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Is Mac OS X Threatening Linux?
An unnamed correspondent asks: "Does anyone think that the release of Mac OS X will threaten Linux? A UNIX-based OS that XFree86, the GIMP, Apache, etc. run on, and is easy to use and maintain for a beginner, might not bode too well for the little OS that could. I'm not talking about techies -- I'm talking about people who might use Linux on their desktop (companies who are deploying it, etc.). Why would they want to use Linux instead of OS X?" It's not a new question, but it won't go away, either. Anyone out there planning to jump to Mac OS X from Linux or one of the (other) BSDs?
You see, when you say ``Linux,'' what do you really mean? You really don't think of your kernel. Really, you don't. You think of all those great tools that help you to get your work done... tools like make and vim and gcc and grip and the gimp and apt and everything else that make you more productive. Things like the window manager that does what you want, and configurability of how your text editor works, and being able to easily remap your keys and such.
If, suddenly, you can get something from Apple that has a BSD underneath, with all the great tools you have grown to love, is it really MacOS that you're loving? No, it's still the things that you love on your computer that you call ``Linux.''
Might MacOS decrease the number of people who run the Linux kernel? Perhaps. Mostly, though, I think it will increase the base of people who have access to all the great tools that we love. In that perspective, what we call ``Linux'' will just have more people added to the ranks.
And, I think, this is what is going to happen to all the computer vendors, especially the UNIX vendors: They will either become like Linux, or they will die. Either you will have all the great tools available to you on your UNIX variant, along with easy (apt-style, perhaps) upgrading and such, or you will see that flavor of UNIX die off. So you might still have a Solaris or IRIX kernel, and maybe even C library, but your installation will become more and more Linux-like. And so, sort of, Linux will achieve Total World Domination. Maybe not the kernel... but the powerful environment, for sure.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
You're quite wrong, I'd say. Mac OS X is Unix, perhaps more so even than Linux (it is based on BSD, which, for nitpickers, is more Unix than Linux). You can drop into the shell, and you'll barely even know it's Mac OS X, aside from the somewhat different directory structure. Also, the Mach kernel is cross-platform, and, indeed, deep in the Apple labs, Mac OS X is running on Intel hardware.
This is the real threat to Linux--Mac OS X for x86. Suddenly, you have an OS that does everything Linux does and can even run Linux binaries (thanks to BSD Linux-binary compatibilty), and has a nice GUI. Three things stand in the way:
1) Steve Jobs. If he doesn't like it, it will get "Steved".
2) Minor performance tweaking and testing.
3) A deal with Insignia Solutions to license Virtual PC code and create Red Box (an environment in which Windows apps can run).
...and I'll say it again, OSX, or any other OS for that matter, represents no "threat" to Linux. Does Coca-Cola "threaten" water? Does the existence of dominos "threaten" my ability to play cards? Of course not. It doesn't matter how popular any OS becomes, because Linux is free, and will always be supported and improved upon by those who love it. It does not rely upon a centralized authority to ensure it's continued survival, ala Windows. As long as one person is running Linux, Linux is alive. The pundits keep talking about Linux as though its a traditional product. It's not. It's not in a race to "beat" anything. We users may hope for eventual supremacy over other OSes, but that is not now, nor has it ever been a primary concern. All the attention from the media, and the involvement of companies like RedHat is great, but it's all peripheral to the central idea that Linux was created, and is maintained by the people who use it. Something better may come along someday, and if it is truly better people will switch. But I can tell you that it will have to be free and open for that to happen. I wish Mac OS well. But I have no concerns whatsoever that there is any potential that it will "threaten" my current OS of choice.
-Vercingetorix
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Just recently, I aquired a dual-G4/500MHz machine and MacOSX beta. I started up the machine (which shipped with OS9 installed), and the first thing it did was crash. Then I installed OSX.
First of all, OSX is *beautiful*. You'd be hard-pressed to pick out an individual pixel on the screen with OSX running. The anti-aliasing is done very well (does not look blurry), and I haven't noticed any slowness in any of the rendering.
The interface isn't extremely different from previous MacOS's (note that I haven't used previous MacOS's much). The menu bar still stays at the top of the screen, and programs still don't quit unless you choose "quit" from the file menu, which bothers me. The rest of the interface is very nice, however. Lots of drag-and-drop, which I like.
I could see myself switching to OSX as soon as it goes mainstream and gets more applications to support it. You can run OS9 programs now, sort of, but it's slow. OSX is stable, though, and POSIX-compliant, which means it beats Windows in my book. And since I really like things that are well-designed and thought out, I like it better than Linux, at least on principle. We'll see about usability.
Oh, and I absolutely LOVE the G4 hardware. The instant I openned the case, I thought "Damn, why didn't anyone else think of this!?" You really have to see it to understand, though.
Over the past few years, Apple has really changed. Basically everything that was wrong about them before has been fixed, and in many cases made *better* then the competition. The only problem remaining is price. G4 hardware is still on the expensive side, though not so much so as I rembered. Also, if you know what you are doing, you can bring the price down by buying just the case and mobo and using standardized parts for everything else (ATA/66 hard drives, PC100 RAM, AGP video (ATI cards), USB keyboard/mouse, etc.).
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MacOS X is going to slaughter Linux on the desktop. But who cares? BeOS slaughtered Linux on the desktop, Windows 2000 slaughterd Linux on the desktop, MacOS 9 slaughtered Linux on the desktep, NeXTStep slaughtered Linux on the desktop, even Windows 3.1 was better than Linux on the desktop.
Linux, as we know it today, it not going going to ever take over the desktop -- not when it doesn't support any of the new media files, not when it doesn't have a decent web browser, not when every distribution comes with (several) piss-poor, incompatible, incomplete control panel utilities, not when it every single program I run seems to have its own widget set, has a different set of fonts, has home-rolled its own ugly alpha blending, and has a different look-n-feel to go with it all.
It will never take over when clicking "install everything" on any distribution means that every passing script kiddie has root on your machine. It will never take over when every single piece of software available requires a certain kernel, a certain C library, a certain set of fonts, a certain version of X, a certain version of Gnome, or any one of the half-dozen Java Runtimes, and each is incompatible with whatever you're running now.
Linux will never take over when every significant program has implemented it's own (somewhat incomplete, and slightly buggy) installer, each incompatible with any method you were using to keep track of where every file on your machine came from.
Linux will never take over when every distribution, every desktop, ever file manager, and even ever program available has its own way of associating files with programs -- It will never take over when telling Gnu Midnight Commander, Netscape, Mozilla, Konquerer, and any other program whether to open PDF files with Ghostview or Adobe Acrobat means configuring each program individually.
Linux is never going to take over the desktop as long as working as a networking client is so piss poor. It will never take over when browsing the network, and attaching to an SMB share, or a Netware share, or an NFS share requires either strong administrator magic, or a user poking around in the shell as root.
Linux is never going to take over the desktop as long as printing is still such an immense pain in the ass -- printing on Linux is about as pitiful as printing from DOS was 15 years ago. The only difference is that DOS programs often made an attempt to work with available printers, while every Linux program demands either a PostScript printer, or a buggy filter manually set up to pretend there's a PostScript printer there.
In short, Linux as we know it essentially has no desktop presence at all. Given the realities of the market, I can't imagine a situation where most current Linux users would consider using a version of Linux that fixed the flaws of Linux that makes it so useless on the desktop. Linux has nothing to worry about from Apple on the Desktop, because Linux isn't on the Desktop anyhow.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
You haven't used OS X, have you? Let's talk.
Well for starters you lose all those lovely ease of use features once you start using X instead of aqua. So there goes that.
The ease of use is *not* totally lost once you start using X. In fact, for many people, I suspect the ease of use associated with the Mac OS isn't really just the cues/navigation abilities in the Finder and widget set -- though those are nice.
No, the real niceness is in the system administration/configuration/installation courtesies. It generally just seems to take less time to learn how to do these, so you get your system out of the way faster to do whatever else it is you wanted to.
OS X follows in this tradition. I installed it, and it worked. Inside 30 minutes. OK, with all the dev tools it inside 45. And oh yes, it's full of all the commandline goodness I've come to expect and love from Linux.
Secondly, you can't run full OS X on x86 platforms - just darwin. So you get an expensive and slow computer from apple that has a candy coated shell. Am I the only one that doesn't see a point?
Apple *will* somehow have to address the price performance issue if they want to gouge market share out of others. But they can keep their core advantages (enumerated above) and keep their core customre base, maybe even grow a little.
BTW, on what do you base your assumption that current apple hardware is "second rate" other than processor speed?
The deal is that since apple customers are cultist followers,
Blah, blah. "I don't understand apple custumors so they must not be rational." Great logic. I expect you to admit also think people like Minkowski and Feynman were loons (pardon my assumption that you don't understand all the theories they published).
But at least they don't have a cpu fan - that's worth an extra $600, right?
Not, as it turns out, in the mass market. But I love laptops for this reason. I hate the noise.
And, as it turns out, one of my hobbies is audio/video production -- a big market for apple. Having a quiet computer really is an asset. But you probably didn't think about that.
If OS-X does anything, it'll simply be to raise the bar for KDE and GNOME - a challenge they will be able to meet.
KDE and GNOME, great as they are, don't get anywhere at solving the underlying system administration problem. Eazel might.
Sorry, but apple has gone the way of the Amiga - thousands of deluded followers and zero relevance.
If by deluded you means that there's not hope of world domination, then your comment has truth. But if you mean that Apple's offerings don't have things worth examining -- even buying -- then you're off your rocker. The Cocoa (formerly Yellowbox/Openstep) development framework by itself is a find. The other benefits I've touted in this post are real and will appeal to people -- even some Linux users.
Mass abandonment of Linux for OS X? Hardly probable. Even if OS X was completely superior and ran on Intel hardware, the ideology of Open Source and sheer stubborn religiousness withing the
*LINUX* community would keep users -- just like the "deluded apple followers" you mention.
But don't think that means that OS X isn't something to be reckoned with -- and learned from.
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.