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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?
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."
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).
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.
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."
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.