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A Quick Look At Mac-On-Linux
Travis Emslander writes: "They have an article about Mac on Linux over at MaximumLinux.org. I didn't even know this project existed but it looks like you can run any MacOS app (not including MacOS X apps of course) on a PPC machine with it. I'm starting to wish I had a mac to try this stuff." Here are some more screenshots. I saw MoL demonstrated over a year ago (when OS X wasn't really an issue) and was amazed at how quickly it ran. Anyone out there using it on a day-to-day basis?
mace?
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Mac's rock so hard. This is wicked-cool and I can't wait to get my G4 to try this now! 8-)
When you emulate one OS, to another and then back again. In truth, any emulator should be able to provide enough services to run another emulator under it :)
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Great, now I can run Linux, MacOS and Linux all at the same time. Is there anything greater?
i think this is cool. more info can be found at maconlinux.org
... is what niche this fills with OS X around. A year ago, there was simply no way to get MacOS functionality on a Unix (/Linux, etc.) system except with either MOL or that horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs (sorry, can't remember the name.) These days, OTOH, a powerful and MacOS-compatible Unix is, in fact, well, what you get when you buy a Mac.
To be fair, there are a lot of older Macs out there that don't have the horsepower for OS X but would do just fine as Linux boxes, and I can see MOL being useful for them. With new iMacs so cheap, though, how long will that be true?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The post says you can run MacOS apps on Linux on a PowerPC, doesn't this defeat the purpose of running linux on a powerpc? Why not just dual boot if you're going to have it on a powerpc anyway? I can understand Mac-On-Linux if it was an x86, but this is Mac-On-Linux-On-Mac.
I am a Mac user, but this is how I see this might be important: one of the great things about Linux is the approach and attitude of the developers - the community, the very nature of open source, the difference from the 'closed' operating systems (including my beloved OS X). If you run Linux as your primary OS because using anything else seems like an intolerable sell-out, having the ability to emulate another OS that provides otherwise unavailable functionality is a way more viable solution that giving up your freedom just to be able to see Quicktime movies and run Photoshop. I don't feel like I have stated this very well - can someone that uses Linux add to this?
I have a related link righthere. :)
This sounds like a great project.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
A lot of the questions about "what's the point?" and "is it emulation or not?" can be answered by thinking of MoL as like VMware for PowerPC.
This is for PPC Linux. It functions like VMWare or Win4Lin under x86 linux, running a virtual MacOS session inside Linux. It doesn't do any processor emulation.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Feasibility? Reading the article, it seems the project has realized its aims and beautifully at that. You can run the MacOS, natively, within linux. You can run your Mac apps and do your unix/linux thing side by side without re-booting. The fact that this is basically what MacOS X does is a different story, though...
Perhaps Win4Lin or Wine, but not VMWware, if you haven't noticed, vmware emulates the entire x86 chip, hence you can run any os on it and it has its own bios, etc.
I thought "What Linux Stands For", was being able to put your own tools together, and use them for whatever you need to get done. Community or no community. Apparently, some people have/prefer Mac hardware, and would like to use Linux on it while still reaping the benefits of Mac compatibility. Who are you to tell them otherwise?
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Then don't waste your time on it.
Oh - you want to tell OTHER folks how to use their time? You offering a paycheck? You got a big stick? No? Then go worry about your own time; they'll handle their's just fine thank you.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
And aside from a few niggles (like, sound not working and other minor stuff), it is very fast and works very well. I use it daily to test PHP generated pages for if they look good under Icab, Mac IE, and mac netscape/mozilla amongst others.
just look at the yellow dog BRIQ hardware. These use a G4 processor, but are not Apple hardware. With the official Apple Clone market closed, anyone with a G3 or G4 processor based system should be able to run Mac software as well as Linux software. Fantastic!
I use MOL on my Lombard Powerbook at work. It has to be one of the most clever and most useful PPC linux apps that was ever written. It is _extremely_ fast with respect to emulation because it isn't really emulation at all; the PPC calls are all native. No need to translate PPC calls to x86 like you would when running VirtualPC on a Mac.
:)
The only problem I've had of late is that the network device stops working after about three hours but I just kill MOL and restart it. From past experience with MacOS, rebooting every three hours is often necessary anyway
All in all, an excellent program. And its not so much that it allows you to run MacOS programs under Linux, ala MacOS emulators for Windoze - it is a complete virtual PPC machine within a PPC machine.
My laptop has YellowDog Linux 2.0 on it but I also ran MOL on Debian unstable for awhile with good success. I also run it at home on my Apple Network Server - I was able to install MacOS from scratch using MOL by setting the boot device to the CD.
Well this is going to cost me another G4 tower... I just got OS 10.1 up and happy (yes, it does rock, no. it doesn't suck) but now I want Mac on Linux running up next to OS X not instead of it.
Talk about a horse race? here is in opportunity to run both classic apps (read: applications that get me paid) on *nix environments. One on a BSD based system supported by a huge ass company with a huge ass budget (and stake). The other, Linux based and supported by the Screaming Linux Jihad.
I choose to exploit everything and see what works best. zealously is for jackasses.
- "It probably was your JVM. Macs and Java don't mesh. They sometimes seem to be meshing, but there's no real rapport."
- "I thought Mac Oh Yes Sex was supposed to solve all that."
- "Have you installed MacOS X?"
- "Well, no, but - "
- "Then I think I see your problem."
Nice troll! I give it about an 8 out of 10. I like the transition from almost reasonable claims to outright lies that nobody would ever believe especially. The troll seems to peak most of the way through the big central paragraph, though, and the rest just distracts from the point. You either ought to quit while you're ahead or continue to make even more outrageous claims. Remember, a short, concise troll is usually better than a long-winded and well-developed one.
I also recommend a little stronger technological background in the introduction. Just mentioning kernel 2.4.9 isn't going to cut it. Try throwing in mentions of Redhat 6.2 for additional stability, Tux webserver for speed, and maybe some impressive hardware specs. The more it sounds like you know what you're talking about in the introduction, the better the ultimate troll effect.
Please drop a reply if you have any questions or want any more advice.
It may be faster than Classic under OSX...it woul dbe incorperated into Darwin, for people who want a v ersion of Linux for the Mac that fully supports all of this hardware.
Another major issue is that, NOT ALL PPC SYSTEMS ARE MACS!!!!!!!! This would allow you to run that Mac OS on any PPC based IBM server.
So basically you think running linux on a mac is a waste of time? Think not. I and hundreds of programmers who actually use stuff called "LinuxPPC" and develop for it are putting our macs to good use. I have an old mac power pc 7600 and I've just turned it into a linux box so it can do mail serving.. seems like a pretty good use for a machine that would have been thrown out. You aren't thinking with an open mind, there's tons of people out there, probably just like me who say "Thank you!" to the people who develop the open source community for the mac.
- Nuts and Gum, together at last.
"Wow and just imagine how brutally slow it is."
You obviously have never used MOL. I used to use my iMac as my main machine. I installed Linux and left it running in the background and started up MOL and used it as my Primary OS. there was NO difference between running MOL from the console and booting it up straight to MacOS.
MOL is awesome. PowerPCs are awesome. SuSE Linux PPC is awesome.
No it doesn't! It emulates the bios and hardware devices, but it doesn't need to emulate the x86 chip. It only runs on systems that already have one. If it did, don't you think there would be a solaris or mac os port of it? Or, moreover, since it does run on x86 chips only, why ever would they write an x86 emulator for the x86*?
And the fact that you can run "any os" on it (although this isn't strictly true -- they only officially test and support it on certain OS's, and I believe they actually dropped support for one of the BSDs recently due to lack of demand) does not mean it must emulate the processor. If it provides a complete, standard BIOS implementation along with a way to emulate direct access to devices, it will of course be able to in theory run any OS.
* - yes, I am aware of the PA-RISC emulator for PA-RISC HP wrote experimentally which resulted in speed-ups under certain situations. This is cool technology, but VMWare doesn't need to use it to do what it does -- and don't you think if they were doing something like that, they would advertise that fact quite prominently (assuming it results in improved performance).
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
http://www.maconlinux.org/sshots/pic10.gif
Okay... so they are emulating DOS emulated from Windows emulated from Mac and emulated on Linux?
*head explodes*
Mac-on-Linux is akin to VMware - it runs Mac code natively on PPC processors by virtualizing the underlying hardware. It is amazingly powerful and the last I was hearing on the MOL lists is that OS X support will be back soon (yes, it was there when OS X was in its infancy, since then, a few changes in OS X have broken things in MOL). With Mac OS 9.x (and earlier), however, MOL is solid as a rock. I can run days, even weeks without any instability - eventually, though, Photoshop or something else will cause me to reboot MacOS.
If anyone's been scared to try out Linux on a PPC machine, for fear of losing MacOS, check out Mac-on-Linux ... you'll have it to fall back on in case you get stuck in Linux. Most PPC Linux distros that I know of ship with Mac-on-Linux, so getting it running should be a snap. If you have any problems, the MOL mailing lists are amazingly helpful, often times Sam Rydh, the creator/maintainer of MOL will post responses himself.
FYI - sound works great, but video acceleration is lacking (much like VMware). USB support is also not there (yet) - but, if your device is seen in Linux, you can use it in MOL.
Er.... no. That's just plain wrong.
VMWare, for the most part, runs x86 code natively on the processor. It traps and emulates some instructions, and scans executables before loading for the occasional non-virtualisable x86 instruction - The x86 PC-AT architecture is not fully virtualisable, unlike both many more modern architectures, and older archtectures that were better designed.
The x86 chip itself is a strange mixture of kludges, that have grown up over the past couple of decades. However, 486+ family chips can virtualise 8086 code, and there's "only" a "few" 80386+ instructions that the VMWare authors had to sacn out and deal with specially, so VMWare is NOT a PC emulator like bochs.
However, one also has to deal with device I/O, since none of the PC support chipset is customarily designed for virtualisation either - and this is what IS for the most part emulated in VMWare, hence the virtual BIOS, HD and gfx card.
For more information, consult the blurb about VMWare, and the documentation for Plex86, an open-source clone of VMWare
Choice of masters is not freedom.
It's better than feasible... it's already working.
Funny thing is, I'm glad not everyone is developing on x86... if the "community resources" were all focused on making shiny new stuff for x86 servers, I wouldn't be able to run Linux on my Macs.
I installed LinuxPPC on my iBook last year (which ran great I might add) but I still needed to boot to OS 9 to use the mac programs, so I played with Mac-on-Linux, it worked great with out a lot of bloat. My only difficulty was networking the emulated MacOS through Linux, it was a bit challenging, as well as printing, but these are problems every emulator faces. I remember something a while back comparing MOL and the classic enviroment. The Classic enviroment of OS X is smoother, but I remember MOL being faster.
Organicsculpture.com
I for one am using Linux on an iMac. I simply didn't bother to find out how MacOS worked.
Also the mac is going away soon and a friend of mine is going to have it. In order for her not to destroy it i need to be able to connect to it and manage it over the internet. (I know that mac should be easy enough that it shouldnt be a problem for her to fix it her self, but hey i like linux more, and with KDE its just as easy)
There isn't much like the scent of a fresh harddisk
I've had MOL running a LONG time ago, but I ended up removing it as I found no need for it. Same reason I find vmware completely useless. I have no reason to run MacOS or Windows software from my linux boxen, the Linux boxen can do everything I require.
I guess stuff like this could be useful for some..
Hmm no I don't think so. When you use VMWare, it uses the native, 'real' CPU. How do I know? Watch the BIOS at POST. It displays the type of CPU you have and the clock speed. Overclock another 100Mhz and the VMWare CPU goes up 100mhz too.
I can see where this would be a major help to those that are still running older macs, (beige g3, 604.) Even though the machines are old, linux would probably fly on them, while still maintaining a suprising amount of compatability for Classic MacOS apps. Taking a look at this really makes me wish that wine supported as many applications (though it has been a long time sice I've played with it.)
Where this project will go in the future is the big question. With 10.1 (yes, this is the obligitory "it rocks" comment,) you get the same ammount of Classic MacOS support, with all the modern goddies that you could want.
On the contrary, it's not a waste of time. PowerPCs have some great characteristics as compared to the x86 line. I bought my Powerbook for the *sole* reason of having a powerful GNU/Linux machine using the PPC chip. GNU/Linux is constantly changing - and anyone believing it's only useful for servers in a closet somewhere - clearly hasn't tried it in the last couple of years (or hasn't spent more than a day trying to learn how to set it up as a desktop). Having used GNU/Linux on a PPC, I truly hope that I'll never have to own an x86 again (which unfortunately won't become a reality unless some OEMs contact IBM or other manufacturors who already have PPC desktops waiting).
Yes, coleage of mine used mol everyday for about 6 months, he was a mac guy that was kind of forced to use linux (by me ehehe), but he had a few need that only the mac could provide (he had to read a few mac files, and use photoshop, etc) so we just installed linux and mol on his g4.
It runs very well even, the few problems he had where due to poor support on the X server (no accel) mol ran just fine anda even allowed him to save his session.
He just quit using it because we decided to try OS/X for his particular setup.
I run YellowDog Linux on my Titanium G4 notebook. Why? Performance is *excellent*, plus the notebook ain't to shabby to look at. Extra wide screen, good hardware integration. Works for me. In fact, every year I've attended the Ottawa Linux Symposium, I've seen more and more people lugging Apple hardware around, running Linux. We're not talking your average joe users either, but serious developer types. I seem to recall a few of the Samba fellows typing away on Powerbooks during the keynote...
MOL (Mac On Linux) is a nice tool for those that do run Linux on their Mac, yet occasionally need to boot into MacOS. It saves a reboot, and can be quite handy when you need to playback a Quicktime file, or something along those lines. I'd rather have a native Linux player of course, but since Sorenson won't disclose the codec, MOL allows me to run Linux yet still access one or two of those quirky Mac apps. ;)
As another poster mentioned, it's like VMWare for the Mac. If you can postulate a use for VMWare, then it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out why some people like MOL.
I'm more comfortable in my Linux distribution of choice than I am in OS X. I know where everything is, I have absurd amounts of software already installed (including a toolchain I didn't have to register online to obtain), and I have little need for MacOS apps. I also prefer KDE over Aqua; Though I recognize Aqua has some bells and whistles that KDE and XFree86 lack, KDE and XFree86 have far more of the bells and whistles that I use and appreciate. I'm pretty much just happier with the software on the Linux side.
As for Mac-On-Linux, I could see using it for the occasional MacOS app... sometimes such functionality is handy. And really, if it works, why not have it around?
I've seen a lot of posts on this thread asking what "the niche" is for MOL, questioning whether Linux has any value in the Mac "market" because OS X is available, etc. My only reply, really, is that maybe those posters should stop thinking like Official Linux Salesmen and Market Strategists... if it's not your thing, fine, but trying to determine the "market" for everything (especially something that's so obviously built and supported by its "market"), as if you own a piece, is silly.
This is a waste of time for the linux community, how many people do you think are actually going to run linux on their mac
LPPC and MOL on a Sawtooth G4 was my main platform for about a year before OSX came out. I needed something that could run an Outlook client. I had tried VMWare, but it was unbearably slow and my employer wouldn't pay for it. Plus, having to maintain Windows is a burden I'd just as soon forego. MOL is blazingly fast, reliable, simple to configure, and doesn't run Windows. Pretty damn good stuff. Still, OSX and classic edge it out, IMHO.
Well for once you can have a linux will a apache server, mysql, modperl, all the nice things that are so easy in linux and then open a macos window just to check who it looks on the mac...
No, that is not what i am saying, if all you want to run Mac Apps in linux, fine, if you want to run linux on your mac fine, I am not telling anyone what they should be doing with their time, that is their own decision. What i am saying is that it is a waste of valuable RESOURCES in the linux community to be developing things like this when they could be putting that effort toward improving the server side of the OS, remember a few months back when everyone on here got in a big uproar about how linux would never be a player on the desktop, All the /.ers had a great time with that one.
It is true. The reason it is true is because this whole movement needs focus. It needs to be concetrating for it's survival instead of wasting time on shit like this.
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
Well, many ms-supporters love to critize Linux for not running Microsoft Office. Infact the only reason why some bussinesses even use windows is because of MS Office, and fear of the unknown.
Well, finally this is a reality with MOL. The mac version of Office is very good and some would say that perhaps its even better then the Windows version. With MOl you can run linux, MS office, IE, java( not supported under linux on the mac),and even games like quake and UT, as well as photoshop. You literally have everythign you need with the satisfaction of knowning that you are not tied with Windows or paying Microsoft( unless you use Office).
Way to go hackers. I have seen MOL and I was very inpressed at its speed. Makes VMWARE look ancient and extrenely slugish. Believe me, when I say its not emulated but native. I wonder how they did it. My guess is they programmed MOL to reserve some memory addresses some and put in a layer to fool MacOS that another app is using the memory. This is to avoid conflicts. I also assume a layer is used on MOL as a data traffic controller but its not fully emulated. Probably only a layer to pass data through. Windows on the other hand likes to constantly monitor and send signals and data to hardware. Even if the computer is idle. NT does this. If you tried to trick windows on x86 linux this same MOL way, the windows kernel would panic when it couldn't send data on every cycle. I believe MacOSX uses something simular by constantly sending signals to the cpu and memory so it will probably never run natively without some emulation. Anyway keep up the good work and I will buy a G4 as my next linux box. Mol makes all the difference.
http://saveie6.com/
ok so i can.... load Linux on my iBook and run MOL and than load virtualPC and load up Linux under VirtualPC to than run WINE to edit that txt file in Notepad?
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Reminds me of that sig I see around here once in a while.
It's that one about the programmers who do it because they can
but they don't stop and think if they should.
I'm so lazy today... I won't even try to find the sig.
Mmmmm, Daleks.
Mike at www.xlr8yourmac.com has a nice article with some MacOS X 10.1 tests. In some your usual 21 photoshop filter test, 10.1 running Classic got like 75 seconds, while MacOS 9.2.1 got 71 seconds. 5% difference. That's pretty damn good. I don't really understand why you would want to use MoL on MacOS X when you can just use Classic, unless it's for shits and giggles.
But then again, I don't even have MacOS X. What do I know?
Well, actually, I am running Linux on my (2nd) mac full-time.
See, the mac in question is a PowerPC 603e (3 generations behind even the 1st G3) and it will not run Mac OS X at all (nor OS 9).
As a Mac, and now that I own a G4, it pretty much is useless to me, so I converted it to run LinuxPPC, and it now has been running my dns, mail, ssh and web server (+php +pgsql) since 1999.
LinuxPPC or Mandrake, Debian (etc) are OSes that work wonders on older boxes, and it enables me to make use of my 5 years old mac everyday, something I would not have done if it was still running Mac OS...
My school is a Mac heavy school. I wanted to try to introduce Linux on some of the workstations, but the users had to be able to run MacOS applications. I hunted around looking at various dual-boot solutions, and I ended up finding Mac-on-Linux.
I played around with it for a little while on an old Beige G3 running Yellowdog. It had some neat features, including the ability to run full screen on a separate virtual console. So users could switch between MacOS and Linux with a keystroke.
My overall impression, though, was that it isn't ready for prime time. The speed was great, but the hardware support wasn't, and there were also several glitches, like the mouse cursor disappearing.
I hope the group working on this project keeps it up, because I think it is really cool, especially for people with old Macs. It just isn't ready for mainstream implementation.
The 4th screenshot says : "Installing Mac OS 9.2 onto Mac OS 9.2", now that's awesome stuff :)
There it is! You now have MSIE 5 under linux. The mysterious hidden MS internet experience we all hear of (but no one can quite point to) can now be had under Linux. If it's like that dog for unix, it loads most of DOS with it. Linux to run Mac to run DOS, ahhhh! infinite regresion!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've seen programs out there that can emulate Windows on a Mac- DirectX included and the such. In theory, you could thus run any windows game in mac os which is in turn on your linux box. This would easily remove any emulation issues of things such as counterstrike.
My question is: if this is indeed possible, how efficient is it really? Also, are their easier solutions? I don't have much experience running emulators on my Linux boxes.
I would be one of those. I own a mac and run Linux (Debian/unstable) on it almost exclusivly. Why? I like the hardware better. I think the PPC processor is superior to the x86 archetecture. Sure, its just a preference. I also found that buying my current mac (a powerbook 2000) was cheaper than buying the comperably-spec'ed PC laptop. Everytime I did the math, the powerbook came out on top by about $500. And this was considering the fact that I would be running the same operating system on either machine. I keep MacOS around on the hard drive just in case I feel like playing with it - but I dont really use it.
I am a McPaint erotic artist by night, and desktop publisher by day. I distribute my McPaint art via FidoNet, my screen is monochrome, and my mouse only has one button, so this maconlinux thing is really relevant to me.
I've always wanted to learn the linux, I hear it runs well on the ibm and compatible clones like the Compaq and the Kaypro. My friend has the Mosaic on his Mac, and he tells me about the linux and WWW all the time. He says the WWW (he's cool, so he calls it the W3), the Archie and the Gopher will be the future, someday we'll have modems that will go almost 4800 baud per second, and the HTML will be the computer language we convert our Pagemaker files to.
Please send me a fax when this is released, I have to go listen to some LP's on my new HiFi and vote for Mondale now.
AC's cheerfully ignored
MOL can run more "classic" apps than class can
MOL's UI is a little cleaner
MOL requires few tweaks and runs diectly under on hardware.
Classic on the other hand has to run on a hardware "layer" hence many apps in classic will not work as well as they would on MOL.
MOL has had issues with 3-D acelerators, this is a issue for people on imac. It also has isues with the cdrom drive, this is a issue with osx as well to.
If anyone tries wine then mol, mol once it works pritymuch always works.
I used mol when I had Linux on my computer, for about a semester in school, and it was nice.
I think if I had a real g3 or a dual g4 it'd be even better
IF someone could port MOL to OSX, OSX would be A LOT better. mabie 10.1 is better.
Apple just released OS X 10.1. Do Linux zealots care? Not really. They'd rather stick with KDE / Gnome than even consider Aqua running on top of Darwin. Oh, but run Mac OS (an OLD, antiquated, on-its-way-out Mac OS) on top of Linux, and it gets it's own post on Slashdot! Aren't there any sound, rational non-zealot Linux users in this forum?
I hope the Mac-on-linux programs refrain from actually looking like Mac programs - otherwise a week from now we'll be reading about another copyright complaint filed by Apple :)
A year ago, there was simply no way to get MacOS functionality on a Unix
vMac-0.1.9.3: Emulates a MacPlus machine! Runs MacOS versions up to 7.5.5
And it has been on FreeBSD for YEARS.
I am currently running Yellowdog Linux on my TiBook. I played around with MOL hoping that I could use it for things like Quicktime, Flash, Photoshop etc.. I have had no success with it though. Most of the applications wouldn't work, and if they did, they didn't work correctly. It was a chore to setup networking, and overall, I was disappointed. Despite this, I still use Linux as my primary OS, and boot into OS 9 for occasional catchups on flash-only sites.
"if you want to run linux on your mac fine"
So... you think that only x86 machines should be used as servers? I personally DO only use LINUX for servers, but a couple of them are G3's running the PPC port of SuSE. They seem to work just as well as my x86 LINUX boxes do.
I am interested in having a remote MacOS application server on Linux, especially if they integrate VNC service into MOL because the native MacOS VNC server has not been the greatest quality. Before, I was considering doing it with Basilisk II which is a 68k Mac emulator which requires an individually licensed MacOS ROM. Thanks!
a good walk spoiled.
When making an axe handle the model is not far off.
But where's the x86 support?
I'm disappointed that it requires PPC since I've been looking for quite awhile for a decent mac emulator that'll run my favorite game of all time.. Spacestation Pheta.
Any suggestions?
I switched to YellowDog Linux on my beige G3 mac. I was sick and tired of having my Mac crash everytime I used remote access software. (There's nothing more dangerous than VNC and shareware FTP on a mac)
And there I was. Everything was great. And if I wanted to use those MacOS programs that crashed all the time, I could feel free. I could switch consoles and get some work done while I was waiting for it to boot. I really feel like MOL is better than straight MacOS in some respects. Not video performance, of course.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
For anyone who doesn't know, KDE also has the option of a Mac-like global menu bar running along the top (changing context as focus changes) instead of the common style of inside individual windows.
2 .j pg
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/medium/matthiase
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/medium/sks1.jpg
Of course, one problem is that you still need to have the taskbar to get the K-button menu, but work is being done to have the K-button in the Mac-like global menu so that it works similar to the "Apple-logo" button.
http://mosfet.org/macmenu2.jpg
What you're really asking here is, "OS X supports both Posix and Mac apps. So what's the point of a Linux/MOL setup?" Which is similar to the question, "Windows supports both Posix and Windows apps. So what's the point of a Linux/WINE setup?" We already know the answer to that one.
I.E. Having the Mac style windows floating around with the others, without having to be inside the Mac-on-Linux / Mac OS window?
That would be pretty neat. And you could also make a KDE theme that funtioned like Mac OS.
I'm a longtime, hardcore, dedicated Mac user. I've tried OS X, and while it makes an excellent *nix, it's a disgusting, horrible replacement for Classic MacOS- the interface transparency and performance - not to mention metadata- that I use regularly to make a living isn't there and doesn't look like it's going to be.
The shit thing about MoS X is that yeah, you can run your Classic Apps- but classic is "transparent", leaving you staring at Aqua. (yay.) I loved the opaque bluebox in the original incarnation of MOSX server (aka Rhapsody), and could well and truly care less for OS X as it stands right now. The dock and the damned Geni effect are no replacement for HD aliases in the Apple menu, tabbed folders, folder colors, file comments, blah blah blah.
Where Mac On Linux is beyond cool is that it's opaque, and you can run it in a window (as opposed to full screen). I saw it on a friend's system under Debian- at the time he was having sound problems with it- and it ran great. You get all of your Mac goodness with all of your Linux goodness, and you get them separated, without the massive, nasty overhead of Aqua.
I'd gladly use OS X for server applications (our Rhapsody box at work just hit 372 days of uptime, and would have been over 700 if we hadn't been ordered to shut every machine in the work area down one particular weekend). Love the stability, and the UI is the best I've ever seen on a unix system.... but it's still incredibly piss poor for the functionality that I need out of a production system.
Hmmm....
I wonder if you could run MOL on OS X? MOS apps at native speed as opposed to the insanely gross hit you take when running them in MOSX would be truly useful.
The PPC is fully virtualizable; x86 is not. As such, if you wish to emulate an x86 OS inside another x86 OS, you either have to prescan the code before running it in order to trap the unvirtualizable instructions OR you go the Netraverse route (invented by Popek et al from Platinum) and patch those instructions which should only exist in the OS. (Which is why W4L is much faster than VMWare.)
Since the PPC is fully virtualizable, the only performance hits are really when executing OS code. Nifty.
Here's an idea... there's User Mode Linux, a Linux kernel designed to run within another Linux kernel, rather than directly on the hardware. This permits all sort of debugging, security and other wonderful things.
From the 'uses' page: This is more a potential use, since UML only runs on Linux right now. But once it's ported to another OS, it is a completely authentic Linux environment - it will run any Linux executable. This would be an interesting shortcut for an OS vendor looking for Linux binary compatibility. See the projects page for more information on porting UML to other operating systems.
Following that idea, it would be cool to port UML to MacOS X. (Would that automatically work on FreeBSD?) This way, you can run MacOS X, Linux (UML), MacOS 9.x inside that and DOS inside that. Why anybody would want to do that is beyond me, but it seems like a cool idea. Hey, with UML, it might be possible to have a "native" Linux system running on just about any operating system.
Here's a scary thought: If Linux runs under Windows, what happens when Windows crashes? On second thought, maybe it's better to run Linux as the native OS and emulate or virtualize the junk under that.
How great! I was just looking for something that would do this. I work for a school district (all macs) but had 90+ intel boxen donated since the dot bomb (District is in norcal). Now all I have to do is make a PC seamlessly boot into a mac enviroment. That should be easier than trying to teach 200 teachers windows or linux!
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I've been trying to get MOL working on my Powerbook G3 Wallstreet (running Mandrake 8/PPC), but it isn't working. :P It locks hard when trying to load a ROM from disk, and it seems to work using newworld boot method to get the ROM from the MacOS System Folder (although the G3 Wallstreet is an old-world machine), but then it crashes after mapping the GC (no segfault or anything, just quits).
Has anybody set up MOL on a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet? Anything I need to be careful about? I pretty much just followed the directions in the docs.
Start Linux.
Start Mac on Linux.
Start Windows on Mac on Linux.
Start MAME on Windows on Mac.
Start Linux on Playstation on MAME on Windows on Mac.
Start VMware on Linux on Playstation on MAME on Windows on Mac...
[
I wrote a mol faq a while back. Much of it still applies, but I've been waiting for the networking, sound, and kernel 2.4 compat to settle down before I redo it. (The prefered network config seemed to be changing almost on a daily basis for a while.)
Several people have said that it isn't an emulator and that it's very fast but one thing that slows it down is the lack of video accel. Notice when you boot under mol that the accel extension fails to find the graphics h/w it's after -- the video appears to macos to be an accel-incapable framebuffer.
When I started my current job, they handed me a G4 to work with. Being a die hard x86 user I was not too impressed. I finally figured out where everything is (not too hard, it is a MAC after all), but it was crashing on average every 2-3 hours! Who ever says that MacOS is rock solid and never crashes is big fat liar.
I did a little research and found Yellow Dog Linux for the PPC. When I installed it (about a year ago) they were still having problems with the G4 hardware (most of which have since been fixed). MAC on Linux (MOL) was a great app. Most of the office documentation was done in MS Word for Mac. I prefer lyx but sarcasam I could never convince the office to use it, go figure./sarcasam For me I could spark up MOL, use word and get out.
Recently I've been trying out OS X. I've been very impressed how seamlessly they tied the UI into the underlaying OS. I'm really torn about which to use. I'm VERY familiar with my linux setup, where everything is and how to configure it, but there are still some compatability issues with my hardware. OS X is unfamiliar, but since I've got XonX (an X server for OS X) I can install most of my old apps very easily under OS X.
As for the comments about MOL moving to OS X, what's the point? When ever OS X runs a classic app it starts up classic Mac OS and runs the app in a rootless window on the OS X desktop. You don't get your own classic mac os desktop as a little window, but who needs it when the app runs on the OS X desktop.
Karma: Abstruse (Mostly as a result of using words nobody understands)
duh. sure it is rallying too.
I'd kill for benchmarks of Linux/PPC vs. Linux/x86. If Apple fans claim an 866mhz G4 is faster than (or even comparable to) an Athlon, they should show something to prove it.
I use it and it is fantastic!! Never could have been happier. Runs at native speed basicaly and capatibility seems almost perfect.
I found the secret of life! But forgot to write it down...
There has been a Mac emulator around for a LONG time.. Executor, from http://www.ardi.com/ runs mac applications. It's available for Linux PPC, but also available for Linux x86.
I remember seeing Mac classic apps running in PPC BeOS without the use of an emulator.
than a hardware emulation layer?
?????
I'm one of those who say "Thank You!" wholeheartedly and am an owner of a 7600 also.
:). It's a great machine still. I have it running 8.6, and is one of the most stable Mac combos I know of.
But I resent you implying that 7600 is something that would have been tossed out
The White House it is, then.
I'll add my voice to the chorus. A few weeks ago I finally kicked MacOS X 10.0.4 off my harddrive for being slow and buggy, and got MOL working under Debian Linux on my PB G4. It's truely wonderful. I use Linux for my java development work, and its great to be able to hotkey right to my Mac desktop for productivity apps. Beats dual booting all to heck. And it's way faster than Classic under OS X (at least with 10.0.4).
I figure I'll take a look at OS X again when 10.2 comes out, but until then I'm happy as a clam.
No, the correct analogy is DOSEMU.
No, the correct analogy is DOSEMU.
No, the correct analogy is DOSEMU.
Stupid short post filter.
...does it do Java? And will it still do Java after v6?
Why am I asking? I'm developing a multiplatform app (commercially) that relies on Java applets, and M$'s dropping of Java is really cheesing me off atm!
Of course, a page that says "this cool software you just bought does not work because MS is screwing over Sun and the Java community" could raise awareness...
As for the Mac being emulated under MOL, well nothing is really emulated. It uses the native PPC processor. It provides the InterfaceLib library that PPC mac applications use to do their stuff. This is a gross simplification, it also has to do hardware mapping, screen in window stuff, etc but the speed is pretty much equivalent to running the apps on a mac. The MOL team call it a "virtual machine with custom device drivers" rather than emulation. They've done an excellent job.
See the FAQ for a bit more detail, not much though.
That's about what I'd expect, and why I put up the parent post. So what do you think it would do under MOL?
Funny how I got rated troll pointing out that it was possible to run that silly browser under linux, where phroggy got himself modded up to 5 singing MSIE praises. My favorite is this, "most of the app was rewritten from scratch by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit in California." It's not really MS guys, I swear, it's a well behaved Mac app that Billy G has no influence over. He must have an army of bots for that kind of modding, and it gets in the way of real information. Well, I'm off to meta mod such stuff away.
Mozilla and Lynx work for me and I'm sticking to them! MOL is a cool project and a nice way to get at some old Mac software that proves that nothing has to be abandoned or lost within the free software model. Old DOS, you got it. Old Mac, sure thing. MSIE? Well no, but thanks!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
bullshit. I understand that you have an iMac and all, but that makes no sense at all that you would run Linux in the background for the hell of it; not using it at all.
I was using MAE (Macintosh Application Environmet) under solaris 5 YEARS ago. Unlike this MOL crap, you didn't need Mac hardware to make it work. Why the fuck would anyone want to run OS9 on an Apple non-natively. This article just proves once and for all that geeks WANT Macs, they just won't admit it until they find a way to hack the fuck out of it. Stupid twats. Get a life, get a Mac and a girlfriend.
That was classic intercourse!
hmm seems that I need something called tcpip for www hmm my local bbs dose not support that and my mac os hmm need special driver hmm would my 2400 buad connection be any good...
I work as a consultant for several fortune 500 companies
Ahh, the "I don't have an original idea so i'll copy Streetlawyer" troll. Ho hum...
This all looks too good to be true. I haven't tried OSX 10.1 yet, but was not terribly convinced by OSX to begin with.
What I want to know is, can I run VirtualPC 4.0 (completely rewritten from v3, and much better) under MOL, and if I run Apache in the Linux OS, can I surf pages on localhost from within the OS9.1 environment and from within the VPC environment within that? (I'm using a 2000 PBG3 - Pismo - 384MB RAM, 500MHz)
If so, this would be ideal for cross-platform compatibility checking of webpage design, including SSI, which would be a real boon!
MOL and Vmware are very similar from what I have read and taken in.
.sig "go ahead, mod me down, you're still an idiot." proved there are some really insightful sigs floating around.
Both do thier jobs admirably of "simulation of hardware" not emulation (of hardware/software).
From the initial description of VMware I got an entirely different picture from what it actually is. I was impressed with how well it functions but disappointed that it was not as I anticipated from the description given.
Let me explain:
From the initial description of VMware, as it relates to MOL topic, this was what VMW was presented as.
Hardware -> VMware -> OS's.
What it really is:
Hardware -> OS(1) -> VMware -> OS(2) {repeat from the VM for additional os's).
Now realize that this is not emulation, per se, it is a java concept of a "sand box" where the host os runs the guest os.
This is fine on a Multi-tasking os because it runs like any other application.
The problem with something like Virtual pc is the multitasking abilities of OS 8/9 are less than adequate if not inadequate because it is emulation + hardware abstraction.
MOL has the advantage because the host OS is more than adequate and just has to do the hardware abstraction portion.
Maybe I am asking too much, but, what I am looking for (making up my own acronym) a H.O.S, or Hardware OS, like my impression from VMware's initial description.
(computer/hardware -> HOS -> OS's.)
(interesting part above, funny part below)
I suppose I just want to beat a dead HOS, but no such animal exists yet.
(token flamebait below)
Now would someone please port LILO to mac?
The Open Firmware on Macs/Suns is maddening enough to deal with and dinking with bootX made LILO look like a piece of cake.
(/end token flamebait)
(token Offtopic below)
Being modded down as a troll for a funny/sarcastic remark... now that's funny.
To steal TWR's
(/end OT)
Moose.
learn to read body language, for the words may be "I won't hurt you" the posture may say "go ahead, make my DAY!"
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I ran MOL on my yellowdog distribution and ran into a problem running some software that came with my iBook, Bugdom won't run the software thinks that it's not the machine that the game was distributed with... I think you run into the same problem if you try to use the OS boot cd's and maybe the apple DVD player. other than that everything runs pretty much at full speed.