Windows GUI. Thus I have stuck with the Mac while using a Linux box for the few things I can't do with MacOS 9. Which are basically Apache, PHP, & MySQL on a PC with two connections: power and ethernet.

The lack of pre-emptive multitasking usually doesn't get in the way. The errors forcing a reboot are not really any worse than WinNT. So it comes down to the multiple monitors and interface that doesn't get in the way of how I work, and the closest thing I've seen yet is the old SunOS desktop.

Sorry for rambling on...

finding tools for macOS

[Numeric]

Probably the best site for Mac tools/utlities is versiontracker.com. Try Nifty Telnet, I found this to be the "best" for the Mac. There's also a Nifty SSH client as well. If you want to do tracerouters, PINGs, etc... try What Router

Re:Yeah, right.

[Schnedt Microne]

He means 'free as in speech.'

Did that sail right over your head??

already done

[iso]

well as i've already commented here, i have a lot of trouble finding a good reason to use LinuxPPC over MacOS X

i've used many incarnations of Linux on Apple computers, including LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog. i found that in both cases they were akward and buggy compared to similar Linux installations on my x86 box. i run linux regularly on this x86 machine but after years of trying LinuxPPC, i have given up on it completely except when i absolutely need it.

i found that just about every software program that i use on x86, including relatively "critical" software, like my window managers and GUI (WindowMaker, KDE, Gnome) were completely unusable due to the number of bugs i encountered. Linux PPC was outright useless on my Powerbook G3, as i would experience at a kernel panic every couple of days. and despite getting help from the Usenet, mailing lists and web boards, i just couldn't find a suitible fix for the problem. i've been a linux user since 1994, and i have never had as many problems running linux x86 in all those years as i've had running LinuxPPC in the last two years.

with regards to MacOS X, i've been running it since DP3, and i've been very happy with it. it's been very stable, i'm quite fond of Aqua (though it did take some getting used to) especially with the recent changes in the latest developer builds. it runs all my old MacOS 9 programs, it's got all the command-line utilities i could ever want, and Project Builder is a joy to develop in.

MacOS X isn't perfect of course: it's quite sluggish and requires a lot of RAM, but this is getting better with each new build, and isn't a problem at all if you don't need to run classic (and with any luck, the applications i'll need will be carbonized soon, and i can do away with classic all together). actually the speed of MacOS X without running classic is completely reasonable, even on my old G3.

what it comes down to is that Linux is really meant for x86. all major development is done for Intel first, and porting to PPC is an afterthought at best. this is certainly true for any third-party applications. i can't see using LinuxPPC as a server, as that seems like a job that would be more cost-effective done on an x86 box. and as a desktop machine, MacOS X beats it hands down. i will glady throw away LinuxPPC as soon as a reliable X-Server can be run on MacOS X.

so remind me again why i should be running LinuxPPC? maybe it sounds like i've been drinking the Apple Kool-Aid, but i'm completely sold on MacOS X.

- j

Re:already done

[frohike]

Where I worked a year or so ago, we had a nice dilemma: we had one available PC machine, and they needed an NT server. So the choice was to go back to using an NT server for our "workgroup" or find a new machine to use as the workgroup server and put NT on the PC box anyway. The choice was obvious. We took a G3 we had laying around and I put LinuxPPC on it. As far as using it as a graphical user machine, it was not the swiftest thing in the world. There was not really any gfx card support to speak of (can you say frame buffer?) and we had a lot of trouble getting it onto the machine, but once that was done it performed like a champ. In fact it performed better than a champ. Once we got that done, we were all happy we had switched the box, NT or no. The G3 was a better performer for what we were using and a PC was freed up for its castra.... I mean new OS. ;-) At this point I'd really like to get myself a G3, I think it would still outperform a lot of the newer machines. That said though, for the price and compatability perspective, the Athlon is looking a lot more attractive. Although there is something funny about the idea of running LinuxPPC on a G3, running something like SheepShaver on Linux, and then running VirualPC under that for everything else =)

Re:already done

[iso]

yeah, the G3 is actually a really nice chip. if you'd like a cost-effective G3, why not pick up a used Blue&White on eBay? (preferably a "Rev 2," since the Rev 1 had some little annoyances) they're a great design, easy to get in and out of, and very upgradeable. by far the nicest computer i've ever owned.

with regards to your comment, this is the only place i can see LinuxPPC working: a situation where you happen to have an extra Mac kicking around, and need a small server set up. still, i would imagine that in the near future it would be best to install Darwin on these machines. it seems considerably more stable, and can compile just about everything application that compiles for LinuxPPC with minimal effort, especially commandline (i.e. server) tools.

at any rate, i'd imagine that only the most stubborn people will be running LinuxPPC a year from now.

- j

Re:already done

[arseydoohli]

I'm feeling like an ass to do that but, well you can't imagine how extatic I am at this time. I'm emptying my hard drive, and by tomorrow I'll luckily have switched to x86. End of ppc/linux. It was kind of fun being sysadmin of my ppc, but I got more fun stuff to do. It's an x86 world!!! As to mosX I'm not quite impressed either! so pissed off having bought my g3 with osX in mind and ending up with some SLUGGISH GUI. On a g3 with plenty of ram. Hell. Support on mailing lists has been nice though, but I'm fed up. my 5 centimes.

Re:already done

[tricorn]

still, i would imagine that in the near future it would be best to install Darwin on these machines. it seems considerably more stable, and can compile just about everything application that compiles for LinuxPPC with minimal effort, especially commandline (i.e. server) tools.

Except that Darwin won't run on older machines, certainly not on Nubus machines. When I got a new Mac (clone), my old desktop machine, a 6100/60, became a mail gateway machine running MkLinux. Part of the decision was actually technical, because the code we were using had originally been on a Sun 3 and had some byte-order dependencies. Other portions of code had been developed on x86 Linux.

That machine is still running, although we upgraded from DR1 to a more recent version of MkLinux when we needed to upgrade sendmail. There is a small Mac partition that is used only to boot into MkLinux (do they have boot code that works without MacOS yet? I know they made it so it could boot from a Mac file system, which makes installing it a lot easier than the original kludge of porting mke2fs and tar into a Mac console-window application).

Other than a very rare glitch with the virtual paging code, the system has been rock solid, with the only downtimes being a power failure longer than our UPS could handle, a hard drive failure, and reloading the OS to upgrade the kernel and sendmail.

I've also tried some of the earlier versions of LinuxPPC; other than the bootstrap process (where I had fun digging into OpenFirmware; I really wish Intel had adopted that instead of inventing Yet Another Bootstrap Protocol for Itanium), it was almost indisinguishable from an Intel box running Linux.

I've ordered the newest LinuxPPC distribution, which should ship tomorrow or so; first thing I'll do is update it to 2.4.0.

MacOSX is already a failure

[tinic]

I do not agree with his argumentation and comparison of the choices a MacOS user has. One thing he has to understand, and this is the reason people still use MacOS, is that most people only care about the applications they are using. As long as any version of MacOS does the job of running them they will stick with it since this is what they are used to. Only if MacOSX will have the same kind of backward compability those users will think of switching.

My experience with MacOSX is not a good one so far. It sucks 2 or 3 times more resources than Windows2000 and its horribly slow forcing you to buy new powerful hardware, which does not exist since the PowerPC processor speeds are stuck around 500-750Mhz. When you boot MacOSX to the finder you will see that about 25-50% of the virtual address space (around 1GB to 2GB) is gone. Launch some applications and each will take another huge chunk of it. The responsivness of the UI is pathetic, although this is something MacOS users know already.

So why do people choose LinuxPPC? Because they have a Mac and have great difficulties running industry standard applications like apache, nfs servers etc. LinuxPPC makes a great server only OS. I dought that MacOSX will allow you that in the way LinuxPPC allows it with such a small footprint.

Perhaps people will buy new Macs to run MacOSX, but their old machines will have LinuxPPC installed since they can't run MacOSX on them.

Re:MacOSX is already a failure

[maggard]

Perhaps because you're running a beta? In-development OS's aren't tuned, they're still in the process of being assembled. From all reports the later internal releases of MacOS X are an order of magnitude faster then the general beta releases.

Tell, me - do you complain about the texture of a cake when you've pulled it from the oven 1/2-baked?

Re:MacOSX is already a failure

[epaulson]

When you boot MacOSX to the finder you will see that about 25-50% of the virtual address space (around 1GB to 2GB) is gone. Launch some applications and each will take another huge chunk of it.

You do know that each application gets it's own Virtual Address space? (that's why it's called virtual) The finder can use all 4 gigs of it and it doesn't matter - each app gets it's own 4 gigs. The kernel swaps the bits in and out of physical RAM as needed.

Re:MacOSX is already a failure

[Costique]

Mac OS X betas suck too much resources because their code contains a huge portion of debug code, slowing the OS by a large factor. It's getting faster build by build, so this is not a reason to question the OS quality.
Moreover, what did you compare? You ran OS X and Win2000 on the same hardware?! Mac OS in any version is always optimized for Mac hardware, unlike LinuxPPC. The latter is only ported to PPC.

OS 9 -> OS X Migration

[Baconator]

In a year, most Mac users will be using OS X. Most of them will only be dimly aware that they're running UNIX. Rather, they'll be wondering What the hell happened to the Mac interface?

I don't really see MacOS X competing with LinuxPPC except in a very small arena: small shops with servers running on Apple hardware. In most of these cases, OS X will win.

Why? Because it's supported by Apple, and if something goes wrong, they can call up Apple and bitch until someone makes things better.

But for the most part, people who are using LinuxPPC as a workstation will not switch over. They probably like their window manager, and they probably like the performance they get. They probably also don't like the funky NeXT-style layout of the filesystem. Lord knows I don't.

Re:stop

[Meech]

The telnet client is not installed with MacOS. That is about one step down from the lackluster telnet client that comes with windows.

No matter what "big boy" you are going to use, MacOS or Windows, installing a better telnet cleint is a must.

About OSX and LinuxPPC, Mac users are going to switch to OS X because of the fact that they are not going to want to learn linux, and with OS X it is going to be possible to never use a command prompt. If someone is going to install Linux on a Mac then they know what they are doing and should stick with the LinuxPPC.

To make a long story short, linuxPPC is linux and MacOS X is Mac, take your pick.

A note

[jimhill]

The point of the article was not whether people would switch from LinuxPPC to Mac OS in general but whether they'd switch to Mac OS X. You are correct that Mac OS 9 and previous versions are inadequate for the kind of person who would be in a position to consider the switch -- namely, people who are running LinuxPPC now, the power user folks -- but OS X ameliorates (get it? HAW!) many of those deficiencies. With the Darwin panties under its Aqua skirt, OS X provides a platform that combines the interface friendliness of the historical Mac with the ability to install the vast quantity of free|opensource software that we have come to expect...oh, and it also gives you stuff like a modern QuickTime for viewing those sweet movie trailers, like the full-screen one for "Cast Away"...where was I?

(What I found most interesting about the article was the lack of a prominent mention of the fact that at present, you don't get Mac OS X without getting Aqua, and that alone is sufficient to keep me from switching back.)

bad thing/good thing

[bcrawford]

While this may mean that the linux community loses a big (?) chunk of its user base (and maybe a whole platform), It should be remembered that MacOSX is about to put *nix on your grandmothers desktop, we could learn a heck of alot from this.

Re:stop

[WillAdams]

Rather than saying Mac OS X was designed to be like WinNT, say rather WinNT was designed like to one of the abses of Mac OS X, Unix.

WinNT does copy a lot from NeXTstep though, such as its 3D appearance, or drag and drop to the command line from the graphical file manager.

William

--
Lettering Art in Modern Use

The advantages obvious; drawbacks glaring.

[Gendou]

MacOS X looks like it's a real winner. The high quality, well polished system is excellent for those of us who love *nix but also want to have more fun with their system than the average Sid.

But, there's more to this than the quality and vender of the OS. You can't forget those who want to run Linux on their boxen in large part because it is open source and they want to support free software. Although Darwin is open, many parts (the most obvious being Quartz) of OS X are not free and are very proprietary. You can replace it (Quartz) with X, but then what would be the point of running OS X (other than to say you run BSD instead of Linux)? It's a highly commercial operating system and in a few ways, defeats a number of interests of the free software proponent.

Bear in mind that other than pretty windows with shadows, fading menus, and stretchy...uhm, things... what can MacOS X do that Linux can't? (And if you're looking for eye candy, count on the fact that X and wm hackers are going to get jealous of Quartz real quick and build something similar. Hell, the hooks for it are already in Qt.)

Consider this comparison: would a Linux user switch to Xenix (the Unix varient Microsoft created a while back) if it were suddenly updated and released?

Re:The advantages obvious; drawbacks glaring.

[mattreilly]

Bear in mind that other than pretty windows with shadows, fading menus, and stretchy...uhm, things... what can MacOS X do that Linux can't? (And if you're looking for eye candy, count on the fact that X and wm hackers are going to get jealous of Quartz real quick and build something similar. Hell, the hooks for it are already in Qt.)

How about run Mac OS 9 applications stably and easily.

cheers

Matthew

Re:The advantages obvious; drawbacks glaring.

[TWR]

Consider this comparison: would a Linux user switch to Xenix (the Unix varient Microsoft created a while back) if it were suddenly updated and released?

If it let you run Win32 and Win16 apps, had a consistent user interface, provided the same stability as Linux, and cost around $100? Hell, yes. There wouldn't be a viable Linux user base left.

-jon

Re:The advantages obvious; drawbacks glaring.

[VAXGeek]

If it let you run Win32 and Win16 apps, had a consistent user interface, provided the same stability as Linux, and cost around $100? Hell, yes. There wouldn't be a viable Linux user base left.

paying for software? HAHAHahoahoahAOHAHA HA HAhah aHAH AHah ahAHAHA. if it costs $100, i won't use it unless i get it for free!
------------
a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless

in MacOS 8/9's defense...

[Oniros]

I think the article is quite biased against MacOS 8/9. My router (running all kind of servers) is running MacOS 9.1 (and before that 8.6) and never crash. I only reboot it now and then to update IPNetRouter (the router software). My main box can have a uptime of several days, sure that's not Linux with several months, but for most users who shutdown their computer at night, uptime in months is irrelevant. Granted I have carefully selected my apps to avoid the badly programmed one which can crash my Mac and which of course couldn't crash a linux box.

Another point in favor of MacOS 8/9 is the number of applications. There are a lot of apps for MacOS, not even close to as many as on Windws, but I believe many more than on Linux (even x86 linux.) Though I believe Linux and MacOS apps are covering different areas (servers/utilities for Linux, 'productivity'/graphics for the Mac.) The MacOS also has more "mainstream" games than Linux (yes, we have Diablo II ;)

As for the performances, I find my G4/500 to be blazing fast under MacOS 9, thank you very much. I think it's fast enough for what most Mac users do with it. Oh sure, it's nowhere near as efficient as Linux for server tasks or other tasks requiring preemptive multitasking... but to use a web browser, an email client, a word processor, or Photoshop, it's fast.

Note that I am not saying that MacOS 9 is better than Linux (or even GNU/Linux ;), far from it. I just wanted to higlight that MacOS 9 is not as bad as the article would like to let people believe.

Linux for server, OS X for desktop

[Kevinv]

I'll keep my existing PowerPC Debian Linux servers, but I'll use OS X on my desktop machine for the applications.

Kevin

People still going for LinuxPPC

[geirlk]

I actually had a customer calling today with questions regarding linuxPPC, because he _didn't_ like MacOS X! He wanted to buy S.u.S.E Linux for PPC. If he stays on Linux, only time will tell...

My bet is he stays... ;)

Re:stop

[NTSwerver]

I agree, Mac OS does not come with the built-in utilities that it should.

But, there are plenty of freeware utilities, including telnet, ssh and ping utilities, available to download from the web.

Do a search on Version Tracker to find them .

----------------------------

Dump LinuxPPC? Hell no!

[AFCArchvile]

Not as long as a Linux user has a spare Quadra 660AV that he wants to convert over! And don't forget the PPC603ev!

why not?

[devonbowen]

What possible reason can anyone give for not dumping LinuxPPC? With MacOS X I'll have a nice graphical environment, I'll be able to buy third party commercial packages, and, with the addition of X windows, I'll have all the Linux tools that I need. When a new hardware device comes out (FireWire, USB, DVD - all adopted early by Apple) I'll have drivers for them immediately. Sure it'll cost a bit more than a LinuxPPC disc set but that isn't significant. The only reason for running LinuxPPC would be to appear cool on slashdot.

Devon

I suspect GIMP might prevent some of this

[JohnTheFisherman]

Since a huge chunk of Mac revenues are from the graphics arena, wouldn't Adobe and others have a slight problem if the GIMP were sudddenly available to OS-X? I know it would be a much easier port, once they move to a BSD-based OS, but I'm sure Adobe has a LOT of pull at Apple, and they'd be a bit peeved by the sudden emergence of a free, pro quality graphics editor. I suspect Apple will make it difficult, at least in this arena, to completely add in *nix support.

I'm not saying GIMP's going to put Adobe out of business, or that it would be impossible to add it to OS-X once they get X, Gimp, etc. all running well WITHIN OS-X, just that it would piss off one of their most cherished vendors.

Re:I suspect GIMP might prevent some of this

[the eric conspiracy]

GIMP is not a pro-quality graphics editor. Anyone who has worked with Photoshop professionally will be VERY unhappy if they are told they have to use GIMP.

Re:I suspect GIMP might prevent some of this

[Infonaut]

While the GIMP is good, and it might give Photoshop some competition, Adobe's real strength is in the cohesion of their graphics/publishing software suites. Photoshop, Illustrator, and now InDesign all use a very similar interface, and graphic designers are used to using Adobe tools.

Like most of us, graphic designers are creatures of habit, and unless something tremendously easier to use and more powerful comes along, they'll stick with what they've got.

There have already been several inexpensive and relatively powerful graphic design tools that have been steamrolled by the Adobe juggernaut, and my guess is that the GIMP will make only minor inroads into Adobe territory.

It would be great if the GIMP forced Adobe to rethink their pricing, and perhaps get off their butts and make truly scriptable actions. I think that the GIMP's biggest contribution will be just that - to kick Adobe in the pants and make them realize that competition can spring up from anywhere these days.

Re:I suspect GIMP might prevent some of this

[log0n]

Hurrah! I see a lot of people tout the Gimp as "equal if not better" to Photoshop.. and this really isn't the case. The Gimp is nice, and well suited for smallprojects/online design work, but you're asking for heartburn if you try to use it in a largescale professional enviroment.

Why WinNT users switch

[Chalst]

I think the author has got the comparison between the NT users who
switched and the Mac users wrong. I think he is about right with the
Mac users, but I think very few organisations who ran MS-only shops
switched to Linux. In my experience, the people who switched to Linux
were people who were running heterogenous computer systems, were
promised interoperability by Microsoft, and were delivered something
rather different. Win2k changes very little from that point of view,
and the advantages of Linux are: UNIX offers a better network glue for
a heterogenous network, and open source means you don't get the
`bait-and-switch' promises and double-speak of a proprietary vendor.

Define Cheap

[!usr-bin-parrothead!]

I still don't know why some of us geeks, especially a typical slashdot reader, would care about spending $99 on an OS. Who the hell cares? Computer Scientists, in general, make more than most people in the general public (or have the potential, anyway). The cost is a moot point. I paid $29 for RH7 and would have gladly paid $99 for it, had it cost that much. Don't care. Also, I love the fact that there are OSs out there that I can tweek, but most of the time, I'm writing software. I spend some of my free time playing with linux, but usually, I spend my free time writing software that does other cool stuff (*net, 3D, AI, whatever). If Apple comes out with a *nix like version I can use and forget about, Cool! Where do I add it to my cart. It's kinda like auto racing. Some people love to work on the car, and others love to drive it. I don't mind working a little to get my floppy drive mounted, or setting up samba to work on my PC network. That's cool and all, but I'm more like the race car driver, I may work on it myself from time to time, but the real joy is DRIVING IT! Once I get things set up the way I want them, I rarely modify it, until the next version comes out. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad there are the flavor of professionals out there who love to tweek linux until it screams. That's great because it benefits us all. I'm just not sure all of us want to do that. Rock on!

Re:Define Cheap

[kurisudes]

I totally agree....Take a DRIVE!! this post deserves to get modded up insightfull!

i like mac. but...

[ALpaca2500]

the only os i have ever used on my home computers is mac os; i considered trying out linux, but i didnt have enough motivation. but with os x, where it looks like it will be a reliable product from a company i (mostly) trust, i think there will be more of a reason for me to learn unix, in general. i already have installed and played around with darwin, and it looks like something i could get into. ps. did anybody notice in the article, where it says "grab a cup of cocoa" , do you think that was an intentional reference to os x's "cocoa" layer? that's all i could think about.

Re:stop

[OwnedByTwoCats]

the main niggle i have with it is how limited it is from a development point of view. there isn't even a telnet client.

I have this niggle with ignorant slashdot posters. NCSA Telnet has been a Mac application since, what, 1988? A dozen years ago.

If it ain't broke...

[kill -9 $$]

...don't fix it.

Microsoft could put out a gem of an OS tommorow and there is a pretty good chance I wouldn't get rid of my Linux box becuase of this principle. I feel for my needs (a developer) Linux provides what I need.

Likewise, I would think the same would hold true on the PPC platform. I've never used Linux PPC so I don't know how it compares to its x86 bretheren, but if a user has everything all set up and running to make themselves optimally efficient, why switch OS's?

Like many Apple ideas it might be a good one with poor timing. It should be interesting....

MacOS X Server

[jonbrewer]

I think that when Apple comes out with a server version of Mac OS X it will start to get some serious interest in many places were Linux is currently used for servers.

MacOS X Server has been shipping for many moons. It's Workstation that's slated for release this spring. Os X Server hasn't been widely adopted. In my experience this is because the MacHeads in IT jobs don't understand enough *nix to play. Many of them are quite frightened. THey'd rather stick to OS 8/9 and their nice AppleScript Admin tools.

Re:stop

[Cannonball]

Not true at all. I have the PB and Terminal is in there. Apple wouldn't pull it from the final version if they left it in the Beta.

Binary compatibility

[tbo]

Just so you know, Mac OS X is binary-compatible with LinuxPPC (i.e. you can run LinuxPPC binaries on MOSX, but not the other way around). This ability comes from BSD's heritage of Linux binary compatibility, and may make MOSX the most compatible OS in the world (it runs Linux, BSD, MOSX, Mac 8/9, and Windows* apps) One more reason for people to switch back...

*With the MOSX version of VirtualPC that I think is on the way.

Re:Binary compatibility

[mattreilly]

This is incorrect. Spend some time on the Darwin Dev mailing list and you'll see this talked about. The BSDs have Linux binary compatibility but it has not been ported to Darwin and therefore OS X (yet). Part of the problem from what I understand is the different binary formats, Linux using ELF and Darwin/OS X using Mach-O.

cheers,

Matthew

Mac is not the only platform for LinuxPPC!

[Gameshow Bob]

You all forget that PPC is the processor used in IBM's RS/6000 machines (i dont know the new name for them) And IBM seems to be more and more interested in running Linux on all of their machines. No, RS/6000 machines aren't nearly as widely used as macs but they are still machines that can run it (somewhat) With all of the latest efforts seen to get Linux on to Big Iron boxes (hppa, alpha, sparc, s390, etc. . . ) linux ppc will be just as viable as any of the others.

You Like Science?

You mean we have to pay for it?

[gamorck]

I cannnot believe this! I just found out that the Mac OS X upgrade will cost money! What is up with that?

I'm getting so sick of these greedy capitalist pigs who think that just because they spend five years rewriting their core OS from scratch, I should have to pay for it. I mean, who cares if they have children to feed? Obviously with parents as stupid as theirs, the world would be alot better place if we just let them starve to death anyway.

I'm sticking with LinuxPPC - cause I'm not going to let "THE MAN" suck another hard-earned (all those hours I put in at the Music store are hard work man) dime outta my pocket!

OS X sux man! I mean it won't even boot up on my 68040 based powerbook - whats up with that? And its so slow on my 603e based Macintosh System (System 7.5.5 just blazes on that box baby!)I won't put up with it.

If you d00ds decide to buy OS X - then Im coming to your houses and Im going to kill each and every one of u. If you buy it, its obvious you cannot think for urself and that you are just part of a big horde.

These mac peeps are so sad - they just want to use their puter and not hack it! What the f*ck is wrong wit these people?

If I gotta pay for it - it sucks. And yeah I stole my f*cking Mac from my next door neighbor - didn't buy that sh*t either.

BTW - check out my site http://www.linuxloser.com for pricing information of my newest KILLA app man! No try before you buy - because pirates suCKZ!

Gam
"Sarcasm - what a great idea."

Re:You mean we have to pay for it?

[Nosbig]

I am hoping that sarcasm is an overriding goal here, because you are certainly making some harsh generalizations.

Of course, Apple expects us to buy the upgrade to the Mac OS. Unlike most Linux developers, many programmers at Apple use this (and only this) to earn their daily bread. I watched Jobs' keynote from MacWorld 2001, and he had some impressive products, with Mac OS X being one of the primary ones.

Also, "The Man" is not Apple in general. Do you complain to "The Man" when you have to buy groceries or your favorite software product? Mostly, we don't. Just because some of us (myself included) love the idea and execution of free choices of computing environments, not everyone cares about that.

As you pointed out, not everyone likes to tweak their system. Most people who are not passionate about technology have neither the time nor energy to tweak things to increase performance. For corporate IT departments, problem-solving on a telephone could be easier with a standard graphical interface. And no, the console or an xterm window doesn't count. ;-)

This is actually a good time to buy a Mac. With the Titanium Powerbook G4, the new and more powerful G4 desktop systems, and Mac OS X, there is a solid base on which to support more advanced and speedier applications.

And as for being part of a horde, what do you call yourself? Many people might now like Linux and other free operating systems for their intrinsic values, but many people also jumped on the bandwagon and have then liked what they saw when they got here.

So, next time you wish to make generalizations at people, even if in jest, think about your language and logic before writing.

Re:stop

[um... Lucas]

Is downloading NCSA Telnet just too hard?

Macs come bundled with apps that most of their users will use, as well as ones that are mostly self explanitory. Such as Acrobat Reader, Quicktime, et al. No one needs to call Apple on those two. They might need to on Telnet, wondering what in the world that application might be, for one thing...

Going back? I don't think so.

[muecksteiner]

A part of the population that quite a few posters (and the author of the article) seem to ignore are those who simply don't want a closed-source OS on their desktop any more.

Those who have this attitude because we've been there. For example, people like me. I used NeXTStep (the precursor to OS X) for several years before switching to Linux/KDE. KDE 2.0 is still not comparable to what NeXT 3.1 was like in terms of UI consistency, useability, stability and so on (although it's come a long way), and the abomination I used at first when I switched (KDE 1.1?) was even much, much worse.

But I still gladly traded the polished UI and seamless application integration for never again having to write postings about missing features to mainlinglists that NeXT employees might read. Never again having to speculate about when support for something useful might be implemented, and whether doing so would be politically viable for the provider of your OS.

The fact that if I really, really needed something in my OS I could get the CVS sources and fix it seems like the only way to exist - I don't want to be totally dependent on some corporation w/r to what my computer behaves like.

Besides, OS X is NeXTStep dumbed-down to the need of the average person who buys his machine at the supermarket and does AOL pr0n with it. Linux is for people who know what they're doing. The two groups don't oerlap to such a great degree.

$0.2E-32

Alexander

Re:Going back? I don't think so.

[gutter]

The fact that if I really, really needed something in my OS I could get the CVS sources and fix it seems like the only way to exist

How many times have you done this? I hear this argument all the time (and I've even argued it myself) but I've met almost nobody who has ever done it. It sounds great, but the truth is that it takes a lot of time and a lot of expertise to add new features to an operating system. I've got plenty of work to do on my own - I don't have time to rewrite my OS. What I want is an operating system that works well and stays out of my way. With the exception of some stability issues, OS 9 has been that for me, and from what I've seen OS X will be even better. Linux is a great server platform - I code on it all day long, but all the editing happens over the network from my mac, because it just works, and I don't need to write my own features.

Besides, OS X is NeXTStep dumbed-down to the need of the average person who buys his machine at the supermarket and does AOL pr0n with it. Linux is for people who know what they're doing. The two groups don't overlap to such a great degree.

From what I've seen OS X is a lot more than a "dumbed-down" NeXTStep. It has been updated to use BSD 4.4 rather than 4.3. It has gone from Mach 2.5 to 3.0. It has a brand new object-oriented modern driver API. It has a brand-new display server based on pdf, with built in transparency, anti-aliasing, and warping capabilities. Some of NeXTStep's UI elements are gone, but there are a lot of new ones as well. I like most of them, but of course others may not. For the most part, it is a huge upgrade from NeXTStep/OpenStep.

As far as the intellegence of mac users goes, I think you would be suprised at just what mac users know. Most of the Mac users I know are very intelligent, and know how to use linux and windows just fine. The difference is that we looked at the alternatives and made an informed decision based on what works for us, rather that spitting out the typical platform BS and blindly choosing which OS has our favorite propaganda. Most mac users I know don't use macs because they don't know any better, they use macs because they do.

The beauty of Open Source

[94229]

When the Darwin OS went Open Source, my biggest fear was that people would poach the code to advance Linux, and Darwin as an Open Source developed project would just die. Why is that a bad thing? Well, I personally believe there is tremendous value in corporately funded Open Source projects.

Recent developments have convinced me other wise. The strong push to port XFree86 is a big one. With it, comes xv, gimp and every other standard X11 app you can think of.

But there's a major challenger to OSX, and it's LinuxPPC. They solve similar goals. They are both true Unices. Linux has a tremendous following. OSX will have a huge following. They both have strengths. They both have weaknesses. They will both challenge each other at every turn.

In my perfect world, Apple's hard work to bring Unix to the desktop will be watched closely by the Linux community, and they'll push hard to adopt some of Apple's work. And with Apple's contributions to BSD, technical support for things like Airport, HFS+, etc. will be folded into, say Linux.

On the other side, Mac afficiandos (and the new people switching to the OSX) will demand more. Better interoperability. Stealing things from GNOME, etc. Kick-ass configuration tools.

Competition is good. The products are very similar. But you know what, there will be enough Mac-heads out there that will install both. And they'll be pushing both OS's to deliver what they want.

That's my rose-coloured world.

Apple has good reason not to put Terminal in CR

[Shadowmist]

While Terminal is included in the Public Beta, it will not be included as a default part of the Consumer Release. The main reason is to make sure developers provide a proper GUI installer as opposed to forcing customers to use command line tools as was de rigor for X Server/Rhapsody.

Terminal will be available either as an Extras install from the CD or by download from Apple. As an out of the box solution, you can boot straight into Darwin by entering >console at the login prompt.

Re:Apple has good reason not to put Terminal in CR

[BlowChunx]

Dude,
Either you are an Apple employee, in which case you should be divulging a whole lot more, or you should pass some of that sh*t you're smoking my way and shut up....

Hell, even Nostradamus couldn't accurately tell you if Terminal.App would be included in what finally ships in OS X. Unless he was a time traveller to MWSF...

Why I *AM* almost ready to never go back to LinuxP

[weston]

I'm thinking about never going back to any of the PPC Linux distros. And no, it's not because I'm a gloss-loving CLI-inept sheep -- it's because I'm a gloss-liking CLI-phile who likes easy installs and system administration. The less a system requires of you to do what you want to do, the better.

I've done web app development for the last 4 years, primarily on Linux. I'm quite fond of Linux. I'd rather develop on a *nix system than anything else -- especially server stuff. I also like the MacOS better than windows for the various non-programmer stuff I do. It gets in my way less than Linux or Windows do.

I am not, however, a system administrator.
It's not that I don't like occasionally firing up vi and tweaking various files under /etc. It's that I really hate having to do it when what I really want to be doing is creating the web app I've got in my head. Especially since I've been a contractor in the last several months. Time spent doing sysadmin stuff -- which I don't do well -- is money lost.

LinuxPPC has been decent on my desktop over the last 6 months or so. There've been some configuration problems (some that still haven't worked out), but I managed to find the right combo of stuff to get PPP working, and compile Apache with everything I wanted.

However, on the laptops, I haven't been able to even get the kernel to boot. This despite weeks of effort, lots of reading, and lots of support from comp.os.linux.ppc.

MacOS X, on the other hand, installed nicely in under an hour. So far, everything has just worked.
I've still got an open partition on my hard drive. I'm just not sure I want to spend the time on installing LinuxPPC, when really, I've got everything I need. I'm sure the performance of OS X is a little bit slower, but frankly, that's the only downside I can see, and I'm making up for any of that by actually spending time getting development done.

Oh yeah, it really does look cool. :)

--

Replacement of Linux?

[maraist]

Linux was arguably not originally intended for production use. To my understanding it was originally only a more useful version of MINUX. Of course today we've advanced to default RAID support, but I still read articles from places like IBM where replacing the scheduler greatly enhances performance (Solaris still has a superior scheduler to my understanding).

Though Linux can be tuned because of it's open-ness, I'm sure that compatibility still plays an important role in thwarting advancement. And more importantly, generic IT's that purchase Red Hat or SuSe out of the box don't have that many options for tweaking. If an initial design goal wasn't performance, multi-media or what-ever then the addition of those things later on are most likely only bolt-ons (much like OOP in Perl).

I hear that FreeBSD and it's bretheren are superior to Linux and I've been meaning to give it a spin to see if the environment is to my likeing. OS-X, likewise has a lot going for it: It has the potential for being as open source and powerful as Linux / FreeBSD, yet it's user-friendly out of the box (at least I assume). A hard core UNIX programmer should probably feel at home with it (assuming that compilers are provided by default), yet the 8 year old daughter should be able to work it as she would an iMac.

The only draw backs that I see are the fact that the entire system is still pricey.. And.. well, it's being worked by Apple who've managed to shoot themselves in the foot too too many times. Anybody need references?

The big push that I hear Linux users say is: Just put a pretty face and make it easy-to-use-out-of-the-box(tm), and the people will flock to it. Course I hear others say "stay away from my OS evil marketers; I like it how it is". The seriousness of this comes into the corporate world that pushes NT. They want garunteed, single vendor suppliers (like SUN / MS / (Apple?) ), with rigorous certification policies. They want feature bloat and a pretty screen for configuration (usually). With that, Apple stands a chance of being a compromise between MS and SUN which might be able to achieve the best of both worlds.

Linux isn't going to go away since it completely fullfills it's mission statement - which just happens to not use the words multi-media, prettyness or Corporate America. Hell, the words learning and easy-to-use seem like opposites.

-Michael

Dumping LinuxPPC for Darwin/MacOSX

[leemcneil]

This thread is mostly asking those of us that run servers of one type or another whether we will update/switch to MacOSX/Darwin, not end-users.

I am in the process of converting MacOS 9 servers (web/dns, etc) to LinuxPPC. I went through the process of testing out MacOSX Beta, Darwin and LinuxPPC and finally settled on LinuxPPC.
This is simply because of stability and speed (of deployment). Despite what anyone says, I maintain that the filestructure and way of doing things of MacOSX is alien both to Linux and BSD users, and I don't have time to learn all the eccentricities of a new OS, and have to patch all my software to get it running on the box. I just want to be able to download sources and keep my servers upto date, stable and serving - unfortunately MacOSX/Darwin doesn't give a simple and robust way (at least not for me) to do that as LinuxPPC does.
Also, I don't need a GUI to run a server, and it is an overhead that I can do without. And before anyone says "use Darwin then", I have used it and the compile and stability problems are still there - not to mention the fact that gcc happily has "gcc_hacked" named next to it in the official Apple distribution!!

So, me...I'll be happily using LinuxPPC for now. If Apple can prove to me that MacOSX can perform any better, or make it easier and more STABLE (which at the end of the day is the most important thing for me - and most people) then maybe I'll move, but until that day, I ain't moving.

Lee.

LinuxPPC will exist for all Legacy (non G3) Macs

[crovira]

OS X makes some pretty steep demands of the hardware. It won't be supported on the older hardware and there's a LOT of it out there.

If the LinuxPPC crowd, and a certain Quebequer in particular, can take a page from Apple and design (and f*ckin' DOCUMENT,[1]) LinuxConf better it could make LinuxPPC a powerful alternative.

As it is, I'm probably going to trash my old hardware and get OS X capable boxes because Linux and Linux app configuration is an absolute f*ckin' nightmare. The configs are as fragile as Linux isn't once you finally get it running. The frustration factor isn't worth it.

1] when you have a field, its a good idea to give the format of what it's supposed to contain and to pop up something (like a URL) to some more information about the possible values, and where to find them, that go into that field. The field labels are uninformative and about as cryptic as you can get.

That's the difference between professional software (too damn much of it, even when its sold is of the other kind:) and rinky-dink amateur kludges.

Price!

[krb]

Many won't because their older macs wont run os X, such as my own. Owners of newer macs probly will.

-k

Show me the sources!

[joeytsai]

As long as people are interested in freedom (the speech kind), LinuxPPC will survive. Though it's admittedly a minority opinion, there will always be those like RMS who choose personal freedom over technical superiority.

I use both Debian and MacOS X on my Powerbook

[MochaMan]

Without the restrictions of the PC hard disk partitionning scheme, Macs can easily host two, three or more OSes on one disk. On my Powerbook G3 Pismo, I currently run Debian GNU/Linux, MacOS 9.0.4 and MacOS X Public Beta. All three co-exist peacefully on my machine.

As a long-time Debian fanatic, I decided that this was the way to go on the PowerPC as well. I haven't tried LinuxPPC, mainly for the reason that their disk images are in Mac self-mounting-image format, and the only burners I have access to are running on Windows boxes, but mostly, I'm just really impressed with Debian. It runs absolutely smoothly once you install XFree86 4.0.2 (if you use 3.3.6, you're stuck with framebuffer graphics).

For those interested in trying it out on their own Powerbooks, here's a link to the instructions you need, in French. You can use BabelFish to translate if you don't speak French, though I have no idea how good the translation will be. If you want X, upgrade to Woody then get the XFree86 4.0.2 debs (they're on the FTP sites in the /debian/pool/main/x/xfree86 directory) and you're set.

Once I recompiled the kernel to my liking, the system has been the best Linux box I've ever had. The only thing that could be better is if the Helix guys would release PowerPC debs of Helix Gnome...

Anyway, as I say, what's to stop anyone from using both Linux and MacOS X? When I want down-to-earth Linuxy Goodness, I use Debian, when I want snazzy graphics, Mac Apps, and a really funky IDE for some Objective-C Goodness, I use MacOS X. Both environments have their advantages and disadvantages.

I like being able to fine-tune and fiddle with my system, as Darwin evolves, and as more and more software becomes Darwin compatible (a LOT already is) I admit I will probably use Linux less, but it'll always have a place on my drive.

OS X for New machines LinucPPC for old

[acomj]

because OS X will come bundled with new machines unless there is a very compelling reason to switch peolple won't.

Old machines (powerppc 603e/604s etc...) will not run os X so must run linuxPPC. I run linux PPC on an old machine to get java and emacs.

So I predict the market of linuxPPC shrinks, as new machines come out unless ppc motherboards come out and are cheap (please soon!).

Speaking as another Mac User...

[Svartalf]

As far as the PPC portions go, I'd heartily agree with you. I've yet to get SuSE to work quite right (I've not tried YDL or LinuxPPC2k yet- just DLed YDL last night and all attempts to burn a LinuxPPC2k CD have went down in flames...). Right now, I'd love to find something that works similar to the Intel distributions so that they're not getting in the way of my Utah-GLX, etc. driver development work for the RagePRO and Rage128.

Your Intel woes? Well, I've not had any problems. Literally. Of course, Mandrake's been quite good and if you're not trying to do fancy things ('fancy' is building a firewall with an on-demand PPP dialout to an ISP...) it simply plugs in so long as you're not using goofy hardware. I don't know what you ran into on impasse with on Mandrake- I'd like to know (and I'm SURE the good people at Mandrake would too) so that people can improve upon things.

As for MacOS X...

The machine I'm using right now for PPC driver development is a Beige G3 with 128Mb of RAM and a Wide SCSI HD as the drive. Should be pretty fast right? The install of MacOS X that was previously on this loaner seemed to be slow on this box. SuSE is more responsive. If KDE 2.X were on the machine, it'd have 80-90% of what's needed to make it happen on PPC. Go figure.

Re:Speaking as another Mac User...

[Svartalf]

Uh, this was server which is officially out (and has been for about a year or so!) and didn't supposedly HAVE debugging code. Next time, before assuming, why not ask?

Re:LinuxPPC - Will OSX work with clones ?

[TandyMasterControl]

I don't want to say anything that would be misleading, but i believe the official line from Apple is that OSX will install on beige G3's or later. Now, I think there's a gray area though in that statement because what it may effectively mean is that Apple's own target for guaranteed, no-worries installation is G3's and up - but it may be possible to install on other machines via the unsupported install option. You may/may not have weird intermittent isoluable problems by choosing to do so, so (I would) wait a while after the official release and check boards like xlr8yourmac and others for success stories and caveats.

MacOS X Server ISN'T beta...

[Svartalf]

And it still seemed slow and resource hungry compared to SuSE 6.4 for PPC. Explain that one.

Re:MacOS X Server ISN'T beta...

[MouseR]

Mac OS X Server is a totally different beast. One of the biggest difference is that it's graphic engine is Display PostScript, which is way slower than the new PDF-based engine.

MOSXServer is a direct port of OpenStep. It doesn't even share the same kernel as Mac OS X.

Get your facts straight from the source.

Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.

Another user point-of-view: for kids

[UnanimousCoward]

I recently bought an iMac DV for my 1st grade daughter for the ease-of-use qualities and set it up with an AirPort card for my IEEE 802.11 home network. Setting it up was no sweat and since she uses Macs at school, the ease-of-use thing was a non-issue (I also steal some of her cycles using the DV capabilities for home video stuff).

However, I was astonished at how unstable the system is--I had not had a Mac since the IIsi which, at the time, seemed stability-acceptable. But the an iMac session in our home inevitably ends in a power off/on ritual.

From our perspective, Linux is not an option, so I am hoping that X will be--of course, it needs to support things that most /. users might not know about like KidPix, iSpy, etc...

Re:LinuxPPC - some hope yet

[MochaMan]

You're right, for the most part, that most Mac users would choose MacOS X over Linux any day. Of course they will -- for the same reason that most PC users would choose Windows over Linux any day. Most users, and probably even an equivalent number on either side are clueless boneheads when it comes to computers. Most have no desire whatsover to run Linux.

However, just as in the PC world, there is a group of geeks that want to customise their OS, and use Free Software. Just as in the PC world, they have various reasons from technical to political that they do so. Yes, MacOS X is a funky, easy-to-use version of BSD. Yes, you can run XFree86 on MacOS X (and plain-vanilla Darwin). No, it's not all Free Software. No, not all plain-vanilla Linux/Unix apps will run on it yet, and many unmaintained apps probably never will.

Personally, I use both Linux and OS X on a daily basis. I do development on both systems. I like both systems, and until the day when OS X offers everything I like about Linux, I won't switch. While I have never used LinuxPPC (I use Debian on my Powerbook), there are a lot of geeks who swear by it. Many, but not all, will find as I did that OS X doesn't offer the utopic OS environment they expected with all the power and customisation of a Unix-like system but the ease-of-use of a Mac and they'll re-install Linux on part of their disk.

Mac OS X is great, but I'm not ready to give up Linux yet.

I think he was referring to _Mandrake_ versions...

[Svartalf]

The numbers correspond to Mandrake version numbers- which I think he said he'd tried as well.

2 things

[kootch]

1. "no use of scripts" - applescript (which can be quite powerful when put to use)

2. ignorance is bliss.

The Author is on Crack

[pabs]

I have several unrelated comments on this article, so I'm posting the sections in question and the comments individually.

LinuxPPC, DebianPPC, and Yellow Dog Linux all will run on Mac hardware. If you're not familiar with these other systems, you're probably wondering why anybody would want to remove MacOS and use something else.

The author makes it sound like installing these Linux distributions is an either-or proposition. It's not. In fact, up until recently, LinuxPPC

• required

MacOS in order to boot. Also, the author fails to mention NetBSD.

Linux is a system designed for a more experienced user.

I think the phrase "more experienced user" is inaccurate. Graphic designers -- a significant portion of of the Mac userbase -- would fall into that category, but Linux (or NetBSD) wouldn't necessarily be appropriate or comfortable for this class of users. "Technically proficient" would probably be more appropriate.

Windows 2000 and Windows ME are Microsoft's newest versions of their operating system. Before this latest upgrade, Microsoft's OSes lacked stability, were not open source, and cost a lot of money. The only one of these negatives Microsoft fixed was stability.

As most of you know, ME is just Windows 95 (aka Windows 98, etc) with a few new bells and whistles. All the architechtural and most of the instability problems in the previous releases are here as well. However, from what I've seen, Windows 2000 is rock solid.

On a separate note, this excerpt presents the author's naive view of the "Open Source" movement. An item purchased at no cost is not necessarily free. Why is this significant? Because the goal of the Free Software and Open Source movement is to produce software with no strings attached; the fact that most Free software is available at no cost is a secondary issue. For example, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player are both available for download at no cost, but neither is "open" or "free" in the sense that Linux, Apache, or FreeBSD are.

In addition, hardware support and compatibility with peripherals is lacking on Linux, but strong with Microsoft.

Which hardware exactly? Granted, some hardware doesn't work, and Linux is behind on the USB bandwagon, but I think the general public would be pleasantly suprised at the abundance of hardware support. For example, I've got a NVidia GeForce 2 MX, Creative Labs, Sound Blaster PCI 128, Hauppage WinTV Go, Western Digital UDMA66 45gig, and a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. Barring a few minor issues with the WinTV card (which have been fixed in 2.4.x), all of the the above are supported, and work great under Linux.

If you went the Linux route because MacOS 9 wasn't open sourced, you'll be happy to know that MacOS X has loads of stuff you can mess around with.

Again, the author fails to note the distinction between open (eg "having lots of stuff you can mess around with") and free. In order to compete with Linux (or NetBSD) in this regard, Apple would need to open Carbon and Cocoa and encourage developers to improve and redistribute both, without any restrictions. This is highly unlikely, given Apple's draconian history regarding unauthorized tinkering (most recently, the uninforceable threats against Skinz.org, Themes.org, etc). Also, given the tree-synching and (up until this week) licensing issues with Darwin, only the delusional would believe the public access to Darwin is anything more than lip service.

Now MacOS can satisfy your computing needs, and many users might take it back.

Unlikely. A friend of mine purchased and installed the OSX public beta (I had my own login as well. Check out the screenshot . He used it for a few months, but ended up going back to MacOS 9. The reason? Many of his applications were either incredibly slow or didn't work at all. And he missed the Finder. While OSX may be providing features sorely needed in MacOS, it's also missing many of the features that make the Mac great.

--
odds of being killed by lighning and

SFPCC

[SFPCC]

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Speaking as a Windows user

[kurisudes]

I recently switched from windows to Linux and have used macs extensively in the past. When I installed it (Linux-Mandrake 7.2) It "JUST WORKED" I was expecting to have to configure everything find out obscure knowledge about all my hardware and when I booted up it could do everything, sound video, (not my scroll mouse button though :( I was just browsing my file system in Konqueror and wondered if it detected my ethernet card and cable modem...typed in slashdot.org and within seconds I was faced with all kinds of new articles to read. I still haven't figured everything out...but it has been VERY intuitive..I installed less than a week ago and the only thing that I still haven't figured out is why linux mandrake didn't ship with gcc so I can install stuff and how I can compile a version of gcc without first having gcc. Mac OS has done some good things for HIGH SCHOOLS but having to hold my jand over the cmd key wqhile playing warcraft 2 and not having any real power to adjust what the system is doing are good enough reasons to switch to windows (besides the software/hardware) and not having any real power to adjust what is going on as well as escape from all the silly windows bugs gets me to Linux... Former wintel user! hear me roar!

Re:Speaking as a Windows user

[clutchcargo]

It (GCC) should be on the Mandrake CD, if it did not install by default. cd to /mnt/cdrom/Mandrake/RPMS and rpm -ivh gcc-[whatever].rpm you'll probably have to install the c libraries, too.

GUIfied Ping (was Re:stop)

[WillAdams]

Uh, take a llok in Applications:Grab Bag:NetProbe.app

William


--
Lettering Art in Modern Use

Not all Macs are created equal.

[Kareila]

One thing to consider in this LPPC vs. OS X showdown is that Mac OS X will only be supported on the very latest Apple machines. While there have been scattered reports of success installing OS X on older Macs or clones, my understanding is that it's a painful process at best. The memory and CPU requirements of OS X make it impractical for older machines as well.

LinuxPPC, on the other hand, has a reputation for giving new life to old Macs that would otherwise be on a shelf collecting dust somewhere. Need a cheap router? Find that old Quadra, install LinuxPPC, stick it in your closet and forget about it.

Of course, what operating systems you choose should be based on what you want to do with your machines. But for older Macs, OS X is not a choice.

LinuxPPC is a niche-product anyway

[GauteL]

Most people who want to run Linux, buys x86-hardware because of the price and availability.

This roughly means the LinuxPPC caters for two groups of people:
1. The ones that had a PowerPC, and got tired of MacOS.
2. People who really like PowerPC-hardware and wants to run Linux.

Of the two, I suspect 1. is the largest, because LinuxPPC from what I've heard is a lot less mature than x86-Linux.

I don't think most people in group 2. will switch, because they actually got a Mac to run Linux on it in the first place.
Most of group 1 will switch I think, because of the much increased power behind MacOSX.
However a lot of people really dislike Aqua, and for them there probably isn't _any_ big reasons to switch.

applescript

[ChristTrekker]

Mac OS is a slow interface (easy to learn, hard to get things done really really quickly - no use of scripts or command line, etc)

I've found that using MacOS is faster than using Windows. Windows always seems to have an extra "Please confirm" click before it will do what I want. It always buries things one level deeper than I want, like putting the drives inside "My Computer" rather than on the desktop, and almost requiring that all my personal files go in "My Documents". The stupid file browser keeps forgetting where I was the last time I used it which forces me to navigate it all over again. I better stop before I start flaming Windows too badly. I haven't used *n*x as a desktop OS much, so I can't compare with that. I do like virtual desktops...IMO it's a killer feature.

As far as scripting goes, check out Applescript. It's there, even if most people don't use it.

hard to believe

[q000921]

I have installed Mandrake 7.1, Mandrake 7.2, RedHat 6.2, and RedHat 7.0 (there is no 7.1) on many different kinds of machines. On most hardware, they install without a problem, without any complicated questions during the install process, without much user interaction at all actually, and result in fully functional KDE and Gnome desktop environments. IMO, Linux installations are now considerably simpler than Windows installations. Linux PPC, of course, may be a different matter.

Market hoopla

[Servo]

Personally, for me, I run Linux on Mac hardware because 1) Linux is my preferred OS, and 2) Mac hardware is generally better than IBM/Intel compatible hardware.

I grew up using IBM compatibles, and so while I'll probably stick with them for the most part, I do like Mac's for their OS as well. I do not currently own a Mac at home, but will be more inclined to do so once MacOS X comes out. Not to say I wouldn't use the hardware to run Linux, but I actually think Apple makes a very nice, easy to use system.

Think about it... MacOS is the really easy to use client workstation. Unix is the the ultra configurable workhorse server. They make an excellent fit together. It really is the best of both worlds.

What kind of software do you want to run?

[q000921]

Whether it makes more sense for you to run Mac OS X or Linux probably depends on the kind of software you want to run. Currently, Linux has most of the software I want to run while Mac OS X doesn't. Your situation may be the reverse.

why I own a Mac, and what I run on it

[krog]

I own a PowerBook G3/333 (Lombard) and I love it. It is one of the sexiest and most powerful laptop's I've ever seen, and at $1600 (used) the price wasn't so bad.

I ditched MacOS 9 because after several years away from MacOS (and never having used Windows), I wasn't used to crashes every 24-28 hours anymore. I grabbed LinuxPPC 2000 because NetBSD/macppc didn't support sound yet.

LinuxPPC, for all its positive points, was a BEEE-YOTCH to install. It took about four tries to get it right, and I still wasn't able to get it booting from OpenFirmware. The kernel had problems, some software didn't work, X wouldn't run in more than 256 colors without running a special command beforehand, etc.

I installed Mac OS X public beta and used it for about a week. It was neat to see BSD under it all, but since there were about 2 applications written for it and it was sluggish at best, I decided to let it mature, and reinstalled LinuxPPC.

LinuxPPC still crashes reasonably often (most often using cdparanoia and lame). It doesn't talk to my USB mouse. I still can't boot from OF.

NetBSD/macppc 1.5 now supports sound, so tonight my PowerBook gets reinstalled. I've used NetBSD blissfully for about three years, and aside from hardware errors due to a faulty CDROM drive, it has never once crashed.

I went to LinuxPPC because it was more stable than MacOS. Once MacOS is that stable (esp. since it's UNIX underneath), I don't think anyone is going to touch LinuxPPC.

Both LinuxPPC *AND* MacOS X

[staplin]

I think that another slice of the mac community has been left out by the above generalizations... Those of us who currently run MacOS 9 and LinuxPPC on the same box, who will probably upgrade to MacOS X and LinuxPPC on the same box. It's just like the x86 world... unless you're a diehard linux zealot, you probably dual boot so you can do your linux thing and still run games and Photoshop.

Having a linux box has been a huge benefit to me as I am a programmer by trade, and have been working on a graduate computer science degree. Neither Windows or MacOS really helps when you need to write linux/unix code. After starting with MkLinux and migrating to LinuxPPC, I don't think I'll give linux up. Even though the Darwin core has BSD in it, for me it just becomes another tool to make my code portable.

Perhaps if MacOS X starts supporting a free X server, and it gets to the point where it's almost the same as just having a different window manager (that lets me run mac apps) I'll stop dual booting. But I think I'll be running both OSs for quite a while.

Ease of learning vs ease of use

[Ambassador Kosh]

Too many people confuse ease of use on a mac with ease of learning. A mac is easy to learn and easy for very simple tasks however for complex tasks I find it far harder then any unix.

I have had times where the mac would not intialize the nic in 100TX mode and found no way to force it to do so in the OS. Or install a modm that it will not detect. I did not find any utility in the OS to make it do what I wanted without any questions.

Macs and Windows machines operate under the asusmption that the user does not know what they are doing. Unix assumes the user is always right. If you put in the time to understand how unix works it is easier to use then the others because it won't ask questions about things. You just tell it to do something and it will. With this power though comes a lot of responsibility.

I spent a while setting up my boxes, more then what it would take to set up a windows or mac machines, however in the last two years the only time they have ever gone down is to have new hardware or kernels put in them. They have been very low maintenance boxes. They check automatically for signed updates to the os I have already locked them down etc etc. I find my boxes to be very easy to use because I don't have to think about the underlying os all the time I know it will just keep working no matter what I do.

If I forget one of my virtual desktops has 20 apps open on it no big deal the os can take it just fine. Vi is probably the best app to exemplify this idea. It is a pain to learn to use. However once learned it is very easy to use and very fast. Emacs is the same way.

Since I have to spend most of my time working on computers, fixing them, securing them etc, it is worth it to me to put the time in now to really learn the tools to use them to the best of my ability.

GUI environments are nice but slow to do things. Think of how long it takes you to explain something to a person using pictures vs text. Maybe it is just that I don't think graphically but I can do things far faster by typing in commands then I can by using a gui for most applications. I have never met a person yet doing regular sys admin stuff via a gui that I could not beat.

This story asks the wrong question

[GauteL]

As I posted my last response, something dawned on me.
The important question is not "who will switch?", but "who will start?".
The reason is that _existing_ users will always be a finite amount (and a small one at that), which is for obvious reasons decreasing (age, death, etc).

Will anyone start using LinuxPPC with their shiny new PowerMac with OSX?
Not many I suspect. There are frankly _less_ reasons to start using LinuxPPC now than before, because of the added power and functionality in MacOSX.
Linux is probably still more Unixlike than MacOSX in it's core and a more natural environment for Gnome/KDE than MacOSX, and this might be the saviour. A lot of platforms will start shipping Gnome as default interface, and Gnome-desktop along with PowerPC-hardware does at least in theory sound nice. But is Darwin a better choice for a X/Gnome -platform?

All things being equal ...

[Dix]

The fact that some people have problems installing Linux is hardly insummountable - it's just a bit of work for someone who could be bothered.

The real issue is whether Linux-on-Mac is worth the effort given that MacOS networks properly now there's (OS) X.

The answer, obviously, is "Yes", for exactly the same reasons that Linux is worth it in general. Whether or not you use Linux on your Mac, there is no upper limit on your freedom because you can always go to Linux.

So true in many ways...

[interactive_civilian]

disclaimer: I'm not trying to start a platform war, so please don't treat this as such.

And I quote:
"My Mac is NOT a toy its something to get work done, my PC is a toy, its something to make work. "

This is quite possibly one of the most accurate comparisons of Macs and PCs, and also MacOS (any version) and Linux that I have ever seen.

Mac users don't want to have to hack their machines to get them to work. We expect them to work and if there is a problem, we expect it to be easy to fix. We don't want to have to track down some obscurely named .dll or .inf, or, like another person said somewhere in this discussion, spend an hour typing in some obscure commands and editing some obscure text files just to get our video card to work. We would rather simply drop the aptly named "ATI Rage Pro" system extension into our extension folder and voila! the graphics card works with our OS. This doesn't mean we don't want to hack our machines at all, but we expect them to work from the beginning and then we break them. ~_^

OS X has the potential to still remain this way, or at least appear to, which will make it infinitely more likeable than LinuxPPC.

In my experience with both OSes, both under the hood and in the driver's seat, I have to say that my LinuxPPC CD will *probably* never be inserted into my machine again after I install the final version of MacOS X. Although a lot of the conventions in Darwin are different than Linux, for some reason I still have an easier time getting things to work how I want them to. Add to that the fact that I have an extremely pretty interface to play with while I am in the driver's seat, an interface that makes sense, works properly, and like all interfaces, can be hacked to be customized if you know what you are doing. All of this is something that LinuxPPC cannot do at the moment. Add to all of this the fact that Darwin/MacOS X was written specifically to run on Mac Hardware, rather than ported over, which increases speed and stability (at least, in my experience). I see no reason to ever use LinuxPPC again on my machines. Congratulations Apple! You'll be getting my money when the time comes.

Of course

[Sloppy]

The author is correct. Different people have different reasons for using Linux over MacOS. For some people, MacOS X will nullify the important (to them) Linux advantages over MacOS, so they will switch from Linux to MacOS X. For other people, MacOS X will not nullify the important (to them) Linux advantages over MacOS, so they will not switch.

Apple has done a good thing: they have increased the overall usefulness of MacOS, and there's every reason to believe that MacOS X will address the needs of a larger market than MacOS 9 did. Those new users are going to come from somewhere, and it's only natural (and obvious) that Linux feel part of the bite.

(Of course, some MacOS 7/8/9 UI fans probably will not like Aqua, so there will be a little leakage away from MacOS as well. But I think this will be fairly minor by comparison.)

---

No, RS/6K uses Power not PowerPC

[yerricde]

PPC is the processor used in IBM's RS/6000 machines

RS/6000 (or whatever) machines use a POWER architecture processor. POWER is a high-end multiple-chip processor designed for big iron; PowerPC is a microprocessor derived from the POWER architecture, designed for embedded systems.

Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?

If I had a Mac...

[deno]

I'm not a Mac user, and I'm not a windows user either - GNU/Linux all the way here for the last five years.

If I only had money to buy that beautifull Mac cube with large flat screen, i would do it at once. Add a lila imac to make my wife happy.

Next moment, all the Mac software would immediately make palace for a GNU/Linux system, simply because I'm used to GNU/Linux, like it very much and have no reason for changing my OS.

I don't say that MANY people would do the same, but here you have at least one potential Mac buyer who simply doesn't care about Mac OS. Let's face it, Apple makes good AND good looking hardware, why wouldn't a GNU/Linux user buy it IF he has enough money?

Re: oops forgot a

[daniell]

I'd like to add that with the aid of a secondary machine, I installed LinuxPPC2000 onto a scsi drive intended for a 6115CD (ppc601), and then installed just the MkLinux kernel and booter portions of the latest MkLinux kernel I could find (which I think was something like 2.2.12 but I don't recall). A lot of stuff worked (like X and Gnome and the rest of linux), some stuff didn't but it wasn't critical. I made an old mac owner happy for a few weeks as they taught themselves perl and actually used netscape at better speeds than the macOS netscape. Eventually the machine was relegated to old-game-platform, and now runs macOS without touching the linux partition.

LinuxPPC2000 wouldn't run at all

[gqgreg]

Yeah, I gave up on Linux PPC when, after installing it, all I got on my screen was "lost interrupt" over and over. I emailed them for support, and they directed me to a URL that didn't help me at all.

*sigh*

Granted, I didn't put a lot of effort into fixing the bug, but hey! why should I? I have OSX beta running fine!
---

Re:LinuxPPC2000 wouldn't run at all

[AArthur]

You need to use yaboot, and not BootX on your machine (I assume it's a new world machine). Finding documentation for yaboot is a bit challenging, mainly because the New World PowerMacs in the hands of people who document (like me and many others ;) or design distros (like LinuxPPC) don't have them. So we have to guess, and go on what the man pages say, and what other users report.

Of course once you get it installed, please, please feel free to write up stuff on yaboot.

Re:LinuxPPC2000 wouldn't run at all

[ebenson]

I have written documentation and installation utilities for yaboot, you can find at my web page:

http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

--

Re:Yeah, right.

[Smokin Goat McGruff]

Darwin.

Macworld: LinuxPPC faster than OS X server.

[haaz]

Macworld magazine has said that OS X Server is "noticeably slower" than OS X Server. That's pretty firm documentation to me.

It also seems significantly faster than the beta. Yes, it's a beta. But how much faster could they really make it?

We'll still be here, OS X or not.

Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.

Re:Macworld: LinuxPPC faster than OS X server.

[jayc33]

Hardware acceleration has been in OS X since DP4.

linux has a _better_ interface than MacOS X

[adrien]

yeah, that's correct.

as far as usability, speed and general usefulness goes, Aqua is a disaster. By the time it ships, Linux (and linux PPC) will have a much nicer interface.

Apple's marketing gimmick scholck interfaces will grow really tiresome really quick (they aready have) and, if the apps are there (they are _not_, and unless Adobe and Macromedia port to linux and linux PPC, they "aren't"), then people will be using Linux and not MacOS X.

just my opinion.


adrien cater
boring.ch

Re:linux has a _better_ interface than MacOS X

[swordgeek]

Linux??? Although I use linux daily, I find that it has almost the most unintuitive, steep-learning-curve interface of anything. (and believe me, I've used 'em all!)

It ain't great. It ain't even good. Pity on a fairly robust OS, but Win98SE with Active Directory turned off is so far ahead of Linux that the latter is strictly a pretender in the Desktop OS race.

Re:stop

[Omega996]

it takes more than simple registry hacks (that break when pushed to the limit of real multi-user functionality) and an option on the shutdown menu to make a multi-user OS. NT is most definitely not multi-user... the peecee guyz where i work have had many many many problems trying to sucessfully implement thin-clients running against winnt; all kinds of problems with applications not working for concurrent multiple users, even stupid stuff like one user setting the default background pixmap for their desktop makes it the default for all users logged in.

makes me want to switch from unix to nt...

NetBSD

[Moderator]

How come nobody has mentioned NetBSD? If I were on a Mac, and I didn't like my OS, I would switch to NetBSD. It has far more support than Darwin, includes more software, Linux compatability (or is that restricted to the x86 platform?), has ports and a makeworld system that quite frankly, leaves Darwin behind in the dust. Of course this is Slashdot, where BSD gets little or no mention...

--

Mac OS X is the NT of the Mac world

[Anonymous Coward]

NT is not particularly UNIX-like. The only significant similarity that distinguishes them from other modern operating systems (like VMS, for instance) is that both were written in C (actually UNIX was ported to C, since both were developed together, but it's been C-based for decades now). NT also went further in the area of platform-neutrality (providing hardware abstraction among other things), but modern UNIX is still basically portable (early version were much less so).

The NT kernel is similar in some ways to Mach (which was an offshoot of BSD UNIX, though with the BSD code above the kernel level), which is almost the polar opposite of the monolithic UNIX kernel. Interestingly, the man who headed the development of Mach works at Microsoft, but not in the operating systems group (he heads Microsoft Research).

NT provides modern OS features, as UNIX does, but so do most operating systems written for modern hardware (from VMS on the VAX and Alpha to OS/2 2.x on the 386). The reason old PC operating systems like Mac OS and MS-DOS/Windows (non-NT) lack some of these features (or have then oddly implemented) is that they were written for early PC hardware which wasn't capable of running modern OSes (the 68000 was much better than the 8088/8086, of course, so the Mac guys had less of a hardware nightmare to deal with, but it still lacked essential things like a memory-management unit -- the Apple Lisa actually had an external MMU, so its OS was far more modern than the Mac OS (including the latest non-OSX versions), the the Lisa scheduler wasn't pre-emptive, so a single process could still monopolise the CPU).

The biggest innovation of NT was that it provided two levels of compatibility with existing PC operating systems (API and binary). NT provided a modern operating system environment (Win32), along with several environments for dealing with legacy applications at the binary and/or source level (the NTVDM/WOW subsystem for running 16-bit Windows binaries, the OS/2 subsystem for 16-bit OS/2 binaries and the POSIX subsystem, which provided a basic set of UNIX APIs and tools, but wasn't expanded to a really useful environment until Interix came along). This was the thing that was most revolutionary about NT. Previous microkernel-based systems (like Mach) had tended to be used only to run a single-server BSD environment, where as NT actually made use of its microkernel architecture to support three legacy platforms (DOS/Windows, OS/2 1.x and POSIX), along with a new one (Win32).

It's interesting that the flexibility of the NT design allowed Microsoft to change horses mid-stream, as it were. When NT was originally designed, it was thought that OS/2 would quickly become the standard PC operating system, but it soon became apparent that customers preferred the small, fast 16-bit Windows environemnt to the large, slow, but technologically superior, OS/2. As a result, the OS/2 subsystem was relegated to a legacy environment (supporting applications written for soon-to-be-cancelled Microsoft OS/2 1.x), while a new, 32-bit Windows API (Win32) became the primary subsystem. This would have been an extremely difficult transition if NT had been built as a monolithic OS (like UNIX).

Mac OS X is similar to NT in that it provides a modern, microkernel-based OS foundation, with a VM environment for legacy applications (similar to the NTVDM/WOW subsystem). I don't know if Apple have tried to support API-level portability or not, but if they have, OS X truly is the NT of the Mac world (only 7 years late, and most likely with support for only one legacy OS). If not, it's still similar in many respects, though with only a partial effort made to provide compatibility (supporting binary compatibility, but requiring Mac developers to learn an entirely new set of APIs).

Re:Mac OS X is the NT of the Mac world

[mr100percent]

Amazing, you hit the nail right on top of the head. Yes, OS X is binary and API compatible, the API is carbon, for portability between OS 9 and X. Future developers are urged to write in Java/Objective C+ and a full toolkit are there for OS X. Also, pre OS 9 apps are run by opening OS 9 in a separate window, in its own environment.

MacOS is fine, dood.

[gqgreg]

"..until the year of 1996, the day quake came to PC"

Um QuakeIII runs fine on my Mac, as does Team Arena and Star Trek Elite Force.

(its multitasking is worthless among other things)

Um, I can run pretty much every program I can think of with 512 MB of RAM in my slots. It's fun.

Nanny nanny boo-boo.


---

Re:MacOS is fine, dood.

[bonk]

Um QuakeIII runs fine on my Mac, as does Team Arena and Star Trek Elite Force.

I didn't see him say Quake3, he said quake 1. And it was QUITE a while before quake 1 was supported on mac, apparently long enough to drive him away from mac.

Um, I can run pretty much every program I can think of with 512 MB of RAM in my slots. It's fun.

You do know what proper multitasking is, right? it means that several applications will execute simultaneously (or close enough to appear so). just because you can have a lot of apps running because you have 512 mb of ram, doesn't mean it is multitasking very well.

The only thing i dislike about mac users is their apparent inability to see the downsides of their choice of OS.

Re:MacOS is fine, dood.

[mr100percent]

He can come back now, and multithreading is a great boost in MacOS 9.

You're missing some people

[dangermouse]

While everyone's talking about Mac users who switched to Linux, you all seem to be forgetting Linux users who want to use Macs. Put me in the latter category.

Fact is, Macs are some nice hardware. If you studiously avoid the cube, they're not even that much more expensive than equivalent x86 machines. They run cool, some run silent, they're zippy on those big glibc compiles, the towers come in great cases, and they look pretty swank sitting on my desk.

But until OS X, I've been prevented from appreciating Macs by their horrible operating (sic) system. And to be frank, OS X doesn't quite do it for me, either, though I'll readily grant that it's a major leap forward for MacOS. I like my whole system free... I know and am comfortable with my linux OS of choice (guess), and have no overriding desire to use another. I'll dual-boot MacOS to play the occasional DVD (for the time being), but that's about it.

I have the GUI I want under Linux, I have all of the tools I want under Linux, I can accomplish all of my tasks (and waste my time effectively with the occasional game) under Linux, and with Linux my OS is consistent across my x86 and ppc platforms. (And if I want to pick up a SPARC or Alpha system, well, it's pretty much the same OS there, too.)

Now, other than perhaps some better hardware support (my only current problem is AWACS sound, and I haven't tried 2.4.x yet...), why would I want to take a step backward and use MacOS (X or otherwise)?

Re:stop

[WillAdams]

Depends. NeXTstep on black hardware was quite price competitive.

OpenStep/x86 was $795 list (though there was special volume pricing to major clients like Chrysler until Apple took that away---also raised the price to $1,495 I believe). Developer Tools were $4,995 I believe.

I bought the $300 Academic set instead though.

Save for at work, I've not bought anything from Apple since the game Through the Looking Glass and my Newton MP100---don't see that changing unless there's a tablet system announcement.

I'll grant that NeXTstep was marketed to users with taste and technical savvy. Your point was?

William

--
Lettering Art in Modern Use

they'll go hand in hand

[mr_burns]

The article covers a lot of good points, but forgets that most geek houses (the typical den of PPC Linux) have MANY machines, each serving thier purpose, and configured accordingly. My PowerMac 6500 has a small hard drive and is too slow to run MacOS X. But it's certainly fast enough to be a router/IP Filtering firewall between my LAN and DSL line. I won't even need to hook a monitor up to it....so no need for a gui even. On the other hand, I've been using MacOS X PB for a couple months, and I'll be damned if I'll give it up. I've put it in my resume as a requirement. I dig it that much.

So I don't think we'll be seeing a mass exodus. Mac sers who've also been using Linux foa a while are going to dig both.

hardware support and using several OSs

[call -151]

The article seems to think that it is an all-or-nothing choice for operating systems. With the size of modern drives, there is not a forced choice of just one OS since it is easy to set things up as multiple boot. I currently use OS9, LinuxPPC and the OS X Public Beta on a G4 and my Powerbook. I switch regularly back and forth for different needs and expect that many LinuxPPC users work in the same mode. I am a big fan of the Mac on Linux project which is great for doing a few things under MacOS without restarting, in a manner similar to launching the Classic Environment under OS X.

OS X and LinuxPPC have a great deal of functionality in common but there I don't think that the kind of people who use LinuxPPC are likely to abandon LinuxPPC entirely for OS X. One issue is hardware support; I expect that to be better for consumer-type hardware under OS X but that remains to be seen. Printer support, for example, is currently very weak under the Public Beta but hopefully that will change soon. Some of the big scientific programs that I have compiled took a while to configure under LinuxPPC; there doesn't seem to be any real point to going through the configuration issues again just to get them working under OS X instead of LinuxPPC. Instead, I see myself continuing to switch back and forth for various tasks. I expect there will be more effort to port scientific computing projects to OS X, which will be great, but again, I don't see it as a question of total immediate replacement.

Re:Speaking... Overcoming Mac OS X annoyances

[weston]

Unfortunately, I don't find OS X to be all that useable as a desktop yet, in terms of its pathetic clone of the Finder, which throws away all the subtle aspects of useability.

Somewhere, recently, there were some articles on how to make the OS X Finder more like OS 9's. Start here if you're interested.

But I rather like the new Finder. Which subtle aspects of the UI do you find degraded?

Plus that stupid dock, which takes up precious vertical screen space

In the Finder/Desktop App, go over to the "Desktop" menu, and choose "Dock & Desktop Preferences". You can shrink the Dock to just about nothing, and then if that isn't enough, set it to auto show/hide, much like the Windows or KDE toolbars...

and prevents you from using the both lower corners of the screen when it is short

Huh? Things work fine for me in the lower corners of the screen below the top of the dock.

(An option for a vertical dock dangling from the menu bar would be a small improvement.)

The Apple Menu hack would probably get you what you need. But you're right, I'm very surprised they didn't include the option to make the dock vertical -- after all, you could do that under NeXTStep, OS X's grandaddy.

--

HFS +, crappy install.

[bmeteor]

I tried out LinuxPPC on and off on my old 7200 a few years back. I ditched the whole project altogether when OS X came out.

there are two reasons at the time why I dropped Linux PPC that are inherently its fault:

1. HFS+
I could not store any of my files on the secondary disk as LinuxPPC couldn't read it. Not their fault, but Apple protecting themselves in their weak times.

2. Installer didn't work.
At the time, Linux PPC just started their Live install, where it would install from a perl based GUI. didn't work. Tried doing a RedHat Install. didn't work. I didn't even know what perl was at the time, so I couldn't tinker with it. ended up installing the previous version, which installed pretty well. tried updating. it told me to use the perl installer. didn't work. :-)

Give me a break, I'm an art student with some experience in java, and was trying to use it as a media server.

Now, for the two reasons that are entirely my fault: 1. no net connection for support
I had one modem, and i decided to put it on my spankin' new G3. (I played a lot of Myth at the time)

2. I turned 21 :-)

"Web Development"

[Slur]

Need I say more? As a web developer I've preferred MacOS for all my graphics and text editing tools for obvious reasons, but always my deeper development has been on a Linux box over on the other side of the room.

Now with MacOS X I see the amazing promise of having mySQL databases running along with BBEdit and an integrated perl interpreter linked through mod-perl to Apache... all right on my G4 right here.

Maybe I'll keep my Linux box around as a server or test-bed but damn I think I got the best of all worlds with MacOS X. (And it'll serve PDF and print media pretty good too.)

--------
Yeah, I'm a Mac programmer. You got a problem with that?

Two different types of users

[Adam Wiggins]

It seems to me that you've got two potential audiences here: Linux users that use Apple hardware, and Apple users that use the Linux OS.

I would be an example of someone who is a longtime Linux user that is just looking for some interesting non-x86 hardware to run it on (Alphas are pretty pointless for the desktop, as I discovered a few years back). My girlfriend, on the other hand, is an Apple user who is just tired of an unstable operating system.

Either way, we are both looking forward to Mac OS X. If Apple can create a stable, powerful operating system running on fast, reasonably priced hardware that is also easy to use - well that's something that has never before been achieved in the world of desktop computing.

Adobe is *already* peeved!

[firewort]

Adobe is already ticked at Apple, for two products.

iMovie and Final Cut Pro. These two dig into Adobe's Premiere product.

Otherwise, Apple and Adobe have a healthy relationship. This could change, depending on the Next Big Thing Jobs introduces. If it's *another* product that will ship bundled and eat into Adobe's marketspace, watch out.

It seems to me that Jobs is borrowing a page from the browser wars by pre-installing Appleworks and iMovie... you don't have to buy MSOffice or Premiere...

Now, if GIMP is brought over to osX (this has been done, by the way... a guy with the nic of proclus (?) has Darwin running Xfree and GnuStep with Gimp up and running.) Then the only thing making it less attractive than Photoshop is, what's the stability/speed of the X layer. (Xfree versus Tenon's X implementation?)

(Okay, I know that people who live and die by Photoshop will not switch to Gimp, claiming something about Human Factors and testing.)



A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close

Totally wrong

[TheInternet]

or PPC systems, LinuxPPC and Be seem to be the only options. Without a G4, you are basically hosed.

That's garbage. Mac OS X public beta should run fine on any G3 with 128MB of RAM. That number is scheduled to be cut in half to 64MB by the final release. Honestly, without the Classic environment, you could probably get away with less, but that thing is a serious resource hog.

I'm currently running OSXPB on my Blue G3/400 with 256MB, and it runs like a dream.

- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson

old macs...

[will]

mac users are as faddish and speed-hungry as any computer clique. Probably more than most, because of all those fancy cases and new colours. and the discarded interfaces. and steve's enchanted green prada boots.

i've used linuxppc on several machines, but they've always been superseded ones. New powerbook he come, old powerbook he run apache _really_ good. put the whole lot in a backpack with a little hub and take your world with you.

i might be wrong, but i don't see anyone buying a mac in order to run linux now. it would be daft, whatever the gaussian blur stopwatch says. it's going to be kind of silly if the case looks nicer than your gui, no?

so, oddly, one of the reasons i keep buying macs is because of the linuxppc people: i know they'll be useful in other ways later.

back to the point: the question is, will people still install linuxppc on the old box when it's running apache already? which will be a while: the requirements are steep. I think the answer is yes, as long as the packaging is right.

OSX has to be all things to all mac users, so there's lots of room for specialists. the print-server in a (pretty) box. the firewall in a box, or the raq-alike instant webserver.

or more usefully, the web design studio special package that just drops in and gives you cvs and mod_perl (and php...) and failover to the other one.

i think if they play to specific audiences they'll flourish on the increased interoperability of macs and linux. the mountain is heading their way, i guess.

Non Sequitur

[ehintz]

And it still seemed slow and resource hungry compared to SuSE 6.4 for PPC. Explain that one.

Besides the fact that X Server was ALWAYS a bastard stepchild, it's completely irrelevant. Past Performance Is No Guarantee of Future Results. We're talking about X final release. Even X PB is not much of an indicator. Wait 'till the debug code is gone before passing judgement. Duh.

Regards,

Tried 'em both..

[jspectre]

And I have to say LinuxPPC w/ MOL is a far better combination than OSX w/ "Classic". Linux is a far more stable OS to boot, has more development behind it and is "free" (as in beer) to boot. Aqua sure is pretty, but I can do more to configure Enlightenment than I can Aqua (which, by the way, is a HORRIBLE GUI).

I sure hope they don't stop development of LinuxPPC, what will I run on my Apple hardware after Apple goes under???

Re:Switchover Or: read me for Steve Jobs.

[bmeteor]

// That's cool for you, and seriously, I've considered
// purchasing a Mac just to try out OS X (but will
// definitely wait until it has been out a while first).

Something in what you said really stirred something up in me.

A lot of the big talk on the Mac sites these days is how Apple is shifting to a software focus. Certainly OS X is numero uno on this list. Another big topic is the rumor of 'harder' advertising, meaning they'll focus on the merits of the functionality rather than calling their customers crazy :-)

I can't think of harder advertising than throwing one G4 Cube (it really is gorgeous) running OS X with internet access, and a loaded software package including Mac MS Office 2000 (it's Freakin' awesome!) in every Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears in the nation, but carry only the G4 cube. (the colored iMac's were an inventory headache for Best Buy, that's why they stopped carrying them, in addition to Apple's strict price level.).

This way, potential switchovers like you would be able to make a really good shopping decision for themselves. Have you ever seen their current display model? Can you spell suck? It's some fluffy locked director presentation, while every other PC is actually running Windows. It's really no wonder they can't sell any of them. Certainly, it would help the Macs against the PC biased salespeople.

Maybe that'd be a better reason to buy a mac.

(Oh if you're PC biased salespeople, sorry about the generalization :-)

How much have you used OSX?

[TheInternet]

as far as usability, speed and general usefulness goes, Aqua is a disaster

How much have you actually used Mac OS X? Because I've found that once people drop the preconception that a UI can't be both pretty and functional, they quite frequently find that Aqua has some ingenious new concepts.

- Scott

------
Scott Stevenson

Re:Mac is DYING

[gimp999]

Mac has been dying since 1984.

Re:Switchover Or: read me for Steve Jobs.

[Faulty Dreamer]

Well, I'm lucky I guess. I'm one of the few people that lives in a town with a full-fledged Apple store in it. So I don't go to any of the "major" computer stores if I want to see Apple hardware, I go to the dealer. Kind of nice.

But, I have seen the Apple displays in the PC-centric stores and agree whole-heartedly, the displays they are using does more to harm their image than help it.

Unsupported machines...

[MoldyZero]

Anyone with an older machine, before G3's, will be stuck using linuxPPC if they want a unix like op/sys. Mac OS X has the damn limitations on it, and will not boot its kernel on my PM 8500.

----------------
I am Moldy.

linux is not "free"

[tim_maroney]

Of the many false myths beloved of fans of free and open source software, the most persistent is summed up in this statement from the article in question: "All of the alternatives mentioned above are completely free. If a new version of Debian comes out, you can download it without charge."

This is false. It is virtually impossible to install a Linux distro by downloading. The servers choke and the downloads have to be repeatedly restarted; it takes over ten hours of manual labor on a fast line if you do manage to do it at all; and the installation instructions distributed for free apply only to the CD-based versions. Try going on to #linuxhelp and ask for help installing a downloaded copy -- people will tell you they have never heard of such a thing.

So how much do the CDs for this "free" operating system cost? Not much, just about seventy to eighty dollars for RedHat -- which is, of course, within spitting distance of what you'd be charged for a copy of MacOS or Windows. Somehow, this "completely free" operating system appears to cost just as much as the supposedly expensive proprietary ones.

So far, this is based purely on cash outlay considerations. If you take into account total cost of ownership, the equation is even worse, because free software was explicitly designed for a high support cost business model. As Stallman said in the 1980's, most UNIX people earn their dough as system administrators, and free software (together with its open source descendants) is set up to keep those people in business. It does that by creating costs in TCO, specifically personnel costs in system administration. Just installing a new piece of software on Linux can easily take over a day, between memorizing the manual, reconciling version mismatches, finding the right compile-time options, rebuilding the software, and dealing with configuration issues. The same software on MacOS or Windows might cost a few hundred bucks up front but it would probably be up and running in less than an hour, without needing to memorize a manual. How much do you make an hour? Do the math and tell me which way is cheaper. You only win if someone is paying you to install it for them.

A free operating system is just as expensive up front as a for-pay operating system. So-called "free" software is more expensive than for-pay software from a total cost of ownership perspective due to the high-support-cost assumptions embedded in the way free software is written. It's not about money and it's false to say it is. Hackers like free software because they like hacking on it, not because it's cheap in any real sense.

Tim

Re:linux is not "free"

[commandant]

Jesus H. Christ, you must be a fucking idiot, to post something like this without first looking into it. Let's see why you're wrong.

Of course, the first reason, is that "free" as applied to so-called "Free Software" has nothing to do with monetary cost, but the freedom to modify and redistribute code. Read the GPL if you like. It is perfectly acceptable to charge for Free Software, you simply need to provide source code on demand, and not restrict redistribution of modified source and binaries. If I'm not mistaken, I could even download the entire Redhat distribution, burn my own discs, and sell them on the street corner for $20 a piece.

Second, I've been through 3 linux distributions, and not paid a penny for any of them. Save for mathematica, a leftover from my Windows days, there is not a program on my machine that I've paid for, and everything is perfectly legal. On a cable modem, I downloaded the Redhat and Slackware current ISO images in just about 6 hours each. This was not wasted time, though, since I left my computer downloading the images while I attended classes, and came back to find them waiting for me.

Debian, on the other hand, did not even require an ISO image. I downloaded six floppy images (about ten minutes), rebooted, started the installation, and let it download basic packages necessary. The installation probably cost me an extra hour over what it would have taken with a premade CD, but that is hardly 10, as you suggest.

Furthermore, not once have I had to restart a download, and none of the servers have choked. Everything was limited only by the speed of my cable modem.

As far as TCO, a term I'm sure Microsoft has perverted far beyond comprehension, your statements are simply not true. You must consider the TCO when you are running Linux (or some other Free UNIX) in the hands of an experienced administrator. Microsoft, and you, expect to calculate TCO from a vantage point of a skilled Windows administrator. They include training and general "figuring-out-time" in the cost of setting up a Linux system. What about training and "figuring-out-time" for Microsoft systems? If you insist that the Linux admin knows nothing about Linux from the start, you must assume the same about the Microsoft admin. But if you assume your admins are skilled in UNIX, installing Linux is trivial. (I should hope any company would be cautious switching operating systems when their administrators don't know about the new OS.) No matter what UNIX-like operating system an admin comes from, it is trivial to become acquainted with another one.

Furthermore, in the hands of a skilled admin, installing software in Linux is trivial. Of course, most Free software is also free monetarily, which cuts the initial cost to 0. I never need to memorize manuals when installing software under Linux. I don't know why you expect this is necessary. The vast majority of software installation breaks down to little more than "./configure; make; make install", and often, the ./configure part is not necessary. Don't forget about package systems, either. RPMs and debs make software installation trivial, especially with a package management utility like apt. Software installation with apt is no more difficult than "apt-get install <pkgname>", which automatically downloads packages, satisfies dependencies, sets up a default configuration, and drops you back at a shell.

Except for select few programs, installing software under Linux is easy enough for a monkey like you to figure out. This is also the case with Windows software.

I will admit I have had to hack some makefiles in my day, but any experienced UNIX admin will have no trouble doing that. Plus, the advantage of being able to modify code far outweighs any benefit (I consider it a drawback) of a nice, "keep-clicking-next" install interface. There is real control in UNIX software installation, and little added difficulty.

We haven't even considered support costs. Microsoft Windows, a closed system, often has problems which are unsolvable by anybody but Microsoft. This means you must call them, and wait on the phone, to talk to somebody who probably doesn't know what he's doing anyway. Often times, you must repeatedly call, talking to a differnt person each time. To top it off, Microsoft charges for support calls after you've exceeded a certain number of calls. This gets expensive.

An open system, like Linux, is much cheaper to troubleshoot. First, any good code warrior should be able to debug and fix problems that crop up. And if you're not a code warrior? Just get an IRC client, find some Linux-related channel, and look for someone who is. It's a system that doesn't work perfectly, but I've found it to be more effective than calling some so-called corporate help desk.

Attitudes are important in troubleshooting, too. Linux, being an open system, harbors a community phenomenon that Microsoft Windows just can't sustain. People who use linux feel like part of a tightly-nit, minority group, and are therefore much more willing to help, without expecting something in return.

I'd be willing to guess that your Linux experience stems from the single Redhat or Mandrake Linux CD you bought at Best Buy, tried to install, and failed. You clearly don't know what you're talking about, since all your complaints are invalid. From the looks of it, you got frustrated with your inability to figure out Linux, and so turned to the Microsoft website to backup your intuition that Linux is some impossible-to-use operating system that takes a genius of 180+ IQ to figure out.

You were right about it not being about money, though. Still, Linux can be totally monetarily free, and cheaper in man-hours than any Microsoft or Apple product.

A new year calls for a new signature.

Re:linux is not "free"

[tim_maroney]

Of course, the first reason, is that "free" as applied to so-called "Free Software" has nothing to do with monetary cost, but the freedom to modify and redistribute code.

I was referring to a specific claim made in the article under discussion, which I quoted: "All of the alternatives mentioned above are completely free. If a new version of Debian comes out, you can download it without charge." I am aware of arguments made by RMS and others that the word "free" is not supposed to refer to payment. However, large segments of the free and open source communities are continuing to falsely insist that Linux is free in the commerical sense -- which it is not. A serious, pre-integrated, cross-platform Linux package such as RedHat will cost you the same as Windows or MacOS.

Second, I've been through 3 linux distributions, and not paid a penny for any of them.... On a cable modem, I downloaded the Redhat and Slackware current ISO images in just about 6 hours each. This was not wasted time, though, since I left my computer downloading the images while I attended classes, and came back to find them waiting for me.

Using the RedHat list of mirror sites, it took over two hours to even find a working mirror; the vast majority are broken or require a user account. I have just now tried a random sampling to confirm that this is still the case, and it is. There are a handful of sites on that long list that actually work and are open to the public, but it takes quite a long time to find out which ones they are; and once you do find them, half the connections terminate in the middle and have to be restarted by hand, requiring a babysitting process.

If you actually have a way to reproduce the six-hour hands-off anonymous download, feel free to share it here. I don't believe that you do.

Furthermore, not once have I had to restart a download, and none of the servers have choked.

Then you must be using some very special server, rather than one on the Red Hat mirror site list. It would be good to know what server that might be, but it doesn't change the fact that this arcane knowledge is not something that is accessible to the average end-user.

As far as TCO, a term I'm sure Microsoft has perverted far beyond comprehension, your statements are simply not true. You must consider the TCO when you are running Linux (or some other Free UNIX) in the hands of an experienced administrator. Microsoft, and you, expect to calculate TCO from a vantage point of a skilled Windows administrator. They include training and general "figuring-out-time" in the cost of setting up a Linux system. What about training and "figuring-out-time" for Microsoft systems? If you insist that the Linux admin knows nothing about Linux from the start, you must assume the same about the Microsoft admin. But if you assume your admins are skilled in UNIX, installing Linux is trivial. (I should hope any company would be cautious switching operating systems when their administrators don't know about the new OS.) No matter what UNIX-like operating system an admin comes from, it is trivial to become acquainted with another one.

None of the above has anything to do with reality. You are unaware of the TCO differences between GUI and command-line software, and you are ignoring the flakiness of free software. As Monty Manley wrote:

A quick look at freshmeat.net lists the reams of software being written, most of it for Linux, and damned little of it unit-tested, much less system-tested. Will application x cooperate with application y? Will daemon x coexist peacefully with the MTA? Does application x fail gracefully? Odds are very good that the programmer didn't think about any of this, much less test for it, and expects his hapless users to do his QA for him.

Commerical software is at least tested. Use a free package for anything important and you may literally be taking your life in your hands. Everyone who has ever been a UNIX system administrator knows that Unices of any flavor generate problems on a daily basis and require constant tweaking to even keep running. The same has not been true of Windows systems for the last five years, and it was never true of MacOS systems. UNIX TCO is a disaster -- a disaster that is profitable to those who work as sysadmins.

Furthermore, in the hands of a skilled admin, installing software in Linux is trivial.

Simply not true. Most of the people who say this seem to be unfamiliar with current desktop systems. Guess what -- on MacOS and Windows you almost never have to mix and match versions to make sure your packages will play together, you don't have to hunt down trivial driver settings to make basic hardware like monitors and keyboards work, and you don't have to search all over the web to find the libraries you depend on before you can install. To the UNIX devotee, somehow these costs don't count, but looking at the situation objectively, they are a huge time drain for the administrator. And that time is real money.

Of course, most Free software is also free monetarily, which cuts the initial cost to 0.

If you don't have to pay your system administrator, and your own time means nothing to you, then this is true.

I never need to memorize manuals when installing software under Linux. I don't know why you expect this is necessary.

If you don't RTFM, you can't use the software, because it's not self-documenting. Every UNIX program requires training by self or others, whereas few GUI programs require training. Again, this is one of the TCO losses on UNIX which UNIX devotees think is actually a benefit.

The vast majority of software installation breaks down to little more than "./configure; make; make install", and often, the ./configure part is not necessary.

That's assuming you have already spent hours resolving all the dependencies and version conflicts, and reading through README and INSTALL files to figure out which set of options you need to use.

Don't forget about package systems, either. RPMs and debs make software installation trivial, especially with a package management utility like apt. Software installation with apt is no more difficult than "apt-get install ", which automatically downloads packages, satisfies dependencies, sets up a default configuration, and drops you back at a shell.

It says a lot about your set of assumptions that you'd consider a cryptic command-line method of software installation "trivial." Have you ever opened a single book on user interface design? RTFM!

I will admit I have had to hack some makefiles in my day, but any experienced UNIX admin will have no trouble doing that.

You are admitting that just to install free or open software, you are faced with difficulties that would not arise on commercial platforms. Once again, these hidden costs somehow are waved away. To you they don't count, but in any objective TCO investigation they would loom large.

Plus, the advantage of being able to modify code far outweighs any benefit (I consider it a drawback) of a nice, "keep-clicking-next" install interface.

A benefit useful only to the .00001 percent of the human population that is made up of computer programmers.

There is real control in UNIX software installation, and little added difficulty.

Huge added difficulty. Contrast both difficulty and time consumed in changing a configuration file and rebuilding as against clicking a checkbox in a self-documenting preferences dialog.

We haven't even considered support costs. Microsoft Windows, a closed system, often has problems which are unsolvable by anybody but Microsoft. This means you must call them, and wait on the phone, to talk to somebody who probably doesn't know what he's doing anyway. Often times, you must repeatedly call, talking to a differnt person each time. To top it off, Microsoft charges for support calls after you've exceeded a certain number of calls. This gets expensive.

Not as expensive as a huge staff of on-call UNIX sysadmins 24/7, which is what it would take to maintain any significant network of end-user UNIX systems. If UNIX is confined to the back office then the support costs are probably about the same as for a Windows NT server network; but move it out to the end users and I would be surprised if support costs dodn't go up a factor of ten compared to a Windows or MacOS network.

An open system, like Linux, is much cheaper to troubleshoot.

Only if the software is of the same basic quality level, which it isn't, due to the lack of testing in most free or open source software.

Attitudes are important in troubleshooting, too. Linux, being an open system, harbors a community phenomenon that Microsoft Windows just can't sustain. People who use linux feel like part of a tightly-nit, minority group, and are therefore much more willing to help, without expecting something in return.

More of a closed community of obnoxious losers who desperately need to get a life out in the real world, from what I've seen. To quote Manley again, "Linux, more than any other OS, suffers from a surfeit of testosterone-poisoned young men who know little but speak much.... They are, in a word, punks. And Linux has far too many of them."

In pragmatic terms, anyone who wanders into this community of obnoxious young hackers asking for help is likely to be immediately accused of stupidity, have "RTFM" and less polite terms screamed at them, and otherwise face social conditions that the vast majority of the population would find intolerable. Not this closed community, though -- it loves to flame newbies.

You were right about it not being about money, though. Still, Linux can be totally monetarily free, and cheaper in man-hours than any Microsoft or Apple product.

Assuming we simply ignore all the hidden costs, it certainly can.

However, I don't think most LINUX advocates are trying to be deceitful by covering up the costs. Like Windows 3.1 users, they honestly don't realize there's a better way -- they really think it ought to take hours to install a piece of software. It's sad, especially since better ways have been in mass distribution for more than fiteen years now.

(Oh, to respond to one of the flames in your message: Both my download and CD installs of Linux were successful. I learned to kernel hack on BSD on a Sun I at C-MU back in 1984, and have worked as a UNIX administrator.)

Tim

Re:linux is not "free"

[commandant]

Look, sorry about all the flames, I just got a little heated in defending my choice of operating systems.

I've not used UNIX systems all my life. In fact, most of my computing life has been spent in the Windows95 and earlier Microsoft world. It's not that I "realize there is a better way," but that the better way, in terms of stability and configurability, happens to be Linux.

I had no trouble downloading slackware from ftp.slackware.com. I got Redhat from the biggest mirror I saw, valinux.com. Debian came from ftp.debian.org. I had no troubles.

Paying a UNIX administrator does not count as software cost, because you'd be paying a Windows admin just the same. This common cost can be eliminated in the comparison.

The vast majority of the linux community is helpful. It is those assholes who spit at you, that you remember, and hold against the entire group. They are NOT the majority.

I'm not a professional programmer, nor am I a good programmer. I wouldn't dream of modifying anything big or important. And yet, the openness of software is still convenient for me.

If software is meant to interact with other software, the maintainer has most likely tested it with that other software. But, of course, my window manager isn't tested to work with BIND 9, because the two programs don't interact. Open software is tested in the environment it was meant to behave in. Furthermore, it is tested by everybody who downloads it. Word does get around about bad software.

I'm not going to argue that putting UNIX on the average user's desktop won't make support more expensive. UNIX isn't for the average computer user, since the average computer user is an idiot, and his IQ goes down the more computers are sold. But UNIX in an office, serving files, printers, and the like, makes a better, cheaper alternative to Windows. Particularly a Free UNIX, like linux.

You don't think install difficulties arise in commercial platforms? The term "DLL Hell" wasn't invented for nothing, you know. Many programs interact poorly with others who use different versions of the same libraries. Don't forget the "System Requirements" on the sides of commercial software packages, which list other software that must be present for the application to run. At least open software gives the skilled a chance to fix things. And editing makefiles is a good thing; it allows me to move libraries and such where I want them. I have seen far too many windows apps that won't install because libraries or other programs aren't in a default location.

The rest of your arguments are gui-vs.-command-line arguments. This is only a matter of preference. As you left the UNIX world for Windows, you are undoubtedly biased against the old command-line setups that UNIX offers. As I have left the Windows world for Linux, I am obviously biased in the opposite direction. We can't win, because it's all an opinion from this point on. But I will say this: I prefer a bash shell because touch-typing is more efficient than hunting and clicking on little buttons. You can type faster than you can place a little black arrow on a tiny gray button using a pointing device.

A new year calls for a new signature.

OS X:1 LinuxPPC: 0

[MasterVidBoi]

Who'd they lose?

Me.

To understand this, you need to know why Mac users want to use LinuxPPC. It's really quite simple, when I got my machine (the last of the Beige G3's) there was no reason anyone sane would buy Apple hardware to run Linux. x86 machines were faster and cheaper. Today, some Linux users on these boards think the hardware looks real damn cool, but thats still about the extent of it.

Mac users wanted to use Linux because they had grown beyond the Classic MacOS. I was in this situation last september. The mac did everything I really wanted it to do, I wasn't interested in serving anything over the net, but I wanted to get some more experience that would be useful in non-mac dominated world. Some experience with Linux/*nix was the key, so I installed LinuxPPC.

For about 2 weeks, I was in heaven. I didn't know anything about how to use it, but the nerd inside of me was freaking out with glee. The included documentation was excellent, and I was quickly learning my way around. Then the MacOS X public came out. I bought it the first day, and when it arrived a week later.

I booted into LinuxPPC a few more times, but by that time, the novelty had worn off. I was by no means a sysadmin, but I could find my way around a shell. It really came down to the fact that if I wanted to get any real work done, I had to reboot back into the MacOS. I didn't have any reason to be using linux except for my own education.

OS X quickly filled both of those goals, I could sit there reading through the grep man page, with Photoshop running in the background. Needless to say, I stopped using LinuxPPC very very quickly, and by now, I haven't booted into it in 3 months. Within the next few weeks I'll be reformatting my drive to reclaim those 4 gigs of partitions.

When OS X Final comes out, and the OS X X-Windows implementations get a little more solid, I'll be installing one of them, and Linux will really have lost everything it had for me.

But thats my story. Those mac users who switched to Linux and were able to stay there and be productive may have a very different story. OS X is still not nearly as customizable as Linux, and despite Darwin, not nearly as open. You can't turn off the Genie effect or anything like that (doesn't bother me though, I actually like it). When some X-Windows implemtation gets fixed up a little bit more, maybe this will help OS X a bit, but then your just going from X Windows to X Windows. Most mac users don't have the same feelings against Apple that x86 linux users have against M$, so coming 'back to the mainstream' probablly isn't a moral curse.

There really is no single reason for using LinuxPPC. Some will find OS X fills their linux needs, some wont. In my case, and in the case of many Mac users who are just use Linux as a hobby, instead of a productive tool, OS X is the greatest thing that ever happened to my computer.

The future of PPC-Linux depends on non-Apple PPC h

[j h woodyatt]

I have a very simple reason for saying this.

I used LinuxPPC 2000 (and two earlier revisions from 1999) on my Powerbook G3. I needed to develop software for a variety of Unix platforms, and Linux was the only option that allowed me not to have to invest in x86 hardware.

At no time did I ever even THINK about installing LinuxPPC over Mac OS 9 on my wife's iMac. She is not an IT professional and she uses her computer for schoolwork, i.e. writing papers, drawing diagrams and using Internet applications.

Let me be clear about this: I asked her to evaluate the idea by using my Powerbook running Linux, and she ultimately rejected Linux for all the traditional reasons. Mac OS 9 really doesn't suck as much as Slashdot would like to believe.

That being said, Mac OS X is a whole different subject. I switched my Powerbook in November and never went back. My wife has tried it, and her reaction was decidedly more positive.

It's still too early to run the Public Beta on her iMac, because some of the ancillary applications won't run (e.g. the DVD player). Still, I can PLAN her transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. That was simply not in the cards with Linux.

It is this experience which tells me that for Linux (as a desktop OS) to survive on PowerPC, someone other than Apple will have to start selling PPC hardware-- hardware that will NOT run Mac OS, without doubt.

So tell me-- just WHO is lining up right now to build PowerPC workstations that will run Linux, Darwin and NetBSD, but NOT Mac OS? Because without that happening, PPC-Linux has about as much future as ARM-Linux.

I've switched already

[scruffyMark]

I had installed LinuxPPC 1999, then 1999 Q3 on my Mac.

Never mind that the interface in Gnome is a disaster in terms of consistency (if anyone wants an environment to bash for being eye-candy first, usability second, Gnome is it). Never mind that getting X11 to support the video card worth a damn, hardly a bleeding-edge just released board, was nothing but headache. Never mind any of that, I needed a Posix OS.

As soon as Mac OS X beta came out, I installed it and never looked back. Some of the best stuff about this is not so much the GUI (though it is nice) is the fact that Darwin is a really nice Unix. Configuring programs from the commandline is sweet - one utility, all files in consistent XML. The way apps, kernel extensions, installers and such are packaged is great too - it effectively hides the complexity of modern programs from people who don't care about it, but makes it super easy to find out for the curious. The organization of startup scripts is really clear too, none of this jumble of /etc/rc.whatever files all piled together.

GIMP vs. Photoshop

[javert]

All my desktop apps work including Photoshop (which is infinitely better than GIMP).

Photoshop might be infinitely better than the GIMP, but then I'd never find out, since it's also infinitely more expensive.

I suppose some parts of GIMP (why is there no line/rectangle tool??) could be improved but then it is getting improved constantly (1.2 is out!!) so I'm happy. It does most of what I need it for and more.

I've never used Photoshop so I can't comment, but if I can't apt-get install it for free then I can't afford (and don't want) it.

Re:Mac is DYING

[coult]

Who is this "Mac" guy you are talking about...oh wait, do you mean Apple, Inc., the company that manufactures the Macintosh?

Vertical Dock Screenshots

[Ruddydude]

This screenshot shows a vertical dock. The grab is supposedly of a newer build of OSX than the Public Beta, one with a more customizable interface--most notably a movable dock (duh--Steve takes out the vertical option to make the weenies all shout in unison--Give us choices!! And Steve obliges--Sheesh) and notice the resurrection of the sacred Apple menu, which when confirmed will be great news for old school Mac faithful. This screenshot shows Terminal app with the dock moving commands (which don't work in PB btw) and this screenshot shows a configuration of the finder (file browser) with what looks like windowshade widget and a what is being called a "shelf" The links came from a Danish MacOSX site and I found them on this thread at MacNN where the guy who posted them goes by the name JLL.

Re:Mac is DYING

[piecewise]

The Mac isn't dying at all. This is a typical comment from some mindless Windows or Linux user. And anyway, why do you *care*? You people act like this is a holy war. Who cares? If you don't want a Mac, don't buy one. I, on the other hand, happily placed an order for 25 iMacs, 2 G4 towers and 4 iBooks for a computer lab a couple of months ago. I'm loving the technology, Mac OS X, Airport, and the stability.

Why don't you just not worry about the Mac, since you obviously don't know enough about it to see how far its come and how much it has ahead of it.

No OS X for me

[dan_the_heretic]

I have a G4. I have SUsE PPC. As soon as I can get MOL going, I won't boot OS9 again!

I have been playing with Linux since '94 (Slackware). OS X ? Who needs it!

No sig, know life; Know cig, no life

I bought one...

[zuhl]

and it worked great for YEARS, before being replaced a month or so ago. That was a sturdy box. I work for a commerical printer and we used to pump GIGAbytes of data through it on an hourly basis. It would rarely hiccup. I miss the reliability now that we have switched to a Win2K box. (yeech)

OS X will rock. When they get around to making a decent "server" type box (RAIDs, extra power supplies, etc.) that will rock, too.

Re:Mac is DYING

[kurisudes]

While I agree in some regards..First: MAC IS NOT DYING...when was the last time you saw an ADVERTISMENT or a MOVIE...there is a wide range of graphic designers using this OS very happily. Secondly: In pricing things out, a comprable laptop system is just as expensive for the same hardware as things from compaq hp and ibm...I have thought about getting an iBook to install linux on with Mac OS even though I swore a couple years ago to never touch them again! Wake up world! People are CHOOSING MACs for jobs where there is some pretty good money. The are using the easy appletalk etc. networking that a child can figure out (plug the cord in the slot with the matching icon...wow HARD?). And don't forget HARDWARE! Another point...go to Asia...see what is in more use there...Mac OS is easy to configure for multiple languages and is beating out Windows overseas! Linux isn't the only computer revolution you know...

Re:The future of PPC-Linux depends on non-Apple PP

[jayc33]

Who's lining up? Basically noone. Try www.openppc.org for details of the POP design, but a shortage of one component killed POP. Probably would have booted OS X/darwin just fine, though, so it's a shame...

We all are speaking as existing UNIX users

[gmac63]

Most of the posts I've seen have been from existing UNIX/Linux users points of view. Mind you, that's the gist of the article, but the problem to me is what is going to happen to the non-UNIX Mac users?

They are going to be left out in the COLD. Litterally shivering when their pretty OS goes bonkers. Unix just ain't like the MacOS.

As for LinuxPPC vs MacOS X, I still have a problem with a single company controlling my OS... Kinda like taking from the bear and giving to the fox...

-Wes Yates

What about POWER4?

[yerricde]

There was talk of IBM going back to re-do the POWER3 cpu

IBM did so, adding simultaneous multi-threading (on-die SMP), and created POWER4.

Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?

Incorrect.

[Gendou]

http://www.maconlinux.org is the answer to this.

So now, we have virtual machines for pretty much all mainstream consumer platforms on Linux.

So, I say again, "Bear in mind that other than pretty windows with shadows, fading menus, and stretchy...uhm, things... what can MacOS X do that Linux can't?"