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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?
i think this is cool. more info can be found at maconlinux.org
Actually, there allready is a project called MACE.
/Svenne
The name "Mace" is an acronym for Macintosh Application Compatibility Environment. Thanks to Simon Biber for coming up with that acronym. The name "Mace" originally came from MACintosh Emulator, which wasn't entirely accurate, as Mace does not emulate a Macintosh, instead it emulates the Macintosh Operating System and Toolbox (the ROM) resulting in the ability to run Macintosh software.
MACE homepage
Slagborr
I think the idea is that you can have both OSes running at the same time without rebooting. The other idea (and why it's so fast) is that it's not emulation of hardware. That will always be slower than if it was on PPC.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Flexibility is what it is all about. Not having to reboot to enjoy both Linux and MacOS is a big selling point, just as being able to run Classic, OSX and XWindows apps at the same time.
BTW, this is posted using OSX10.1 It is a vast improvement over 10.04. As they say, it rocks.
photosMy Photostream
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.
The niche this makes sense for is all the current Mac PPC users (this includes the 603, 604 series machines) who would like to run OS X, but don't want to pony up the bucks to buy a new system. This would seem to be a good way to achieve many of the benefits of OS X (plus better performance, since YDL does not have the overhead of OS X's overkill GUI layer).
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.
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.
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 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.
The ``horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs'' you're thinking of is probably A/UX, Apple's implementation of SVR3. This ran native on the 68030/040 Macs, but it could also run Macintosh applications right alongside X11 apps.
The product most similar to MOL was Macintosh Application Environment (also from Apple), which let you run System 7 in an emulated 680x0 in a window on RISC workstations, e.g. Solaris on SPARC and a couple of others
Both of these are quite out-of-date and, to my knowledge, no longer sold, though A/UX still has some fans.
If you want to go the *nix on Mac route, Tenon Intersystems still sells MachTen, a 4.4BSD/Mach implementation that runs as a process under Mac OS 9 and earlier on PowerPC and 68K.
That "horribly expensive proprietary Unix for Macs" is named "MachTen" and was made by Tenon.
Once Machten reached version 4.1ish, it wasn't that bad. I could use a unix mach kernel at blazing fast speeds on my mac's PPC processor WAY before OS X.
Just my two cents.
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!
MSIE for Mac really has nothing to do with MSIE for Windows. MSIE for Mac is a decent, well-behaved Mac app, following basic Mac rules. Parts of the rendering engine may be derived from MSIE/Win source code, but most of the app was rewritten from scratch by Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit in California. It's one of the most standards-compliant browsers available (much moreso than MSIE/Win).
A few differences:
Preferences at the bottom of the Edit menu, nice and organized, not hiding under Tools with convoluted tabs and buttons
MSIE/Mac lets you manage cookies; you can see all stored cookies in a list, show their values, delete them, etc. You can also choose which domains to accept and deny cookies from.
MSIE/Mac has its own Download Manager. All downloads are listed in one window, and they remain listed there (as a history) after downloading.
MSIE/Mac is MUCH prettier than MSIE/Win. It also includes multiple color schemes for the buttons and stuff.
Of course, it supports Internet Config, ColorSync, Location Manager and other Mac OS goodies.
It's easy to install (download and mount a disk image, drag the folder to your hard drive, launch the app) and easy to uninstall (drag the folder to the trash). To be thorough, trash some libraries in the Extensions folder, and the cache and other stuff in Preferences. MSIE/Win thinks it's part of the OS and can't be installed.
Basic features like right-clicking a graphic and selecting "Open Image In New Window" are missing from MSIE/Win. If you do open a graphic, MSIE/Mac shows you the dimensions in the title bar, like Netscape does; MSIE/Win does not. These two features come in very handy when doing Web design.
View Source shows a decent source window, in the same app (instead of launching Notepad), and it marks HTML tags in blue and comments in red. Much more readable.
Oh yeah, and it still works with Netscape plug-ins.
</RANT>
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If you look at the MOL site, the front page says it doesn't need a Mac ROM. And the User Guide says "MOL can run on non-Apple hardware."
Something you might not realise is that Mac OS volumes are named... not lettered ;)
:)
/vol/Mac\ OS\ 9.2
Heheh..
Its common when you're into running 7 different versions of MacOS on your hardware to name various partitions after the OS on them...
You don't *need* to use different partitions, but it works better that way
Anywho,
Installing onto
heheh
Installing macos-9.2 onto
:)
---
Live Long & Prosper \\//_
CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
Jedi & Last *-fytr
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.
Mac MSIE5 does indeed rock, but I have noticed that it chokes, and badly, on big HTML pages. For example, a big
This is on a well-tuned Pismo (400MHz G3, 320MB RAM), and I have done a lot of experimentation with memory settings and other stuff. But it's totally repeatable. Drives me nuts.
Never tried this myself, but might be worth looking into:
http://www.ardi.com/executor/index.html
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
I think you are mistaken on a few points:
Classic's transparency is a virtue, which allows for a necessary integration. It is very bad UI to have a whole runtime living in a separate window. The old Blue Box was clearly short lived for a reason, trueblue kicks it's ass in both performance, and usability.
In current Mac OS X the Genie effect can be replaced by the 'scale' effect if you want it, HD aliases can go in the dock (or you can use an Apple Menu replacement if you really want to - they exist). The Finder toolbar allows you to put whatever foders you want in it, which works far more nicely that the pop-up windows (or tabbed folders as you call them).
It is true that you do not have the option to use labels currently (or folder colors, as you called them), and I would suggest that if you miss it you give Apple feedback to that effect. I have, and I know there is a Radar bug on it. More feedback = better chance it will appear in 10.2 (or whatever the next releaase will be called).
As far as file comments go, they exist in Mac OS X, you show how little you actually tried to use the system by that comment. I am running 10.1 as my production system, I do not find that I am any less productive than I was on 9.x. After I lived with the changes to the UI, I discovered (somewhat reluctantly in places) that they are mostly improvements over OS 9. I do not run Classic often, but apps run at close enough to native speed that I have never noticed it, and benchmarks done (on xlr8yourmac) show that at worst you are typically looking at a 5% performance drop - I seriously doubt that MOL would offer better performance.
You might want to actually test the system for longer than the ten minutes or so it appears you spent with Public Beta or DP 3, or whatever you were using, so that you know what it is you are writing off.
Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.
why won't it run OS X?
Because Samuel hasn't gotten that handled yet. There's nothing that strictly prevents it, however. It's doable, just requires a bit more work (probably a slightly more complete OpenFirmware implementation will be required, but ask Samuel to be sure).
how does the speed compare to Classic under OS X?
Pretty similar. They both run Classic MacOS in a similar fashion - using the PowerPC's designed-in virtualization capabilities to run a full OS in a process context. (Something that takes a lot of dirty trickery on e.g. IA32)
can you drag+drop between desktops like w/ Virtual PC?
No.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"