OS X Vs. Linux On The Desktop

saintlupus writes: "There's an interesting article about the recent web browsing stats of Linux by Charles Moore, a fairly well-known web journalist in the Mac community. He asks whether OS X is the deathblow to Linux in the desktop and scientific computing markets. He also touches on the perennial "I'll run it on my Athlon or not at all" mindset of current Lintel hardware owners. Definitely worth a read." The article that Charles uses as his jumping point is the recent stats on Linux on the desktop. That article cites .24%, but Charles article has some pieces on why that number could be wrong.

Comments

OSX on x86...

[ezs]

Now that would be a serious challenge for Windows. Now all we need is a business case to present to Apple.

Re:OSX on x86...

[i_am_nitrogen]

I would certainly consider purchasing OS X if it was cross-platform. That's why Linux, in my opinion, has a better shot at the desktop than OS X. I want to be able to build my own box, I want to pay dirt-cheap prices, and I want it to run open source (or at the very least cross-platform) software. It doesn't help Linux, though, that Macromedia Flash, and numerous other plugins, run like 4 times as slow in Linux as they do in Windows, and that drivers have to be written by hackers in their bedrooms (so to speak - I know that VA Linux, RedHat, and others have/had people working on drivers).

End of ramble.

Re:OSX on x86...

[PotPieMan]

The point is that you are a minority. Most people don't want to go to the trouble of building their own computers. (Have you ever had parts that were DOA?) They also don't want to install the operating system themselves, and then prey that all their hardware works. They are willing to pay extra to make sure it works when it arrives.

Personally, I think Mac OS X is very attractive. My only complaint is that Apple hardware is a tad too expensive. Maybe once I have more money, I will purchase a Mac.

Re:OSX on x86...

[WildBeast]

They already tried and it was too much of a challenge for them. Going from supporting Mac Only hardware to supporting thousands and thousands of PC peripherals was a nightmare for them.

Re:OSX on x86...

[Doomdark]

Well, even the article stated the obvious: Apple has zero interest in doing this. Their money comes from hardware, and they don't do x86 hardware. Dominating desktop OS marketplace is useless if it doesn't bring in money.

Re:OSX on x86...

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have to build it anymore than Windows. A mac will cost another 20% at the least.

Re:OSX on x86...

[SaDan]

Have you ever had parts that were DOA?

Have you ever had a Dell or Gateway system that was DOA? I have. What's the difference?

Sure, DOA Dells and Gateways are pretty rare, but I have seen a couple systems that went bonkers right out of the box (probably due to rough handling during shipping) that I've had to return.

Out of all the PC components I've ever purchased for myself or for work, I've only had two hard drives that were DOA.

I do wish OS X would be released for x86 hardware, though. I'd love to try that out on some of my existing machines!

Re:OSX on x86...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that you are a minority. Most people don't want to go to the trouble of building their own computers. (Have you ever had parts that were DOA?)

Hmmm, at first I was going to say no, but then after thinking about it I agree. I remember building a 486DX2/66 system from scratch with parts I picked up piecemeal from someplace in Computer Shopper and after getting it all assembled I was presented with a curious problem of hard drive errors. Zipped up a bunch of files for example and unzipped it and pkzip showed a shitload of CRC errors intermittently. Eventually I finally realized the VLBus EIDE controller was fucked up. I replaced it and voila. No more CRC errors and everything was fine for years after that.

As for MacOS X, after playing with in on a G3 B&W Powermac at work for one afternoon I can say that I've fallen in love with it! :-) Nice pretty graphical interface that blows the doors off of ANY window manager in the UNIX world and makes Windows look like an expensive crappy kludge. Underneath it all you can drop to a terminal window and voila... UNIX underneath it. Install OpenSSH and you basically have your UNIX box to play with. Hehe. Now, if only I had $1700 for a Powermac G4!!! Maybe I can find a used G3 B&W Tower for cheap enough.

Re:OSX on x86...

[mpe]

Most people don't want to go to the trouble of building their own computers. (Have you ever had parts
that were DOA?)

You can get prebuilt computers which are DOA anyway...

They also don't want to install the operating system themselves, and then prey that all their hardware works.

Outside of the home market you'll quite often find the first thing done to new computers is to wipe off whatever the OEM might have preloaded them with. Rather than having to spend lots of time and money explaining what needs to be loaded on them. There was a big fuss a year ago about Microsoft trying to charge twice for licences in such situations.

Re:OSX on x86...

[Enahs]

It doesn't help Linux, though, that Macromedia Flash, and numerous other plugins, run like 4 times as slow in Linux as they do in Windows, and that drivers have to be written by hackers in their bedrooms

That was true three years ago, but most folks (at least I'd hope so :-) using Flash plugins under Linux are using the actual Macromedia Flash plugin.

If you think it's too slow, complain to Macromedia.

Re:OSX on x86...

[gig]

> [Apple's] money comes from hardware

The other side of this is that Mac OS X is well supported by revenues from hardware. In other words, the software project that is Mac OS X has a constant source of funding, money coming directly from users and going directly to the OS development effort. This means that when Apple started building CD-RW's and DVD-RW/CD-RW's into Macs, they had a good reason to build the software support for those features into the OS and have done with it. They purchased a company that made disc burning software and they absorbed that into Mac OS X, and now working with writeable optical media is as easy as working with floppies used to be. And it's good, good stuff, not some cut-rate attempt to give you something that won't survive the next Windows rev and thus drive you back to a third-party solution just for basic data, audio, and MP3 CD's. That capability should come with the hardware (the drive) not be some add-on that you get so you can use the hardware.

Re:OSX on x86...

[humtibum]

Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. They tried to let other companies build Macs but they gave Apple too much competition, so Apple killed that deal off. Apple cannot survive from only selling software. I have used Mac from 1991-1999. I would go back the second OS X could run on an intel platform, but... i am afraid Apple has no incentive to do that.

Re:OSX on x86...

[i_am_nitrogen]

... I also know someone who is working on Lindows. He's moving to San Diego in 3 weeks so he can. Lindows may help Linux get to the desktop. It seems that it's not as likely to be vaporware. This guy used to own his own business (Axiom Technologies) that did custom software for tons of clients, including Adobe and Metacreations (I think).

OS X vs. Linux

[i_am_nitrogen]

It is my opinion that while OS X has a better interface, Linux will only continue to progress because of its lower cost, and the Open Source nature of it.

That said, Aqua is smooooth!
Mandrake is pretty good for desktop users, and SuSE is pretty good for Windows "Power Users" and above.

I think there's a place for both OS X and Linux. Macintosh has a very loyal following, and so does Linux, so I don't see either team dying out any time soon. Personally, I'd rather have source code than fluff.

Re:OS X vs. Linux

[aka-ed]

Linux not only costs less, you can get hardware that will run it for next-to-nothing. The article's notation of a proliferation of ibooks at this or that conference is close to meaningless. Those conferences are damn expensive! You would have seen the same people with Apple Newtons (or whatever other pricy-trendy gadget) a few years ago.

Re:OS X vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

That said, Aqua is smooooth!

I think you spelt "juddery" wrong.

Re:OS X vs. Linux

[OsamaBinLogin]

> Linux not only costs less...

only if you exclude hassle cost. You plug stuff in and it works. If your time is worth money, macs are cheaper.

> ...you can get hardware that will run it for next-to-nothing...

but if your time is worth money, that's really going to be expensive.

> The article's notation of a proliferation of ibooks at this or that conference is close to meaningless. Those conferences are damn expensive!

People whose time is worth money, buy Macs and go to conferences, because they are well paid, and their companies are well funded. If your computers doubled in price, but your paycheck also doubled at the same time, wouldn't that be a deal?

Re:OS X vs. Linux

[SkepTech]

So you're telling me that all I need to do to double my paycheck is switch to a Mac?

Hahahahahah! Hahahahah! You're rich!

Actually, the successful company deploys the best value hardware to their important professionals. That almost always means Intel-based machines. Not that it matters, that class of professional runs 'Office' not an OS. And MS Office runs on Mac and it runs on Windows.

What? Linux? Don't fool yourself. You're the one who is talking about the People whose time is worthy money.

So, basically, you're fighting a Mac versus Windows fight here. This is all off topic.

Re:OS X vs. Linux

[aka-ed]

basically, you're fighting a Mac versus Windows fight here. This is all off topic.

If the topic is OSX vs. Linux, the cost of entry for each platform is certainly part of the issue. Since OSX limits your choice of hardware, that's a negative, even if you think the balance sheet overall favors OSX.

The need to run Office seems to me a more likely reason for conference attendees to have ibooks, so your point isn't entirely off-topic either; usual brain-dead moderating...

Re:OS X vs. Linux

[gig]

I'd rather have half as many Macs as PC's, or just one Mac every three years instead of a new PC every 18 months. You can play with the economics forever in this way, but the fact is, when I sit down to work at my Mac, I see my work (music and audio, graphics), not the computer. It's priceless. There is no price you can put on that. If not for the post-NeXT Apple, I would have already given up on computers. Seriously. My second choice to a Mac is a dedicated audio recording rig of some kind, or an easel and paints, not a Windows PC. Having to admin the thing would not be worth it. Having my workspace open to the world would not be worth it.

As for Linux, I have a server that runs Linux, and it has been a decent performer at a low, low cost. Very good stuff. Linux is good for anything that you want to set and forget, where you don't mind getting your hands dirty for a couple of days so that you can leave the box alone to do its thing for the next two years. Mac OS X is an answer to another problem altogether: you sit down, day-by-day, to do creative, desktop, user-oriented, one-on-one work with the computer. It has to work first time when I plug shit in or drag-and-drop some new software into place. If it doesn't work first time, it has to have a simple, non-technical GUI-oriented solution that I can apply and then get back to work immediately. I don't NEED Apple to hold my hand; I WANT them to take care of the technical shit so that I don't have to switch gears when I'm working.

Perennial attitudes

[Waffle Iron]

He also touches on the perennial "I'll run it on my Athlon or not at all" mindset of current Lintel hardware owners.

Well, I might consider OS X if Steve Jobs didn't have a perennial "You'll run it on our overpriced, single-sourced, proprietary, artsy-fartsy hardware or not at all" mindset.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[usermilk]

I think the reason Mac OS X can hit it big is that developers only have to develop it for ONE market, the Mac market.
I would imagine it gets relatively easy to smash bugs when you develop for only one hardware base. You know what to expect.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[singularity]

So Apple should become more like Be and try to sell a better OS for the Intel platform?

Apple comes up with a business plan to compete, on a small scale, with M$ and Linux users around the world complain about expensive hardware? They are *competing* with Microsoft (yes, you are complaining about hardware costs, and I am commenting on software competition - but, for the most part, with Apple you need to combine the two together - Apple is in the hardware and software market, and each computer sold is a unit of both).

No, BeOS demonstrated that it is going to be very difficult to design, write, sell, and support an alternative OS for the Intel market. Even Redhat and others are having problems, and they do not do the vast majority of R&D and writing on the Linux kernel.

Also look at it this way: Apple's hardware is well designed, and relatively fast. People who comment on Apple losing the "bang for the buck" competition never think that design is a desireable feature worth paying for.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[Waffle Iron]

Well, I would pay good money for OS X if it ran on X86 (assuming it could emulate old Mac SW at some speed). This is because I could run Mac apps, Unix apps, and any new OS X apps that were compiled cross platform (including, I assume, MS Office). It would also by supported by large, established company with some influence on hardware driver writers.

BeOS had few if any of these advantages; I have never been tempted to either buy it or use it for free.

Another thing: the MS settlement might hopefully give hardware vendors the freedom to preinstall OS X along with windows. It would be nice to have the option to unlock either Windows or OS X on a freshly purchased machine. I'd choose OS X.

Unless and until all this comes to pass, I continue to fill my brain with Linux minutia.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

Do your memories continue to evolve? If not, then I guess you could say you have a static ROM memory, but I'd surmise that you have a problem with short term memory aquisition and you should see a doctor. Of course, you will never remember having read this post.

If your memories continue to evolve, are you saying your static ROM memory is replaced on a regular basis? Wouldn't there be some rather high costs associated behind that?

I think you're a fucking lunatic who doesn't know a god damned thing about industry terms (otherwise you'd be saying EPROM or something, not a static ROM chip -- a ROM chip by definition IS static, you stupid fuck...once you're written to it, you can never write to it again)
I don't think more education in technobabble, nor a visit to your doctor will do anything to improve your situation. Therefore, please find the nearest Al Qaeda fighter and ask him for a fast-track introduction to Allah.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[Waffle Iron]

Do your memories continue to evolve? If not, then I guess you could say you have a static ROM memory, but I'd surmise that you have a problem with short term memory aquisition and you should see a doctor. Of course, you will never remember having read this post.

If your memories continue to evolve, are you saying your static ROM memory is replaced on a regular basis? Wouldn't there be some rather high costs associated behind that?

The whole point, Mr. Anonymous Fscking Moron, is that you can't prove that your memory evolves because you can't prove that your past experience isn't fake, nor can you prove that you will have any future experiences. Try to find some imagination, loser.

I think you're a fucking lunatic who doesn't know a god damned thing about industry terms (otherwise you'd be saying EPROM or something, not a static ROM chip -- a ROM chip by definition IS static, you stupid fuck...once you're written to it, you can never write to it again)

It's an image that statically placed in a ROM, not an image in a "static ROM". Your anal retentive rant is nothing more than a figment of your inability to comprehend a simple sentence.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[Daleks]

I think the reason Mac OS X can hit it big is that developers only have to develop it for ONE market, the Mac market. I would imagine it gets relatively easy to smash bugs when you develop for only one hardware base.

Nah, there are plenty of buggy Mac OS X applications.

The ironic part about Mac OS X software is MS seems to have written better Mac OS versions of IE and Office than for Windows. I use IE on a daily basis at campus on a 1.4Ghz P4 running Windows 2000 and the stability is horrible. IE at home on my dual-800mhz G4 is wonderful. Then again, the P4 probably cost half as much.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[nitehorse]

The funny thing is that you really don't appreciate the design because it's very subtle. I was _never_ a huge Apple fan - as a matter of fact, I was one of the more vocal anti-Mac people at my high school - until I heard whispers of OS X and the BSD system underneath it. Now that I actually own an iBook, let me tell you straight out - there are so many design issues that Apple has gotten right that it's not even funny.

Let's take (for example) the screen. The iBook, which is most definitely affordable (more so than most of the PC laptops I've seen, or at least comparable ones) has a gorgeous LCD. It's active matrix, it has beautiful true color support, and Apple's proprietary Quartz layer with its own fonts and their OpenType rendering literally beats the living sh*t out of ANYTHING from Microsoft (ClearType included) or the FreeType project.

Ah well. To use it is to love it. I won't bother explaining every single detail, mostly because there are so many that I can't recall every one off-hand. But there are reasons why Mac users rave about the design - there are things to appreciate.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[be-fan]

Obviously, you've never seen good fonts. OSX fonts bite.
Not only are they all blurry, but the blur doesn't
even hide the crappy non-hinted font rendering!
If you want to see real quality fonts, check out
KDE2 (which uses FreeType2) or QNX Photon (which
uses BitStream's FontFusion). With good fonts, FT2
is as good as FontFusion, except maybe the AA, which
is of slightly lower, but still very good, quality.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[cygnus]

The whole point, Mr. Anonymous Fscking Moron, is that you can't prove that your memory evolves because you can't prove that your past experience isn't fake, nor can you prove that you will have any future experiences. Try to find some imagination, loser.

so your argument is that it's less questionable that ROM might exist than the ideas of having a past and a possible future?

you sound like a real dork. get a life.

Re:Perennial attitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

ah... touche

-- macboy

Re:0.24%

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you should tell that to all the linux fanatics on this board. they seem to THINK Different...

Re:0.24%

[oo7tushar]

Linux can and will be used on the desktop. There's a fundamental reason to use Linux: It's very flexible. It's much easier to write a GUI for Linux through X than for other OS's. I use Linux primarily as a desktop OS. Sure I've got half a dozen servers, but the power of Linux combined with Windows and OS X suits me just fine. Develop code on Linux, adapt for Windows, and make pretty things on a Mac.

Not really a valid comparison

[HalimCMe]

The only way you can really fairly make a comparison here is by comparing OS X vs. Linux on Macintosh hardware, because most people and businesses, no matter how good OS X is, will not simply move their desktops to OS X because it requires the purchase of Macintosh hardware.

I think OS X vs. Linux on PPC hardware is easily won by OS X. PPC Linux does not give you the ability to seamlessly run Windows software and games in an environment such as Wine like x86 Linux does. Sure, there is MacOnLinux, but Mac OS X's classic environment outclasses MOL's feature set and speed in nearly every aspect.

You also must consider the target of each OS. OS X is truly designed to be a desktop OS, with server use as a secondary function. They even offer a higher priced server version of OS X that would be more of a comparison for Linux on the server market.

I think with Macintosh hardware, OS X clearly wins over Linux. With x86 hardware, Linux obviously wins, because there is no OS X for x86 hardware :) (and there probably won't be any time soon either)

Its all in the hardware platform.. not the OS.

Re:Not really a valid comparison

[pope nihil]

Actually if you look at the core of OS X (Darwin), you'll find that it's based on a FreeBSD kernel - designed to be a stable server OS. A lot of what Apple did was porting it to a microkernel and creating the Aqua GUI. Aqua is not essential to the core of the OS. Early versions of OS X Server lacked the Aqua interface (and still may, I don't know) and was released before the OS X desktop version.

Now, obviously a smooth interface was essential to Apple. I merely disagree with your position that OS X was designed secondarily as a server platform.

Re:Not really a valid comparison

[nosferatu-man]

"I merely disagree with your position that OS X was designed secondarily as a server platform."

I'd say that Apple has nil interest in OS X as a server platform, actually. Mach + BSD is a holdover from NeXT that carpetbagged along with the really cool stuff that Apple bought: the OpenStep runtime, and more importantly, Steve Jobs. The fact that OS X can probably serve as a decent little server OS (albeit running on toy hardware), is tangential.

Upon rereading your post, I think that we probably aren't really disagreeing.

Peace,
(jfb)

Re:Not really a valid comparison

[__past__]

Actually if you look at the core of OS X (Darwin), you'll find that it's based on a FreeBSD kernel

Um, no, you won't. You'll find a Mach-microkernel based Darwin. They took parts of the Userland from FreeBSD, but not the kernel.

Re:Not really a valid comparison

[Alan Partridge]

then you clearly don't understand the market sectors Apple operates in. In education and publishing at least, Apple's server solutions are well represented and have always been exceptionally easy to administer and fairly secure by virtue of not having any CLI or true multi-user basis. OSX changes that equation somewhat, but may better be able to attract admins who are used to working with Solaris, IRIX, Linux etc.

Re:Not really a valid comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

PPC Linux does not give you the ability to seamlessly run Windows software and games in an environment such as Wine like x86 Linux does.
in all fairness, wine doesnt allow u to seamlessly run windows software (ever try any games like cstrike?)

Re:Not really a valid comparison

[SkepTech]

'Education and publishing' aren't server markets.

Or are you talking about a print server at Kinkos?

I'd say a Mac is adequate for that, if a bit silly.

Sorry, I just don't see a strong Apple presence in the server market. Unless we start playing around with words and their meaning.

Re:Not really a valid comparison

[Master Bait]

OSX uses Mach, which is more of a millstone at this point in time than a true benefit (NeXT used Mach's capability to support multiple CPU architectures once, with a Motorola 6040 for the main cpu, and with an Intel i960 for the PostScript interpreter/graphics card).

Apple truly isn't interested in the server market. It's iMac G3 motherboards would have made an excellent foundation for 1U servers, but they never produced anything of that ilk.

Aple's interests would be better served if they dumped Darwin and used Linux. Linux has better support for multiple CPUs, and has a wealth of device drivers. In the past NeXT built NeXTStep on top of both Sun's UNIX, HP's HP-UX and IBM's AIX. We know that Aqua isn't tied so tightly to Mach that the move would be expensive.

Unlikely

[nosferatu-man]

Three points.

1. Unless Motorola (ha!) or IBM (more likely, but still ... ha!) can close the performance gap with commodity x86 hardware, the scientific computing market will stick with the bang for the buck that the beige box world provides.

2. Neither Linux (currently technically incapable) or OS X (incompatible hardware) are in a position to challenge MS for the commodity desktop. This situation is not likely to change any time soon.

3. OS X will /never/ be ported to x86. Firstly, Apple has no interest in alienating MORE developers with yet another giant architectural switch-over. They're going to have enough trouble getting people to drop Carbon in favor of Cocoa without having to try and convince ISVs to start their projects over on a whole new hardware platform. And secondly, Apple makes the lion's share of their money from HARDWARE sales. Their position in the industry is unique, and they're not interested in being either Be (a dead OS provider for x86) or Compaq (a soon to be dead assembler of beige boxes).

Peace,
(jfb)

Re:Unlikely

[Ryan Amos]

This may sound like flamebait, but it's more of a rebuttal ;)

1) Wait till early next year, when the G5s are released. Speeds are rumored from 1 gHz to 2.2 gHz, plus with the G5's incredibly awesome SMP capabilities, multiple CPU configurations will not at all be uncommon. Add to that some very scientifically friendly things like the fact that it's a full 64-bit CPU (lots and lots of RAM) and the 128-bit vector units, and you suddenly have a VERY attractive package.

2) He never claims they'll be able to. Macs and Linux have always been niche markets. He's just claiming that OS X is nudging Linux out of its niche.

3) It doesn't really need to be. OS X works so well because Apple doesn't have to support a bunch of odd third-party hardware, so instead everything works REALLY well on their one platform. Apple's hardware is by no means second-rate. The build quality and nice little touches are tops over any I've seen on the x86 side of things. Apple sees themselves as more the Mercedes of computers, where Compaq would be the Toyota. And for the most part, as long as people adopt the hardware and software changes, software vendors are more than happy to port the software (and trust me, OS X is sooo much better than OS 9.)

Re:Unlikely

[nosferatu-man]

"This may sound like flamebait, but it's more of a rebuttal ;)"

Actually, it sounds pretty reasonable to me.

1. The rumored G5 is a joke. No, bear with me. The numbers bandied about for the (illusory) G5 at 1.6 ghz are preposterous (1342 SpecInt2000 and 1364 SpecFP2000 -- ha!), more realistic numbers are well under the current performance of high-end x86, and Moto's semi division is in even more trouble than Carly Fiorina.

2. Yes, Linux and OS X are niche markets; different niches. Linux is squeezing Solaris, and OS X is squeezing ... OS 9.

3. We're in total agreement.

Peace,
(jfb)

Re:Unlikely

[White Roses]

One point and two misconceptions, more like.

(1)(a). Mainstream scientific computing is done on big iron made by someone other than Intel. Solaris SPARCs are used a lot, for instance. My grad school days in Astronomy and Physics were spent on SGI Octanes (yummy).

(1)(b). You seem to have fallen prey to the MHz myths. Have you used a recent G3 or G4? The PowerPC architecture is *built* for heavy duty mathematical precoessing.

(2). Well, alright, point there.

(3). Sorting through this jumbled mass of points was a barrel of laughs. True, OS X won't go x86. And true, Apple makes a lot of money from hardware, thus supporting the lack of a port. Of course, this means that MS support can't send me to Intel and Intel can't send me right back to MS. If it's broke, you have only to make one call. That's as may be. Point me to reports of Apple alienating developers. They've spent loads of time and resources helping developers move to Cocoa. In fact, that's what Carbon is for. They also provide one of the best Java VMs out there. Apple is embracing (as in welcoming, not as in extending) the technology, rather than trying to quash it or "standarize it" out of existence. They even provide a Cocoa API for Java, should you wish to optimize further. They are bringing more developers on board, while making the trasnition from Classic to OS X as easy as possible. If anyone is alienating developers with their new OS, it's Microsoft.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

"They're going to have enough trouble getting people to drop Carbon in favor of Cocoa"

WRONG -- Apple is pushing developpers to switch from the old APIs to Carbon (which are essentially cleaned-up versions of the "classic" ones), not from Carbon to Cocoa. If they switch from "classic" to Cocoa, it's a bonus for Apple.
Because Cocoa is essentially the old OpenStep APIs, a switch from "classic" to this new object-oriented architecture required a complete re-architecting of existing apps, which was not exactly wildly popular with existing developpers. Hence Carbon, unveiled in 1998, which permitted quicker *ports* of applications just by weeding out calls to the removed API calls and other obsolete data structures and recoding only the affected bits. Carbon, as much as Cocoa, is a destination for migrating MacOS developpers, not a departure point like you state.

Also: the core of OS/X is already running on x86 hardware (Darwin x86). And persisting rumours have it that Apple is keeping the upper layers of OS/X (Quartz, Aqua, etc.) portable between architectures. They're simply not releasing those bits rigth now.

Re:Unlikely

[staeci]

MS wants you to buy new machines cause of OEM contracts.
Apple wants you to buy new machines because they are a hardware company.
GNU wants you to be productive with your software no matter what you run or how old it is.

Maybe in 10 years Apple will be gone and MS will rule the world or maybe the other way around. Either way GNU and Linux or HURD will still be there pottering round with a couple of % user base, one of which will be me.

Re:Unlikely

[nosferatu-man]

1(a). You're right, of course, but there *is* a movement towards swarms of smaller bitty boxes for problems that don't require a) 64-bit address spaces and b) aren't tied to Big Iron software vendors.

1(b). Sorry, no. There's no comparison in speed between a big x86 box and even the very fastest G4. Altivec *is* marvelous, clearly the best SIMD engine available, but where're the vectorizing compilers for OS X? (*sound of crickets chirping*) This has nothing to do with the "Mhz myth", and everything to do with the much larger R&D budgets at AMD and Intel, WRT Moto semi. Just look at SPEC. x86 is gross -- true. The 7400 series from Moto is a nice design -- no argument. But in performance, general purpose real-world performance, x86 wins.

3. My point was that asking for OS X on x86 is pointless. And it's true that, while Apple has been doing yeoman's work at improving their ISV relations, they've only looked good in comparison to their historical performance. Apple is *famous* for alienating their developers, and to Jobs' credit, this is one area where he's markedly improved the company's image.

Peace,
(jfb)

Re:Unlikely

[aussersterne]

Apple doesn't have to support a bunch of odd third-party hardware, so instead everything workks REALLY well on their one platform.

This is absolute bullshit... I have a beige G3 that is "supported" by OS X. Wanna know what happened when I bought OS X 10.1.1 to use with it?

The SCSI CD-ROM (Apple 12x) wouldn't boot the disc. I called Apple, they said use an Apple IDE CD-ROM, the old SCSI CD-ROMs didn't have the right firmware, so I bought an Apple IDE CD-ROM.

Then, I kept getting SCSI errors with my 2GB Apple SCSI hard drive. Yes, termination was correct. Apple responded that SCSI doesn't work very well under OS X on G3 systems due to driver issues with the built-in SCSI. They say try an IDE drive, so I go out and buy an IDE hard drive. Finally I get OS X installed.

Then, the graphics were slow and 3D acceleration didn't seem to work properly. Apple informs me that 2D acceleration is only partially implemented on beige G3 systems and 3D not at all, use classic for that since there are no plans to augment driver support for beige G3 systems.

So I was going to send off a letter to Apple to complain. I started up AppleWorks and typed in a nice letter, then went to try to use my Apple LaserWriter IIg, connected to my Beige G3's printer port.

OOPS! The built-in printer port on G3 systems is unsupported (it uses, you guessed it, AppleTalk). I call again, Apple says use classic if I need to print or get a new printer and a USB card since there are no plans to support AppleTalk/LocalTalk. I already bought a new CD-ROM drive, a new hard drive, and a new OS for this Mac. No way I was going to buy a USB card and a new printer just to print.

And unfortunately, the reason I switched away from Mac OS Classic on that machine is because the thing crashes any time you open more than four or five windows that are doing something. On my Linux box, I can open windows until the cows come home without bad effects.

So that's my story. I was all eager to try this wonderful new Linux-killing "perfect Unix" OS X. I shelled out for it, but turns out I got the shaft from Apple on THEIR hardware -- and RECENT, SUPPORTED hardware at that. Looks like OS X is only a bait-and-switch to get you to buy a brand new Mac with each release.

Slashdot readers are right. You can't afford OS X.

Re:Unlikely

[softsign]

It's not about performance or commodity hardware. Since when do professionals or researchers care whether or not their personal machines are made from bargain-basement components? These are the same peole that are springing for $10-20k workstations out of their budget...

It's about having a computer that:

1. Travels well - Powerbooks and now even the iBook are dream laptops.
2. Allows you to prepare and deliver presentations, often just minutes before you step up to the mike - with a native Powerpoint you are leagues ahead of anything Linux can offer.
3. Gives you the Unix underbelly all geeks know and love.
4. Gives you a beautiful, functional GUI - say what you want about Aqua, amidst a sea of Winbooks, it still raises the occasional eyebrow at conferences and makes people just that tiny bit more likely to remember your talk specifically.

I'm not just saying this as a rabid Mac advocate. As an EE grad student I look around my department and I see a sizeable chunk of profs and students using Macs - myself included (though I still have a PC at home). My supervisor - a hardcore Mac user - has just switched to OS X exclusively. We don't all use Macs because we are a bunch of Luddites... we use them because, all things considered, we'd rather just get our work done: easily and effectively.

I won't even touch the x86 argument except to point out that re-compiling an app for a different hardware platform is done thousands of times a day by Linux developers - what makes you think it would be any harder for Apple developers to do? Though I agree we might be long accustomed to airborne swine before Apple publishes OS X for x86. =)

Re:Unlikely

[amlutias]

did you do any research? at all?

Re:Unlikely

[Genady]

1. Unless Motorola (ha!) or IBM (more likely, but still ... ha!) can close the performance gap with commodity x86 hardware, the scientific computing market will stick with the bang for the buck that the beige box world provides.

Ummm have you seen the price of an iMac lately? I'd say the gap is closed. Now if all you're talking about is MHz and processing power tell me why companies are replacing 64 processor Sun E10K's with 24 Processor IBM S80's. Those S80's run the same PowerPC core as a Mac G4. (They're actually the POWER4 derivitive.) MHz isn't everything.

2. Neither Linux (currently technically incapable) or OS X (incompatible hardware) are in a position to challenge MS for the commodity desktop. This situation is not likely to change any time soon.

If Microsoft keeps raising prices on their OS who knows?

3. OS X will /never/ be ported to x86. Excuse me? Darwin has been ported to X86. The layers above Darwin haven't been ported. This argument is analogus to saying RedHat will never be ported to PPC.

Porting OS X to x86 would be very very similar to porting a Linux distribution to a different architecture. You're not talking about the majority of developers haveing to make a large painfull move. That is what the Carbon/Cocoa move is. Moving to a different architecture should be trivial for all but device driver developers, and that probably wouldn't be as bad as you think, most of the work has been done in the *BSD community.

Apple does make their money on hardware, just like Sun does, but have you really looked at Apple hardware recently? The iMac might as well be an eMachine with different processor and a design engineer that has a clue about style. It runs an ATA Hard drive, regular ol DRAM DIMMS, identical USB to PeeCee's. Hell the only thing different about it is the built in antenna for the AirPort (oh sorry that's just standard 802.11B/Orinoco) and the Firewire ports.

Re:Unlikely

[led]

That's it you said it!
I don't care what everybody else is running as long as I'm running a stable, free system... Even if I have to write the damn drivers myself!
So I don't care at all about how much % linux has of the desktop market.
Infact I use Linux, OpenBSD and FreeBSD, and I don't care how much % those have either.
I'm not die hard, i'm not clinging to a dying software i'm using what I like for the same reasons I had when I tried kernel 0.9x.
And that's what the guy who wrote the article will never understand.

Re:Unlikely

[GiMP]

Yeah, because IBM and Motorola have no money for R&D.. :) Did you really think apple designed this stuff?

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

tell me why companies are replacing 64 processor Sun E10K's with 24 Processor IBM S80's.

WTF!? Because you've found a good crack dealer?

Re:Unlikely

[proj_2501]

There is an x86 ISO of Darwin 1.4.1 available on http://publicsource.apple.com

Re:Unlikely

[naasking]

2. Neither Linux (currently technically incapable) or OS X (incompatible hardware) are in a position to challenge MS for the commodity desktop. This situation is not likely to change any time soon.

Perhaps you should preface that with "my opinion is..." I believe many people are having great success with linux on the desktop. Unless, of course, you have some actual, logical proof to the contrary.

OS X will /never/ be ported to x86.

Darwin (core of OS X) already runs on x86. Perhaps you meant Aqua.

Firstly, Apple has no interest in alienating MORE developers with yet another giant architectural switch-over.

GNUStep is the full OpenStep API, which forms the core of Cocoa, and runs on Linux, Darwin, Solaris and a bunch of other OS's which I'll leave you to look into if you're so inclined. The GNUStep developers have even expressed a desire to track Apple's recent updates to OpenStep(which make up Cocoa). That takes care of multiple platform compatibility.

Furthermore, you don't seem to realize that the Cocoa/OpenStep API's are themselves cross-platform->easy for Apple to port and since platform-independence is a major factor in Cocoa/OpenStep, developers wouldn't have to do a damn thing except recompile to port their apps over to any architecture that currently hosts OpenStep. Perhaps you meant a hardware switch-over forcing people to buy new machines?

And secondly, Apple makes the lion's share of their money from HARDWARE sales.

You could argue that increased compatibility with existing x86 software would bring Apple more machine sales. I sold computers for about two years, and Windows compatibility was a big reason people weren't buying the Apple machines I was trying to sell. Either because they already owned apps which wouldn't run, or because they wouldn't have the availability and selection of the Windows software world. If Apple managed OS 8 and 9 compatibility through Classic and Carbon, they could certainly perform a similar feat for OS X on x86.

Not only would that bring them more software, it would give them cheaper hardware and parts to work with, and they wouldn't have to worry about hyping "The PPC is 2x as fast as an equally clocked x86 chip!". Additionaly, they'd have the coolest looking boxes and best built/bundled hardware of any x86 manufacturer anywhere. Any computer stores would gladly accept Apple machines, compared to now where most wouldn't touch them with a pole. If executed properly, I definitely think Apple could succeed in the x86 world.

Re:Unlikely

[J. J. Ramsey]

Well, let's see ... Apple said his machine was supported, so he assumed (Gasp!) that OS X would work on it. Not an unreasonable assumption.

Re:Unlikely

[dougmc]

Their position in the industry is unique

Is it really? Isn't Sun in a similar situation?

Re:Unlikely

[aussersterne]

Yes, I looked at Apple literature to see if Beige G3 was a supported machine.

Silly me. I guess I should've hired someone.

Re:Unlikely

[Fnord]

Actually the Power4 and the G4 are two completely different beasts. If the Mac were using Power4s I'd buy one in a second, but Motorola has completely screwed up the PowerPC line since diverging from IBM (the G3 is the same as the Power 750, the last time IBM and Motorola made the same chip).

And Darwin is just the kernel. That's all that's been ported to X86. The Quarts graphic engine is highly optimized for the PowerPC architechture, and only really performs decently when Altivec is present. That's one of the reasons OSX on a G3 is so dismal.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

An IBM S80 does NOT contain the POWER4 chip, rather the previous generation POWER3. The new pSeries 690 systems contain the POWER4.

And the G4 is NOT the same *core* as the POWER4 (or POWER3). While they are both PowerPC architectures, the core is definitely NOT shared between the two.

The difference is that the architecture describes the instructions that it handles at a high level. Whereas the core is the blueprint (VHDL) on how it gets done inside the chip. A program largely only cares about the instructions, not the internal methods to carry them out. (note: some high-performance, highly-tuned programs will care about the internal details. Just as they would on any processor)

Also, bear in mind that the POWER3/4 (IBM) are full-fledged 64-bit chips whereas the G4 (Motorola) is definitely a 32-bit chip.

Tom

Re:Unlikely

[Frey]

It is not likely that dell would even try to provide drivers or support for a machine that old for Windows XP at all, so you are still better off than if you were on the "other side."

I would not call the beige G3 recent. It was last sold in what 1998?

I do agree with you however that if they say it is supported, that it should be FULLY supported, I just think that it was silly to try to support that machine.

Re:Unlikely

[Alan Partridge]

the performance gap is largely illusory. Really, my company does video compression work, and we choose our workstations based on speed and reliabilty. Powermac G4s comprise HALF of our machines. people who don't use Apple hardware will bore you to death with SPEC numbers and benchmarks, and I'll admit that our Athlon XP 1900+ 'station IS the fastest uniprocessor machine we have, but it only smokes the (older) 867Mhz G4 by around 20% and the Powermac's many unique features often render (sorry) that margin irrelevant.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

(1)(a) *cough* obviously, you've been hiding under a rock for the last few years. linux based clusters
of x86 type hardware have become the rage for HPC computing. the fact that specFP no longer
sucks on x86 processors likely influences this
(especially when using a good compiler). As for sparcs, etc, sun hasn't been keeping up, and the POWER# series is _not_ PPC. don't confused them.

(1)(b) I believe in the performance myth. I don't care if my cpu vendor achieves improved performance by giving me a better compiler, upping
the clock speed, increasing the amounts of instructions it can simulaneously execute, or any other of the myriad tricks that can be pulled. I just want my stuff computed faster. Stop claiming that cpuA is faster than cpuB without asking if it really is. hint, for my code, x86 is WAY faster than the PPC 745x (g4).

(3). I don't follow your point about "best jvm" obviously, you've never looked at any of the JVM benchmarks which clearly show that the IBM JVM on x86 is one of the fastest (if not _the_ fastest). Your other points about programming api's are interesting, but, show that the truth is in the tools, not the OS nor the hardware. In this arena, M$, unfortunately, is probably the winner.

Re:Unlikely

[fperez]

Allows you to prepare and deliver presentations, often just minutes before you step up to the mike - with a native Powerpoint you are leagues ahead of anything Linux can offer.

Except if you need lots of math, which looks horrible under any of Microsoft's programs. Yes, I know there's an equation editor and whatnot, it still looks like crap.

In that case the only reasonable solution is latex+pdf, which beats powerpoint any day (granted, harder to get up and running). google on PPower4 or TexPower, the stuff out there is very impressive.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Touche... Sun really has cornered the graphics professional market with their wealth of world-class DTP software, easy-to-use GUI and end-user dream OS.

...

Dumbass.

Re:Unlikely

[softsign]

Framemaker has a respectable equation editor. Then there's MathType. Latex is also an option for Mac users...

Re:Unlikely

[__rsub__]

porting OSX to x86 should not alienate developers since they probably wont notice the difference. This is because the underlying OS API remains the same for them (darwin). It is the same with Linux and Unix implementing the POSIX API on different hardwared architectures.

Re:Unlikely

[jacobito]

That's really too bad, and you have my sincere sympathy. I've always assumed that because of the finite number of hardware configurations sold by Apple, that they would provide solid support in the OS.

(rant follows...)
Somebody mentioned that your G3 is too old to reasonably expect support from OS X. I strongly disagree. As a PC user, I don't doubt at all that I could take a machine that I built three years ago, say, a K6-2 machine with a Super 7 motherboard or a Pentium 2 machine with a BX motherboard, and install Windows XP or Linux on it, with driver support for most if not all components. I do not doubt that I could do this, and frankly, that's amazing because the number of possible PC hardware permutations from just the past few years is staggering. Apple should stand by the hardware it produces and support it for a reasonable number of years, especially when dealing with components that were standard at the time they were sold.

As an aside, I like to tinker with hardware and upgrade my PC frequently, but I'm getting tired of the assumption that a personal computer is obsolete and must be upgraded every few years. I think most folks have better ways to spend their money.

Re:Unlikely

[dougmc]

I forgot to quote everything I'd meant to quote. Upon noticing, I was going to correct it, but then I figured that most people would understand my point. Obviously I was in error ...

And secondly, Apple makes the lion's share of their money from HARDWARE sales. Their position in the industry is unique,

You may not be aware of this, but Sun is in a similar situation. They do make software, but they practically give it away.

Unlike Apple, however, their flagship software product (Solaris) is available both for their hardware (Sparc) AND for x86. Not many people use the x86 version, but it does exist.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

well, there could be some big endian/little endian issues in a few programs.

However, by only writing an OS for hardware they design/spec out/build, they don't have to worry about driver support. If they go to x86 land, 90% of adio, graphic, scsi, etc. cards will be unsupported, and MS will be a direct competitor. Read the earlier story about Be to see what that means.

As an AAPL stockholder, the prospect of them making money on hardware is more appealing than the prospect of them going bankrupt competing against Microsoft.

Re:Unlikely

[Tide]

Actually, it runs on intel just fine. Remember its based on NeXTStep which ran quite nicely on standard PCs. And as far as "porting apps' goes, Cocoa apps has the advantage of just needing a quick recomplie for any other cpu hardware.

Will it ever get released? who knows. I certainly dont, and I work there.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

With apologies to Lloyd Benson...

I knew OpenStep. OpenStep was a friend of mine. GNUStep is no OpenStep.

I've tracked GNUStep's progress for a couple years now, and have tested various builds of it. Although the current snapshot is much improved over the searlier versions, I'd guess it will be a minimum of 5 years before it's remotely useable by the "average" linux user. More before commercial developers might consider porting/recompiling their OpenStep/Cocoa apps for GNUStep.

Solaris users on Sun hardware can d/l the beta OpenStep libraries/tools for Solaris/Sparc. The OpenStep/Solaris project was cancelled years ago, but the implementation is still significantly better than current GNUStep.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Their position in the industry is unique

Your mom likes it when I do her doggy position, missionary position, greek, catholic, ... hell, she likes any position!

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you should have made yourself a nice free Mac OS X.1 install disc for this experiment...

Re:Unlikely

[stevew]

And when you graduate EE- you'll be using Win NT with an X server or a Sun/Linux box to do your work! All your sims will run on linux or Sun servers.

I haven't seen an engineering organization using a Mac for better than 12 years! (That counts about 10 organizations...)

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, it's not like Macintosh hardware has evolved much since the beige G3 came out...

Re:Unlikely

[Jeff DeMaagd]

"As an aside, I like to tinker with hardware and upgrade my PC frequently, but I'm getting tired of the assumption that a personal computer is obsolete and must be upgraded every few years. I think most folks have better ways to spend their money."

Agreed.

Right now my main computer, an Alpha 21164A, is about five years old. It does everything I need it to do. I know it's not a speed demon anymore but to be honest, even the GHz+ computers can look just as slow because XP takes so much power to look pretty.

I think the computer industry is forgetting that actual people need to USE their machines and that people often end up feeling used when software bugfixes mean having to get new hardware. I've known a lot of people that have the idea that Big Hardware and Big Software are colluding, which is why the term "Wintel Duopoly" came about - new software required new hardware to work, and new hardware invariably required new software to work, and that support old software and old hardware is ignored. It's practically as if people using products even three years old have to go to flea markets to get stuff that works with what they have.

Heck, I tried getting Norton AntiVirus for my Dad, it turns out that the 2002 version _barely_ supports Windows 98B (~two or three years old now), only by means of including NAV 2001 on the CD for those users.

As for Macs, they look fine, seem to work fine for a lot of things, but some things are a real hassle.

The thing that I do like about Linux is that it's the users that decide obsolescence, not the companies. As long as there are available users they'll make their own determinations about what is obsolete. If it works fine for a person on a 386 then so be it.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Win NT for EDA? Hahahaha! That's a laugh...you know, a couple of years back at the start of Willamette design a couple of braniac managers at Intel decided to switch to EDA under NT so "We can eat our own dogfood." You know what happened? Sim performance was so dismal that x86 boxes were abandoned and instead they went with the big iron RS/6000s.

Theres more to performance than how high your SPECINT numbers are. There are things like memory bandwidth and such. (However IBM may have slit their own throat because of their release of the Summit chipset which is used with P4/Itanium.)

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Woops...oh you said use NT as a glorified X11 server. Ah. OK, that's a bit different--more in line with Windows boxes.

BTW, are you the same stevew working with "the other" stevew on Icarus?

Re:Unlikely

[ljaguar]

Same here. I've got pentium 3 450Mhz (the slowest PIII ever manufactured) here and I even play a kickass games of quake 3 on radeon on linux.

But really. My brother's using 4~5 years old Pentium 2 233Mhz on W2k. He tried XP, but he hated it. W2k isn't bad, and I presume the computer will last quite a while.

Re:Unlikely

[SkepTech]

Actually, Motorola is pretty weary of the desktop market. They really have little interest, outside of what leverage Apple can apply, in competing in that area. When Apple killed the cloners, they killed Motorola's solid market for PPC chips.

Motorola would just as soon get back to what they do best, which is produce chips for the embedded market. Apple is just a distraction.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Darn, a completely 100% new OS based on an entirely different kernel doesn't work on 3-year-old hardware. I really feel sorry for you.

In any case, your experience doesn't negate the original author's point. If you buy a relatively recent Mac and don't use technologies like SCSI that Apple's clearly trying to phase out (ever heard of firewire?) your experience will be much better. Also Apple is getting away from the lame ATi video cards of the beige G3 era and moving toward exclusive support of nVidia products. I'm sure if you get an nVidia card in your box the graphics performance will increase significantly (though it will of course be limited by a G3 300).

So the short version is: if you want the benefits of a Modern OS, you need a modern computer. Not every computer can run OS X. Even a Blue & White G3 frequently has problems.

I guess the fault here is Apple's for listing the Power Mac G3 as a "supported" system. However, I'm sure if you were to purchase a stock beige G3 (with all the hardware/software exactly as Apple shipped it) OS X performance would have been fine.

Re:Unlikely

[binarybits]

And Darwin is just the kernel. That's all that's been ported to X86. The Quarts graphic engine is highly optimized for the PowerPC architechture, and only really performs decently when Altivec is present. That's one of the reasons OSX on a G3 is so dismal.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Writing this on a iBook with a 600 MHz G3, I can tell you there's nothing dismal about it. And as CPU's get faster, the difference will become less and less relevant. Even on slow hardware, Aqua just seems jerkier. It doesn't really stop you from getting work done.

Apple would have to be incredibly stupid to have written Aqua in a non-platform-independent manner. They've already got a platform-agnostic foundation-- why would they write higher-level stuff to be tied to the PowerPC? Darwin is *much* more than the kernel, and so much more than the kernel should be available on PC hardware. Apple releases Darwin x86 side-by-side with the PPC version to ensure continued platform independence. It's likely that there are some platform-specific hacks they'd have to work around for an x86 port of the high-level API's, but they'd have to be morons to add fundamentally platform-specific features to the OS.

If Apple wanted to move to x86, I'd bet money they could have a shipping product within 18 months. The reason they don't isn't technology, it's their business model. If they chose to go to PC hardware, they'd have to deal with a bunch of new challenges-- supporting multiple platforms, getting developers to cross-compile to both CPU's, etc.

If they continued the proprietary model, they'd have to find a good way of preventing users from running OS X on commodity hardware. (which would cut into margins) If, on the other hand, they chose to allow running it on commodity hardware, then they'd have to come up with a new pricing strcuture and they'd have to deal with the onslaught of tech support calls from people with non-standard hardware. Either way, it'd severely distract Apple from its core focus on being able to build and sell the whole widget on proprietary hardware.

Actually, I think Apple is stupid for not moving toward PC hardware-- their real value is in their software and industrial design skills, not in their hardware per se. They could continue selling curvy boxes with high margins, and they can charge high enough prices to run on other x86 hardware that they can compensate for the lost hardware revenue. But such a change would be expensive and painful in the short run, and risky in the long run. It's unlikely that Steve Jobs has either the desire or the guts to do it.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola points at Apple for "killing the clones", but the _original_ plan of the PowerPC alliance was to sell Windows NT/PPC worstations to businesses at inflated prices. They spent _billions_ to that end.

Apple was just kinda along for the ride on this -- the idea that PPC had a chance in the desktop market was all Moto and IBM in their sad vein attempt to destroy Intel. Apple probably now wishes they picked something other than PPC, but they can't switch now due to aformentioned developer issues.

Re:Unlikely

[cb0y]

I run XP on an old abit MB from 98 with a 600mhz celeron and 400meg or so ram, with a scsi card for cdr and tnt2 card from 99.

Works well/sweet. Now whats wrong with apple?

Re:Unlikely

[melatonin]

I have one of the original Beige G3/233s, and yes, OS X is shit on it. I really don't care.

The Biege G3's is part of Apple's "Old World" machines. The only thing they have in common with iMac and newer (Blue & White G3, G4s) is the PCI bus and the cpu. Those are Apple's "New World" machines.

The Beige G3s have ADB, SCSI, and serial ports. Serial ports are pretty non-existent in OS X, since these were the last machines (and only G3s) to have them. You can't buy any hardware that will work with them anymore (except for modems with adapters). Ethernet was always the preferred method for network printing. ADB was hacked onto the Blue & White G3s because Apple monitors needed it for ColorSync, it's not even a proper implementation of ADB. No hardware vendors are supporting ADB in OS X, there's just no point when you have USB, and USB cards are cheap (I had one in my G3).

The Public Beta fried my G3's sound hardware (my fault, I was determined to get audio working on it...). Later my G3 became an unfortunate victim during a move... I've got a G4 now and it's schweet (shit happens... move on, be happy).

It's actually a pretty shitty operation for Apple to be supporting these machines. They need their own set of drivers and share no commonality between their New World machines (New and Old World are very appropriate names). It's more of Apple keeping their promise to support all G3s than anything else. I'm not saying that it doesn't suck, but any beige G3 is underpowered for OS X anyway (I did upgrade mine to 400 Mhz, which made it fast enough, but whatever).

Yeah, not the greatest position to be in, but a beige G3 is almost an obsolete machine when it comes to hardware anyway. Every other Old World Macintosh is fairly obsolete.

Re:Unlikely

[skajohan]

Either way GNU and Linux or HURD will still be there pottering round with a couple of % user base, one of which will be me.

You're predicting you will be one per cent of the user base? Will that be achieved by cloning? Or perhaps genocide? Or will that quote about a world market of five computers finally be correct?

(Couldn't resist. Sorry ;)

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

>3. OS X will /never/ be ported to x86

I thought that, too. However, I am not 100.00% sure anymore after I discovered the x86 code on the Mac OS X 10.1 upgrade CD (CheckForOSX is a multi-platform executable)

Re:Unlikely

[softsign]

And when you graduate EE- you'll be using Win NT with an X server or a Sun/Linux box to do your work! All your sims will run on linux or Sun servers.

Hell, all my sims already run on Solaris... Spectre and HSPICE only run on our Sun boxes (though I think they may have NT versions). It's mostly only Matlab that I can use for sim work on the Mac... that's not what I was talking about. You'll notice I never claimed the Mac was replacing anything else for simulation work.

I haven't seen an engineering organization using a Mac for better than 12 years! (That counts about 10 organizations...)

I have. One of the wireless research companies out here uses Macs almost exclusively. They use Linux for some simulation work... but the real work is done by data generators and analyzers that can actually operate at 30 GHz. Data is captured by the Macs over GPIB.

Again, I'm not talking about engineering companies switching to Macs wholesale... I'm talking about Macs filling an important niche. Content preparation and delivery. Macs excel in this role. Design and simulation are still very much the domain of something like Solaris or HP-UX. You don't see Cadence releasing a custom IC layout tool like Virtuoso for Mac (or Windows or Linux for that matter... at least not yet).

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I can't figure out if you're being serious or trolling. OSX has great 3d support, and appletalk support. Can't comment on the SCSI support. Also, the beige G3s are a few years old, no? Is everything in it stock? Or did you add all that scsi gear?

But regardless, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. I purchased an iBook and with it running OSX I've replaced both Windows and Linux desktops in my life. I still use Linux for server stuff (although I'm migrating most of that to FreeBSD) and with OSX I can run xfree86 and export applications on my linux box back to the iBook, giving me access to any linux apps I want.

Re:Unlikely

[aussersterne]

No, I'm not trolling.

AppleTalk over ethernet (i.e. EtherTalk) is supported. AppleTalk over LocalTalk (which is used by all beige-era Apple laser printers and by the printer port on Beige G3's) is not supported and I was told that it will not be.

3D support is not available for Beige G3 systems, which use different 3D hardware from B&W G3/G4 and iBook systems, and I was told that some operations (i.e. window resizing) are very slow on Beige G3 systems because 2D acceleration is only partially implemented for these systems. (Resizing is nearly impossible in some cases, it's so slow).

The SCSI in question is on the Beige G3 motherboard, the CD-ROM and SCSI drive were both Apple-branded and were original hardware. Apple says that some of their SCSI PCI cards are supported by OS X, but the support person couldn't give me a definite list "just then" for which ones were and which ones weren't and suggested that the onboard IDE port would be better supported anyway.

So yes, everything was stock on the G3 in question.

And yes, it's a couple of years old, but it's still a 300MHz G3 system with 256MB memory which should be enough just to run an operating system, IMHO, and Apple clearly says it's supported and the original poster's point (to which I was responding) was that since Apple controlled both the hardware and the software, OS X on Macs just works really well.

For me, it didn't. I'm sure if I ran out and bought a brand new iMac things would be great, but then in the end just how is Apple's own-the-OS-and-the-hardware paradigm better than any other operating system, if it's still only the OEM preloads on new hardware that work right?

Re:Unlikely

[SkepTech]

So, you're saying that that cat has the end of the string in it's mouth and enough down the stomach that it can't spit it out. But there's a huge ball of string still rolling aorund on the floor.

That's a delicious illustration of Apple's committment to the Power PC Architecture.

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be achieved by a final recognition that every method used by Mac and MS fans to count users undercounts Linux users. Every method.

Re:Unlikely

[Maserati]

in there.I've got a G3 - 300MHz or a bottom of the line blue & white tower g3. It ran OS X 10.0 acceptably, if a bit on the slow side for a professional machine. 10.1 should (dead drive) run just fine on it.

And the expansion capacity is fine too, I have a second video card and second HD

Re:Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you describe anyone else the same way? Microsoft would have preferred to ride Alpha into the server room too. But, alas, binary compatibility isn't the most important thing. It's the only thing.

This reminds me...

[mojo-raisin]

of the old zdnet stories saying Linux would never amount to crap.

kde is going to become a _major_ desktop system. It' s inevitable and obvious.

Re:This reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this just blind hope or can you back this up with numbers/facts ?

Re:This reminds me...

[aka-ed]

Is this just blind hope or can you back this up with numbers/facts ?

I don't agree with him either, but it's neither blind hope nor fact, this is an example of what English-speakers call an opinion.

Re:This reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of the old zdnet stories saying Linux would never amount to crap.

You mean you tbink this story is right too?

Re:This reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

um, no. no it won't. sorry.

He's right.

[dimator]

I'm going to go buy an OSX equipped G4 right this minute! Well, as soon as I sell some organs to pay for it...

Re:He's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

go and give handjobs out on the street for cash instead

Re:He's right.

[leiz]

no dimator, don't do it, we have an OSX equpped G4 in the lug lounge!

Re:He's right.

[Anonymous Coward]

go and give handjobs out on the street for cash instead

CmdrSoonToBeUnemployed doesn't like it when people invade his turf.

Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

OSX is a better desktop unix but you gotta buy an apple to enjoy it. Therefore OSX is a nonstarter for 90% of the desktop market since we all run X86. I would also say Win XP is better than OSX. As far as servers go linux kicks the crap out of it when you factor in the cost of buying an apple. Dollar for dollar though if your not using a free OS and have to spend cash, might as well get Solaris on a nice sparc, its not that much more than an decked out apple server.

Linux wins hands down

[euroderf]

I'm fed up of all the nonsense about the BSD OS X flavour. It may seem that OS X is flavour of the month, after all it is a Unix with MS Office and IE and photoshop and even high street games.

But normal people don't need these things. Who the hell needs MS Office except business zealots? Nobody needs anything more than vi or emacs and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the command line. With a bit of effort, I can do simple things like post emails, browse newsnet and rip mp3's too, and as nobody but closed minded GUI maniacs need some brain dead pointy-clicky interface, I don't see how retrogressing into the early 90's fraudulent GUI paradigm can do anybody any good.

GUI's are a productivity waste for dummies. Think how long it takes to move the mouse around and select some obscure option in preferences, as compared to editing rc files with sed. Any decent user worth his salt can make his PC sing with eternal, messianic, orgasmic glory as he ./configures, makes and make installs his way to ecstatic, orgasmic destiny.

Fuck this GUI shit. Look at my uid, I've been around since 1969 and used Unix since 1972, after graduating from Multics, and I still curse the day that the closed sourse idiots in Xerox started getting lofty ideas.

Sorry, but I just had to rant. This stuff makes me see red :-)

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

you are not the type a person that a consumer desktop OS is built for.

>Fuck this GUI shit
need i say more you command line stud !

(cough.)

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

This stuff makes me see red :-)

Euroderf == COMMUNISM!

Re:Linux wins hands down

[ImaLamer]

I've only been alive since '80 but I post emails, browse usenet and rip mp3's too!

As we speak ABCDE is ripping my music collection to ogg - fetchmail [easy, easy] is getting my e-mail, and PINE is even there to help with reading USENET posts.

When you are poor like me, and only have one keyboard, mouse and monitor for two computers, you learn the command line utils a lot faster. When I dual-booted, I just flew into X and actually ruined more data that way. [actually not my fault - MandrakeUpdate[!] among other crap utils]

Now I learn what I'm actually doing, I've written my own scripts and more while leaving the easy work [or games] up to my [cring] windows PC. I know ANSI escape character codes, I know how to alias, I'm god!

Now if I had only installed debian on this machine, and not RedHat... but 6 weeks of uptime on a personal computer is too much to throw away.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[ImaLamer]

Oh, and why the link to adequa__.org?

It has to be the biggest crap site on the net today. Not because I'm linux fanboy #1, but because its a forum for liars and idiots.

links to horrible stories:
[i won't link to... i hate them]
http://adequacy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/12 /1 6/145311/35
http://adequacy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/12 /1 8/202346/38
http://adequacy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/12 /2 1/195051/13

Or this poll:
Aware of Open Source License Implications?
* Yes, I work at Microsoft
* Yes, I used to work at VA Linux Software
* No, I work at slashdot

Re:Linux wins hands down

[cxvx]

Ever heard of satire???
The funniest article I ever read was "Is your son a hacker?".
And the people reacting to such nonsense are even funnier.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[ktakki]

Fuck this GUI shit.

So, how's that command-line version of Photoshop working out for you?

k.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[led]

actually I loved programming images with perl on gimp....

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

Well spending your time trolling AOL users - yes, great site. Takes skill, that.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

At least AOL users are a much bigger challenge than /bots.

I mean, let's be realistic.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

So, how's that command-line version of Photoshop working out for you?

pshop> create PSD -s 1024 768 -c 32bit RGB -t my_image;

image 'my_iamge' created

pshop> draw square
pshop> width 200px, 300px
pshop> pos 500px, 500px
pshop> fill #F4F6B7
pshop> border 2px, #000000;

square created. id: 000931231.

pshop> edit square 000931241
pshop> border 3px, #990000;

error: square 000931241 does not exist.
error: comamnd 'border' undefined.

pshop> edit square 000931231
pshop> border 3px, #990000;

border changed for square 000931231

pshop> preview;

tret
etet
09
trfd
tert

pshop> edit square 000931231
pshop> pos 400px, 200px;

position changed for square 000931231

pshop> create ovel
pshop> width 100px, 100px
pshop> pos 300px, 300px
pshop> fill #F4F6B7
pshop> border 2px, #000000;

error: no object 'ovel'

pshop> create oval
pshop> width 100px, 100px
pshop> pos 300px, 300px
pshop> fill #F4F6B7
pshop> border 2px, #000000;

oval created id: 00346583.

*sigh*

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

They also post anti-semetic libels. Is that "satire"?

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen to the weenie howl ... squeal weenie squeal. Then stick your thumb up your azzhole and go back in the byte-boyz ebonics hoodz ... grope yer fav electromechanic blo-up doll. And bleat, weenie bleeeeeaaaaaaatttt ...

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

Your attempt at satire is tired and boring. You obviously aren't a programmer. Go away.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[MidKnight]

Aw, this is just cute. Some guy (hmm... did I get the gender right?) whose head is apparently buried in some deeply interesting CS project happens to poke into /. at around the right time to bash Apple for helping to spur the graphical advancements of the past 15 years.

I use vi as my main editor. I have two flavors of Unix running in my home. The vast majority of my work is for a large Unix company whose name starts with 'S' and ends with 'n'. I am (for lack of a more graceful term) a Unix guy. I love this shit.

But I fail to see the usefulness in berating the idea of a graphical interface. The fact is, graphics are the only way the masses are going to be able to use computers is through an intuitive interface that *does not* involve man pages. You can bitch and moan as much as you want, but the majority of people out there just want to push pretty, jewel-colored buttons.

So, flaunt your old-school colors all you want -- it doesn't change the reality that there are mounds of people who think that MS Office is the best thing since VCR's.

--Mid

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

I roared with laughter at that one.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice rant! The command line does require a more "encyclopaedic" knowldge than a GUI. Professionals or "power users" may well prefer a command line. Lesser mortals and "every day persons" can do what they need to do more easily using a GUI. I believe that the best system is one that provides BOTH a command line AND a GUI. Things can then be approaced from either end of the "spectrum." Remember: there are lots of "dummies" (as you call us) looking for the best choice.

Re:Linux wins hands down

[Inthewire]

"Now if I had only installed debian on this machine, and not RedHat... but 6 weeks of uptime on a personal computer is too much to throw away."

Who gives a shit about uptime? I mean, if you are saying you don't want to trash a stable config, good.
But if you are saying you don't want to migrate to what you *really* want because it'll make you start your uptime count all over again, bad.

Why doesn't /.....

[Fromeo]

Only sites using "HitBox" software (HitBox is a division of WebSideStory, as is StatMarket) are polled. They may represent 125,000 sites among the millions on the Web, but they are invariably sites created on and often served on Windows machines. You can bet your bottom dollar that Slashdot and Low End Mac are not among these sites."

Why doesn't Slashdot take a poll of the OSs that hit it? Heck. All the OSDN sites could take the poll, and then release their results as the TRUE results. I mean, gosh. As long as we're having baised samples of the Internet, we should bias it the RIGHT way!

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[Trevelyan]

I like ur thinking. =)

OSDN (Slashdot) and Co. should do a poll*.
but if you do lets us know first so we can set our User_Agent strings back ;-)
* not a /. poll a web log one

But it'll only have enough clout if enough servers are involved, because although we know 125k server is small compared to the millions out there, it still and impressive enough number

-Trevelyan

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[WildBeast]

yes but the problem is that Slashdot have more Windows desktop users than Linux desktop users.

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[satch89450]

Why doesn't Slashdot take a poll of the OSs that hit it?

Well, for one thing there is this little problem that some of the HTTP proxy junkbuster packages can block the UserAgent information (like mine does) and so the numbers would be skewed.

Nice thought, though.

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it's more than 0.25 percent (in my logs, for my company site, it's 5% Linux - which is impressive, I think).

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[Anonymous Coward]

What's your company? Redhat?

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't Slashdot take a poll of the OSs that hit it?

Because it's useless and inaccurate information: FILE|PREFERENCES|NETWORK|BROWSER IDENTIFICATION|IDENTIFY AS MSIE 5.0

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Corel (but don't tell the boss...)

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[mpe]

Well, for one thing there is this little problem that some of the HTTP proxy junkbuster packages can block the UserAgent information (like mine does) and so the numbers would be skewed.

Also remember that any open source browser can easily have any user agent. Until websites stop using the user agent string as a capability (even as an access) criteria you will get user agent spoofing.

Re:Why doesn't /.....

[frank249]

Yes, but it's more than 0.25 percent (in my logs, for my company site, it's 5% Linux - which is impressive, I think).

- Which company, Redhat?

- Corel, but don't tell the boss

Hmmm, so a company that owns/maintains Corel Linux OS and sells Corel Draw, Photo Paint and WordPerfect(vers 8 and 2k) for Linux only has 40 PCs running on Linux(based on latest headcount)?

Linux is highly over-rated

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying for years to have a stable Linux system (beginning with slackware v0.95x or so). Even today's newest thing is flaky, poorly put together, no sense of it being anything resembling cohesive, and more ... in short, my use of Linux has always gotten in the way of doing what I want to do.

OS X has the advantage of being highly cohesive, while having a stable Unix based (sort of) foundation, and having a nice GUI. There's some bugs and deficiencies still to fix (any complete changeover like OS 9 -> OS X is not going to happen overnight). Warts and all I am much preferring OS X over Linux, so far.

- David

Re:Linux is highly over-rated

[Archie Steel]

That's still comparing Apples and ... beige boxes! How can you compare the two OSes when they don't even run on the same hardware! If I had an apple computer I'm sure I would have OS X on it, but I don't so what's the point?

As far has having a stable Linux system, I've installed Mandrake 8.1 and it is far more stable than either Win98 or even Win2K...if you still have some x86 hardware, perhaps you should try the new distros - they are certainly not flaky or poorly put together, as you suggest. They are getting quite cohesive (especially with Ximian Gnome). It seems as if you have some kind of pro-OSX/anti-Linux agenda - which, again, makes no sense as they don't even run on the same hardware!

Re:Linux is highly over-rated

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not with Linux. The problem is with you. If you cannot use something, the problem is with you.

Re:Linux is highly over-rated

[StarTux]

Never had a stable Linux system? I've never had an unstable Linux system, unless my hardware was on the fritz.

If you like OSX, then please use whatever you want.

People who think droves of people will leave Windows for MacOSX, or leave in droves from Intel/Linux to MacOSX are taking something strong. Unfortuantly a lot of people are accustomed to MS environment to the extent that they fear to tread outside of its influence.

Going to Kinko's I have not seen anyone use any form of OSX.

Matt

OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[mlinksva]

For every *nix hacker who switches from Linux or *BSD to OS X there must be dozens of non-unix users becoming unix users via OS X. This will only make more and higher quality developers and applications available on all unix platforms.

Had OS X become Apple's default years ago (presumably in the form of NextStep), perhaps Gnome and KDE wouldn't have gotten off the ground and *Step would've become the single dominant Unix UI. Now there's no holding back Gnome or KDE.

I'm slightly tempted by Macs now that OS X is shipping. I have mixed feelings: I hate MacOS, far more than I hate MSWindows, but I loved NextStep. Apple's hardware prices decide the issue for me at this time: no OS X.

Even if iWhatevers where cheap and I ran OS X, many of the applications I'd want to run would be Unix or Unix/X apps that I could also run under Linux or BSD.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[alfredo]

Look at the prices for the iBook, or some of the iMacs. That might change your mind.

If you need any UNIX apps for OSX, go here.

This is a good resource for OSX apps. HyperJeff There are also a bunch of links to Darwin and OSX sites. Check it out.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[led]

yes, but the iBook is a crap hardware, for the same price you get a super bomb x86 notebook, with a lovely geforce for quake and all...

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[Blitter]

I have mixed feelings: I hate MacOS, far more than I hate MSWindows, but I loved NextStep.

In that case you should absolutely check out OS X. Apple calls it a Macintosh, but in reality it's BSD/NextStep with a flashy new paintjob and extra libraries implementing the old Mac APIs so you can run old programs. They replaced Display Postscript with "Display PDF" (Apple calls it Quartz) and they added things like QuickTime, OpenGL, and Java. But it's just NextStep rebranded, don't be fooled by the name.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[Osty]

For every *nix hacker who switches from Linux or *BSD to OS X there must be dozens of non-unix users becoming unix users via OS X. This will only make more and higher quality developers and applications available on all unix platforms.

You're missing the most important part -- Mac OS X software is not neccessarily going to be any more portable to UNIX than Windows software is, because 99.9% of commercial developers will target the proprietary APIs like Cocoa. For example, Microsoft Office X (for OS X) is no more portable to Linux than Microsoft Microsoft Office XP (for Windows). Just because OS X has a UNIX core doesn't mean it looks like a UNIX at a high enough API level.

Okay, sure, if developers target X, using portable APIs like qt, then maybe your argument would hold. I doubt that will be the case, though.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[Pope Slackman]

Had OS X become Apple's default years ago (presumably in the form of NextStep), perhaps Gnome and KDE wouldn't have gotten off the ground and *Step would've become the single dominant Unix UI. Now there's no holding back Gnome or KDE.

And this would be bad HOW?

C-X C-S

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[Dr. Sp0ng]

You're missing the most important part -- Mac OS X software is not neccessarily going to be any more portable to UNIX than Windows software is, because 99.9% of commercial developers will target the proprietary APIs like Cocoa.

No, dude. Cocoa is pretty much just a new name for the OpenStep API, with a bit added. GNUStep is working on writing a fully OpenStep-compliant environment to run on *nix and Windows, and is coming along nicely. When it's more complete, Cocoa applications will be very portable to other operating systems.

Of course, that isn't to say I'd abandon this beautiful OS and go back to Linux, but hey :)

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[mlinksva]

What does "this" refer to? I certainly don't think Gnome and KDE's momentum is bad. NextStep as the dominant unix UI would've been a bad thing in that it is proprietary, but OTOH GNUStep probably would be where Gnome and KDE are now in that world.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[alfredo]

I'd rather Photoshop than play games.

If it is crap hardware,why is it getting called the best laptop for the money, or in some cases, the best laptop on the market.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, you are the lowest-uid troll I've ever seen on Slashdot. I congratulate you on your skillful use of irony.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[led]

It's still crap hardware, windows is crap software and look how much it sells...
People buy macs because they are beautifull, not because they are good...
Anyway the point is for the price of a mac you buy a x86 with 2x the hdd 2x the speed (not only mhz) and 2x the ram...

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[Pope Slackman]

What does "this" refer to?

The NeXTStep dominating the UNIX GUI world.

NextStep as the dominant unix UI would've been a bad thing in that it is proprietary

I don't view the world from the same good/bad, black/white point of view you do.

If NeXTStep had become the dominant UNIX GUI years ago, I might have UNIX, not windows on my PCs now.
(Background on why I prefer win/mac on non-servers: I loathe X. See my posting history for why.)

Now tell me, which would you rather have people using? NeXTStep, or Windows?

C-X C-S

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[mlinksva]

Sure, many apps will be OS X specific, but some will be portable. Even disregarding new applications, OS X users will want to use some Unix or Unix/X apps, expanding their user/tester/developer base.

Re:OS X helps Desktop Unix (which included Linux)

[mlinksva]

Yes, I'm religions about free software.

But I don't see the world only from a good/bad, black/white point of view. I said that NextStep dominance would've been a bad thing in that it is proprietary. I think it would've been a good thing in several other ways, not least aesthetically.

Of course I'd rather have people using NextStep than MSWindows. I'd rather still people used a beautiful free software UI. Whether that's GNUStep, Gnome, KDE, or something else I don't really care. None of these are all the way there yet, but their progress so far gives me much hope.

Re:0.24%

[bstadil]

Well will you concede then that Windows in any form is not for Servers / Handhelds / etc ONLY for desktops? What difference does it make if it is 0.24%, 2.4% or 24%, if the people using it is happy with the performance and Apps?

More LIkely

[adamy]

That we will start seeing more variety in Desktops again, due to the larger number of standards compliant systems being put out.

If something runs on a X server, you can run it remotely on any machine, so a large organizations base level software will be served off of a central machine, and each person will run it on their local system. If something is Java based, it will run on the desktop of any system. This goes for any toolkit that can be run cross platform, so Tcl/tk, Perl, Python etc..If something is based on a cross platform Librarys, like Qt, it will run on any machine that supports it, albeit it with a recompile. And with Cygwin, if I write my apps to be Unix-compatible, they can run on a windows box as well. Throw .Net into the mix, and Ximian's product may be quite useful. Again most of this that will run on one system will run on all.

So software can and will be built that runs on multiple platforms. As a developer, If I were to write a desktop application, I would choose something that could run on as many different end systems as possible, so the difference between Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, Solaris, etc will be minimized.

As an IT person, I am going to look for systems I can deploy cheaply. Unless we have another explosion in growth like many companies expereinced during the .com explosion, They are going to be buying machines a few at a time, and will attempt to maximized short term utility. If OSX makes sense for their business, and they can get a good price, and they can get the support , they will choose it. If 3 months later something makes more sense, they will choses that. So long as they avoid vendor lock-in, they can vary things up. Yes I know the costs involved in going between multiple systems, so Companies are going to stay primarily with one set of systems. But even during my time with a medium size consulting Firm, we had all flavors of Windows, a huge chunk of Linuxes, and did development for and on Solaris. So Variety seems to be a real possibility. Damn that is cool.

Re:More LIkely

[mpe]

As an IT person, I am going to look for systems I can deploy cheaply.

As well as maintain cheaply. Which is something which the current Windows Workstations can be very bad at.

In defense of the article itself...

[ebbomega]

Everybody seems to have already jumped on "Well, OSX isn't universal".

The thing though is that this article isn't looking from the geek or computer programmer perspective...

It's looking from a World Market perspective, which is what companies willing to fund the development of a Linux GUI will be looking at. Linux isn't going to gain popularity on the sole basis that the public has no reason to like it. They have OSX for the Mac (which the educated public looking for something user-friendly will opt for) and WinXP for the PC (which everybody else looking for something user-friendly will go for).

Linux remains the domain of those who want to be able to tweak and toggle with the OS itself and want to play around with their friends' computers relatively easily. So the apocalyptic Linux-is-going-down attitude is harshly erroneous.

That being said, the point the article is _making_ is that Linux in a user-friendly form most likely isn't going to be made, because on the most part, Linux users can probably be quite happy with a hack-and-slash GUI and still can make quite the use of command-level prompts.

There is no market interest in doing a stable GUI for Linux... at least not to the extent that there is in having a clean and user-friendly GUI or WinXP or OSX. OSX is looked upon as the "ultimate alternative" because it's unix-based.

In reality, the only way Linux would gain worldwide popularity would be if Microsoft devoted its efforts to making Windows a Linux-based GUI shell.

But, with M$'s attitude towards Linux and the general geekdom attitude towards M$, it would be both inplausible [sic?] and most likely regarded by the geeks as a Bad Thing.

Re:In defense of the article itself...

[ImaLamer]

So right!

My solution? Debian's apt-get package system with Mandrake's ease of use.

Apt-get seems to be the only good install system out there. RPM doesn't hold a candle. I've not used one RPM utility that worked as good as the apt-get tool.

But debian isn't got it all! If mandrake built their distro off of debian, we wouldn't need this discussion. But they would also need to do a lot more work... so...

Re:In defense of the article itself...

[WildBeast]

To be honest, I don't care. I'm using Linux on my server and Windows on my desktop, couldn't be happier.

Re:In defense of the article itself...

[Cheesy Fool]

Your right of course, neither Gnome or Kde have any interest in creating a stable GUI.

A little misleading?

[dimator]

The data research firm says that Microsoft's Windows and Apple?s Macintosh operating systems, hold a combined global Web usage share of more than 98 percent


And how much exactly is Apple's specific share of that 98%? 8%? 10%? Assuming it's 10%, that makes it 10 times more than linux's 1%. But that leaves Windows with ~90%, which is 9 times more than OSX!

So, not only should Linux users jump ship for OSX, but, based on the numbers, OSX users should jump ship to windows! Does tha sound right Mr. Moore, since popularity seems to be your major gauge?

Re:A little misleading?

[Sentry21]

Assuming it's 10%, that makes it 10 times more than linux's 1%.

Linux didn't have 1%, it had 0.24%, which gives Macs (at 10%) 42 times more than Linux, compared to Windows' mere 10 times over MacOS.

I'd reply to the point of your post, but I couldn't find it.

--Dan

Re:A little misleading?

[adamy]

And as we all know, 42 is the answer

Re:A little misleading?

[tim_maroney]

I believe the current Mac numbers are more like 4-5% than 10%, sadly.

Tim

Re:A little misleading?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can the answer to life, the universe, and everything possibly be offtopic? :-p

Extreme view, not the "common opinion"

[HalimCMe]

While this is a perfectly valid opinion of your personal preference, this obviously is at the extreme end of the spectrum and does not represent the view of most computer users, more importantly, the ones that will make the purchasing decisions.

My mom is not going to use vi. Period :)

Re:Extreme view, not the "common opinion"

[pope nihil]

I've made non-technical people use vi on numerous occaisions when I didn't want to drive over to help fix their internet. Of course, even telling them exactly what to do, keystroke by keystroke, there were still a couple of minor glitches. But you're right. An average soccer mom will never willingly learn vi.

Re:Extreme view, not the "common opinion"

[led]

I do however think that vi is a drug, did you ever catch yourself laughing while using vi ?

Two Different Groups

[mlknowle]

I don't think that OS-X (which I am running now) will kill Linux in any markets. There are two distince groups of users; one is composed of mac users and those who never want to touch anything other than a GUI, and those who enjoy having far more control over their operating system. I'm not saying by any means that there won't be some crossover from Linux to OSX, but I don't think it will be too signifigant. Apple has done a lot open up the Darwin Core, but some people will never be happy with an Apple supplied Aqua GUI.

Re:Two Different Groups

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for power-users who transcend the mono-skilled point&clickers and the CLI freaks.

What's with all the VS Linux?

[zulux]

Good greif,
I love OpenBSD and FreeBSD, but I'd hate to have them take over the world. Diversity in computing is cool and fun. Would we really be happy if Linux took over the world? There'd be no more Amiga users to poke fun at ;)

Re:The problem with OS X.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. The morons who used OS 8 and OS 9 are 'still' using OS 8 and OS 9 and for the most part dislike OS X.

I'm a Solaris/SPARC and Linux/X86 user who went out to buy PPC hardware specifically for OS X. I don't even have OS 9 installed on my box, and don't see a need for it.

I'm willing to bet that the majority of the early OS X migrations will be X86 and SPARC people rather than OS 8 and OS 9 people. After all, if you were fool enough to think that a message-passing OS that looked like shit was great, then you'll stick with OS 9 or Windows. If you want a very stable BSD kernel on good hardware, with a spiffy, intutitive UI, then you'll want OS X.

thank you.

let's not forget something important

[MoceanWorker]

Linux is very customizable when it comes to using window managers... your typical Linux user and choose from KDE, Gnome, blackbox (my personal favorite), icewm, vanilla, Enlightenment, etc.. etc.. where as with OS X... ok you got everything set up in a KDEish type desktop environment... the only other "cool" thing i noticed with it is that you can switch back to Mac OS 9 (which takes about a good 2-3 minutes to do that)... not to mention... the fact that you get a unix shell in Mac OS X is nothing special... it's really limited to what you can and can't do in the shell... hell you can't even use make... i guess it's Apple's way of saying "hey... in windows you can run a DOS prompt... why don't we let our users run a BSD shell"

in the long run, Mac OS X really isn't as special as people say it is... not to mention the first release was buggy as hell

Re:let's not forget something important

[WildBeast]

Anyway, Mac advocates have been saying that before even the Mac OS X release, yet customers are still not buying it. This article was just made out of frustration.

They were unable to develop a good OS on their own, so they took BSD's code.

Re:let's not forget something important

[TellarHK]

Yes, and being "stuck" with Aqua is just what a desktop needs - a standard interface. Without a standard interface, users won't be able to expect the same exact results on whatever machine they use with that OS.

Also, you -can- run make. All you need to do is install the Developer Tools (Free download after free registration with the Apple Developer Connection) and there you have it, make, cc, gcc, Cocoa, everything you need to not only compile applications for commandline and Aqua, but you can even use a nice tool like Fink to download and install X11.

Re:let's not forget something important

[90XDoubleSide]

your typical Linux user and choose from KDE, Gnome, blackbox (my personal favorite), icewm, vanilla, Enlightenment, etc.. etc..

This offers a great advantage in that you can pick a WM that fits your style, unfortunately X11 is a very weak and, as the author put it, "clunky" base that they all must run on, and none of the choices offer the desktop ease of use and incorporation of graphics desktop users demand. It is childish to call OS X a "KDEish environment" when KDE cannot hope to offer an interface at the level of Aqua.

the only other "cool" thing i noticed with it is that you can switch back to Mac OS 9 (which takes about a good 2-3 minutes to do that)

43 seconds on my G4/466 MHz, which should be fairly middle-of-the-road Mac hardware (it's mostly disk operations anyway); I don't know any Mac that would take more than a minute.

unix shell in Mac OS X is nothing special... it's really limited to what you can and can't do in the shell

There are very few limits to what you can do in the CLI; it is essentially a full BSDish system. You can complain about what comes preinstalled, but I think it's fine considering most users will never touch the terminal; power users will most likely want their own favorite tools so it's just as well to let them download it themselves. Apple doesn't bundle make because almost all developers are going to do all of their compiling in Project Builder (why would you want to do it at the CLI when you they bundle such excellent DevTools?)

Re:let's not forget something important

[thammoud]

That is exactly the problem. You have to big competing WM's in KDE and GNOME and users are always confused. I am NOT referring to techies, try telling your wife 'Will it be KDE or GNOME ?' and listen to the answer.

Being customizable is an advantage. However, many WM's that compete against each other with no standard in sight is very bad for the Linux desktop.

Re:let's not forget something important

[ksr]

Actually, if you simply download and install the free Developer's Tools from Apple, you'll have make and a couple of hundreds of megs of other goodies. Can you really blame them for not including such things in an OS targeted at such a wide audience? As with Linux, xBSD, etc., it's there if you need it.

Re:let's not forget something important

[davechen]

If you install the developer tools CD, you get make, you get cc, you get c++, even lexx and yacc. I've install X windows, icewm. I could install which every GUI I felt like. I've install Mesa, tcl/tk, vim, vtk Open Inventor. Just about anything you can install on a Linux box, you can install on OS X.

dave

Re:let's not forget something important

[Binary Boy]

Yeah, and Linus was unable to finish an OS himself so he to GNU code... isn't that the SPIRIT of OpenSource? Or is it "you can only reuse our code when it's politically correct, otherwise you have to reinvent every wheel while we make fun of you for doing that"?

OSX runs on a Mach microkernel, the BSD layer is just that - a layer above the kernel providing BSD compatibility at the API level, exactly what Linus advocates (portable APIs written in platform specific ways). Had they left out the BSD layer you would have said "well, it doesnt have a POSIX-compliant CLI so it's not worth a shit" and had they written their own it would have been "I don't trust any *nix API layer written entirely by Apple". Can't win, huh?

So many bitter Linux users on /.

As for the article, I'm not certain OSX is displacing Linux, I've seen nothing but some of the parrotted anecdotes referenced in this article... it's a nice OS, but this is a big world with room for lots of choice. OSX appeals to a few user segments which may in some cases overlap with Linux (scientific users for one, at least in my experience, who want a nice Unix and are sick of Linux or Solaris for workstations), but it will, at least initially, likely appeal to segments that aren't Linux strongholds.

As much as I like OSX, I despise so much of the Mac fanatic scene, which tends to do itself a disfavor with its loudly demonstrated narrow view of the world and the technology market. So long as we have as much choice as we have right now, everything is just peachy - I wanna see a Jobs-dominated industry about as much as I enjoy Gates' reign of stagnation.

Cheers,

BB

Re:let's not forget something important

[led]

I know about 50 imacs that take more than 2 minutes...

Re:let's not forget something important

[Anonymous Coward]

*It is childish to call OS X a "KDEish environment" when KDE cannot hope to offer an interface at the level of Aqua.*

The eye candy is good, yes. But for usability OS X has a ways to go before it is up to KDE. Multiple desktops and configurable hotkeys are essential.

Re:let's not forget something important

[RickHunter]

(why would you want to do it at the CLI when you they bundle such excellent DevTools?)

I don't know. Easy scripting? Familiarity? Simplicity? Not wanting to have to take one's hands off the keyboard to use the mouse all the time?

Its a matter of personal preference, and (AFAIK), OSX provides both options.

Re:let's not forget something important

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, saying that Aqua is KDEish is like saying that Unix is Linuxish. The main influences for Aqua are the classic Mac OS and Next. Both of which were around long before KDE.

Bitching about startup time for classic is like bitching about loading time for Virtual PC. It's actually booting another OS on top of OS X, it takes just as long as booting into OS 9 normally does.

Unix on OS X is NOT crippled. You can use make if you install it. It's on the dev tools cd. You can also install XDarwin and actually run KDE or Gnome or whatever.

You can use almost any *nix app you want. Just compile it yourself or find someone who has a binary distribution. Most programs compile directly. A few require simple tweaks to work with Darwin.

It might help if you actually knew what you were talking about.

Re:let's not forget something important

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people insist on calling X11 "weak" and "clunky" in these subtle troll posts?

Back it up with a shred of evidence, or maybe even some (gasp) logic please? I doubt you're a programmer, much less one skilled or informed enough to comment on the usability or design ethic of the X Window system.

Prove me wrong.

Re:let's not forget something important

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull. Choice is the major point of OSs like Linux. If OX X doesn't give me the opportunity to set it up as I like rather than as Apple likes, then it's a non-starter. And if you don't like X (Window System) that's fine by me, but for what it does it works very nicely. How easy is it to get a remote display from your OS X system to another machine on your network?

Re:let's not forget something important

[SmittyTheBold]

Here. ;)

OSX has already won, short-term...

[TellarHK]

To quote "Sean Connery" on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy ''My time has come, Trebek!''

I've been ranting about this for a few weeks now, ever since purchasing my first Mac to use, and my rather surprisingly pleasant introduction to OSX.

Linux has always had two major things going for it. Free as in beer and speech, and the open source development model for the kernel. But at the same time, what it's had going against it were a difficult install (not difficult for me, difficult for grandma) and the clunky, quirky system that is X11. (clunky compared to what it -could- be, not necessarily the current competition)

Linux isn't ready for prime time just yet. It could be, but it's not ready yet. Say what you will about Mandrake, but grandma can't use it.

Now, OSX has the advantage of a pretty decent Mach/BSD core, and an incredibly impressive and functional GUI. Aqua, for being as young and closed as it is, does a damn good job at innovating in the 2D paradigm. Transparencies, dialog boxes that attach to the affected window, an actually useful style of windowshading. And all this with the environment of *nix beneath. With OSX, more than half the work Linux needs to do to make it on the desktop has already been accomplished. People may call for Apple to open the GUI, or they'll whine and complain that it's not open enough. So be it. If you want it that badly, make your own that's better. Open source doesn't have to simply follow other ideas, it can innovate too.

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[Archie Steel]

Say what you will about Mandrake, but grandma can't use it.

Come on! If Grandma can't use a correctly configured GNOME/KDE desktop (Mandrake or other), then she probably won't be able to use Windows or even OS X either. Computers still need a bit of training to use...and consider the next generation of users, who sometimes seem to instinctively know how to use GUIs and non-command-line software as easily as playing their PlayStations! The quest to make computers as easy to use is moot...I personnally think that computers are easy enough to use as they are.

I will say this about Mandrake: its installation is as easy (if not more) than that of WinXP. I have actually tried both...have you? If you indeed have installed mandrake, and are not simply talking through you hat, in what way would you say it is harder to install than WinXP?

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[aka-ed]

Linux has always had two major things going for it. Free as in beer and speech, and the open source development model for the kernel. But at the same time, what it's had going against it were a difficult install (not difficult for me, difficult for grandma) and the clunky, quirky system that is X11.

You don't factor in something that's been mentioned only about a dozen times in posts above your own. Apple is in the business of moving iron, and running OSX requires that you buy one of their overpriced, proprietary systems. Nicht gut!

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[Anonymous Coward]

\i{To quote "Sean Connery" on SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy} ...

I'll take "The Rapists" for 200.

That's "Therapists", you idiot!

You dog, you!

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[Broken Bottle]

With all due respect, if you're grandma can't use a preinstalled Mandrake Linux box, then you may want to consider having her retake her drivers test because she's probably losing her faculties. Red Hat and Mandrake linux are *every bit* as usable as Mac OSX or Windows to the average person who uses their PC to play a CD, use a word processor, surfer the internet or send emails. Most computer users will never have the desire or need to get very far below the hood of their operating system regardless if it is OSX, Windows, or Linux. Both of the afore mentioned Linuux distros will autodetect 99% of the hardware on your PC unless you happen to have the latest and greatest uber-videocard, which, btw, Apple computers don't. Preinstall 3 desktop computers with OSX, Windows, and Linux respectively, preinstall the most commonly used apps for the particular OS (like browsers, word processors, etc...) and plop the average computer user down in front of amy one of the them and I'd be willing to bet that given an hour in front of each machine, they'd be equally productive on any of them. Why not sell them the more powerful, less expensive computer running Linuns then?

Chris

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[Anonymous Coward]

..or you have any reletively recent Hercules cards (past couple of years, I'd guess). Hercules keeps their driver information secret, so if you have a Herc card and aren't running windows it's pretty much bend-over-time for you.

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[dvNull]

Wow ... So the fact that I am using my Hercules Prophet card here in Linux is just a figament of my own imagination ....

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[skyhawker]

I think you're overlooking the fact that Linux is a HUGE hit on the server, and the folks who manage all those servers are going to mostly run Linux on their workstations as well. There's no way that Apple hardware is going to replace PC hardware in server farms, particularly rack mounted stacks of servers. That alone is why Linux will continue to thrive for some time to come.

Having said that, I sure wish I could justify the expense of a new Mac with one of those luscious cinema-style displays. But for me, it would just be a toy, and I don't have the funds to splurge on a system like that at the moment.

Just my two cents.

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[Vagary]

One of the classic arguments in favour of software piracy: students pirate software when they can't afford it, then tell their companies to buy it once they graduate. This should be an even stronger effect in terms of platform bias -- if it isn't, then why does Sun Canada keep giving my university hardware?

I am a poor, starving university student who also enjoys assembling my own computers. When Macs come with reasonable price and flexibility*, I will be first inline to buy the parts. But until then, I will be using PCs until I graduate, and recommending them to my employers afterwards.

* The only distinct hardware in a G4 is:

• Chasis
• Motherboard
• CPU

(Many AGP cards can be flashed to work in Macs, everything else is plug&play.

Re:OSX has already won, short-term...

[Lars T.]

But the server market is tiny compared to the desktop market, and this is unlikely to change. And those who run Linux servers are likely to run more servers than desktops.

I need OS X

[Master Of Ninja]

In the desktop? Well OS X wipes the floor with anything (and this includes win xp). I'm in the UK and the first time i tried OS X was the other day in this specialised high-street technology shop. Was i bloody amazed! (as you can tell by reading this post)

Desktop linux is workable, but for home users (who don't want a fuss) OS X rocks, plus it is eye candy. I was using it on a G3 iBook with 128mb ram and was it smooth running. The interface is great - i was amazed at how you can type a couple of numbers into the calculator application, minimize it to the dock, and when pointing to the calculator in the dock, see the exact numbers you typed in. It's a very small thing, but has wow factor!

Then there is the fact that for the Mac there are many office apps, plus that with source code many free-software packages can be ported easily.

For the scientific markets things are not so clear cut. Windows will be widely used (as Macs seem to be a bit foreign) but for research i would expect Linux would be used a lot for its ability to be customised. Plus it runs on cheaper (maybe faster?) x86 hardware, which can be replaced with ease. This would give it a slight edge over hard-to-customise macs.

Re:I need OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

*maybe* faster? rofl!

I Don't Care

[krmt]

Ok, first off... 0.24% is not bad. I personally don't care, because that number can still go higher. I know Linus isn't aiming for world domination, nor is Redhat, Debian, or anyone else really (maybe RMS, but that's Ok.) The point is, it's there, it's usable, and people can move to it if they choose.

As for OSX, yeah it's a fantastic product. The best OS in the world for desktop in my opinion. But that doesn't mean it'll stay that way.

Anyone remember 1984? Apple was the best desktop OS then too. They were really something to cheer for then. It wasn't just a new pretty and slick interface, it was a whole new way of working with computers. Sure, it was clunky in some ways, but Apple had the best system on the market for years.

So what happened? Well, most people know about this, but they got greedy and lazy. They overcharged. They stopped building the coolest stuff. They let the OS wither and die as we salivated over the ill-fated Copland. 3rd party developers abandoned us and unless you were willing to fork out hundreds of dollars for dev tools and docs, there was no way you were going to help the problem. They still had their strengths, but they were a shell of the vibrant company that they once were.

So here we are now. Apple's fixed things. They've got the best system on the planet. They've got slick hardware. They give the dev tools and docs for free again, AppleII style. People gush about the system left and right, and they should! It's really nice.

But who's to say that it'll be that way in two years? Apple could get lazy again. They could get greedy again. They could fire all their talent or let them leave again. And then everyone with macs will be back where they were five years ago, fretting over whether or not to move to windows.

And you know what? Linux will still be there, .24% or more or less, but it will still be there. So I personally don't care about what this article is talking about. I felt screwed by apple, and I'm never going back, no matter how nice their stuff is. There's a reason people push free as in speech, and it's because you will not get screwed over when some company like apple decides you're not worth the effort because you don't use photoshop.

I love Linux because it frees me, not just to work and learn, but to work and learn with confidence that my skills will be worthwhile, and that I will never be a commodity because I can contribute. I'm proud to be part of that 0.24% because that 0.24% isn't just something to be treated like pennies that someone is afraid to lose. It's 0.24% people who care, who can and do contribute. Linux is that 0.24%: it's people not stock options.

So you can keep your flashy system. I'm staying right here where I'm not just revenue on a balance sheet.

Re:I Don't Care

[Anonymous Coward]

So what happened? Well, most people know about this, but they got greedy and lazy. They overcharged. They stopped building the coolest stuff. They let the OS wither and die as we salivated over the ill-fated Copland. 3rd party developers abandoned us and unless you were willing to fork out hundreds of dollars for dev tools and docs, there was no way you were going to help the problem. They still had their strengths, but they were a shell of the vibrant company that they once were.

In other words, Steve Jobs wasn't there.

Jobs is often maligned for his ego and general nuttiness, but when you look at the history of Apple under Jobs, followed by Apple without him, followed by Apple with Jobs back... there is little room for debate that he is the heart and soul of that company, and the driving force behind their efforts towards quality.

Re:I Don't Care

[Schwarzchild]

In other words, Steve Jobs wasn't there.

That pretty much sums it up. When Jobs was there in the 70's and early-to-mid 80's Apple was very successful but as soon as he was persona-non-grata and left that's when Apple started going down hill. Now that he's returned it's back in nearly top form for its niche.

Sculley, Amelio and the others merely helped drive it into the ground.

Re:I Don't Care

[V.P.]

One of the first decisions Jobs made when he returned was to stop licensing MacOS to clones, effectively killing that market.

Maybe that turned out to be a good short-term business decision, but, boy, did he alienate a lot of people (including Motorola) with this...

Re:I Don't Care

[bryan1945]

"When Jobs was there in the 70's and early-to-mid 80's Apple was very successful but as soon as he was persona-non-grata and left that's when Apple started going down hill"

One quick correction, Jobs got forced out, he didn't leave. Imagine if Scully and Amelio didn't fuck up everything as badly as they did.... sigh...

Re:I Don't Care

[ablair]

krmt wrote:

"I'm proud to be part of that 0.24% because that 0.24% isn't just something to be treated like pennies that someone is afraid to lose. [...] Linux is that 0.24%: it's people not stock options. So you can keep your flashy system. I'm staying right here where I'm not just revenue on a balance sheet."

I like your sense of belonging to the Linux Community, I feel the same way. But your condemnation of Apple as viewing it's customers as just "revenue on a balance sheet" is unjustified. Or, it is justified, but just as applicable to IBM's Linux business, to Red Hat's and to every other company trying to make money from Linux. What you forget is that the Mac Community has been around and is not going anywhere anytime soon either. Whatever Apple may do right or wrong in the future, they are the ones that help one another and that really care. One of the greatest criticisms of the Apple one often hears from the Wintel world is that they're such a "cult": it's exactly this "cult" that's 4% of people who care just like the 0.24% in the Linux Community.

In short, Apple may be a company looking to make a profit, but so what? The Mac Comminuty is not just stock options either. I'm glad to be part of both now.

Re:I Don't Care

[krmt]

I know, I was a big time supporter of the community myself back in the day.

The problem with the mac community though, is that you control nothing. Apple owns you in every way, and when they drop the ball, you get dropped with it. You have no sway over your own destiny. I personally wasn't a graphic designer, so in the mid 90's I really felt fucked over. I didn't do photoshop or quark or freehand or premier or Kai or any of the other programs that Apple really loved. As a result, I felt alienated. I especially felt out becuase I wanted to create programs on the platform that was described as the platform for creative types. And I couldn't because I couldn't afford it.

What a load of shit.

Apple likes having a community around, but you have no power. You had no power to save cyberdog or OpenDoc or Quickdraw GLX or any of the other great stuff Apple put out. You had no power to say "I want OSX to support my older Powermacs!" You had no power to demand that games be made for the system (only recently has that even started to change). And you have no power to say "I want to buy my system from someone else." This is key, especially if you've ever tried to deal with upgrading a mac, and finding you're paying the price for a whole new machine (something I've experienced).

The Mac community is a strong and rabid one no doubt, but they hold no real sway. If Apple moves, you move with it, no ifs ands or buts. If IBM moves, I don't. If Redhat moves then I don't. I control my own destiny here because Redhat and IBM don't own Linux anymore than Slackware, Debian, or even Linus does. And if someone with a balance sheet decides not to bother with something I need because it's got nothing to do with Adobe products, then I'm not screwed. That's the difference between Mac and Linux, and that's why I made my switch.

Re:I Don't Care

[paul_the_nomad]

I felt screwed by apple, and I'm never going back, no matter how nice their stuff is. There's a reason people push free as in speech, and it's because you will not get screwed over when some company like apple decides you're not worth the effort because you don't use photoshop.

Exactly right. Apple treated me (and millions of others) like scum. Apple would have to do something pretty amazing for me to go back to them. Free software is a different story. With free software, I don't have to worry about being dragged through s%&t by a large corporation.With free software, I have total control over my computer.

History tells us: the problem with Apple is that you just can't trust 'em.

Re:I Don't Care

[rhess460]

Well, revenue doesn't go on a balance sheet. There you learned something new.

depends on which desktop

[dangermouse]

I have a Powerbook G4, and I dual boot between Linux and OS X. Under Linux, I run KDE. Under OS X, I run Aqua and OroborOSX.

I've got to tell you, KDE kicks Aqua's ass as a GUI. The multiple desktops, configurable hotkeys, tabbed Konsoles (with keystrokes for opening new tabs and switching between them), Konqueror, and KMail (with its ability to use gvim for editing) just stomp on the single-desktop, click-to-focus, barely-keyboardable Aqua for sheer productivity value.

I run OS X mostly to play. The ability to (easily) play DVDs; iTunes (hands down the *best* mp3 management software I've ever seen); Fire.app; and the fun of tinkering with a new OS.

For the past couple of days at work, I've booted the powerbook into OS X, but to actually Get Work Done I've fired up OroborOSX and run Konsole and KMail off of my desktop Slackware machine. It's not the prettiest desktop in the world when I do that, but it gets the job done and I get to toy with OS X when I need a break. I'll probably go back to booting it into Linux when I get back from vacation, though, as it's just so much easier to get around in.

Maybe those "it's the applications!" weenies are right... but OS X still seems to have a GUI that's designed around the idea that you'll probably be doing, at most, two things at a time. For a lot of people this isn't the case, and KDE addresses their (our) needs much better.

Incidentally, if you drop below the GUI, I still generally find Slackware easier to work with... it uses a lot more of the GNU software I know and love, which tends to be more featureful and flexible than its BSD counterparts. OS X also feels a bit like you're not really supposed to be running around down there under the GUI, but maybe that's just because I'm not comfortable in it yet.

Comparing oranges and bananas

[buserror]

I have an OSX box and a Linux box. My iMac run OSX, my Tosh laptop runs Mandrake.

Comparing the two is silly. Their objectives aren't the same. Their 'customer' targets aren't.

1) The pseudo 'common' part is barely common at all, most of the BSD-ish tools on OSX are several years sometime behind what is available on linux.
For example, 'm4' is barely usable on OSX, it lacks all the FNU extensions that makes it usable nowadays.
Apple also has decided that the GPL was dangerous, and systematicaly removed everything that was GPLed. Bash went first in the DP series, while wget went rather recently out of OSX 10.0

2) On the other hand, OSX *does* have applications and development tools that are, as far as human interface is concerned, way ahead of what is available on linux.
The reason is simple: There are no Xlib vs GNOME vs KDE vs whatever dilution. Development is focused on one target, even is there are two way to reach the target (Carbon & Cocoa)
And, bless them, there are still people at apple who aren't geeks and try to focus on the end users, instead of on being 'customizable' or 'skinable'

That said, OSX sucks speedwise compared to a linux box. Just generally sucks I mean. Play an mp3 on iTunes, it eats *30%* of your CPU while on a slower laptop xmms will eat barely 1%. That might look like a cliche, but it's verifiable on many other 'serious' tasks. I have applications running on both.

So, well, 'desktop' is probably OSX major plus, and will stay that way. While 'OS/server' is probably where linux is better, and will stay better for a long time

Re:Comparing oranges and bananas

[HalimCMe]

Why don't you take your eat your own words and run XMMS under OS X then for your comparison? Talk about comparing Apples to Oranges. iTunes is not XMMS. There is an OS X port of XMMS, you know.

Just some elements of the GUI in OS X are slow, the OS as a whole fares quite well though.

Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Albert Schueller]

Cost and openness are the key. Linux will completely dominate the non-US markets over the next 5 years. Desktops and servers alike. This squabble between OS X and Linux is laughable US-centered viewpoint. Neither OS X (nor M$ for that matter) will ever see the non-US growth that Linux will see. Cheap software on cheap hardware will win in the long run. Third world nations aren't interested in paying Apple for its hardware or M$ for its software. Nor are they able. Yet that's where ALL the people are.

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[swissmonkey]

You are right, MS won't see the double-digit growth that Linux will see in non-US markets.

Linux will jump from 0.5% to 2%, a 400% growth.

Windows, well it's already at >90%, so it probably won't get more than 10% increase in market share...

You remind me of one of my best friends with whom I started using Linux 6 years ago, after a few monthes he told me "you'll see, in 5 years Linux will be everywhere", I remember that I laughed and said he was a fool.

I was right.

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Shelled]

Who gives a shit about the 3rd world, fucktard?

The 7 billion others who didn't immigrate to your country, dickwad. Keep on bombing.

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[sheldon]

It's not difficult to obtain double digit growth numbers when your marketshare is only .24%.

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only the third world could afford COMPUTERS and ELECTRICITY, Linux might have a new market to penetrate.

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Anonymous Coward]

the entire world population is 6 billion. were
did you get the "other" 7 billion?

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Sleeper]

I completelly agree with you. And actually Linux has a lot to gain from whatever positive acceptance the OS X will gain. Because whatever GOOD commercial software for OS X will be either ported to the Linux or will be run with the help of open source libraries (wrapers). I am not a specialist to judge but my guess this will be easyer to do than for example WINE (which has come a long way by the way). I am pretty sure I am not the first one to say that.

And on unrelated note. I have to say articles like this has to be taken with a grain of salt. All these journalists/analysts exist on the face of the Earth because somebody somewhere does something. The best thing that could happen to them is that thier words will end up on the mouth of some marketing guy who wants to look smart. And specific article is just a part of Apple's marketing compain to create a warm ant fuzzy feeling for the people who already bought OS X.
So yeah, the promisse to yank Windoze from it's leading positoin would look kind of lame (mainly because it has been done to death already quite unsuccessfully). So of course next thing to do is to say that supposed userbase gain will come from "those Linux users". Who run their OS on "shitty hardware". And in the substential amount have yet to figure out what mouse is for.
What can I say. Those who can do, those who cannot predict

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[TheInternet]

Because whatever GOOD commercial software for OS X will be either ported to the Linux or will be run with the help of open source libraries (wrapers)

It's really no easier to port the big name Mac OS X software to Linux than it is to port the Windows software. Mac OS X's primary APIs are Carbon (Office, all Adobe apps, all Macromedia apps, Maya, etc) and Cocoa. There is GNUStep, but it's not finished.

I have to say articles like this has to be taken with a grain of salt

I completely agree.

And specific article is just a part of Apple's marketing compain to create a warm ant fuzzy feeling for the people who already bought OS X

The article was written by Mac users, not Apple.

- Scott

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure?

OS X *does* have the best multilingual support out there. I mean, not everyone (espescially in third-world countries) masters english enough for daily computer usage.

Apple have stronger market presence in France (and in Quebec!) than in the US... Guess why?

Olivier

Re:Linux will dominate non-US markets.

[Shade, The]

Still, it is far more common than it was 6 years ago, and has come a long way technologically. Quite a bit of embedded Linux is getting around as well, for instance the Tivo, so I wouldn't dismiss his claim altogether...

That said, Linux isn't as popular as Windows or MacOS, and may never be, but it is possible to live in a niche market. Linux is doing very well at the moment, despite its relatively small following, and I see no reason why it can't continue to do so. Linux may well benefit from money spent on it, but unlike its other competitors, it cannot go bankrupt either.

Two different markets

[christurkel]

I use Mac OS X on my Mac and I love it. I think it is the best Unix-based OS for my needs. I love the slick Aqua interface and the rock solid command line goodness underneath. I also use Linux on my IBM laptop and I must say the two are aimed at vastly different markets. There is nothing wrong with this; each has their strengths and weaknesses and I use (and love) both.

Re:Two different markets

[anderman]

I use Mac OS X on my Mac and I love it. I think it is the best Unix-based OS for my needs.

Want to qualify that? Why is it the best Unix-based OS? If its just based on the rock solid command line goodness underneath I would say that all unices would meet your needs.

Re:Unlikely(moderators should stop smoking reefer)

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This is a myth. It's been shown time and again. Macs hold their own with PCs.

2. Who said anything about challenging MS?

3. This was said in the article. Did you read the article?

Im one of the converts

[willardj]

I am one of the linux -> OS X converts. I dont use MS 1) because I dont trust them, 2) Weak CLI -Cygwin, while nice, still feels like too much of an afertought. OS X really is the best of of both worlds I ran run all the Linux type Apps I want with rootless X Windows, and still have access to all this geat Mac Software both old and new. Links 2002, Tax / finance, etc. And the wife wife can and does use it. The one drawback I see is that the hardware costs twice as much, but for me that hasnt been a show stopper. I dont have a problem giving $ to apple.

Re:Im one of the converts

[Anonymous Coward]

> The one drawback I see is that the hardware costs twice as much, but for me that hasnt been a show stopper.

Let me translate:

"I'm an idiot who pays twice as much for something that isn't worth twice as much, also I'm making MS richer in the process (they have Apple investment)."

It doesn't sound like you took linux too seriously in the first place.

Re:Im one of the converts

[willardj]

mabey an idiot,
At work I use strictly linux all day on a cheaper, higher MHZ machine and have been for the last four years. Linux is great, but being able to run it (similar) side by side with OS X is worth the extra money for the machine (to me)

GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[Flarners]

Tog says differently. People perceive that using the commandline is faster since it gives their mind more of a workout, whereas mousing is easier and more "boring". However, the stopwatch rings true, and it turns out mouse-based GUIs are almost always faster at most tasks than a CLI.

Now don't get me wrong, commandline utilities are great for basic scripting tasks and remote administration, but modern GUI research as manifested in OS X and Windows XP has superceded the commandline in usability and speed for all tasks that matter. Get into the 21st century, you damn luddite! There are so many new developments in software technology that require a GUI to fully manifest, like A/V editing, NetMeeting-style conferencing, and of course gaming. The CLI freaks are retarding themselves by sticking with such antiquated technology.

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[Tralfamadorian]

Firstly, the parent comment is a joke, secondly, the command line is faster at many tasks, not just a select few. I suppose if all you do is view email and browse the web, then that isn't the case, but more advanced computer usage yields many cases where command line tools (not just a command line, it's actually the tools that one has access to that's important, like a base linux system) are many times faster.

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[euroderf]

Firstly, the parent comment is a joke

No, it isn't. Learn to recognise the difference between satire and truth, though it can be close, I grant you.

I suppose if all you do is view email and browse the web, then that isn't the case, but more advanced computer usage yields many cases where command line tools (not just a command line, it's actually the tools that one has access to that's important, like a base linux system) are many times faster.

YES! I absolutely agree, it is nice to see some people have sense and cling on to the old ways.

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[__past__]

Actually, especially web browsing etc. is faster without a GUI. While those stupid Mozilla/Konqueror/Opera/IE/whatever-users are still downloading those fancy gif ads, the smart w3m/lynx/links/ whatever-as-long-as-no-gui-is-envolved-user already knows that this nice colorful webpage doesn't include any useful information and is up and away :)

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could people _please_ stop posting this inane nonsense. Do you have any idea how foolish you sound to people who actually use the command line? That so-called experiment tested a limited set of mundane tasks that revealed nothing about the power of the command line.

You want some _real_ tests. Here you go. Get out your stopwatch...

1. Retrieve the contents of an individual website hosted on an ISP (those things are always going down):

Command line: wget http://www.example.com/~someone
User-time: 4 seconds, 6 if you need to open an xterm

2. Back up a large directory to a second hard drive, copying only the files that have changed

Command line: rsync dir1 dir2
User-time: 3 seconds
System time: MUCH less than drag-n-drop in explorer

3. Find all subdirectories of "/topdir" that start with a number, but don't descend into them once they've been found, as they are very deep and that would be time consuming. Oh, and don't check remotely mounted filesystems.

Command line: find /topdir -mount -type d -name '[0-9]*' -prune -a -print
User time: 6 seconds
System time: Just _try_ and express that with a GUI...

4. Repeat the previous, this time deleting the directory if it's empty.

Command line: for i in $( [up arrow] ); test $( ls $i | wc -l ) -eq 0 && rmdir $i; done
User time: 8 seconds
System time: ibid

5. Find all .html files in a particular subdirectory that do NOT contain the word "XML". Do not search non-html files, as there are several large non-html files in random locations, and that would be time consuming. Save the results to a text file for later review, but also print them out as they are found for immediate consideration.

Command line: for i in $( find dir -type f -name '*.html' ); do grep -v $i XML && echo "match: $i" && echo ---------------; done | tee outfile.txt
User time: 24 seconds

Ok, let's see how fast you do the same things with the GUI. My guess is that anyone who even managed to design a GUI that was capable of such things would make it so bloated that it would take more time to _load_ than most of my commands did to type. By comparison, an xterm loads in about a second.

Start getting into replacing text, formatting it for output, selectively copying files, and so on, and you can't begin to approach the power of the command line. Any GUI trying to do the same thing with point-and-click would ultimately be forcing you to build the command line text piece by piece anyway.

If the command line gives you the ability to tell the OS exactly what you want by speaking its language, the GUI is at best a clumsy translator. Great if you're a user with the equivalent of "See Spot Run" tasks, but there _is_ life beyond first grade.

I've literally seen people point-and-clicking through tasks like the above, manually taking days to do what I could have done in, literally, seconds. And since they're using Windows, there's nothing I can do to help them. They're just stuck with their hours of drudgery.

So the next time you consider quoting this GUI nonsense, think twice. There's a lot more to the command line than typing "mozilla" or Control-f-o to open a file...

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, if the command line is so superior, why do you have to open an Xterm?

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is so stupid, I'm not even going to bother replying to is.

(oops)

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[falzer]

Little was gained from a previous thread about GUI-time versus CLI-time where "Tog" was referenced. Slashdot is probably not a great place to mention it.

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back ta the hoodz, byte-boyz and take the weenie ebonics with you.

Re:GUIs a time waste? Hardly.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah yeah, it's obvious that CLI has its advantages. but gimme a CLI that'll let me edit the DV footage from my last family vacation, then edit a DVD together. oh, that old photograph that needed to be restored? sure we can use the Gimp or even photoshop. where's the CLI version?!

you can't seriously think mom or dad will be syncing drives or archiving random websites more often than the stuff above can you? GUIs make those tasks much easier.

See...look at the kewl stuff OS X can do...

[linuxjack55]

I'd call the above poster a moron, but that would be an insult to morons.

Re:See...look at the kewl stuff OS X can do...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you couldn't do that.

Carbon vs Cocoa

[pneuma_66]

I dont know why everyone has this carbon versus cocoa debate. Carbon and Cocoa are just different API's for the same functions. Carbon. actually is a framework on top of Cocoa, and you can access most, if not all the features through Carbon This article, is the first one i found on it, google will probably turn up more in the carbon versus cocoa debate.

Re:Carbon vs Cocoa

[Lance Fuckhoff]

Carbon is not layered on top of Cocoa -- Cocoa is actually layered "slightly on top and mostly to the side" of Carbon. But yes, the debate is pointless.

Re:Carbon vs Cocoa

[nosferatu-man]

There isn't a debate if you're just starting out; but the whole reason to have Carbon is to make the job of porting pre-existing applications over. You'll recall that Carbon wasn't on the roadmaps until there was a (relatively) huge uproar on the part of Mac developers, when they heard that they were going to have to move their applications over to Obj-C and the Next frameworks.

Personally speaking, I'd rather poke my own eyes out with a fork than use Carbon (Cocoa, OTOH, is lovely), but if you're, say, Macromedia, or Adobe, and you've got bignum lines of Powerplant or whatever invested in the old-school system, I can see the rationale.

Peace,
(jfb)

Re:Carbon vs Cocoa

[jcr]

Carbon and Cocoa are just different API's for the same functions.

No, not really.

Carbon is the Mac Toolbox API, minus the things that you really shouldn't do in a protected memory environment, plus a new event-handling system and a few more enhancements. In other words, Carbon is the set of functions which were feasible to offer up on *both* OS 9 and OS X.

Cocoa is a considerably richer application framework, including such things as a comprehensive undo facility, text editing with such typographic features as kerning and ligatures, and a whole lot of other cool things (check it out.)

-jcr

Re: Carbon vs Cocoa

[kuma]

cool, someone with a clue.

yet watch the examples--each api/framework has its strengths but typography is definitely stronger in macos 9.x (atsui, derived from quickdraw gx).

KEY

[chairmanKAGA]

"deathblow to linux on the DESKTOP"

I can understand that, I will still use Linux, but I use OS X more for the desktop...as for a server, I would rather save the money and get a cheap PC and run Linux to serve. OS X is the BEST desktop and I will spend the extra money for the Mac hardware and software. Linux will never have Final Cut Pro and Photo-Shop among other DESKTOP tools. Mac will never be so cheap as to warrent the standard server over Linux.
Also, as a developer, Cocoa is AMAZING and I still have all my GNU tools =)

Also, us "alternative" OS users should really get along.

hardware costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Beyond the absolute dollars and cents of Apple's high priced hardware, is how problematic it is to upgrade without losing a lot of $$$. When you drop $3500 for a good Apple machine, you are not going to be able to upgrade without losing many bucks.

On the other hand, when you build your systems on commodity hardware, it is easy to stay current with the state of the art. Add a new motherboard, a new video card, new processor - whatever. Check out pricewatch.com. For $500 you can put together the core of an awesome machine that will blow away the best Apple has to offer, and you will blow them away for a fraction of the price.

Hey Idiot

[euroderf]

(I don't mean that in an offensive way, if I had I'd have called you a cunt)

People perceive that using the commandline is faster since it gives their mind more of a workout, whereas mousing is easier and more "boring".

Umm, even if that is true, I don't see how it matters. Are you a corporate slave? Do you think 'Oh, this may seem boring and repetitive, but hey, there are integers and studies out there that prove this way is faster.' If so, you admit that base fact of economic superiority outweighs subjective experience.

Implicit in the TOGS study is the FACT that CLI is aesthetically superior, else why would TOGs respondants describe the GUI as boring?

The simple fact is that CLI Users have higher IQ's and demand more intellectual challenge and stimulus, stimulus the GUI does not provide.

So, I leave you to your corporate dreaming, your 'productivity', and I'll go off and have a damned good time with the superior, and TOGs-admitted more enterataining CLI.

Thank you.

Re:Hey Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

How do the adequacy trolls get away with trolling so much here and have high mod points at the same time.

Distant cousins

[Karl Cocknozzle]

The biggest thing is how portable software is between linux and OS X. Essentially, most stuff just needs to be copmiled and it works. GUI stuff usually has to be worked on, but this is minimal.

OS X won't kill Linux on the desktop because Macs cost more than PCs, but Linux will help OS X by virtue of the applications which will be easily ported and distributed for X. The biggest fight for a new OS is software, but X is rapidly finding itself flush with free software, ported from linux or OS9...

Re:Distant cousins

[vorpal22]

but Linux will help OS X by virtue of the applications which will be easily ported and distributed for X

How many Mac users do you think will install X on their systems? I doubt more than a tiny handful. And even among those that do, in most cases there's hardly a reason to use an X app; there are Aqua alternatives that are just as good or better (the only exception that really jumps at me is xchat, which, IMO, is better than any of the OS X IRC clients). The majority of Mac users would prefer to shell out a few bucks for well-known commercial alternatives. I think Abiword and the KDE web browser (memory slip - can't recall the name now) are excellent pieces of software, but I'd choose to use MS Word and MSIE over them in a heartbeat.

Re:Distant cousins

[ablair]

But lots of users that are coming from open source software alternatives (like the KDE webrowser, Konqueror) would be more familiar with and prefer those X-Windows versions. It's all about choice - you may choose MSIE and Word but others (especially in this forum for idealogical reasons) would not. Everyone can be remain happy.

Re:Unlikely(moderators should stop smoking reefer)

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This is a myth. It's been shown time and again. Macs hold their own with PCs.

That only holds true when your C apps are heavily optimized with assembly code. It's been shown time and time again that the top of the line x86 will smoke a top of the line mac in most _real_world_ tests.

You mac zealots can spout the same line over and over again, but nobody buys it anymore.

Ha!, who would believe anything of a technical nature coming from a bunch of graphic artists anyway. Go back to playing with photoshop.

What about GNUstep?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people overlook the fact that Mac OS X uses OpenStep-compliant system libraries. Full Mac OS X GUI applications would be very easily portable to GNUstep running under Linux.

Re:What about GNUstep?

[christurkel]

Or the reverse. I built GNUMail on Mac OS X with no problems!

Childish namecalling

[Flarners]

I'm guessing from your fake email address that you're a troll, so I'll keep this short. I was the valedictorian of my high-school class, and currently make $500,000 a year as a web designer. My IQ is a fucking 169. I am smart enough to place functionality over form. Wasting my time typing "yes | hash | bison | true" or some other indecipherable rubbish is unacceptible. My time is worth money; I can't go doddering away time better spent working for my clients reading 1000-page UNIX manuals or coughing out pointless shellscripts. If you're so damn smart, you wouldn't waste your time either.

Computers aren't supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be TOOLS. They're supposed to sit there and do what I tell them to, without coughing out syntax errors and overall forcing me to yield to the idiosyncracies of some college student's term project. Get off your high horse and get into the modern age.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

If your time is worth so much money, why the hell do you spend time reading slashdot comments?

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, you are not smart enough to refrain from responding to Slashdot trolls. You are also not smart enough to form a rebuttal without bragging about your IQ.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

I was the valedictorian of my high-school class, and currently make $500,000 a year as a web designer. My IQ is a fucking 169.

Okay. We're happy for you.

Re:Childish namecalling

[led]

nope it's you that don't understand... that's what unix is about tools... the best set of tools in the planet...
I also think it's sad the way you measure your success and your inteligence.
Don't bump that pointy head of yours.

Re:Childish namecalling

[GiMP]

Although you are right about your parent poster being a troll, it does not mean you are right.

If time is money, and you KNOW HOW to type the commands at a CLI.. then the CLI will be incredably faster then doing it via a GUI. Knowing the CLI is a valuable ADDITION to the GUI. I find it a lot easier and faster to have the ability to pipe commands into each other and perform 'batches'. Sometimes a GUI will be a lot slower or you will have to have custom software written to do that batch via the GUI.

A GUI is NOT faster, but it is stupid and people like stupid. Simple and Visual tasks are more easily accomplished in a gui; but anything complicated or requiring batch processing is definately and certainly faster and more easily done from a CLI.

I love using the Gimp, a graphical tool. But I also love bash, which can aid me in producing art of another kind :)

Re:Childish namecalling

[Alan Partridge]

IQ of 169? When I was 14 i was informed my IQ was 174. That sounded really great until I found out that IQ means ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL. You might as well tell us how high you can piss up a wall. YOU FUCKING TWAT. Actually, YOU'RE BOTH TWATS, and way OT twats at that.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's nice to see a high IQ doesn't actually make a person even vaguely intelligent in a social sense.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

$500,000 a year for web page design? If by "web page design" you mean "clean rich oriental businessmen's assholes with my tongue for 200 bucks a pop" then maybe.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

I was the valedictorian of my high-school class, and currently make $500,000 a year as a web designer.

$500,000, eh? Not even Linux zealots are stupid enough to believe that patent absurdity. Admit it, you're just another geek child living with his parents, dreaming of the dot com future that's already come and gone.

They dont even give that kind of money to professional designers with an art education and a real talent. You think they're going to give it to some web monkey with a copy of Dreamweaver?

Re:Childish namecalling

[r00tdenied]

Not to get off this thread here. But since when do web designers earn $500,000 a year. I know several that are extremely good, infact know ASP, XML,DHTML, etc and on average they get paid about $70,000. So I can only really read in to your post as saying "I'm a spoiled and want to make everyone else 'feel' like they are lower than me"

So Flarners, please do us a favor and not brag about you "169" IQ, because the number seems like one that you probally would of made up anyhow.

See, I take this very offensively. I am an under paid Network/System Admin, that most likely has way more stress associated with my job, than yours. And yet you insist on trying to 'prove' to everyone that you are better than they are, mostly by saying I have x IQ and make x in a year.

Oh and BTW since when is a CLI interface the only interface to spit out 'syntax errors'?? Gee, Windoze does this to me EVERYDAY. It's called a BSOD. Granted the CLI is not perfect, neither are the GUI interfaces that are in the most common OS's.

r00tdenied

Re:Childish namecalling

[Alan Partridge]

...which is my point, of course. Not only that, it doesn't make anyone anything because it means nothing in itself or even at all. A better guide to someone's intelligence would probably be the MPG of their car (assuming they had one) - or maybe Charles Dickens' measure of worth. Simply count his friends.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Flarners]

"So Flarners, please do us a favor and not brag about you "169" IQ, because the number seems like one that you probally would of made up anyhow. "

Fine, I'll refrain from telling you that it's "would have".

"Oh and BTW since when is a CLI interface the only interface to spit out 'syntax errors'?? Gee, Windoze does this to me EVERYDAY. It's called a BSOD. Granted the CLI is not perfect, neither are the GUI interfaces that are in the most common OS's." A general protection fault is quite a different thing from a syntax error. Commandline applications have the disadvantage of having both problems. No wonder you're an "underpaid" sysadmin, if you can't discern two completely different error types.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Your time is so important that you play games:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24951&cid=27 09 941 (w/o the lamefilter space)

Remember, computers aren't supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be TOOLS. You said it yourself.

You're the tool, not your computer. Now lock yourself in a closet, think about Natalie Portman, and dump a big bowl of hot grits down the front of your trousers. This IS Slashdot, you know...

Spend some of your free time reading those 1,000 page UNIX manuals and not running around SuperMarioLand saying "Woopee!" (and landing on your butt) and maybe you'll be able to accomplish work more effectively for your clients. Otherwise, you're just being pouty: GUIs are only faster for trivial tasks or with operators who are inexperienced.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh - you're bragging about your IQ? With that one single comment you've single handidly managed to make yourself look like a complete fucking dumbass. And anyway - if you've got a 169 IQ, I've got a beowulf cluster and a hot girlfriend...

Re:Childish namecalling

[ljaguar]

You are a fucking idiot. Only idiot would design website for a living. Your PHB is a bigger idiot than you for paying you. If you think work isn't supposed to be fun, you are definitely an idiot. You choose a career that you like and find challenging. For example, stuff like, quantom physics, or computer science, or a writing. You ain't nothing but a skilled laborer, at least a step from _un_skilled laborer, but you are a long way from being a thinker.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Malcontent]

Can I move to your planet? I would love to live in a place where web designers make half a million a year. Hell where any tech job makes a half mil would be great. Or maybe jest let me know you your boss is. They are paying a half a million to a guy who thinks shell scripts are pointless I bet I could get them to pay me a million dollars.

BTW. Just yesterday I did this. "grep eth0 *" and do this all the time "cat /var/log/somelog | grep something" I can't think of any gui tool that would make this easier or faster. I won't even start with how you would duplicate the functionality of find with a gui.

Re:Childish namecalling

[knorthern knight]

> Wasting my time typing "yes | hash | bison | true" or some other indecipherable rubbish is unacceptible.
> My time is worth money; I can't go doddering away time better spent working for my clients reading
> 1000-page UNIX manuals or coughing out pointless shellscripts.

Wasting my time waiting for your god-damn Fuckwave/Slash to download over a 33.6 dialup is unacceptable. And let's not even *THINK* about the time wasted downloading the "latest/greatest" plugin, because you just *HAD* to use the latest version of your proprietary garbage, and my current plugin is "obsolete". My time is worth money. Sure, a picture is worth a thousand words, but it takes up the bandwidth of 10,000 words. Only a control freak worries if their page doesn't render *EXACTLY* identically on every browser.

I wish you GUI-zealots would get it through your heads that not every application on this planet is a Photoshop clone. I wouldn't try to do graphics layout from the commandline. But GUI-zealots can't seem to go to the bathroom without using a menu. Ever heard of using the most appropriate tool for the job ? Let's face it, for cranking out emails and memos, vim walks all over GUI's...
And dee first menu is connected to dee second menu
And dee second menu is connected to dee third menu
And dee third menu is connected to dee fourth menu
And dee fourth menu is connected to dee fifth menu

Re:Childish namecalling

[Alex Belits]

My time is worth money;

If so, how much is the rest of your life worth? Maybe I would prefer to pay it to you now rather than to have you around all that time.

The truth is, time isn't worth money, time is the most expensive and irreplaceable thing a human may have. Money may worth or not worth the time spent on them, but this is a different story.

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Hhaha, see if you had such a high IQ then you would have not posted in response to r00denied's allegations.

Unfortunately, I would have to agree with him on this one. Blue screens are a result of poor syntax in the programming, therefor he is correct and you make yourself out to be a childish prick. LOL

Anonymous Coward

Re:Childish namecalling

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use cat? Just 'grep string /some/stupid/filename'

Re:0.24%

[90XDoubleSide]

It's much easier to write a GUI for Linux through X than for other OS's.

I would have to say that it is easier to write the GUI for an OS X application since it doesn't involve writing any code.

Somebody help me out here

[Radical Rad]

So Satan was actually Steve Jobs all along?

Re:Somebody help me out here

[Anonymous Coward]

wahh hahaaaa... so funny i forgot to laugh...

"Run it on my Athlon or not at all?" Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the heck does this come from?

My current box is an Athlon 1900XP - Apple doesnt
make a box that can compete with it performance-wise, certainly not in terms of price.

Further, Linux has been ported to at least 10 different processor architectures. I've got an Atari TT/030 (68k) sitting five feet away from me that runs Linux just dandy (NetBSD too). A friend of mine has both
a Netwinder (StrongARM) and a Cobalt Qube (MIPS).
I've looked at used Sparcstations and alpha 21164 boards on ebay. I wish I had gotten a Multia when they were giving them away - just as a fun fix-er-up project.

I'd consider running a G4 box - find one for me that wasnt manufactured by Apple.

Maybe I can get a used Amiga and put a Shark PPC board in it? Would that make the Macheads happy? No, of course not...you wouldnt be contributing the the Macintosh charity.

I owned Apple II's all throughout the 80s. Loved 'em. Apple murdered that line. The ROM3 I bought back in '89 (still got it, still runs) was the last nickel they'll get from me.

after 5 years of linux I'm switching

[Anonymous Coward]

I started using linux in early 97, using Slackware that someone installed for me. Then I switched to RH5, installed myself. In 98 I managed to get RH installed on a laptop! Have continued to install it myself, now running RH7.2 and also Mandrake 8.1 on a laptop.

Linux has been mostly wonderful. Most of all I'm grateful for it's existence- without it I would have had to switch to NT I suppose. The think I don't like is the continual configuration and fussing it requires. In 97 I probably spent 3-4 WEEKS getting linux configured - making the modem work was hard, making ethernet work was hard, making sound work was hard, dvd was and still is hard, so on.

It has gotten MUCH better, but I still find myself spending too much time on configuration.

Recently by accident I've become the admin on an OS/X machine. "Admin", meaning I click "software update" and it updates to the latest stuff, that's it. EVERYTHING WORKS, and is beautiful besides. Movies work. I recently tried to find something on Linux to make an mpeg2 or 4 movie from a series of frames - after a day of looking and configuring gave up and looked on OS/X. Half an hour later it was done, and with the Sorensen codec - much better quality that I would have had on Linux. I'm buying myself an Ibook for Christmas.

Turning to rant mode, a second and equally important reason why I want to switch is simply that I'm mildly embarassed to be part of the linux community. Slashdot always has interesting articles, but look at the posted responses --
the words "reactionary" and "narrow-minded" only begin to describe them. People don't even read the original story before responding.

I've read interviews with Linus and certain other people in the community that seem quite thoughtful and intelligent, but that doesn't describe the community as a whole -- based on their words I almost expect the Linux types are the same people who would support a dictator given the chance. Almost. I would have wanted to believe that linux users are among the more intelligent/open minded/creative people... perhaps they are; perhaps other groups are even worse?

But even if so, it's still embarassing to be associated with the shouts of ignorance, and worse, shouts that are hurting rather than helping your own interests. How many times have we read a "PERL RULEZ, JAVA SUKS" post, then someone follows up with a thoughtful post and some hard data saying that no, java is not dog slow, (see
HTTP://www.philippsen.com/JGI2001/finalpapers/18 50 0097.pdf
- java within 20% of fortran on a variety of numerical codes- fluid dynamics, etc.), only to be followed a week later with the same venting.
Duh, java has helped linux hugely - the existence of app servers in java has allowed large web sites to consider moving off of windows.

Similarly for Sun (the existence of a commercially supported high-end unix is not SO horrible for linux), for any commercial apps that dare to port to linux, for OS/X, for Mac hardware (we'll all happily accept a rumor that Macs are always slower/more expensive rather than looking at any data), so on.

OS/X is by numbers already the world's most popular Unix variant. I think the Linux world should celebrate this as a friendly achievement.

Who cares???

[bunhed]

Who cares about the desktop? Most (>90%) of the people I know who use a desktop (win/mac) spend most of their time doing doing one of four things, games, email, surfing or choosing wallpaper. Some of them actually create documents. The point is you can't do real work with a desktop. I think this article tells the tale of the desktop better than any browser statistic can. You can have the desktop. I'm actually working.

Re:Who cares???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, no kidding. I know dozens of people with all sorts of computers and they don't do much more than surf the web, or play games. In fact, most people I know rarely turn on their computers. They prefer to watch "Frazier" or "Friends" or "NBA" on television.

Re:Who cares???

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are the people Linux-on-the-desktop is for!

Re:Who cares???

[Anonymous Coward]

You stupid fuck. Go put your head back in your hole. The rest of the world is DOING stuff with the DESKTOP. Hello?

Look at me, I am POSTING from my desktop! Wooo!

You got root? Who the fuck cares. I got more apps than you EVER will. Bitch.

Re:Who cares???

[bunhed]

I rest my case. :)

Above is why the dotcom bubble failed

[euroderf]

Interpretation of above post follows

Time blah blah money blah blah I'm so smart blah blah IQ blah blah I deserve cash

Honestly, don't you understand what hacking is about? Only through playing, playing can we reach total understanding of a complex system, and learn to maximise out own personal growth potential.

Certainly, it is wonderful the way you sacrifice yourself for corporate ideals, but don't forget moeny is only the means of survival, and not the substance.

Get out of your Ayn Rand hellhole and join us, us in the older generation with true socialist, egalitarian ideals.

Re:Above is why the dotcom bubble failed

[naasking]

Get out of your Ayn Rand hellhole and join us, us in the older generation with true socialist, egalitarian ideals.

If you call socialism egalitarian, you can keep it for yourself. I'll keep capitalism and my freedom thank you.

Re:Above is why the dotcom bubble failed

[jeffehobbs]

Hey, let's just agree that you're both cocks.

Different cocks, but cocks nonetheless!

~jeff

Nice Troll...

[EnglishTim]

... you must be very proud.

Unfortunately I just ran out of moderation points.

expensive macs

[cheezus]

Its not really the case that Macs are more expensive than PCs. Apple is a quality brand name, like Dell. A high end Mac (PMG4) is about the same price as a high end dell. A low end iMac is around $800. sure, there are some bargain PCs for less than that, but you would have a hard time matching the quality for the same price.

Re:expensive macs

[Alan Partridge]

NOT like Dell, more like Sony, IBM, Toshiba or - at a push - Compaq. Apple hardware is designed and constructed with outstanding attention to detail.

Re:expensive macs

[PotPieMan]

I guess my problem is that I want a TiBook, but simply don't have between $2300 and $3600 for one right now (price range from the Apple Store). :-)

Re:expensive macs

[Hoser McMoose]

One of the big problems here though is that, relative to PCs, Macs have very slow processors. Yeah yeah, I know Steve Jobs likes to try and convince everyone that a 2MHz Mac will outperform a 20GHz PC, but in reality, the G4 is only marginally faster, clock for clock, then a PIII, about on-par with an AMD AthlonXP. The downside? The fastest G4's are running at 867MHz, the slowest AthlonXP's are running at 1.33GHz.

The end result is that the Macs have reasonably good components but slow CPUs as compared to most PCs. The Dell's and Compaq's of the world, on the other hand, have very fast processors and generally piss-poor other components.

All in all, you definitely DO spend a lot of money on a Mac, considering what you get. None of the components in even the high-end Macs are truly top-notch components, at best they're above-average stuff, unless you customize the system yourself (where you get REALLY expensive systems, because the markup on high-end components from OEMs is HUGE, regardless of whether it's from Dell or Apple).

PS. Anyone who actually believes Steve Job's comments about the speed of G4's should try and find ANY industry standard benchmark. ANY of them! Every major CPU out there today has SpecCPU 2000 scores EXCEPT for the Macs. Reason? Third-party SpecCPU scores haven't been too hot for Macs. There's a very good reason why Apple ONLY uses Photoshop, because it's the absolute easiest benchmark in the world to "prove" that any given architecture is faster then another. Apple's benchmarks show that the G4 is faster then the P4 in Photoshop, while Intel's benchmarks show the exact opposite. Neither of them is lieing, just using different benchmarks.

Re:expensive macs

[Hoser McMoose]

(Yes, I am replying to my own post.. I often like to talk to myself! :> )

I should probably point out that the Macs start looking a whole lot more attractive when you look at laptops instead of desktops. The fastest PC chips are never available in laptops and laptop chips cost more because PC processors (particularly the Athlon and especially the P4) consome quite a bit of power. On the other hand, laptops in general are always very expensive for what you get when compared to desktops, but for those that need the mobility it's obviously worthwhile.

Re:expensive macs

[gig]

Which is slower or faster also depends on the kind of work you do. The G4's Altivec component was designed to do the kind of DSP stuff that lots of Mac users are doing in audio, video and graphics work. Final Cut Pro 3.0 on a PowerBook G4/667 is doing things that can't even be done on a desktop PC of any kind without a dedicated processing accellerator card. PowerMacs are routinely doing high-quality 1x software MPEG-2 encoding (making DVD's), and in fact, come with the software to do that out of the box. Encoding and encryption are also faster on Macs in general. My PowerBook can encode high-quality MP3's faster than the data can be read off the audio CD. Apple added Media Cleaner Pro Mac/Windows shootouts to their demos last year because of this, too. Encoding movies for the Web is twice as fast on Macs.

You can play with your SPECmarks and other questionable stuff, but I'm more impressed when I see Machine A (Mac) beat the pants of Machine B (other PC) at the desktop tasks that I do all day, with the same applications that are important to me, that affect my own business. Bring the machines out of the lab and let's see what they can actually DO. That's why all the machines at the Apple Store are up and running, on the Web, connected to peripherals, and you can use them to do stuff before you decide to buy one.

Unless there are people buying machines just to run SPECmarks all day long. In that case, Microsoft has a PC and the world's most insecure general purpose operating system ready, just for you.

Re:expensive macs

[jwhyche]

My PowerBook can encode high-quality MP3's faster than the data can be read off the audio CD

Hate to bust your bubble but that is no real feat. My 950 thunderbird can encode 192K mp3's faster than it can read them off my 52x cdrom.

Re:expensive macs

[Anonymous Coward]

You can actually get a 400mhz or 500mhz PowerBook G4 for $1699 and $1899, respectively. Just go into an Apple Store, a CompUSA or a Fry's and ask if they have any of the previous model left.

Also, 500mhz iBooks are $864.00

I and my friends are quite happy with them!

Re:expensive macs

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Athlon is not a notebook.

Silly article

[Error27]

Reasonable estimates put Linux web browsing at 1%. Of course Linux users are going to go to LowEndMac just the same as they are more likely to surf something like OsOpinion.

OS X runs on Unix, that's true. But it doesn't really apeal to the same market as Linux. It doesn't have any more games that Linux does. I personally like OS X, but most of my classmates still mock anything to do with Macingtosh, so OS X is not l33t. Finally, Apple has expensive hardware.

Windows XP is a far far bigger threat to Linux on the desktop. Face it, Windows 9x operating systems were utter crap. They were the biggest reason to use Linux ever. With Windows XP, Microsoft has finally created a operating system that doesn't fall over every three minutes.

Of course, Windows XP, isn't going to stop Linux on the desktop because Linux is cheaper. In the next couple years I expect more and more coorporations to use Linux on the desktop to save money.

Re:Silly article

[Radical Rad]

Windows XP is a far far bigger threat to Linux on the desktop. Face it, Windows 9x operating systems were utter crap. They were the biggest reason to use Linux ever. With Windows XP, Microsoft has finally created a operating system that doesn't fall over every three minutes.

I've heard this same, untrue statement for each windowing system Microsoft has ever released, including WINDOWS M.E.!
XP is already under security alerts. If security has not improved why should I believe that stability has?

I do agree with your idea that Linux being cheaper it will eventually win out. I don't expect any huge gains in only 2 years though. Redhat's CEO testified that it would take (if I remember correctly) as long as 20 years for Linux to break the Windows monopoly.
I thought that was an overestimation at the time but considering the current administrations attitude regarding the prosecution and punishment of wealthy criminals, it might take that long.

Re:Silly article

[Error27]

>>I've heard this same, untrue statement for each windowing system Microsoft has ever released, including WINDOWS M.E.!

Believe it this time. Probably Linux uptimes are still better but XP really is aceptably stable.

Your probably right that I am too optomistic about Linux on the desktop. That is the curse of the computer scientist. It's going to happen some time but you're right that it could take a long time.

Re:Silly article

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, Microsoft has had Windows NT and Windows 2000 available long before XP and both are very stable. XP and 2000 seem no more stable than NT and have no new features that interest me, and so I am keeping my NT4 system for a few more years.

Re:Silly article

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I hope you have at least one reboot of your XP box in the last week because if you don't you're going to get rooted. :-) Please go download the security patches!

Re:Silly article

[Anonymous Coward]

The trouble with that is, will Red Hat be around in 20 years? I doubt it. Linux may still exist as a hobbyist OS much like DOS is still around to this day, but it will NOT break the desktop monopoly that Windows holds. This isn't to say Linux is bad, but many other excellent products have come and gone without any success. OS/2, BeOS, Amigas, and even the venerable Apple only holds less than a 10% marketshare. After 20 years of a complete Microsoft monopoly you'd think the government would get a clue and quit sucking off the Microsoft teet for christ sakes!

Re:Silly article

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, Microsoft has had Windows NT and Windows 2000 available long before XP and both are very stable. XP and 2000 seem no more stable than NT and have no new features that interest me, and so I am keeping my NT4 system for a few more years.

On the contrary, Windows 2000 is lightyears ahead of NT in terms of driver support and home usability. Games under NT are basically unplayable because anything recent will require at LEAST a recent version of DirectX which AFAIK isn't being developed for NT anymore. The sound support was horrid under NT as well. I switched from Win98 to NT several years ago and was playing Half-Life and noticed a considerable lag in sound effects. I then switched to Win2k and the problem went away and I've been using it ever since. Win2k offers the stability of NT with the usability and gaming support of Win98.

Re:Silly article

[mpe]

Windows 2000 is lightyears ahead of NT in terms of driver support and home usability. Games under NT are basically unplayable because anything recent will require at LEAST a recent version of DirectX which AFAIK isn't being developed for NT anymore.

But if you simply want a gaming platform then you'd be better off with a machine designed to play games on. e.g. a playstation.

Re:Silly article

[be-fan]

If security has not improved why should I believe that stability has?
>>>>>>>>>
Because people who've actually used the thing can tell you that NT's based OSs have been very stable for years now. Win2K is stable just as NT4 was stable. Live with it. Get over it. Fix Linux.

"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux]"

[LazLong]

I take exception with Kimbro Staken's statement:
"the engineer community is abandoning it left and right for Mac OS X."

I work for a government weapons lab and have seen no great move to OS X. And we are the largest Mac site in the world. What I have seen is people dropping their Macs, Windows boxes, and commercial Unix desktops for Linux in DROVES.

Linux is doing a good job of grabbing commercial Unix desktop and server market share; however, there have been practically no inroads into the Windows desktop/server space, and I don't expect to see it. Rare is it the Windows/Novell sys admin who shows any great interest in learning Linux. Face it, mousing around and figuring stuff out appeals to lazy people MUCH more that reading man pages. Thus, I don't see Windows/Novell IT shops dropping their platforms for Linux.

As for the common denominator desktop, do not underestimate the power of Office. A platform can not hope to succeed in the commercial desktop space without Office. Microsoft's contract with Apple to provide Office for the Mac at parity with the Windows platform has either ended, or ends soon as the 5 year contract was announced at MacWorld '97 in SF. Unfortunately MS holds the power to kill OS X as a viable commercial desktop because it controls the number one productivity package. And since the Bush administration has pussed out with the suit against MS, our only hope is that the hold-out states will get MS broken up into OS/App divisions with provisions preventing/limiting their collaboration, and a mandate to provide Office for other platforms at parity to Windows. I seriously doubt this will happen, but one can hope it will. Or pay enough bribes to counter-weight MS's payola to Bush....

OK, I guess I've ranted enough....

Lets face it

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux sux as a desktop system, and will for a while yet. Instead of religious rantings based on users with 10+ years of commandline experience, let's see some more objective research findings proving it.

I did such a comparative test between w2k and kde, using strictly non-computer knowledgeable people. I found that none of 110 people could install Linux while 80% installed w2k with no trouble (and NO it wasnt a wintel biased machine).

81% of linux testees never got staroffice up'n running while 76% installed office correctly. Finally only about 18% found out how to send an e-mail on linux, while 56% did in on w2k (I set up the account).

The conditions of the test was that they could only use the documentation and support supplied with the vendor.

Now I know I am going to be flamed, but please post more research instead of just ranting. We need to be a little objective if Linux is ever going to be more than a glorified server platform.

Re:Lets face it

[Anonymous Coward]

Write an article about your test and submit it to slashdot... if it was legit then I think people should be shown more then just the claims about linux that they're used to...

Re:Lets face it

[Archie Steel]

I personnally think you're lying through your teeth...first of all, kde is not a distro, so you cannot compare installing kde and w2k.

(Incidentally, if you had really made such a comparative test - which you most obviously have not - you should have tried installation with Mandrake 8.1 instead of "kde": You put in the CD. You select the recommended mode. You sit back - at some point you can fiddle with installation of additional software if you want - and then it's installed. One thing is for certain: it does not require any more brainpower than installing win2k or XP...)

Tell me exactly how sending an e-mail with Netscape is different on Linux than on Windows?

It's pretty easy to come here and post the imaginary results of an imaginary survey. Take me, for example: last night I did a survey on 122 monkeys, half of them using Linux, and half of them using win2k. Well, the monkeys that used Linux ended up with 59% more bananas as the ones that used win2k (of which, 10% were your cousins).

Either you're a MS employee or just one of those bizarre Win2k fanboys...Are you so afraid to lose your OS monopoly that you swoop down to inventing Bogus studies to prove your point?

I'd call you stupid but then you prefer to remain anonymous...

Perception vs. reality again

[Flarners]

Did you read the link before you posted your senseless drivel? Your text browser only seems faster because you have to think a lot more about using it than you should have to. How many times do you find yourself looking at the manual page because you don't know the correct key to, say, save a webpage's source? I don't know about you, but for me graphics provide essential feedback in modern web designs. Text browsers are missing out on the potential of the modern web; how does w3m handles the fun golf game at Electrotank.com or the helpful Flash buttons on any one of a number of professional sites? HTML is an anachronism being phased out in favour of better technology such as PDF, Flash and Javascript; your w3m browser will soon be useless for browsing the web at large.

Re:Perception vs. reality again

[GiMP]

You are a troll.

HTML is crossplatform, easily parsed, and is only being phased out in favour of XHTML which forces it to be a fully parsable XML document.

PDF and Flash are garbage, proprietary.. they will never be able to take a foothold. Javascript (or better yet, ECMAscript) is standard and is ok, although potentially annoying. However, [Java,ECMA]script is totally reliant on HTML; The others, although good for media or layout, are NOT viable alternatives to HTML.

Why don't you go learn something about the technology rather then looking at banner ads and trying to twist your hair into points.

Re:Perception vs. reality again

[Alan Partridge]

"PDF and Flash are garbage, proprietary.. they will never be able to take a foothold." what colour is the sky in your world? you really should try and get out a little from time to time. proprietary!=bad. WTF is wrong with making something and then selling it? Has /. gone fucking crazy?

Re:Perception vs. reality again

[ljaguar]

Hey, fuckernut, are you on pot?

CLI is faster. There are just things that can not even be expressed in GUI. I've read that report and I said "BS." You really gotta stop believing everything you read. That study focused on idiots who obviously weren't geeky enough. Sure, if you don't know what you are doing and have to read the man pages, that's gonna be slow. But your average day CLI users are gonna have IQ higher than yours and can actually work CLI at a tremendous rate. It's called steeper learning curve, it's what Linux is all about. It's got higher learning curve, but, boy, when you get there, you are up there.

Re:Perception vs. reality again

[GiMP]

There is nothing wrong with proprietary, as long as it is not considered STANDARD. It is like making (government fianced) roads which require you to have Microsoft Car, or you cannot drive it.. and Microsoft Car costs hundreds of dollars and cannot have any competitors. Now, if it relied on an OPEN standard like ordinary rubber tires.. anyone could make a car and freely join the market place.

It is about being able to have competition and to make it compatable for those who don't always follow the crowd (such as linux or mac users)

This is confusing.

[Lussarn]

"I'll run it on my Athlon or not at all" mindset of current Lintel hardware owners.

Again, Who made the Athlon?

Re:This is confusing.

[Anonymous Coward]

bwahahahahaha.

Good catch...

The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you make a computer STUPID people can use. ONLY stupid people will use it.

Ok flame away but in your heart of hearts you KNOW it's true.

Besides the audio/video industry of course.

Re:The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

LMFAO thats so true!!! every Mac user I know is a moron :) I'm not saying all of them but the above statement does sum up a good percentage of Mac users! LOL thats too good!!!!!!

Re:The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you make a computer STUPID people can use. ONLY stupid people will use it."

Linux isn't so hard.

I'll bet even you could use it.

Re:The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, are retarted! MACS are candy coated BS. They put *nix underneath NOT for preformance but to try and convert some linux bsd people plain and simple. This way they get the hippsters who like purtty colors and the nix people but it backfired since most nix users are a tad bit more informed then the usual clueless MAC head. Now there pissed is all.

Re:The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[bat, blind as a]

Boy, if you think that's funny, have I got a fart joke for you! Morons huh? Maybe you ought to get out more; mingle with a more diverse group of people. Most of the Mac users I know have PhDs and Masters Degrees in Molecular Biology or Geography or Geology. Some have MDs. One Mac user I know is a Physicist. They're not sophisticated computer users by any means (except for the Physicist and one of the Geologists) but I would hardly call them morons. BTW, how smart are you? (Yes, this is a open-book question. Take your time. In the mean time: Pull my finger.)

Re:The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[astrodawg]

More than a few Macs at NASA too. I sold Macs for a few months in Newport News, VA. The people at NASA regularly cleaned the G4's out of stock.

Re:The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[snoozerdss]

I only use macs when I have to do audio mastering with pro tools. But I have to say Mac users in general are very bright. Mac users are alot like Linux users (I'm a linux user) There is no changing there mind. They like what they have and they stick with it. Now go play with you windows pc. (last part was a joke poking fun at orignal poster)

Re:The Mac. I'll sum it up.

[Anonymous Coward]

We have about a 20% Mac installed base at our center. 20% UNIX (Solaris/IRIX/Linux/*BSD), and the rest are Win98 Peecees. Not too bad. :-)

Microsoft thinking

[markj02]

The author displays typical Microsoft thinking: if you just put in enough features and make it snazzy enough, everybody will want it. One size fits all. Etc.

The author is also wrong in assuming that many Linux developers care one bit about competing with OSX. Maybe the KDE and Gnome developers have that peculiar obsessions. Most others don't give a damn. Why should they?

It doesn't work that way. I don't care one bit about the features in OSX, and I'm not willing to live with the limited range of systems Apple is offering. I'm also not willing to deal with a bunch of Apple-proprietary APIs--why waste my time? And I'm not willing to pay a premium for style and features that I don't want to use. I'm not alone in that.

OSX is a nice system--for consumers. Use it. Be happy. Stop thinking, though, that everybody is all the same.

Re:Microsoft thinking

[TheInternet]

OSX is a nice system--for consumers

No, not just for consumers. Also for designers and developers that want things that Linux (or even Windows) does not provide. The label the *nix community has given Mac OS X is "a nice face on Unix." And it does do that quite well, but that's only one part of what makes it unique. Not that Linux isn't great. But it's a mistake to assume only consumers would value what Mac OS X provides.

- Scott

Re:Microsoft thinking

[markj02]

I don't agree that OSX is particularly interesting for developers. The only distinctive aspect of it is its NeXTStep heritage. That was great for commercial applications a decade ago, but today, it is a rather aging approach to OOP and GUI programming.

No deal

[CatherineCornelius]

It's lovely stuff, but who wants to write free software for OSX when Jobs flatly refuses to fill the other part of the deal by porting the MacOS layer to other kit? Just about anything written for Linux in userspace can be ported to xBSD and/or OSX, so OSX only represents a nice way of running open source software on some classy kit, which is neither here nor there while the cheap beige stuff in every office cannot run MacOS.

OS X for PCs, yeah right!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unbelievable shit we can read nowadays. OS X will never seriously compete with Linux. Linux can run on any hardware, OS X runs only on Apple hardware. Even if both OSs would run only on same hardware, the fact is that Linux is tecnically superior to OS X. Hehe, and it was funny to read that only .24 (?) percent of internet users use Linux. That is the biggest bullshit I've heard for a while. For example Linux movieplayer (MPLAYER) site www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/ has reported enormous growth of visits per day. In July they had 23487 hits per day. In September it was 49947. And in November, it was 90601 hits / day. Linux usage is growing fast and there's no way to stop it. Don't forget that the governments of France and Germany will switch to Linux. British and Finnish governments are also considering about switching to Linux. OS X is not even an option when considering switching from Windows to some other OS.

Re:OS X for PCs, yeah right!

[Flabdabb Hubbard]

It's unbelievable shit we can read nowadays.

It certainly is

OS X will never seriously compete with Linux. Linux can run on any hardware

Yes, and Windows, which only runs on PCs 0wns Linux's ass, so what was that you were saying about competition?

Linux is tecnically superior to OS X

MMM HMMMM You keep telling yourself that.

Don't forget that the governments of France and Germany will switch to Linux.

Complete bullshit.

Re:OS X for PCs, yeah right!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not bullshit that the governments of France and Germany will switch to Linux. They already have partially done it.

Re:OS X for PCs, yeah right!

[Flabdabb Hubbard]

They have not switched. That is a flat out LIE. Lets have some evidence please. One down, two to go.

Re:OS X for PCs, yeah right!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not switched, right, but they *WILL* switch. Perhaps you should read the original message all over again. Nobody has said they have already switched from Windows to Linux.

Re:OS X for PCs, yeah right!

[TheInternet]

OS X will never seriously compete with Linux.

This is sort of vague. What do you mean?

Linux is tecnically superior to OS X

Oh boy.

I guess it depends on what you care about. Mac OS X's graphic system is "technically" superior" to anything available on Linux, or probably any other OS, for that matter. No to mention the architecture for audio, video, Java, etc. Linux probably wins on raw speed in many areas. Different design criteria.

funny to read that only .24 (?) percent of internet users use Linux. That is the biggest bullshit I've heard for a while

Yeah, surveys like this do suck. People extrapolate all sorts of things from data taken out of context.

- Scott

Weakness of Linux

[feldsteins]

It seems ot me that Linux will never be a real desktop contender. It's still more difficult to install configure and use it than it is to do likewise with Windows or Mac OS. And - here is the killer - I seriously doubt whether the Linux community at large even *want* that to change. That is the weakness of Linux.

Linux will stay a geek toy and light server OS until and unless the Linux developer/user world actually get behind the idea of making a GUI worthy of someones grandmother. I watched the development of Nautilus...and when it sank down to the level of a couple dozen guys working in thier spare time it saddened me.

Won't someone make a serious Linux for the desktop? Does anyone *want* Linux to edge itself into that arena? I certainly do.

Until such time I won't bother with x86 hardware. I'll take my Macintoshes and my OS X, thank you very much.

I'll run it on my dual athlon or not at all

[nusuth]

Someone give me a ppc mac emulator (preferably with dynamic recompilation) and I'll give mac osx a try. Until then, well, sorry steve.

By buying a mac you lose choice, you lose performance, you lose money. What you gain is a very very nice UI. OTOH when using an emulator you lose less money or none at all, you lose some performance or none at all (compared to mac, that is) and you don't lose choice. I know that two ppc mac emulators are in the works (but neither support dynamic recompilation AFAIK), so why bother with osx now?

The question is, if an emulator with respectable performance comes along, will people stick to native open desktops or use osx on their linux boxes instead? I, for one, will run osx, but I don't think I will be among the majority.

Re:I'll run it on my dual athlon or not at all

[Flabdabb Hubbard]

By buying a mac you lose choice, you lose performance, you lose money.

You do not lose choice since emulation is available

You do not lose performance.
That is a myth put about by Stupid Linux Zealots.

As for price ? Well quality costs money.

Re:I'll run it on my dual athlon or not at all

[nusuth]

Everybody (with the possible exception of you) knows that these photshop benchmarks are not reliable indications of real world performance, since they make use of large caches and SIMD instructions on G4 but not many apps can use those caches or instructions that effectively. Photoshop plugins presented there (which are not all photoshop plugins, conspicously) are extreme examples. Would you consider SPECFP and SPECINT instead? Maybe you would see the light.

OTOH, even if those benches are considered valid, cpus on my rig already beats p4 1.7 when they are in a single configuration, so a pair of them would beat that 83% faster dual G4 in any case (provided plugins are coded in an efficient multi-threaded way, which I believe is the case.) I paid just 2000$ for the whole system and save for a translucent case and OS X, I'm missing nothing at all. Nothing in terms of quality, nothing in terms of performance...

Emulation on mac? Give me a break. Mac can't run even its own applications with sufficient speed. Or is that another myth invented by ...ummm.. mac os x users?

Re:I'll run it on my dual athlon or not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Your precious fp2k and int2k tell me that this P4 i'm using right now is faster than an Alpha. Yeah, fuck off.

What?

[krmt]

Computers aren't supposed to be fun. They're supposed to be TOOLS.

Why can't they be fun? Or better yet, why can't they be fun tools? For someone who likes to brag about how smart they are, this was a pretty poorly thought out statement.

Re:0.24%

[Lussarn]

I would have to say that it is easier to write the GUI for an OS X application since it doesn't involve writing any code.

GTK+ User interface builder

Use it all the time. Pure painting.

More browser-based OS lie^H^H^Hstatistics

[Anonymous Coward]

I decided to do my own little research on OS statistics
based on hits to two non-biased (OS-wise) websites: an anime
site I run (www.reimeika.ca), and the Math Department
website at University of Toronto (www.math.utoronto.ca).
The following results are completely unscientific, make
of them what you will:

reimeika:
linux ---> 3.91%
mac ---> 4.46%
win ---> 84.10%
other ---> 7.53%

utoronto:
linux ---> 3.24%
mac ---> 2.75%
win ---> 75.84%
other ---> 18.17%

These stats are for the last 22 days.

Re:More browser-based OS lie^H^H^Hstatistics

[Anonymous Coward]

I hereby deem this the "post your webserver statistics here" thread.

On my home box, I have a really long (100k) links.html file. Google found it, and people have been wandering in on random keyword queries. Using grep, wc, a script to strip multiple entries from the same IP, and a script to filter out my own connections, I counted occurances of these strings in the logs:

FreeBSD: 3
Linux: 26
Macintosh: 8
Windows NT: 208
Windows: 443
(Win9: 18

That's a total of 498 counted connections.
Linux has a 5.22% market share on my box, Macintosh an abysmal 1.6%,
and Windows 92.6%, of which 41.8% is NT/2000.

I admit that my site has some information of interest to people using FreeBSD and Linux, but little for Macintosh users. Personally, I'm surprised at the huge number of NT users.

Re:More browser-based OS lie^H^H^Hstatistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Here some real daily stats from popular non-technical site:

Operating System Report
(Go To: Top: General Summary: Hourly Report: Directory Report: Request Report: Referring Site Report: File Type Report: Status Code Report: Host Report: Failure Report: Failed Referrer Report: Browser Summary: Operating System Report)

Listing operating systems with at least 1 request, sorted by the number of requests.

pages: %pages: OS
------: ------: --
778699: 89.43%: Windows
430249: 49.41%: Windows 98
175393: 20.14%: Windows 2000
88522: 10.17%: Windows NT
70386: 8.08%: Windows 95
12659: 1.45%: Unknown Windows
600: 0.07%: Windows CE
475: 0.05%: Windows 3.1
249: 0.03%: Windows 32-bit
166: 0.02%: Windows 16-bit
32310: 3.71%: Macintosh
32170: 3.69%: Macintosh PowerPC
128: 0.01%: Macintosh 68k
12: : Unknown Macintosh
23631: 2.71%: OS unknown
27714: 3.18%: WebTV
8135: 0.93%: Unix
3509: 0.40%: Linux
2776: 0.32%: BSD
1163: 0.13%: SunOS
371: 0.04%: IRIX
149: 0.02%: HP-UX
105: 0.01%: Other Unix
36: : OSF1
26: : AIX
212: 0.02%: OS/2
36: : Amiga
2: : RISC OS
1: : OpenVMS

Re:More browser-based OS lie^H^H^Hstatistics

[Vagary]

Keep in mind that Mathematicians use less Windows than even other scientists. I believe there are two reasons for this:

1. LaTeX is vital and it's not much fun in Windows.
2. All the Math software you could ever need (eg: Mathematica) has been ported all over.

The Math Dept. at my university uses Macs exclusively while almost everyone else uses Wintel machines.

Re:More browser-based OS lie^H^H^Hstatistics

[Anonymous Coward]

You can bies statistics by protocal.
Many websites I visit throw up this text
"Please uses IE4" This happends no matter what web browser I use... Mind you I don't have Ms-IE on hand.

As a result quite a few people use Windows for web browsing.

Now for contrast visit IRC... quite often it's Unix people. The reason isn't becouse Unix is prefered amoung chatters but becouse good IRC clients for Unix are plentyful but for other plantforms they are rare.

Now if you were to do a check vea cell phone based e-mail I'm sure PalmOs would come out over Windows or Linux... as I don't believe there are any Windows or Linux based cell phones but a batch of PalmOs cell phones came out just last year.

I do expect Windows to show a majority in web browser statistics purely becouse it's a pain to surf the web from anything else. Hence the whole protocal is os bies and not a realistic sample.

Article is a zealot troll.

[tempest303]

And I quote...

Any hope for Linux on the desktop is gone.

Come ON... and people call Linux advocates "zealots?" Superlative like this is rediculous. OSX is very cool, but Linux still has some *serious* advantages over it for the future. Combined with it's nearly infinite flexability (Free as in speach), and it's price (free as in beer), and its emerging office applications, Linux may be the one to beat late next year. Abiword, Gnumeric, Evolution, Galeon, Gabber, Ximian Setup Tools, and OpenOffice, all running on top of Mandrake could become a hell of a competitor. Notice, however, that this doesn't mean that it will suddenly eat Windows whole, and destroy all need for OSX to exist. Linux will simply become a stronger player, filling what I believe is a serious need in the software market...

Re:Article is a zealot troll.

[theJavaMan]

emerging office applications

Try submerging

Bollocks.

[Flarners]

Just a few points:

• None of those times include the time wasted typing out those excessively long commands.
• Dragging and dropping is better than rsync, because with rsync you have to know and type out the name of the directory ahead of time. GUIs provide a nice spatial representation of the directory structure, and are very quick to scan and find.
• In order to know how to use any of those commands, you would have to spend years learning the intricacies of all the various commands, options, etc. Setting up a for loop and pipeline takes an excessive amount of thought and care to ensure that everything works as it should. A single typo can have catastrophic results (cf. "rm -Rf *.o" and "rm -Rf * .o")
• Most people's needs are simple. They don't need to sync massive directory trees or save webpages or any complex bullshit like that. For everyday tasks like web browsing, WMA playing, and writing Word documents, the GUI is superior.

The CLI is fine for a few highly specialised tasks and little else. It is fine for batch jobs and remote administration where a Telnet prompt is all you have. For day to day use, the GUI is simply faster.

Re:Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, the times quoted _were_ the times it took to type the commands. What did you think they were, execution times? They were abstract examples. As if I really have directories names dir1 and dir2, and I'm quoting execution times from my particular system...

Sheesh.

Re:Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to address the other points.

1. Drag-and-drop better than rsync? I take it the directories you've had to synchronize never contain anything more than a few megs of data? Well, some people acutally _use_ the other 39.5 gigs on their drives. Sync up 10 gigs some day, watch your system become unusable for 4 hours, and _then_ tell me rsync is inferior.

2. Yes, it takes time to learn the command line, and years to master it. It's just like any language. I've yet to meet a six-year-old with a 100-word working vocubulary who can speak with the fluency of someone with years of experience with language. To talk to other people beyond the level of an infant takes work and education. To talk to a computer beyond the level of an infant also takes work. Do you also suggest to children that they don't become educated in spoken languages?

3. Most people's needs are _not_ simple. The people I've seen taking hours to replace text in files, or change fields in GUI-oriented email lists, are ordinary people. If they knew how to speak the language of the command line they'd accomplish their tasks in seconds, but instead they spend days in Outlook and Word, opening up contact folders and documents one-by-one, taking days to accomplish such basic tasks. And these things come up again and again IN ORDINARY PEOPLE'S LIVES. But rather than take a few months learning how to talk to a computer in an efficient way, they spend _years_ of their lives in mindless point-and-click repitition.

I'm not even going to get into remote adminstration. Like from now until the end of mankind "the average person" is going to be limited to working on the machine that's sitting under the desk attached to the monitor. For chrissake, show a little vision...

Re:Bollocks.

[Karma Sink]

sprialx? Is that you?

Re:Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah dude, how'd ya guess? guess i gotta be a little more diskreet, know what i mean :)

btw, you catch that ozzy show last week?

Re:Bollocks.

[Malcontent]

"None of those times include the time wasted typing out those excessively long commands."

Where do you get this? He posted how long it took to type them up.

"Dragging and dropping is better than rsync, because with rsync you have to know and type out the name of the directory ahead of time. GUIs provide a nice spatial representation of the directory structure, and are very quick to scan and find."

Dragging and dropping would not accomplish the same task. It would copy over the entire directory as opposed to only the files that have changed.

"In order to know how to use any of those commands, you would have to spend years learning the intricacies of all the various commands, options, etc."

Not years maybe a day or two for a complicated command like find a few minutes for rsync.

"Setting up a for loop and pipeline takes an excessive amount of thought"

Maybe if you are an idiot it takes too much thought but for someone with an IQ of 169 it ought to be trivial.

"A single typo can have catastrophic results (cf. "rm -Rf *.o" and "rm -Rf * .o")"

So would highlighting a directory and then right cliking and then dragging you mouse to delete.

"Most people's needs are simple."

Well most people don't have IQs of 169. Most people are idiots who can't change their home page. That's why windows exists.

Re:Bollocks.

[mpe]

Most people's needs are _not_ simple. The people I've seen taking hours to replace text in files, or change fields in GUI-oriented email lists, are ordinary people. If they knew how to speak the language of the command line they'd accomplish their tasks in seconds, but instead they spend days in Outlook and Word, opening up contact folders and documents one-by-one, taking days to accomplish such basic tasks.

Effectivly this is a highly boring and repetitive task. Exactly the kind of thing computers do far better than humans in the first place...

Re:Bollocks.

[nyet]

Dragging and dropping is better than rsync, because with rsync you have to know and type out the name of the directory ahead of time. GUIs provide a nice spatial representation of the directory structure, and are very quick to scan and find.

Do you even KNOW what rsync is used for? Hint: its not a replacement for cp -a. You need learn a bit more about what rsync actually does.

From the features list on rsync.samba.org:

rsync features
rsync is a file transfer program for Unix systems. rsync uses the "rsync algorithm" which provides a very fast method for bringing remote files into sync. It does this by sending just the differences in the files across the link, without requiring that both sets of files are present at one of the ends of the link beforehand.
Some features of rsync include

can update whole directory trees and filesystems

optionally preserves symbolic links, hard links, file ownership, permissions, devices and times

requires no special privilages to install
internal pipelining reduces latency for multiple files

can use rsh, ssh or direct sockets as the transport

supports anonymous rsync which is ideal for mirroring

There are about a million other features your GUI can't even come CLOSE to implementing w/o a maze of tabbed options menus. Fortunately for me, I am capable of LEARNING how to use the tool so I can whip out a one liner in a few seconds that does EXACTLY what I want, every time.

GUIs are great for tasks you only do a few times (or need to learn how to do quickly), but as a front end to a general purpose utility, they simply don't match up to what a CLI can do.

Re:Bollocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right - which is why (critics be damned), Microsoft has stuck a full development environment on the side of their word processor.

Of course, that has nothing to do with "the command line", and only shoddy thinking Unix zealots think that programming requires a 70s emulation of a teletype and paper tape.

Re:Bollocks.

[Karma Sink]

Well, mostly, it was a GOOD TROLL! On Slashdot! Besides, your style is very distinct... You may as well sign each one. They're each a minor masterpiece.

Sadly, I haven't had a chance to catch any show since TMBG passed through recently...

Linux is definately catching up

[HanzoSan]

At the pace the Linux desktop is moving, 2 years from now it will be at OSX's level.

Its already at the level of WindowsXP and some people even say its easier to use. Linux easier than XP

As far as OSX, its not quite there yet, Linux is struggling to do what OSX does with ease right now. However in 2 years, expect to see a Linux far superior to the current OSX in terms of ease of use.

Remember, OSX has most likely been in development since before KDE and Gnome projects even exsisted, and WindowsXP is just Windows with a nice skin on top and in that case, it sucks.

So the point is, its only a matter of time, just like its only a matter of time before Mozilla is better than IE in everyway, if it isnt already.

Re:Linux is definately catching up

[Anonymous Coward]

oh how i wish we could meet two years from now and we could see how gnone + kde will != the mac os ease of use....

Re:Linux is definately catching up

[Anonymous Coward]

". Linux easier than XP [theregister.co.uk] "

If you would read the article you'd see they never compare the two except by saying XO had problems with Verizon. The article is about RedHat having install problems and newbie Linux unsers.

"However in 2 years, expect to see a Linux far superior to the current OSX in terms of ease of use. "

that's your opinion, ok. but remember - in 2 years OSX and XP will have matured on their collective timelines. linux will have to mature twice as fast to even catch up to the current levels of usability if you're 2 year prediction is correct. i think that is unlikey.

"WindowsXP is just Windows with a nice skin on top and in that case, it sucks. "

what if i said KDE is just Linux with a nice skin on top, so in that case it too sucks?

"So the point is, its only a matter of time, just like its only a matter of time before Mozilla is better than IE in everyway, if it isnt already."

IE is evolving too. Again, Mozilla will have to evolve twice as fast. and in a world of people doing it for fun in thier spare time, i dont think that'lll happen.

dont get me wrong, i've used Linux since 1995 with Slackware, but Linux has some serious issues if its going to eclipse OSX.

I'm running OSX right now and this beats the pants off Linux.

Re:Linux is definately catching up

[Anonymous Coward]

> As far as OSX, its not quite there yet, Linux is struggling to do what OSX does with ease right now. However in 2 years, expect to see a Linux far superior to the current OSX in terms of ease of use.

..and during those two years you expect the OS X UI to have remained as-is, no improvements that might make the Linux desktops still seem to be not as good?..

Re:Afterthought?

[Gothmolly]

You know Cygwin isn't written by MS, right?

Asking the wrong question

[YU Nicks NE Way]

You know, all the rebuttals to the various "Linux has ...% on the desktop" stories miss what I take to be the most important point those reports make. No matter how plausible the arguments about statistical bias may or may not be, the key thing which needs to be understood is this: no report, no matter how biased towards claims of Linux' usability on the desktop, is making the claim that Linux is being seen more frequently in browsing surveys. Both the LowEndMac report and the WebSideStory report show that the frequency of Linux hits on the sites being tracked is not rising.

Most of the predictions that Linux would be a factor on the desktop were based on the rapid growth that was seen two or three years ago. That shift has stopped. And that is far more ominous for "Linux on the desktop" than arguing over whether the actual adoption rate is .24% or 1.0%. If Windows stays at 90%, that's stability -- after all, Windows can realistically only fall. If Linux stays at less than 10%, that is irrelevance -- after all, Linux can realistically only rise.

Please be a troll.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the off chance that you're serious, please, PLEASE don't have children. If you really are a "web designer" (and you should be burned at the stake with your cohorts if you are) you have no business meddling in the affairs of real computer users. Get back to your flash game and enjoy your imminent insolvency as you are culled from the job market along with the rest of the chaff. I hope your New Beetle catches fire from your overheated iPod and you plunge into the river and drown. But I suppose your overinflated sense of self-importance will keep you afloat long enough to reach the shore. Pity.

Article is written by Mac OS X Eccentrics

[narfbot]

They say in the article that Linux development is slowing and as for the reason:
"the engineer community is abandoning it left and right for Mac OS X. While the true free software advocates will stick with Linux to the death, those who just want to get work done and not fight with the OS are switching like crazy. This is a real problem for software developed as open source because, as these users leave there will be less interest in the OS and the continuing evolvement of the mess of Linux desktop technologies will slow considerably."

But I say that is from their perspective. What I see is a KDE 3.0 coming faster than ever, and even a solidly progressing Gnome.

I haven't seen Linux slowing at all. In fact, it has progressing faster than in the past. They're just Mac OS X superiority optimists. And they like to pick on tiny Linux, because some people think Linux has a tiny share of the market or not growing.

It wouldnt matter

[HanzoSan]

OSX could never beat Windows. BeOS was easier to use and better than Windows in ever way.

Having a good product wont help if Windows is whats packed with every PC. OSX also lacks software, game support etc etc, its as bad as Linux in THAT area. Dont forget Microsoft has shares in OSX.

Re:It wouldnt matter

[Alan Partridge]

Windows ISN'T whats packed with every PC though. Apple's PCs come packed with MacOS9 and OSX, and Apple represent 5-10% of sales. Apple are trying to build market share to maybe 10-15%, figuring that nothing succeeds like success, and that's what the Apple Stores are all about. As to MS having shares in OSX (??) well, they do have a stake in Apple Computer (not a very big one though), but I'd be stunned if Apple Computer didn't hold SOME equity in MS stock - it's only professional portfolio management after all. Apple are one of the VERY few companies that compete head-on with MS in several markets, and they deserve respect for being able to maintain a strong business doing that.

Re:It wouldnt matter

[doce]

Microsoft sold it's (non-voting) shares in Apple the first day they could legally do so. At a large profit, at that. Ask Shawn King @ The Mac Show Live, he's got the goods on this.

Re:It wouldnt matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that this needs to be said ALL THE FRICKING TIME, is there a never ending supply of dumbshits?

Have Apple evangelists really stooped so low?

[Whelkman]

The article by Moore wasn't bad. I liked his frank and realistic observations. But Kimbro's quote within the article is so petty it hurts. Linux has always been the underdog, hype or not. Kimbro's "WE WIN WE KILL LINUX HA HA HA" attitude is astounding considering the history of the Apple corporation and its fall from grace.

Much of the Linux software comes from GNU and friends and much of that worked its way into OSX. Kimbro's "OPEN SOURCE IS DEAD NOW!!!" statements are disgusting.

These statements are just sour grapes from a man who was insulted at insinuations that Linux could possibly be overrunning MacOS. Kicking around the underdog is embarassing.

Sure there might be a bit of a double standard here, but, really, how often do Linux evangelists come out and say, "Take that, Amiga! Die Atari!" The suggestion of such is ridiculous.

3rd world literacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Computers may require literacy to be very useful. I think that this is another good reason to fund education in the third world.

What do these numbers, %0.25, %10, %90 mean as the market grows to 1000x its current size, and changes to fit the needs of the third world?

Let's build a general purpose computer into every new television set. An infrared keyboard can be really rugged. Every village has a television today. Data transmission for a usenet feed, a daily slashdot update, satellite photos of grazing areas and shepherd locations are broadcast with the TV signal.

Slashdot's Numbers

[rbeattie]

I'd like to see the number of Linux users browsing Slashdot. Just to see what a "utopian" Linux future looked like...

-Russ

Re:Slashdot's Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

something tells me they'd be biased :-)

Re:Slashdot's Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather see a desktop OS poll (if there hasn't been one yet) first, and then compare it to Slashdot's actual statistics.

Re:Slashdot's Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there was a browser poll a while back and Internet Explorer, which doesn't run under Linux, got nearly 50%! Maybe lots of slashdotters use IE for Solaris?

Re:Slashdot's Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, most slashdot users probably use windows or macos. They're all people who'd LIKE to run linux, but have it in dual-boot, and still use windows for their daily stuff.

Myself though, I'm 100 percent windows-clean, and proud of it.

Re:Slashdot's Numbers

[UnknownSoldier]

> I'd like to see the number of Linux users browsing Slashdot. Just to see what a "utopian" Linux future looked like...

They already took a poll a while back. Most people were using IE, IIRC.

The survey would only show Linux on the Desktop, which is probably a minority compared to Linux on the server. Heck I use Win2K at work and home, and have a Linux firewall.

A more accurate survey would be:
1. How many computers do you use?
2. How many of those are running Linux on the a) Desktop, b) server?

Cheers

Re:Slashdot's Numbers

[realkiwi]

A more accurate survey would be:
1. How many computers do you use?

5-6 Main machine a Vaio Picturebook running RedHat 7.1

2. How many of those are running Linux on the a) Desktop, b) server?

1 Linux server
1 Linux ADSL gateway/router/firewall
1 Linux desktop
1 Linux portable
1 Mac OS X/9.2 blue and white G3
1 Mac OS 9.1 G4 (occassionaly)

Windows is run in VMWare machines on Linux desktop and on portable.

But for how long

[HanzoSan]

We know OSX has a better interface than Linux. The question is, how much longer will that last?
At one time Linux was commandline, in fact that was only 3 years ago!

And hey, remember when Windows95 looked better than Linux?

Well, its only a matter of time, thats all i have to say, I dont think Apple has the money to keep ahead of Linux forever. I dont think Microsofts code is clean enough to greatly enhance the interface.

What this means is, just like Mozilla will eventually be superior to all browsers, Linux will eventually have the best interface.

Why? Because Linux is open source, coders will first copy what they know works, once thats done, they will improve beyond the levels of OSX and XP. Remember XP and OSX wont be improving for at least 2 years. So in 2 years I expect Linux to have surpassed them both and I expect Apple to release a new GUI or be completely left in the dust. Microsoft cannot support a new GUI on such a bad codebase, XP is slow as hell and looks like the same GUI with just a skin.

Re:But for how long

[Metrol]

We know OSX has a better interface than Linux.

Please excuse me from the "we" in your comment. I quite honestly don't know that OSX has a better interface than what is available for Linux. In a head to head comparison of both Aqua and KDE, for instance, where does Aqua excel exactly?

When evaluating OSX for some Mac users I support I ran into serious difficulties in how to make basic changes to the GUI. Dumb things, like the background graphic, system colors, and other stuff along them lines.

On the other hand, my first experience with KDE (back on 1.12 as I recall) I managed to locate all kinds of tweaks to the UI with mostly all the control center objects being where I expected to find them. Add to this seemless multiple desktop support and I just don't see the all the phu phu graphical effects from Aqua comparing.

I guess I may be trolling a bit here, but I get a little irritated at comments that suggest that either KDE or Gnome are somehow inferior products to what MS or Apple shell out. If anything it seems that both those companies have a ways to go to work in even a portion of the real usability features found on the *nix desktop.

Re:But for how long

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I ran into serious difficulties in how to make basic changes to the GUI. Dumb things, like the background graphic

While I understand that Mac OS X isn't for everyone, this is just trolling. To change the background graphic, could it be more intuitive than opening "System Preferences", and then selecting the "Desktop" control? From there, you can select one of many backgrounds provided by Apple, or browse for your own graphic. And while you can't change the scroll bars from the basic two colors, you can change the highlight color--again, from "System Preferences", but this time select the "General" control.

Seriously, I don't know how much easier it could be. Do those same Mac users you support call you for support much? I suspect that the problem truly lay in habits formed by your own use--your past experience has informed your intuition, and Mac users, for better or worse, have a different experience base. I wouldn't find my desktop picture control intuitive in any place other than where it is.

Re:But for how long

[Metrol]

To change the background graphic, could it be more intuitive than opening "System Preferences", and then selecting the "Desktop" control?

Yeah it could, as OSX provided no options for selecting your own background graphic. I understand that this got fixed in the newer release. At that time you could only pick from the themes that Apple put together from anywhere in the control panels.

This may sound like minor nit picking, but the person this was going to had a very specific requirement to have a 50% gray background so as not to influence on screen colors.

I left out the really fun part about actually installing OSX on a G3. Spent hours dinking around with it. I finally called up Apple tech support about this. According to Apple I had to create an 8gig partition in order for it to work. No more, no less. Nothing in any of the documentation could I find information about this, and I would have thought others would have different partition sizes. Didn't explore it further after that.

In contrast, I slapped a Mandrake install in a blank PC and it was the single sweetest installation routine I've ever seen. Picked up on all the hardware, handled the partitioning, and essentially held my hand all the way through.

Heck, Linux even has more apps NATIVE to it. Until Adobe starts porting apps to OSX like Photoshop and Illustrator I'm not even going to bother looking at another version of OSX. What's the point?

Re:But for how long

[OsamaBinLogin]

> When evaluating OSX for some Mac users I support I ran into serious difficulties in how to make basic changes to the GUI. Dumb things, like the background graphic, system colors, and other stuff along them lines.

Go to The Control Panel. There's only one of them, unlike on Linux, where there's countless control panels, depending on your distro and the whims of the programmers and the block diagram of how it's put together.

> On the other hand, my first experience with KDE (back on 1.12 as I recall) I managed to locate all kinds of tweaks to the UI with mostly all the control center objects being where I expected to find them.

You are a user who knows how it's put together. "ui tweaks" are part of the window manager, session manager, blah blah blah. If you know X windows and the gui stack and how it's put together, you can find all that stuff. I just want to use my computer.

My first experience on Gnome, I was lost, and the only help message told me how to drag a title bar to move a window, duuu. Where's the control panel that adjusts the screen depth? Took me 6 months to find out on Linux. On MacOS and Windows it takes a minute.

Re:But for how long

[OsamaBinLogin]

> I left out the really fun part about actually installing OSX on a G3. Spent hours dinking around with it. I finally called up Apple tech support about this. According to Apple I had to create an 8gig partition in order for it to work. No more, no less. Nothing in any of the documentation could I find information about this, and I would have thought others would have different partition sizes. Didn't explore it further after that.

Well, that's never happened to me. Honestly, I haven't had much experience installing OS X. Mostly cuz it works the first time, and it's done. What is there to spend hours on? I had one beta version fail to install, and that's it, ever. Worked the second time, that time. What's this 8gb thing? I've never heard of something so absurd. I don't think any of my installations have been in 8gb partitions. how do you get the installer to fail? I don't get it.

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

MOZILLA?!?! Wow.... um. that is a really crappy browser on every platform i have used it on. i was hopefull, but it really sucked. Just be cause it is opensource does not make it better. Moraly, yes. Code, defiantely not. Projects die because they suck.

not saying that Linux sucks (it truly speeks for itself), but being opensource does not make it good. It is the foolish zelotry that has gotten so many people in troble for many years. don't be a fool.

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

Dooder Mozilla is not even 1.0 yet. Gimme a freakin' break.

Re:But for how long

[Juanvaldes]

On the early iMac's and G3 towers the boot volume has to be under 8 gigs. Something to do with the motherboard I believe....

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

You are completely wrong. If you go into system preferences, choose desktop, and choose folder from the "collections" pull down menu, you can specify any graphic for your background. I don't believe that you could have possibly done any research before you wrote this comment. You stated that you heard that it got fixed in the new release, (I assume you're talking about X.1), but it was available in the first release, as well as the public beta. Now tell me in any of the Gnome or KDE desktops, how would one easily change screen resolution or frequency? I've yet to find it in anywhere other than xconfigurator, and that is not any easy thing to change.

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, the beige G3. Why not just leave OS 8.6 or 9.X on that machine and get a new G4. I have one of those older G3s at work and I have debated upgrading the thing. I don't think it's worth it.

What I didn't understand is the Linux guy doing an evaluation of OS X for mac users doing design work on a 3 year old computer. There's nothing wrong with the computer, leave it alone! If you were smart, you would have told the designers to wait for the apps to come or set up a system just to try out. Ahhh, perhaps the G3 is the eval machine... What a poor choice. Rage Pro graphics are slow! Would you run XP on a `97-98 vintage Pentium machine? Sure, you can do it, but why?

I'm currently running a G4/733 with the standard dual boot. OS X has become the home base for web and mail. I boot back into 9.2.2 for Photoshop, scanning and some games. I have Painter 7 for X and have done some work with it. I think it's pretty cool! Overall it's not quite there yet, but I see a strong future in OS X. I already have Final Cut Pro 3 on order. There are many killer apps that just don't exist on Linux and probably won't... ever. By the same token, you probably won't see many sysadmins buying G4s to do web serving.

Re:But for how long

[RussGarrett]

The point is there is no widely accepted and standardised interface for these sorts of things on Linux. To pick up on a point I saw mentioned by an AC, how would I go about changing the screen resolution on a typical installation?

The typical Windows user would start looking in the desktop properties. On a Mac it's in control panels. On Windows it's in control panel. On Linux it's in /etc/X11/XF86Config. Granted there may be a gui app installed in that particular distribution, but can you guarantee that if you move to a different distro? The consistency is not there.

The open-source ethos seems to dictate that many smaller applications from different authors are better than a big all-consuming application. I like this idea, but it means that every single unix GUI setup has different settings and applications, and this is not a good thing for the end-user.

This is why I don't like the idea of Linux on the desktop. OK, it may seem simple to the user, and this may be all well and good, but in actuality it *isn't simple*. Continuing the old refresh rate theme, what happens if the user's monitor isn't detected properly and the horizontal refresh range is set too high. If you say to a newbie Linux user "Oh, you'll need to reboot into a lower runlevel, login as root, and edit the appropriate section in XF86Config", they're not going to feel particularly confident about this Linux thing. Most Windows users wouldn't know what a horizontal refresh rate is.

The differences between OS X and Linux are huge: The Linux GUIs are programmed (mostly) for hackers by hackers. They're based on the huge estoteric heap of junk known as XFree. Whether it's the appropriate solution is not the point. The point is, it's yet another layer of complexity onto an already complex OS.

The OS X GUI is developed by a company loved by some for it's gorgeous design. It's developed by paid engineers for non-technical users. It's a window manager and desktop environment in one. It's vaguely based on an existing OS. And most importantly, it's designed so the user should never see the command line, unless they want to. Oh, and it's bloody gorgeous :).

I'm rambling now... I wonder if any of the above made sense...

Re:But for how long

[Metrol]

A couple of replies to statements made. Let's see if this makes any sense :)

Granted there may be a gui app installed in that particular distribution, but can you guarantee that if you move to a different distro? The consistency is not there.

So if a single distro provided kick ass utilities to tweak on X settings this isn't good enough unless anything labeled Linux has it? Because Suse and Mandrake might do something differently is by no means a hit against it. Is OSX that much less on OS because it put settings in different places than OS9? What about comparing 98 to XP? Settings for all kinds of things moved to entirely new places.

I like this idea, but it means that every single unix GUI setup has different settings and applications, and this is not a good thing for the end-user.

So why not set up a new user on a single window manager and leave him/her there for a while? When you are in KDE, KDE is in control of all aspects of the visual display. Set the newbie up, and leave them there. The paradigm is only different because on Linux a user actually has a choice if they wish. If the user decides they don't like KDE, they haven't far to go to change their environment.

Continuing the old refresh rate theme, what happens if the user's monitor isn't detected properly and the horizontal refresh range is set too high.

Indeed. So what exactly happens if for some reason OSX can't bring up a GUI at all? How about XP or even Win2k for that matter? No GUI, no way to edit the system. Reinstall. With a *nix system a user at least has a chance to correct something gone horribly wrong.

The differences between OS X and Linux are huge: The Linux GUIs are programmed (mostly) for hackers by hackers.

I'm sure the groups who are dedicated to usability issues within both KDE and Gnome might take some exception to this.

They're based on the huge estoteric heap of junk known as XFree. Whether it's the appropriate solution is not the point.

Not the point? Huh? How can you not judge a solution based on whether it was appropriate? Should Linux have used an inappropriate solution?

The point is, it's yet another layer of complexity onto an already complex OS.

Complexity? You want complexity? How about an OS that's got an OS on top of it, a translation layer in the middle, and a low level system that's otherwise unrelated to the other two. Oh, then to get the vast majority of key apps to work under it you have to install it's previous version to ride along side that as well. Every interaction is going through all kinds of translations and emulations on there. OTOH, KDE is running native on this machine here.

And most importantly, it's designed so the user should never see the command line, unless they want to. Oh, and it's bloody gorgeous :)

So are as talking about the pure look of the environment I would still put KDE using Mosfet's tweaks well above what was done with Aqua. I did rather like the notion of drop shadows for windows though. Outside of that, there were a ton of effects that were very cool to look at for about 20 minutes. After that, when it got time to do some work having warped magnifying glass views got real old, real fast.

Re:But for how long

[cb0y]

as bad as it is, yes i hate it, its still better than SOlaris which is a shocking piece of shit.

So whats the solution? DUdes/programmers, just copy windows/osx, and add new bits in logical areas.

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. So what exactly happens if for some reason OSX can't bring up a GUI at all? How about XP or even Win2k for that matter? No GUI, no way to edit the system. Reinstall. With a *nix system a user at least has a chance to correct something gone horribly wrong.

Under Mac OS X, if something goes horribly wrong you do what you would do in any Unix - boot into single user mode (hold down 's' on boot up).

Oh, you didn't know you could do that? Wouldn't want your arguments to be weighed down with FACTS now would we?

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

I've long been certain that KDE was more intuitive than the mac -- but as I have never been using macs for more than an hour at the time, I couldn't exactly pinpoint why it felt wrong.

In this particualr exemple, I know :

--"System Preferences" ??? the background is not part of the "system"

-- WTF is it with hiding things like that in submenues, you ask :
"I don't know how much easier it could be"

Thats an easy one : under KDE, you drag an image to your desktop, a menu pops up "set as background"...

Hell, even ripping CDs, is infinitely easier under KDE than under mac : drag and drop also.

Re:But for how long

[mpe]

To pick up on a point I saw mentioned by an AC, how would I go about changing the screen resolution on a typical installation?
The typical Windows user would start looking in the desktop properties. On a Mac it's in control panels. On Windows it's in control panel. On Linux it's in /etc/X11/XF86Config.

Actually with Linux it's more likely a case of pressing a key sequence. One very big problem with the Windows design is that it puts things end users generally should not be fiddling with in amongst cosmetic changes. Does the OS X model avoid doing this?

Re:But for how long

[marmoset]

Yeah it could, as OSX provided no options for selecting your own background graphic. I understand that this got fixed in the newer release. At that time you could only pick from the themes that Apple put together from anywhere in the control panels.

Every release of OSX since at least the Public Beta (and probably earlier, that was first version I used personally and can speak to from experience) has supported custom desktop pictures. And any Photoshop user worthy of the title knows how to create a 50% gray graphic sized to his/her screen in exactly 2 steps, approximate time required to do so is about 10 seconds.

Spent hours dinking around with it. I finally called up Apple tech support about this. According to Apple I had to create an 8gig partition in order for it to work.

A limitation in the version of Open Firmware used in beige G3's required that the first partition on those machines had to be under 8 gigs (not "exactly" 8 gigs.) Since this was prominently mentioned in the release notes for the OS X install, I have to wonder how much else you missed.

In contrast, I slapped a Mandrake install in a blank PC and it was the single sweetest installation routine I've ever seen

I've seen the Mandrake installer. I've used the Mandrake installer (I used Mandrake as my Linux distro for over a year.) And Mandrake Installer, you're no OSX.

Heck, Linux even has more apps NATIVE to it.

Hmm, are you counting all the Unix apps now "native" to OSX via Fink, GNU/Darwin and the ports system in your census?

Until Adobe starts porting apps to OSX like Photoshop and Illustrator I'm not even going to bother looking at another version of OSX.

Duh.
Duh II, Electric Boogaloo
Duh 3D

And you support users. I weep for them.

Re:But for how long

[mpe]

To change the background graphic, could it be more intuitive than opening "System Preferences", and then selecting the "Desktop" control?

The term "System Preferences" sounds rather "techie" to someone computer illiterate. Also they might think it is something the "system admin" will tell them off for messing around with. Wouldn't something like "user settings" be a better term? Especially on a machine which can be used by more than one person. After all OS X does support working as a network workstation with each user having their own personal settings, dosn't it?

Re:But for how long

[marmoset]

--"System Preferences" ??? the background is not part of the "system"

For most end-users I've ever used, the definition of system is "this box I'm sitting in front of." I think the terminology is appropriate in this context.

Hell, even ripping CDs, is infinitely easier under KDE than under mac : drag and drop also.

If it's easier than this, I'll eat my hat.

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

So why not set up a new user on a single window manager and leave him/her there for a while? When you are in KDE, KDE is in control of all aspects of the visual display. Set the newbie up, and leave them there.
In that case, your user has no choice, you, admin, has the choice.

The paradigm is only different because on Linux a user actually has a choice if they wish. If the user decides they don't like KDE, they haven't far to go to change their environment.
In that case, your user is quite a hacker. He has the choice, and must go again through the hassle of configuring everything (I wonder why there is not a standard for the menus, and a standard place too, ~/.menu would be great).

Complexity? You want complexity? How about an OS that's got an OS on top of it, a translation layer in the middle, and a low level system that's otherwise unrelated to the other two.
Complexity doesn't matter, if the user is unaware of it, which is the case for OS X, not for Linux.

It is great to have choice, it would be greater to be sure that an application will run the same way with different environments or windows managers. When I switched from WindowMaker to Blackbox, I couldn't read my pdf documents in Acrobat Reader anymore (don't know why). And a little app I wrote in Rebol, with shortcuts and buttons, while using Blackbox, works only with the shortcuts now that I switched to Fluxbox (which is only an enhanced Blackbox).
Linux and the likes have a lot of work to do to be suitable for the common user on the desktop

Re:But for how long

[deaddrunk]

On Mandrake it's in the Mandrake Control Centre.
Perhaps the previous poster would care to stop
pretending that Linux hasn't changed in the last
2 years.

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but on the other hand, I have had it happen that windows picked the wrong refresh rate, and on windows there is no way at ALL to change it.
At least linux always has a fallback.

Besides, XFree rarely needs refresh rates anymore, it can calculate it itself based on your resolution and card settings.

It doesn't need one on my desktop machine at least.

Re:But for how long

[firewort]

This is a documented problem at Apple's Knowledge Base.

It's analogous to problems PC BIOS had with larger hard drives, and only occurs on older G3 and iMac machines that came equipped with IDE on board. It's also similar to LILO having to be within the first 1024 of a drive..

Apple also told you incorrectly- the system folder has to be in a partition within the first 8gb of a drive. So I make a 4gb for OS 9, a 4gb for os X, and a huge partition for data (slice it how you like it) and it works beautifully. It's all a matter of getting the system folder anywhere within that first 8gb.

This is not a big deal.

Re:But for how long

[firewort]

Shoot, when newbies in Win do this, I have to say,
reboot, hold down F8, select safe mode, boot up, ignore the warning about being in safe more, control panel, display properties, reset the resolution to a lower setting on the slider control, now go to the monitor, and make sure it's set for your display...

They can't believe that Win would let them set a resolution that it can't boot to.

Confronted with xf86config, they'd choke!

Re:But for how long

[SCHecklerX]

The typical Windows user would start looking in the desktop properties. On a Mac it's in control panels. On Windows it's in control panel. On Linux it's in /etc/X11/XF86Config. Granted there may be a gui app installed in that particular distribution, but can you guarantee that if you move to a different distro? The consistency is not there.

Ummm...I would call the same file to edit on every system pretty consistent. And I can even telnet in and change it remotely. Or run it through a perl script to automate the whole mess for me as a sysadmin in charge of hundreds of systems.

You *should* learn the text files, as they are what give you the flexibility and predictability needed to properly configure a system. The GUI config stuff in linux can definitely hose your system, so I generally stay away from it.

Re:But for how long

[Hoser McMoose]

I've seen the Mandrake installer. I've used the Mandrake installer (I used Mandrake as my Linux distro for over a year.) And Mandrake Installer, you're no OSX.

Well, I haven't installed OS X (I'd much rather spend $800 on really fast PC hardware then $2000 on slower Mac hardware), but I'd imagine that it's fairly slick, probably similar to what you would find with a modern Windows installer.

I have used Mandrake installer, and I DID have some trouble with it. Obviously, I'm a reasonably techie-type person who does the odd bit of programing and only ever builds custom systems for myself, so I know that if I'm having some trouble getting the installer working I'm not going to be the only one.

That being said though, it's important to note that a lot of the problems I was having with the Mandrake installer were things that I flat out could NOT do with a Windows installer (and, I'd assume, MacOS X). It was mainly related to having 6 different partitions split across two hard drives with at least 3 (and later 4) different operating systems installed (Win2K, Linux, DOS, and for a time, FreeBSD). Windows might have installed fine all on it's own, but it certainly wasn't going to allow me to boot up my Linux partition, no matter what I possible did. Mandrake caused me some trouble, but it DID allow me to boot up both my Windows partition AND my Linux partition (and my DOS and FreeBSD partitions, which were both sitting on a different hard drive).

So really a lot of the "problems" with Linux are the typical issues that people have always had with Unix type systems, they're powerful. Being able to do more means that you're going to have more options. More options means more potential points of difficulty.

Re:But for how long

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's exactly like Linux in that case... What are those supposed advantages again?

Re:But for how long

[RussGarrett]

Actually with Linux it's more likely a case of pressing a key sequence.

God I was asleep then... yeh it's mostly -- or which I love. However, when I came to Linux desktop from Windows, it's not very clear it's that easy.

One very big problem with the Windows design is that it puts things end users generally should not be fiddling with in amongst cosmetic changes. Does the OS X model avoid doing this?

Good point there. Not entirely sure whereabouts in Windows it would go if not in Display Properties - it is in a different tab from the cosmetic stuff.

Re:But for how long

[RussGarrett]

I totally agree with you, and indeed I love the way it's done, which is where I feel most prospective Linux users are being misled into believeing it's all as smooth and as easy to use as Windows. It's not.

There may be a thin veneer of smoothness, but if you're actually *using* Linux, you need to know the command line and files like the proverbial back of your hand. In that respect Linux is a kick-ass OS.

Re:But for how long

[mr100percent]

Why would you assume OS X and XP won't be upgraded at all?
XP is a lot better than 95, the jump in GUI evolution took a while in Linux.

Re:But for how long

[mr100percent]

Apple had ridiculously easy options for selecting graphics. You either read the caption below the command and dragged an image onto it, instantly updating, or hit other and selected one from a folder. In short, you're information is wrong, nothing personal.

Re:But for how long

[mr100percent]

Photoshop is in beta, Illustrator is already native. the Gimp works fine in OS X.

Even if that weren't the case, they work fine in Classic, better than kludgy WINE.

Re:But for how long

[mr100percent]

get an $800 iMac, they're much better quality than the cheapest PC.

Modern mac hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay attention ;) It hasn't been that way for five years. Remember when OSX came out and people couldn't use their voodoo5? Aside from the motherboard and CPU most other parts are interchangable.

Not as good as OS 9

[blank]

I'm using OS X right now (along with debian on my vaio). It's very nice, but NOT better than OS 9 as a GUI. Mac OS 9 had cleaner borders and icons. it uses window shade. the mouse is accellerated (well). I don't know why the AQUA interface is so big! I know that we're all suppose to have 20" monitors, but I don't want it to be my fault for not buying a bigger monitor!

There are hacks coming out for customizing the features, but not for all of them. I just bare it and grin. Thank gawd there's a BSD subsystem on this thing.

I stuck X-Windows on here and was happy to see wmaker again. The only problem is that this only helps with X-Window applicaion.

Okay, It is easier to intall than Linux with KDE or GNOME. All you have to do is get a mac and click on some buttons. No fuss, as long as you have that mac. which most of you have right? *cough*.

Statistics can sound like anything you want.

[Dog and Pony]

Last time I looked at browsing statistics, I think Windows had like 98% of it all by itself... it would still hold true, of course if you say it like that. :)

Like if I say that 100% of the browsing on my computer is made by me and Abraham Lincoln, that is still true, although I don't lend my computer to a dead US president.

Why versus?

[Stenpas]

There shouldn't be a OS X vs. Linux situation. They both compliment each other. And they both need each other. The open source community as a whole needs big corporations backing them up so some crazy senator doesn't make some bill that outlaws open source. OS X has definately proven that open source advocates aren't just hackers that want something for nothing.

But more specifically, it's no secret that Apple is the leading computer supplier for educational institutions. Soon, schools are going to transition from MacOS 9 to MacOS X. In the longterm, this has huge benefits for everyone. What better place to learn open source than at school? OS X is a pretty snazzy OS to learn it, too. It's got, of course, darwin, and a really slick GUI to fall back on. The kids, the ones who know they want to go into a tech, they'd probably stay after school just to learn the ins and outs of darwin. The skills learned from that are transferrable to Linux. And Linux is used in the real world. Yes, I know. Real world experience in SCHOOL. It's a first. But anyway, of course there are some major differences between the two. For example, I don't think installing MacOS X is anything like installing Linux. But nevertheless, OS X is a great starting point for kids, to expose them to the power of open source.

As for why Apple needs Linux, lets see what Linux has that Apple didn't have before OS X. The whole slew of technologies that *nix utilizes. Preemptive multitasking, protected memory, SMP. All of which are VERY important. A command line, which allows for unprecidented control of an Apple OS. A million and one Linux apps which are easily portable to darwin. And most importantly, the open source model that Linux shares with OS X. This will hopefully ensure that OS X doesn't fall behind in speed(slowness is in Aqua, not open source), stability, security, etc.

But where they both miserably fail is product recognition. Apple's trying to correct that with their retail stores, and hopefully they will succeed. Because a win for Apple is a win for open source. Well, only a win if the consumer knows that MacOS X's core is opensource, but that sort of goes with product recognition.

Re:Why versus?

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT!

it's no secret that Apple is the leading computer supplier for educational institutions

Maybe in your fairy land. Most educational institutions I have seen use Wintel hardware because of the cost.

When you combine (Australian Dollars 2AUD = 1USD) :

$70 Per Computer Licence (per Year) for Microsoft Products (All Queenslands(australia) Schools are entitled to) and a $1000 PC you have a winner. The only schools that I have seen that still use Macs have them as left over legacy systems

Re:What's with all the VS Linux?

[led]

well you can always run openbsd on an Amiga...

Take away this guys troll rating, hes right

[HanzoSan]

If Apple ported to OSX they'd become Be.

Its true, Neither linux or OSX is capable of taking Microsoft, I say Linux can in 2 years, I say OSX isnt even going to try.

As far as processor power goes, while G4 is better than pentium 2, maybe even pentium 3 which it battled, this was years ago. It cannot even come close to comparing to a Pentium 4 clocked at 2ghz.

PC motherboards are also better and PCs have better video and audio.

I'm an engineer and I'm not dropping Linux...

[SwedishChef]

However, the iBook is a different matter. I can see how an engineer would be interested in one of those. Unix on a small, relatively potent laptop with lots of I/O for network use (firewire, ethernet, USB), decent battery life (5 hours or so), and reasonably priced. So I would definitely consider an iBook running OS-X (but with 256mb of RAM.. the 128mb is too puny).

Perhaps my attitude is not that uncommon, given that most reports of "engineers switching in droves" were based on watching engineeers who were away from their office (at trade shows) using laptops. But no one is moving me away from Linux!

I use Linux on my desktop for 99% of my job (and it will be 100% when we get a Citrix box running). I use Linux on a laptop for 100% of my field work. We had a loaner MAC with OS-X on it to look at last summer and we all liked it fine... but no one switched to it. We set up a VNC so I could get a MAC desktop on my KDE desktop... that was kinda cool. But when it came time to return the MAC no one cried... we just packed it up and hauled it away.

My work habits are sloppy enough to need the four desktops KDE gives me (or more if I wish) and I much prefer the KDE desktop to the OS-X version. Maybe when I can justify paying the $800 (and up) for a iMAC versus the $500 for a comparable PC, or when I can give up the clear path to hardware upgrades, or when more of the cool network tools one gets with a Linux distro appear on the MAC I'll switch. But I don't see that happening soon.

Re:I'm an engineer and I'm not dropping Linux...

[PatJensen]

I am a Network Consultant who spent a lot of time researching and then deciding to buy an iBook. Great laptop, great feature set and good price points. But even loaded with as much RAM as you can put in it - OS 10.1.2 performs like shit. That's the bottom line.

You cannot have a web browser (IE), an MP3 player (iTunes) and a news reader open without significant slowdown and swapping. Page displays in IE are very very slow and it makes your general web experience disappointing. Also, doing simple things like trying to sort through files in Finder is awfully slow. List views are very low performance and almost to the point where they are frustratingly unusable.

It really pisses me off, it seems like they only optimize 10 for their high-end products, but for those considering to buy an iBook to run OS X - don't waste your time. Buy a PowerBook.

Anyways, that's my two cents. I use OS 9.1, as on OS 9.2 and OS 10 you cannot shut your laptop lid without the box going to sleep. You have no choice, so forget using it in a docked configuration.

-Pat

Re:I'm an engineer and I'm not dropping Linux...

[TheInternet]

You cannot have a web browser (IE), an MP3 player (iTunes) and a news reader open without significant slowdown and swapping

I think something is unique about your situation. This just isn't normal. My hard disk frequently spins down due to long period of non-use, even while I'm continually using the machine.

Of course, you don't say what type of iBook you have or what the configuration is, so it's hard to be sure.

- Scott

Re:I'm an engineer and I'm not dropping Linux...

[PatJensen]

This is what I've heard, but I have a stock iBook G3 500 with 320 (64 + 256) megs of RAM. Stock HD and CD-ROM. I am running a fresh install of OS X 10.1.2, with IE 5.1, iTunes 2.0.3, Thoth, AIM, ircle, etc. Classic is not active as I try to only use OS X native apps. No funky modifications or system changes are installed. No power management changes, no window extensions, etc.

This was the case even when I was running 10.0.4 months back. It is just very unresponsive, even running IE by itself. Sites render extremely slow - downloads are fast though.

Everything on 10.1.2 sucks, even when I only run one or two applications at a time. It is considerably faster then 10.0.4, I'd say a 40% improvement, still when I switch between applications, it is slow. File copies seem OK. Window operations (drags, resizes, etc) are slow. Pretty much everything in the Finder is slow as well, opening new windows, renaming directories.

I've pretty much given up trying to do anything useful in 10. Do you PowerMac and PowerBook users find it to be an easy switch over? Does it perform usable on your machines? I hope it isn't as slow as it is on my G3/500. I guess I'll just have to look at u pgrading from my nice new iBook to a new PowerMac to run OS X.

-Pat

Re:I'm an engineer and I'm not dropping Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Linux on my desktop for 99% of my job (and it will be 100% when we get a Citrix box running). I use Linux on a laptop for 100% of my field work. We had a loaner MAC with OS-X on it to look at last summer and we all liked it fine... but no one switched to it. We set up a VNC so I could get a MAC desktop on my KDE desktop... that was kinda cool. But when it came time to return the MAC no one cried... we just packed it up and hauled it away.

Maybe it's because you kept calling it MAC.

Re:I'm an engineer and I'm not dropping Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, I'm using a 466SE iBook (graphite baby!), and just upgraded from 10.1.1 to 10.1.2 this afternoon. I bought this iBook because I wanted to use OS X. I originally installed OS X on it as soon as it came out, felt like it was too sluggish, so I started to use OS 9 for awhile. Then I started using X again after the 10.1 update, and have never looked back.

It's still slightly sluggish, but moving from 128 megs of RAM to 320 just plain put my book into overdrive!

Work != Play

[Flarners]

Is a hammer fun to use? Are a pen and paper? Celphone? Answering machine? I would love for work to be more entertaining, but there is a reason it is called work, and we have vacations and weekends with which to enjoy ourselves. Your productivity shouldn't be wasted, whether it be by playing minesweeper or having "fun" hashing out long, inscrutable commands at a shell prompt. Your naïveté is charming, but you really must learn to grow up.

Re:Work != Play

[Daengbo]

I think you may mean naivette, otherwise I'm not familiar with the word na vet. That, and cellphone is generally spelled with two L's. Just my thoughts. If you actually are making $500k as a web designer, I applaud you. Don't forget to take some time out for family, though.

Re:Work != Play

[Flarners]

It's "naivete" with one T; it is not my fault your browser can't display Unicode characters for diaeresised i (ï) or accented e (é). And "celphone" has one L; look it up.

Re:Work != Play

[Inthewire]

" And "celphone" has one L; look it up."

Well...I had no need to look it up. I happen to know that a cellphone is the same thing as a cellular telephone. I felt safe in assuming that the shortened version would be cellphone and not celphone...but because you told me to, I looked it up.
Like what I found?

Oh, and Google found about 196,000 results for cellphone, but it only found about 14,200 results for celphone

I was surprised by the number of links to celphone, but I ascribe many of them to misspellings. True, some were to non-English language sites, but I don't think this is what you were trying to say.

Read the goddamn link

[Flarners]

There was a study done to answer this very question. The GUI is faster, even when the test was slanted to favour keyboard usage! As I said before, using the CLI gives you a cognitive workout, and thus seems perceptually faster since you need to do more to get it to work. Mousing around a GUI is much faster, but seems slower since it is easier and requires less thought. Please don't make me reiterate myself. Modern GUI's are not "stupid"; they are sophisticated aides to productivity and ease of use.

Re:Read the goddamn link

[GiMP]

My point was specifically about specific tasks, one of which was 'batching'. I would really like to see you drag and drop hundreds of things when I can just run a long, complicated, but (to me) simple command. I can do it much faster by writing a small batch then you can click the same things 2,000 times. Also, it depends on how fast you can type and how well you know your CLI and corrisponding tools.

Of course, a good GUI tool MAY let you do it faster then me, but the problem is that if you have a very specific need you will need to write custom software to do it. Meanwhile, it is more likely that the existing commandline tools can be used together to perform the function without any additional time being spent on developing a GUI tool.

Re:Read the goddamn link

[crucini]

There was a study [asktog.com] done to answer this very question.

Oh dear. So this is the oft-cited "study". First, the "study" is far too lacking in documentation of methodology, control procedures, raw data and possible biases to be glorified with the name. But that's hardly worth mentioning, given the objections arising from what little information "Tog" provided.

This "study" is not a comparison of GUI vs. CLI - it is a comparison of two ways to move a cursor around in a GUI - mouse vs. arrow keys. Even within that limitation, it is of dubious value.

The task is to replace the '|' character with 'e'. Most hackers wouldn't even use a text editor for this: just perl -pi.bak -e's/\|/e/g'. Within vi, you would type :%s/|/e/g. Microsoft Word, the platform used in the study has similar (slower) functionality. So we start by accepting an artifical constraint on how to accomplish the task. The constraint is intended to tip the playing field in favor of the mouse.

In any event, I actually agree with "Tog" that arrow keys aren't that useful. hjkl are in the home row and work better. However a good text editor should not force you to navigate by spatial position - it should assist you in navigation by content.

The GUI is faster, even when the test was slanted to favour keyboard usage!

I disagree. Although "Tog" claims this slant, the test is in fact geared to a "sharecropping" task, akin to picking apples or pulling weeds. In other words, a task that rewards the ability to move the cursor to a precise position rather than the ability to symbolically express the task. I don't do those kinds of task on a computer - I tell the computer to do them for me.

Re:BS

[Frey]

I don't know about you , but I recently purchased a dell laptop for 4500 (fully loaded I8100), it is not the processor that counts on price, but what is in the rest of the laptop. I am kinda wishing that I had put that money into a TiBook instead.

Stop comparing the low end stripped down dell to the high end fully loaded large screen apple, it just isn't fair to the Dell :)

Making enemies

[StarTux]

Why do Apple people keep going on about how they will kill Linux off?

Sorry, this is a waste of time, Motorola is too darn expensive and the performance difference do not make it worthwhile.

Add to the fact that you're dealing with a closed system thats enough to put a lot of geeks off. As for general use, the Mac is in the same boat more or less as Linux, despite being more available as a hardware/software package.

All these words of death knells have been much exaggerated, poor Apple will have to find out just what they are dealing with is not a corporation, but a very large evolving user community. Perhaps its fear that OSX could be the one in trouble, the one that may die?

Matt

OS X helps sell OS software to PHBs etc

[spasm]

One of the nicest things about OS X is Apple is a company most IT departments and PHBs have heard of and have even worked with.

Why does this matter? Well, let me give an example. Recently I worked on a research project which needed some mapping done, & had no leftover budget to purchase an expensive proprietary solution (the usual preferred solution of our "where's my kickback" IT department through whom all software aquisition must go). Looking around, I found the GrassGIS package (http://www.baylor.edu/grass/), an open source & free-as-in-beer solution.

Great, except the IT department hated the idea - no receipt, no box, no CD, no kickback, and, probably most importantly, it ran on Linux* & they were (still are) deadly afraid of linux-in-the-workplace for a wide range of reasons not limited to the fear a lot of people might start asking why we're paying $$$$ for M$ solutions if free-as-in-beer solutions can do the same thing in many instances.

To get it past them, I had to sell the entire concept to some PHBs. This took months, and required explaining a lot of things, ranging from what-is-linux through to why-there-is-no-receipt-for-this-'purchase'. Ultimately, the only reason we finally managed to get it up was that we had, literally, no money left in the budget. And even then we had to promise never to connect the necessary linux box box to the rest of the network for "security reasons" (ok, fair enough, someone clueless like me setting up a redhat box could certainly compromise network security - I'm a sociologist, not a professional geek, sue me : ).

Anyway, to actually get to the point, now OS X is released, Grass, along with almost every *nix package I actually use to do non-computing related work, is being ported to OS X. And the IT department has worked with apple machines on their network before. And the PHBs have heard of Apple. They even use macs. So as I see it, this makes getting OS software solutions and operating systems into my workplace a lot easier, because it splits it all into a two step process (and I an *so* sick of seeing non-trivial chunks of my budget disappear in operating system licenses).

Step one is to introduce software solutions that 'happen' to be open source as "mac software" - not a hard sell to PHBs who like pretty macs and an IT department who is used to plugging the PHB's titanium executive toy into their NT network. Step two is introducing the idea that this very same software that is now an integral part of their operations can also run on x86 hardware - which tends to have cheaper up-front price tags and which tends to be laying about the place in abundance anyway. Oh, and we need to install another piece of software (called linux..) to make this happen, but it's also free, so no problems there.. : ) As long as we're not threatening to take away the PHB's titanium laptop, the bottom line makes it a no brainer.

* ok, so there's an NT port/version of Grass, but it was in beta at the time and we really needed something as stable as possible

OSX and the Engineering desktop

[wdavies]

Hi,

If anyone wants to know why Engineers might want a powerbook, look at the specs of the Titanium Powerbook - 1 gig ram - and the fact there is a clean Nix underneath.

A few months ago I did an experiment with OSX 10.1 -- basically I got my company's entire tree built just fine in 2 days. No code changed, just a few softlinks needed to be set up (Perl for example was in usr/bin instead of usr/local/bin. This tree is normally only run on Linux or Solaris's box.My next laptop wil be a TiBook -- especially now they have the CDRW/DVD combo drive.

I have been evaluating getting a PC laptop -- I can't find anything close to the TiBook -- try finding a slim design, with a 15" display and 1 gig Ram -- Sony slim Vaios max out at 512 or 384. Toshiba at 256mb. Please will someone point me at an x86 with those kind of specs, and I might go with Linux instead. I'd be totally convinced if it came with the cinema-scope style screen (2 emacs sessions side by side).

Now, for Desktops a whole different story -- we just got a rack mounted box for $4k -- twice the power of a E420, at 10% of the cost (and a 1/4 of the footprint and weight). I just couldn't fit it in my rucksack (close though, maybe in my 70 litre one)

Winton

p.s. This isn't a troll. I want a laptop with a gig of RAM (we're doing some hard memory intensive work)

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[BigBir3d]

Dell has one (brand new), it is a Latitude C400 .

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[wdavies]

Much appreciated, will take a look!

Looks promising.

Winton

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[anderman]

Compaq has one too, 2700. Not sure if its slim enough for you. They are out there, just go to the major sites and do a configure.

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[Jeff DeMaagd]

"Compaq has one too, 2700. Not sure if its slim enough for you."

They apparently have several: http://www.compaq.com/products/notebooks/index.htm l

Only one with a 15" display & 1GB RAM and that unit is probably thicker than a TiBook.

http://www.compaq.com/products/notebooks/n180/n1 80 -subfamily.html

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[AntiTuX]

HP Omnibook 6000
dunno what the market is on them. It comes with a 15-in screen (1024x768), can handle up to a gig of ram (2x512m PC-100 SODIMM's) and comes stock with a DVD rom. It gets about 4 hours of battery life for me. You can also get the combo CDRW-DVD drive for it. Built-in NIC and modem, so you your pcmcia slots are free to play. Oh, and it's got 3 mouse buttons. You can't beat a laptop with 3 mouse buttons :P.
It runs linux like a dream btw.

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not going to find one any time soon. I've been using apple gear for - ah well, pretty much forever - and the quality is amazing. My last powerbook was a Wallstreet 300, bought specifically as a linux box - 192MB, 8 Gig HD, 14" screen, lovely keyboard, SCSI, 2 PCMCIA slots, room for 2 batteries. With a processor upgrade, and the fact the memory currently maxes out at 1GB, you'll still pushed to find a windows laptop that will beat it. Mine still runs linux, and flies. I was tempted by an inspiron, which had a 15" screen, but was ugly and felt cheap.
I'm typing this from my new TiBook under OSX though, which you'll have to pry from my cold, dead fingers. Rootless X alongside aqua apps, lovely developer tools, I'm in lurrrrve. The Wallstreet sort of worked for OSX, but it really needs a G4 and lots of ram.

Get the TiBook. Now. You deserve it.

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[tarkin]

Get yourself that TiBook and you can run MacOsX AND Linux as well... Tell me one x86 that can do that ;-)

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[BigBir3d]

Winton,

Check out the Intel PIII-M processors. They have double the cache (512K vs 256K) and a 133MHz FSB in comparison to the less expensive Apple referred to above.

Here is a list of vendors that sell P3-M laptops.

Re:OSX and the Engineering desktop

[anderman]

They apparently have several: http://www.compaq.com/products/notebooks/index.htm l

Only one with a 15" display & 1GB RAM and that unit is probably thicker than a TiBook.

Since you specified wanting 1GB RAM there would only be one and not several.

Macs have a corporate "standards" problem

[lbmoore]

I work in a fairly overpowering Windows environment. However, I can get approval for Linux but not for a Mac (and both were in my budget request). Why? Because they can standardize on Dell and my GNU/Linux workstation runs on either of the two official configurations.

In the server room, I can get Red Hat on the rackable Dells. I can get Tivoli Storage Manager clients for them and they fit in without causing management to support Yet Another Hardware Platform.

Frankly, I don't care if its OS X or Linux or Hurd, I like the diversity. Why the hell should we fight with each other over Microsoft's crumbs. Let's stand on each others shoulder and get us a real piece of the pie.

Re:BS

[Alan Partridge]

does your 1GHz laptop use Speedstep by any chance? If so, how much faster is it (really) than the 600Mhz iBook. I believe it IS faster, but not much, and not much cheaper either all things considered. Playstations are for games, although there is a small selection of games like Quake 3, Oni, Wolfenstein etc available for OSX. I play those plus X-Plane on my machines (plus all my PS1 , C64 and MAME favourites under emulation...) but my PS2 is always best for gaming on my 28" widescreen TV.

Illusions of freedom

[Y-Crate]

Remember when some users got together and tried to make a theme creation app for the Mac?

They were threatened with a lawsuit from Apple.

Remember when Apple didn't want to let their users upgrade their machine?

They were sent a firmware update that "accidentally" blocked upgrades.

Remember when some people made Apple parody sites?

They were threatend with lawsuits.

What happens if you want to upgrade your video card?

Ask Apple. They're trying to make all video card production in-house. $250 for a Geeforce 2 MX. Yeah....whatever.

What did Apple do when iMac analog video boards started to fail en masse?

Nothing.

Apple has some nice products, just don't for a moment think you're saying goodbye to having your computing experience dictated from some corprate office on the West Coast.

HTML is hardly crossplatform

[Flarners]

Any HTML more complicated than simple B and P tags will rrender completely differently on every platform you try to view it on. It is a nightmare for web designers to work within the narrow range of HTML which works on all platforms, requiring inelegant hacks in order to get around every single browser's bugs and inconsistencies. Much-needed improvements such as XHTML and CSS are too little, too late; the ancient Netscape 4 is still in widespread use, and one cannot use anything more than that piece of garbage can support.

PDF and Flash are both open specs. The file formats are both available on the Web; numerous open-source PDF viewers exist, and projects are underway to make open-source Flash viewers. These standards were designed to render exactly the same in every viewer, and are supplanting HTML as we speak. More and more web designers forgo the agony of HTML for much easier Flash widgets. Scientific, educational and legal documents are now almost entirely published to the web in PDF instead of HTML. If you want HTML survive, tell the W3C to get off their asses and actually implement their standards instead of bending over for Netscape's and Microsoft's constant proprietary enhancements. For all intents and purposes, HTML is already dead.

Re:HTML is hardly crossplatform

[GiMP]

I beg to differ, my webpage used to render perfectly fine and IDENTICAL in all browsers and I didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary to make it work; I just write pure clean html the way I always have, learned by reading the W3C's specifications.

This past week, however.. I did do one that that makes one section render a little differently, I moved my "news" section from tables to CSS. It isn't a big deal, it renders in both new and old browsers; although older browsers such as NS4 render the news as text without the tables. I am considering moving it back to the way it was, however.. but the new CSS-enabled one looks so pretty ;)

But it renders in Amaya, thats all that matters.. right ? :)

Re:HTML is hardly crossplatform

[Anonymous Coward]

show me a flash that site that is database driven, numb-nutts! jesus christ you flash fuckers think you can do anything, but it's the fucking GROUND GLOW of the internet, beautiful, but functionally retarded (in the realm of db-driven sites)...

Re:HTML is hardly crossplatform

[Sunnan]

Please stick with CSS instead of tables.

Abusing tables is not a good thing.

Thanks.

Don't confuse userfriendliness with marketing

[rseuhs]

I've not tried MacOS X yet, but I know MacOS and it was equally described as the ultimatively userfriendly OS.

Anyway, I was really disapointed because it's inconsistent (changing windows between apps and within apps; config apps quit when the last window is closed, normal apps don't), awkard (contect menu) and very limiting (try to switch to a finder-window that is obscured by another finder-window. No chance without closing/(re)moving the obscuring window).

Why do people think the Mac is easy? Because user-friendlyness is the main point of Apple marketing.

Linux on the PPC is a bit tricky to install, but the x86-versions are damn easy and KDE beats theMacOS9-GUI single-handedly no matter on what platform.

And since Apple remains the only computer-seller in the world that sells one-button mice (while most other vendors already sell wheel mice) - yes that is important because the mouse is the most important (and de facto only) GUI-navigation tool - I don't believe in the MacOS X marketing anymore.

So to summarize:

No I don't think MacOS X will kill Linux because Linux users already know great GUIs like KDE.

But I do think that MacOS X may gain a lot of users because the marketing-machine behind it is priceless. - And that's a good thing for us Linux-users, too, because apps will be a lot more portable between MacOS X and Linux than Windows and Linux.

Re:Don't confuse userfriendliness with marketing

[Metrol]

Why do people think the Mac is easy? Because user-friendlyness is the main point of Apple marketing.

I suppose my post up above is destined for Flamebait moderation for not joining into the group think that all things Apple are automatically the standard for ease of use.

For what it's worth, your dead on with your assessment. KDE is a far better, easier, and more flexible environment to work in. Yes, I am including newbies. I'll never forget trying to explain the whole drag the CD to the trash bit to someone new to the Mac. Or how about why the app is still running even after all the windows are closed?

I guess if you say something often enough it must be true.

Re:Don't confuse userfriendliness with marketing

[astrodawg]

And since Apple remains the only computer-seller in the world that sells one-button mice

To be precise, the Mac mouse has no! buttons.

Though mine has three buttons and a scroll wheel, and works with out any drivers installed. Buy whatever mouse you want.

Re:"Run it on my Athlon or not at all?" Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd consider running a G4 box - find one for me that wasnt manufactured by Apple.

The Powerbook G4 is manufactured by a Taiwanese laptop maker.

Done.

You are now free to enjoy both OS X and your shallow brand-name bigotry.

What are you talking about? "make" IS IN OS X

[HalimCMe]

OS X comes with GNU Make. What are you guys talking about?

Re:What are you talking about? "make" IS IN OS X

[SmittyTheBold]

Not technically true either...Make is part of the dev tools - install that, and you get all the fun command line tools *and* Project Builder.

I have no idea how the original poster managed to get the dev tools without make, probably just an honest mistake.

Apple hostage to MS Office

[homer_ca]

"do not underestimate the power of Office. A platform can not hope to succeed in the commercial desktop space without Office"

This is exactly the reason OS X will never have more than a minority share of the desktop market and will never be ported to x86 (aside from the nice hardware profits). Apple is hostage to Microsoft. If they ever pull the plug on MS Office for MacOS, Apple is dead in the business market. If there was ever a backroom deal where MS threatened this if Apple ported to x86, that would have been an antitrust violation, proposal to divide markets.

Re:0.24%

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should he concede that when Windows is on about 41% of new servers while Linux is only on about 9%. Even if you choose IDC's Linux numbers (27%) instead of Gartner's, and there's no reason to, since Gartner explained why IDC's analysis was wrong, Windows's percentage still blows Linux's away.

some web browsing stats

[sam i am]

I have a military jeep site that I feel is about as representative of the general browsing public as can be expected. The recent stats are

• windows 87.9%
• macintosh 4.4%
• linux 0.8%

.

The fulls stats are here.

Linux + OS_X == Windows - monopoly

[MikeFM]

If anything OS X will finally bring the Mac back to a level to compete with Windows at every level. This, and the growing strength of Linux (and FreeBSD, etc) will help convince hardware developers that they need to make sure their hardware works with more than just Windows and software developers that their software needs to be designed around portability.

OS X will pull both current Mac users and Windows users into the Unix world and as any Unix geek knows once you learn it on one OS most of it translates pretty easily to any other Unix OS. After all these people learn Unix enough to accomplish their daily tasks they'll be much more likely to consider the free (as in beer and freedom) alternatives they keep hearing about.

Software ported to OS X should be easy to port to FreeBSD, Linux, and any Unix OS so this should mean a lot more commercial apps and games available for these Unix platforms and more programmers remembering the things that make Unix great.

Both Gnome and KDE are very strong platforms these days. They don't have the polish of the Mac GUI but it's my experience that they are more flexible and lighter in general. They are improving rapidly. Much more so than I would have expected possible a couple years ago.

Almost every basic home or business app that could be desired now exists for Linux, mostly as opensource, including games. With the extra pull Mac OS gives us we can seriously expect to start seeing the Windows empire crack even in their desktop stronghold.

I don't think Windows or Mac OS is going anywhere any time soon but if anything Mac OS and Linux will work together to end Microsoft's monopoly. A solution to fit every need.

OS X on x86 Costing Apple Money is Garbage!

[thelinuxkid]

Who is richer, Apple or Microsoft? Who sells all their software on an architecture that they dont make any serious internal hardware for? The answer to both is Microsoft. Apple has no reason to worry about losing money by selling to x86 customers, because they can still sell their pretty plastic computers with RISC power to the yuppies and scientific community and in turn could make money from those who are sick and tired of running Windows. What about hardware support? Do you think Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and others arent going to help make drivers for the #2 desktop OS in the world! Please. Apple is just making another stupid mistake that helps keep Microsoft at the top.

Re:OS X on x86 Costing Apple Money is Garbage!

[Graymalkin]

That's absolutely ludicrous. Do you know how Microsoft makes so much money selling an OS without making the hardware? They don't fucking support it. When they sell an OEM copy of Windows to an OEM that company takes on the responsibility of supporting both Windows and the hardware they sell. If you buy a new Dell with Windows XP and something on it goes wrong you have to first call up Dell to get them to fix it, they may or may not consult Microsoft but you sure as hell don't call Microsoft first. They will forward your call to Dell or charge you 200$ for support fees. The only time Microsoft supports their OS is when you buy it directly from them which costs you a pretty penny.

Apple tried to license its OS to clone makers a couple years ago but ran into problems support wise because it ended up being that they were just subsidizing the manufacture of Mac systems to other manufacturers. This brought a temporary bounce in Mac market share but ultimately cost them money because they had to support all of the clones sold. So they tried increasing the licensing fees and the clone makers balked and Apple stopped licensing the OS. Software licensing is simple when you've got no stake in hardware.

If Apple didn't support the OS on OEM licenses (like Microsoft does) no one would buy the licenses because it would require tens of millions of dollars for them to build an entirely new support infrastructure for the new OS (which is also an argument against sticking Linux on their hardware). These OEMs would also be at the whim of hardware manufacturers that supported the new OS with drivers and support themselves. PC OEMs make their money because they can get components from just about anybody because everybody writes Windows drivers for their hardware. If Apple did support their x86 system they'd have to charge OEMs beaucoup cash or else they'd end up losing serious money having to support all the jackasses who couldn't understand the differences between Finder and Explorer. Why the fuck do you think Taligent and Rhapsody fucking fell through? Rhapsody (which started life as NeXT and eventually became OSX Server and so forth) was originally meant to be cross platform but would have meant Apple would definitely lose the hardware business. Apple is not a software company and I don't think they ever should be.

Stats from a Biased Site

[VB]

While primarily about music and songwriting, there's a lot of pro-linux content. There appear to be some trends from 1998 to 2001:

1998
os Cnt
Win95 8199 92.33%
WinXX 514 5.79%
WinNT 67 0.75%
Win98 47 0.53%
Mac 35 0.39%
Linux 18 0.20%

1999
os Cnt
Win95 49854 89.15%
Win98 2852 5.10%
WinNT 1626 2.91%
WinXX 788 1.41%
Linux 398 0.71%
Mac 384 0.69%
UNIX 19 0.03%

2000
os Cnt
WinNT 22820 32.14%
Win95 18958 26.70%
Win98 16534 23.29%
Linux 6021 8.48%
WinXX 5578 7.86%
Mac 707 1.00%
UNIX 375 0.53%

2001
os Cnt
WinNT 20670 37.18%
Win98 17176 30.90%
Win95 9477 17.05%
Linux 5405 9.72%
WinXX 2020 3.63%
Mac 786 1.41%
UNIX 60 0.11%

Innovate, not copy

[PlaysWithMatches]

As another post has pointed out on here, OS X has essentially one for the moment. The GUI goodness of Aqua alone mops the floor with Linux.

Wait! Before you mod me down as a troll, let me explain.

First, I love Linux. I've used it for 5 years, and for the last 2 or 3, I've used it exclusively on my computer here at home. However, and I say this in a parent-who-loves-their-kid-but-has-to-punish-them- anyway kind of way... Linux's desktop GUIs suck.

Don't get me wrong - KDE is a good looking and extremely functional desktop. It's really slick, and I like a lot of the KDE apps. The same goes for GNOME, although it still doesn't feel quite as polished to me. The problem is, these desktops are all clones of Windows. One of the reasons I left Windows in the first place was the annoying GUI, and these "desktop environments" do little more than mimic it.

I want a Mac simply so I can play around with Aqua, because it's such a neat GUI, and I know from others that it is as efficient as it is beautiful. I want something like that on Linux, and unfortunately no existing project really gives that to me. Most window managers are, to some extent, Windows clones. As long as that's all there is, Linux will not penetrate the desktop market much further.

Major open source projects have gotten to the point where we're playing catch-up. Clone Office, clone IE, clone the desktop, and so forth. We need to innovate if Linux is to keep momentum. Simply playing copy-cat with everything that looks neat is not good enough. Don't copy Aqua - improve on it. Winning users over from Windows isn't happening at a very rapid pace anyway, so instead of worrying about alienating them with a frightening interface and copying the one they're comfy with, why not create something new? Something so cool, so pretty, and so functional that everybody will want it? That's a big chunk of what MacOS X has going for it, and Linux should have that too.

Re:Innovate, not copy

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw, I think you're wrong here. The only way to get Windows users to switch to Linux is to make the Linux GUI as close as possible to the Windows GUI. That way users don't require retraining--retraining that they don't want and that costs money.

Re:Innovate, not copy

[tal197]

Don't get me wrong - KDE is a good looking and extremely functional desktop. It's really slick, and I like a lot of the KDE apps. The same goes for GNOME, although it still doesn't feel quite as polished to me. The problem is, these desktops are all clones of Windows. One of the reasons I left Windows in the first place was the annoying GUI, and these "desktop environments" do little more than mimic it.

So, use one of the others. ROX (which I develop for) is quite different to Windows, and XFCE is different again.

Re:"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux

[update()]

I take exception with Kimbro Staken's statement:
"the engineer community is abandoning it left and right for Mac OS X."

I work for a government weapons lab and have seen no great move to OS X. And we are the largest Mac site in the world. What I have seen is people dropping their Macs, Windows boxes, and commercial Unix desktops for Linux in DROVES.

It depends on the area, I suppose. I was at the big Human Genome Project meeting this spring and there were OS X laptops everywhere. (Linux was the only other OS in attendance.) Molecular biology is a Mac-friendly area and there were a lot of Japanese attendees (another big Mac domain) so the jump to OS X for coders and informatics people is smaller than it would be in areas where Macs are unknown.

I'd link to hear Linus or RMS respond.

[McVeigh]

Essentially, Mac OS X represents a "user-friendly Linux" -- a robust UNIX core with an attractive and easy to operate superstructure in the form of the Aqua GUI. While OS X and Linux stem from different branches of the diverse UNIX family tree, ... and except for ideological Open Source True Believers, OS X has to a considerable degree removed the raison d'etre for development of a highly engineered and refined Linux GUI...
I'm sure they would have an interesting counterpoint.

Pick one:

[Anonymous Coward]

When we talk about "Winblows" and their evil OS being forced down everyone's throat, nobody can find a DIY box store, everything is prebuilt and preinstalled with Windows. Now x86 is inherently "build it yourself?"

Please.

Re:Pick one:

[PotPieMan]

No, not at all. I was merely replying to a poster who said that he thought Mac OS X wouldn't succeed because he preferred to build his own computer. I argued that the majority of people see the computer as an appliance - meaning they want it to work right out of the box. It's not about x86 vs. PowerPC or Windows vs. Mac OS.

Re:What's with all the VS Linux?

[kimihia]

Absolutely! Diversity is the way to go. I run OpenBSD and Debian GNU/Linux. Each has its strengths, and I enjoy in that.

No way! Linux is almost ready. OSX is non-free.

[egarland]

Linux isn't on my desktop yet. I'm ready for it. Linux isn't.

Don't get me wrong. I think the Linux kernel is ready it's the software that runs on top of the kernel isn't.

OSX is a nice idea. Take a powerful kernel and put a nice happy face on it. It doesn't solve any new problems though. The closed hardware still costs a fortune. The closed software can't be ported. This is comodity software, (the OS, Web browser, email program, word processor.) This is software that should be free. Eventually it will be, it's just a mater of how long it will take.

I use Linux in the server space almost exclusively now. It works great there. It is good at web-browsing and email but it isn't good enough. I'm a Netscape 4.72 user and I won't even switch to the Linux version of Netscape 4.72. It's worse. Outlook+IE users have even more functionality missing if they try to switch over.

But! At this rate that won't last long.

Linux needs a good open source email/calandering client-server application that can interact with Outlook clinets and exchange servers. Then it will be ready to start creaping onto the Desktop for real.

When Linux is ready for the desktop it will go there and there will be no turning back. We are getting to that point and the changover is starting to happen already. I know some programmers and sysadmins who use Linux as their primarry desktop. I predict that next will come the power users/early adopters. Then the desktops will slowly start changing over.

In the middle there will be some failed attempts at selling Linux based computers in BestBuy and CircuitCity type stores for $400-$500. Then some clever company will figure out a really cool package to put together and it will sell like hotcakes. Not because it is Linux but because it is cool. Linux will simply have made it possible.

The changeover to Linux on the desktop will not happen until all the everyday things (reading email, web browsing, calandering, word processing) can be done better than in Windows. People won't switch unless the reasons to do so outweigh the reasons not to.

It's not really about having Linux on the desktop for it's own sake. The kernel doesn't care where it is. It's about having a better desktop. The Linux kernel is just a way to get there.

Re:BS

[wdavies]

See my request earlier for a TiBook Equivalent x86 box. The closest I could get from DELL (thanks to a follow on post), came out at this price.

$3,795.00 (combo/drive, internal wireless, 1gig RAM). Maybe if I didnt have to pay the dumb Windows fee it might be cheaper.

However, this is with a 12.1 inch screen...

Apple, I can get the same for $3,948.00 -- and this is with the 15" cinema scope...

$200 bucks difference ? I have an Educational discount which wil bring this down to the same price (3700).

Winton

Problems with web browsing on linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Linux as a desktop system but I tend not to use it to dial the internet. Main reason being that getting dialup networking working or dialing up my network provider are a lot more difficult than on windows. For instance when I finally get a ppp connection going It takes 2 phonecalls to connect to one of my services and I can't connect at all with the cheaper service.

Secondly I tend to visit only a small area of the web - connected to the software I use. painting or my and my freinds online galleries. So I am not likely to show up in the statistics even when I do use linux.

I like the current generation of linux web apps. Mozilla is a really nice browser to use and evolution looks like a very nice email client.

OS X is very attractive. Because it will give access to my favourite unix softwares + commercial offerings from companies like macromedia & adobe.

However I am perfectly happy with the performance of my current hardware. I am amazed at how quickly linux distrubution have grown between the first I tried (Slackware 3) and My current (Mandrake 8) & will probably continue to use it in future

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus you're spoiled. You're obviously a student with a rich daddy, but you could at least save him a few bucks and buy an old PIII for a few $100. Perfectly adequate for your purposes.

A Latitude C400 stacks up quite well...to an iBook

[90XDoubleSide]

You are telling him to get a 12.1" screen Dell to replace a TiBook?!?

Now the Dell is $500 cheaper, so i changed the specs to try to get it to compete with the 2,299 TiBook: 256MB RAM, 20GB HDD and CD-RW/DVD drive, and the result cost $2,226.00, so price is about the same. But you get the screen of an iBook!

Speed.

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on what you are doing. My work needs _lots_ of single precision floating point. On the G4, the floating point issues one per clock, and the altivec unit is issuing _four_ per clock. The main problem I have is keeping the ()(*)( data flowing into the chip fast enough for the 5x500 GHz = 2.5 GFLOPs (single precision). The multiprocessor x86s don't seem to come anywhere near linear speedup, which is really irritating, and they also have all sorts of hair pulling restrictions on when and how FPU/Vector/Integer units are used. .

I'll grant you that 'macs are slower' is mostly true, but it all comes down to benchmark BS. I'll try anything and use whatever's actually fastest for me.

Mac too expensive

[harlows_monkeys]

MacOS X looks nice...but the hardware to run it costs about 3 times as much as comparable hardware to run Linux, and that hardware for Linux can also run Windows.

Re:Mac too expensive

[Wyatt Earp]

3 times?

That's simply bullshit.

store.apple.com

At most a Mac is a couple hundred dollars more than a name brand PC, and in laptops, it's very hard to beat an iBook or TiBook for the same price. The Dells and Viaos I've come across in the last 2 years are vastly inferior to iBooks, PowerBook G3s and G4s.

Re:Mac too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Try pricing an Ibook vs a comparable Dell, (C400 lattitue).

The Dell *starts* at around $1800, quite a bit more than an Ibook, and has arguably slower processor (866 P3 vs 600 G3).

--

All Slashdot posts are based on hearsay.

Re:Mac too expensive

[harlows_monkeys]

Why are you comparing to brand name PCs? In the context of Mac vs. Linux, we have to presume that the user is fairly sophisticed technically, and so has no problem buying a case, motherboard, CPU, etc., and spending a half hour assembling it themselves.

Given that assumption, at any given level of performance on Unix-like things, you can beat any given Mac at a much lower cost.

Re:Mac too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

>Why are you comparing to brand name PCs?

Um, because they have warranties and support? And the cost of the OS licence is included in the price of the PC?

Re:Mac too expensive

[the eric conspiracy]

In the context of Mac vs. Linux, we have to presume that the user is fairly sophisticed technically, and so has no problem buying a case, motherboard, CPU, etc., and spending a half hour assembling it themselves.

Given that assumption, at any given level of performance on Unix-like things, you can beat any given Mac at a much lower cost.

I don't know about that. The times I've built my own box I've generally ended up spending more than if I bought an off-the-shelf machine. After all, ala carte carries a cost penalty with it.

The big advantage of build your own is that you get to specify exactly what you want in your box. That's particularly useful if you are going for compatability with a non-windows OS.

Re:Mac too expensive

[Wyatt Earp]

Never presume anything.

Just because a user knows about an OS and software, doesn't always mean he has the time or know-how to put togeather a machine from scratch.

And...I'm sticking by my statement that Macs are not that much more than a name-brand or a cobbled togeather PC, when you look at the guts of the machine.

1. 10/100/1000 Ethernet
2. 2 Firewire ports
3. 802.11 suppot in the case
4. CD-RW/DVD-R/DVD video writer in 2 of the 3 desktop models
5. 4 free PCI card slots after all of that.
6. Support for upto 1.5 GB of RAM, many PC motherboards don't support over 768.

As for assembling a PC in a half hour, the last time I threw one togeather, it took almost a half hour to pull all the parts from the boxes and round up all the manuals and crap that comes in component boxes.

Slashdot's stats

[kimihia]

Many people have said in response to this pile of stats that: I'd love to see the stats for Slashdot! Well, you can. It was mentioned in an interview done near on 23 months ago:

9)What happened to browser and os stats?

by John Ratke

There used to be a slashdot page where we could see the daily hit count by browser and OS. While sometimes depressing (2/3's browsing from Windows!), it was very interesting. Is there any chance we will see this again? Is this now information that you feel you need to keep private for some reason? What about the number of registered slashdot users? Could we find that out?

CmdrTaco:

I stopped logging it. I could stick it back in someday, but since I wasn't logging browser info, I couldn't generate those numbers. Maybe we'll do that again someday. Its fun trivia if nothing less.

I've added the emphasis, and note that the figure quoted here is both anecdotal and severely out of date, so take it with an entire European salt mine. The guy who posted the question still has an account, but he's been AWOL since mid 2000.

It may have changed. I know that over the time since the comment was made that I've changed from using IE4 to IE5 to Mozilla, then over to Lnyx on OpenBSD and Mozilla and Lynx on Linux and now I'm writing this in Galeon on Linux. (I was testing it out - I recommend Mozilla and Skipstone).

SPEC *this*

[Anonymous Coward]

[posting as AC--think different]

1. The rumored G5 is a joke. No, bear with me. The numbers bandied about for the (illusory) G5 at 1.6 ghz are preposterous (1342 SpecInt2000 and 1364 SpecFP2000 -- ha!)

Given that SPEC CPU2000 v1.2 int_base numbers for a G4/867 under OS X 10.1 are roughly 320, a 1342 result on a G5/1.6 would be a truly...astonishing improvement.

Apple is a member of SPEC; it would be nice if they were to submit results on their hardware instead of sitting on them. But their membership does give me hope that they are concerned about performance on workstation loads, and will continue to improve.

Alan Cox isn't a hacker?

[Anonymous Coward]

and that drivers have to be written by hackers in their bedrooms (so to speak - I know that VA Linux, RedHat, and others have/had people working on drivers).

Alan Cox is employed by Redhat, but he's still a hacker sitting in his bedroom.

GNU

[Anonymous Coward]

Just pointing out that Apple Legal removed the GNU stuff from the 'Default System Only Install'. If you add the developer stuff, there's plenty of GNU. Just... Apple didn't want someone to say that any of the GNU software was 'relied upon in the base install'. (Where if they lost that lawsuit Apple'd be belly up.). Not so bad really. Fink + BSD ports system are working, gnu stuff everywhere :)

But Steve Jobs said

[javaaddikt]

that he was mapping out the human genome on a few G4's--his supercomputers on a chip--in his basement in his spare time and was scheduled to be finished in about 2003 and start a bio tech company. Oh, then he said that with the raging speed, and blazing performance of his mega-cool, and tantalizingly awesome G4, he already rendered all the animations to his next 284 movies Pixar will release in the next 1024 years last night while he was just "taking a dump." Sure enough! "Hot fscking damn" he said--"I'm getting bored--I think I'll calculate the position of Pluto in 3026--the year a complex simulation on his G4 told him Microsoft would see its demise. You see, I'm going to be cryogenically frozen and revive myself in 3026--that's the target date. That's the plan." Meanwhile, I've left Pixar in good hands and will will brainwash the youth of the planet with the films--laden with subliminal propoganda-- I just rendered and pave the way to my triumph. I will use the genome to create hunter-killer types that will go after Microsoft. When asked if he thought Gates had plans for cryogenic storage as well, only a soft audible grunt--aparantly some veiled explicitive or insult could be heard. He was noticibly angered. He then muttered something about using his G4 to find a new element or something.

Glass half full? Or half empty?

[sydbarrett74]

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. One can view a figure of 0.24% as a curse or a blessing. What if we chose the latter? That means there's huge room for growth. Microsoft has begun to realise that the OS market is largely saturated. Sure people upgrade from 95 to 98 to ME to 2000 to XP. But for the most part, the huge growth curve of, say, DOS 5.0 days is gone. That's why we see Microsoft diversifying *out* of operating system sales. This leaves a vacuum for OS's like Linux to fill.

Mac's will never take over Unix.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on! What serious unix user would want a desktop without a virtual window manager!

Talk about out to lunch. Mac has it's addicts.

They're not even interested in X11 applications. You should have seen the flak we got when we made a port of abiword to Xdarwin.

As for scientific computing, well maybe the odd laptop but not on desktops or the beowulf cluster.

Martin Sevior

Re:Mac's will never take over Unix.

[mrnick]

Comparisons like this are useless. A true comparison would be Linux to Solaris (or some other server OS) and Mac OS X to MS Windows XP.

Linux cannot compete in the workstation arena and Mac OS X cannot compete in the server arena.

I know many Linux users will argue the point that Linux is a strong workstation environment because of it's ability to be customized but this customization comes at the cost of ease of use and standardization which are the 2 main requirments of a usefull GUI.

DrVPN

Re:Mac's will never take over Unix.

[firewort]

Here's why-

Preface: I love AbiWord, and use it on Win and Linux.

XDarwin is a pain to set up, and a pain to set up rootless. It needs to be a simple installer, install to ONE and only one directory, so I can trash it easily, and work reliably. Updating it also needs to be easy.

AbiWord is great, but I wish it could use the Quartz/Aqua part of OS X that is native to OS X. The less things that require clunky old X-Windows, the better.

I'm a big advocate of AbiWord, installing it on every platform I use. I used to it write my M.A. thesis. On OS X, it's just too hard for 99% of users to get X-Windows properly up and running, and for what? A light Word Processor? Come ON!!

Get it to work with Quartz, you'll have a winner.

I'll switch to Windows before I'll buy from Apple.

[leereyno]

I'd rather have standard hardware based on interchangable parts and only be saddled with a proprietary OS than be stuck with proprietary hardware and a proprietary OS.

Apple is dead, they're just not broke yet. The only people they have left to blow their trumpet are the religious freaks. I don't know of any knowledgable person who likes the mac, let alone would want to use one, Unix-like kernel or not.

Lee

(another big Mac domain) TM McDonald

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the TM.

"grandma" can't install Windows any better..

[leereyno]

So grandma can't install Linux, well she can't install windows either.

Show me a group of people who can sucessfully install windows and all of the necessary drivers, and I'll show you a group of people who can also install Linux. Technical ignorance plagues the Windows world just as much as it does the Linux world, just ask anyone who does tech support. If systems didn't come with windows pre-installed the barrier to entry for it would be just as high as for Linux.

Lee

Re:"grandma" can't install Windows any better..

[TellarHK]

The comparison isn't Windows, it's OSX.

Re:"grandma" can't install Windows any better..

[RussGarrett]

I must say that the Mandrake installation is probably on a par with the Windows installation. The MacOS installation is probably my favourite, technically speaking. However, and I think many people make this assumption, the mere fact that it's easier to install doesn't mean it's easier to use. The user should not need to touch the CLI AT ALL in a proper GUI interface, although it should be there. MacOS X achieves this with flying colours. Linux distros do not. Windows achieves this most of the time :)

Linux needs a fairly substantial paradigm shift to move away from CLI installations and standardise on a package format which is widely accepted, yet simple to use. A system which negates the need to compile anything, automatically or otherwise, and can handle dependencies well.

Linux doesn't come at all close to how polished OS X is, and to a lesser extent Windows. It's a different league altogether.

Re:"grandma" can't install Windows any better..

[drsoran]

What do you mean "install Windows"? I'm sure my grandmother (god rest her soul) could have stuck the Dell recovery CD in the drive, rebooted, and followed the simple prompts to completely restore her system to factory condition. The point is, on major manufacturer computers there's almost always a recovery CD that does all the work for you. Why would they ever need to install Windows using the original Windows CD? Then you'd have to go and install all your drivers and applications. What a pain in the ass. Even *I* admit I'd rather use the recovery CD to recover my laptop than sit through a boring Windows install.

Re:"grandma" can't install Windows any better..

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

Recovery CD's are not hard to make for Linux.
It is just a chicken an egg market issue.

Ever heard of kickstart ? For RH installs at least.
Hardware Vendors could easily, completely
automate the install of hardware they ship.
To the point of a "one-click" installation that
does everything (all apps, as well as the OS.)

I rolled out 30 PC's with a proprietary app a
couple of years ago ('97). They used a recovery
floppy, because there was some host specific
tweaking required (not for hardware.) but the
rest of the install was a CD-R, which installed
everything, 30 minutes from blank HD to
running system. User interaction: "Press Return"

Google Zeitgeist

[sanity_slipping]

According to the Google Zeitgeist for August, Linux accounted for 1.8% of it's hits. Macintosh's had 4.18%, and Windows 98 held 54.34%.

I think Google is a better indicator than the Hitbox stats.

August Zeitgeist
--------

Re:"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux

[sakusha]

I work for a government weapons lab and have seen no great move to OS X. And we are the largest Mac site in the world.

Bullshit. You aren't even in the top 5, there isn't any government facility in the top 5. The largest Mac facility in the world is Disney Imagineering in Burbank CA. Disney has a contractual obligation with Apple to never reveal the extent of their Apple CPU purchases. I know this because I negotiated that contract, and I was their sales rep. But now I don't work there anymore so fuck the NDA.

Proprietary?

[Wyatt Earp]

Old, obsolete arguement against Macs.

IEEE-1394, USB, IDE, Ethernet, PCI, AGP.

The hardware isn't any more propietary than anything made by a PC vendor like IBM or Dell, and alot less proprietary than boxes from Compaq.

The core of the OS is BSD, it will run all those tools that are there for UNIX and Linux.

Old, tired arguement.

Re:Proprietary?

[leereyno]

You are right that the hardware isn't much more proprietary than what Dell, IBM, or Compaq are offering, but then I wouldn't buy any of those either. I've been building my own systems since Reagan was president and until I can mix and match my own mac system I'm not interested no matter what kind of OS macs are running.

The core of OSX is Mach, with a BSD userland. While it will run the stuff that is portable enough to compile on Linux and the *BSD's, I haven't seen anything that would suggest it will run things better.

In the end you've got proprietary hardware that is, lets face it, underpowered, with an OS that can only be said to be compatible with other breeds of Unix. That is not a compelling argument to me.

If Apple were to port OS-X to other platforms, such as x86, Alpha, Sparc, etc.. and it offered something in terms of either performance or usability that I can't get from Linux or *BSD, then I might be interested. But as long as the OS is tied to proprietary hardware with a lousy bang for your buck coefficient then its never going to be something I pay money to use.

The true strength of Linux and open source in general is that it puts you in the driver's seat. You decide what the system is going to be. That is on the software side of things. On the hardware side of things you have the ability to build your own system from parts you personally choose. With Macs you have traditionally had neither. Whether OSX gives you much power to choose I can't say, but I do know that you lose that power when it comes to the hardware. Thanks, but no thanks...

Lee

Re:Proprietary?

[uradu]

Ok, so show me a good source of third party components for building a complete generic Mac, including cases, motherboards, etc. Because, after all, tinkerers are still the crowd that frequents Slashdot and would object to the Mac mostly for its lack of third party components.

I've always liked the PPC architecture (I was pining for IBM to release their OS/2 for PPC stuff, but alas), and I was dragged to the PC kicking and screaming from the Amiga. But let's face it, I'll be damned before I switch from building my own high-end generic PCs to buying Apple's legendarily high-priced hardware.

-

Re:Proprietary?

[bacchusrx]

In the end you've got proprietary hardware that is, lets face it, underpowered...

You keep saying this, but, it doesn't make any sense. What, exactly, is so proprietary about Apple hardware?

As far as I understand it, they make a custom motherboard. That's about it. All the components that attach thereto are pretty "standard." Video card? AGP. Expansion cards? PCI. Memory? Standard SDRAM DIMMs. Storage? ATA. They've got USB, Firewire, Ethernet.

A PowerMac is about as standard as any PC; built custom or manufactured by Dell.

Unless you're using some phantom components that are universally standard in every circumstance, I don't see how your custom built PCs are any more "standard."

Macs ship with a proprietary OS, just as PCs are often shipped with one. That's about the extent of it.

bacchusrx.

Re:Proprietary?

[leereyno]

Where I come from the words "custom" and "proprietary" mean essentially the same thing. When I build a systme I can choose from a wide array of motherboards, cases, and other components. Later on I can upgrade any one of those components. Were I to buy a Compaq or a Mac, I would be stuck with a funky motherboard in a funky case. Were I to try and upgrade the system (other than simply augmenting it with more memory, new hard drives etc), I would be forced to cannibalize the old system for parts in order to build a new one. This is the bane of "brand name" computers. There are a few exceptions, such as Gateway. Whenever anyone asks me what kind of computer they should buy, I tell them to have someone build them one. If they are uneasy with that, I just tell them to buy a gateway. Any degree of component compatibility that macs current have is the result of the market forcing Apple's hand. I've got a quadra 700 here at home running NetBSD. Before that it was running System 7.5.3. When I wanted to add a CDROM drive I discovered that I had to hunt around on the net for hacked drivers because the standard cdrom extension looked for a proprietary tag in the CDROM's firmware, meaning that non-apple brand drives would not work. With the hacked driver my 24 speed teac worked just fine. The same was true with hard drives. I had to get a hacked formatting utility because the standard drive setup looked for, you guessed it, a tag in the drive's firmware. I suspect that even now Apple is pulling this kind of a stunt with these devices. If not I will be greatly relieved to hear it since I dread the day someone asks me to help them upgrade their G4 or iMac.

Never actually been to the third world, have you?

[Doktor Memory]

Having done a fair bit of legging about in China, Thailand and Cambodia, I'm afraid that the facts don't square with your optimism. I have never seen a computer in an asian country that was not running Microsoft Windows. Not in government offices, not in businesses, and certainly not in the corner internet cafes. I don't imagine that the situation is much different in South America, Africa or the Middle East.

Of course, whether those copies of Windows were paid for is a different question entirely, but probably not as important as your average slashdotter would suspect -- Gates and Ballmer aren't stupid, and they know damn well that if they turn a semi-blind eye to piracy of Windows in developing countries now, they can make bank when those countries finally have the resources to pay up on what will by that time be an unshakable monopoly.

Plus, not to be blunt or anything, but linux's foreign language support is laughably bad. Microsoft's entire product line (or close to it, and certainly all of the major packages) is available localized into Mandarin, Korean, Thai, Japanese, Tagalog, Arabic, Hindi and probably more. On a good day, AbiWord might get translated into German.

The triumph of cheap commodity hardware in the third world is, yes, inevitable, but that really implies nothing about Linux's odds of success there. Linux may be "free", but profit margins on software are almost infinitely elastic: "free and in English" will not necessarily beat "really cheap and in my native tongue."

Alot faster, and better than speedstep

[HanzoSan]

Its the new Pentium M series.

Its better than speedstep or so they say. As far as speed its faster than my Desktop which is 400mghz.

I tried an Imac and its definately faster than an Imac which is a G3 used in the Ibook.

So its definately faster than the Ibook. As for the powerbook, even if its the same speed or not faster, the powerbook is over $1500 more.

My stripped down dell has a much better screen

[HanzoSan]

Lets see my res is higher than the rest on my Desktop with XSGA+ and theres UXGA which is like 1600x1200 i believe, totally smokes the monitor on the power book.

The Powerbook has a better battery life but thats about it.

I have the 4100 series, your 8100 if you actually have that, would literally blow the powerbook out of the water in all areas except maybe battery life.

Word of wise

[Anonymous Coward]

You should better listen to the man his IQ 169 and he's clicking.
P.S. Mine is only 178 and so I'm still bashing

Re:BS

[OsamaBinLogin]

gimme a pc catalog. OK. The dell you got ... ok change that to a compaq. here's one for $1599, 1ghz. 14.1" screen. dvd/cdrw 128mb/20gb. 10/100 ethernet. Free printer. Mid-priced in its class.

Titanium for $2994, has 15.2" megawide screen. 512mb ram/30gb. Firewire port. DVD-ROM, oops. 10/100/1000 ethernet. Free Printer. Sleep works correctly. This is the top of the line mac.

Not the same beast.

OK here's a mac ibook, $1694. 600mhz. 128mb./20gb. 12.1" screen, 10/100 ethernet. dvd-rom/cdrw. firewire. free printer. Sleep works correctly. That's more like the compaq, and only $100 more. We're talking 7% more expensive for a Mac.

I'm having a hard time finding that 4.2ghz laptop. Can't even find a 1.7ghz pentium laptop. hmmm... Keep in mind that 1 powerpc mhz is about 1.5 or 2mHz for pentium. And your cutting edge speeds don't show up in laptops.

So...what?

[ballpeen]

OS X puts a cool GUI on top of Unix, right? Which is what Windows did to MS-DOS to compete with the Mac (or just get GUI), no? Which is what KDE and GNOME have been trying to do for years, correct?

So if Apple and MS can do it, why not the "open source community" - the same people, presumably, who've built the server layer of the entire modern Internet: Apache, Linux, BIND, etc. Not to mention Perl, MySQL, PHP. Whatever...

Apple sucks. They've conned "artists", basically, they have minimal market share with an influential group in computer/Net/design circles, which they parlay into stock market survival. But they ripped off millions, me included, by charging triple for their hardware, and pulling that off by designer packaging and marketing - a Scully strategy from the '80s. I started out using Macs for DTP, and flipped when I found out that A) I could get more choice for a third of the price in PCs, and, B) within a year or two Photoshop, Quark, etc, ported to PC, were for my purposes, identical. And the Mac GUI is not easier than Windows if you don't know either.

I'm not a programmer/nerd/geek, so I stick to Win98 'cause I started with GUI, not command line. But I do mainly Net stuff, for years, working remotely on Linux/Apache, etc, etc. So it's all one continuous thing to me, really: Win on my end, merging into Linux/Apache, etc online (like Telnet in from a Win app, but I'm operating a Unix shell...)... MS I believe is "evil" because they're a big corp, and by definition they're trying to trap their consumers within their proprietary model at all costs, keep growing, monopolize - they don't have an expiry date like replicants in Blade Runner, so that's their nature. So I know I could have a way cooler OS than Windows. But Win works.

I've had 98 for 2-1/2 years on one main machine, installing HUNDREDS of every sort of demo, shareware, junk, and it's never melted down, no OS reinstall. Crash, and it restarts! I can find anything for it. And I can even run ancient programs. Unlike Apple.

Of course, most of the s/w could be ported/duplicated in a minute, if there was a Linux (or any other) core effective desktop GUI package to control it all. I don't feel like Win is a choice, it's just the by far the best of a bad lot. I'm ready to jump...

So, Apple is true to form with OS X...if you buy gadgets, feel self-conscious using a Palm IIIx these days, have had and broken a VAIO, well, I'm sure OS X is cool... A gadget.

Otherwise, what's the big deal? It's why someone doesn't just get on with the desktop Linux packaging!!!!! What's the problem?

BTW, last StarOffice was slow, but the latest OpenOffice seems pretty peppy. Dunno how well the MS FILTERS work both ways, but it seems pretty well like an MS Office replacement already...

Re:So...what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise, what's the big deal? It's why someone doesn't just get on with the desktop Linux packaging!!!!! What's the problem? Same reason Eazel folded. There's no fucking money in it, that's why.

Oh please!!!

[HanzoSan]

What BS is this? When did you go to buy a dell?

Also the G4 600mhz is not faster than P3 1ghz.

Lastly, The 1 gig of ram thing, how as if you need 1 gig of ram ofr a laptop, and the powerbook doesnt come with 1 gig of ram either.

Ok lets see what I got.

A 14 inch screen (much better than your 12 inch)
combo drive, 256 megs of ram, AND 1+ghz processor.

Compare this to the Powerbook which has a 600mhz proccessor, 15" cinema scope? what res? MY SXGA+ monitor has a res higher than my desktop machine, and you can go even higher.

I paid $1400. I suggest you go back to the site and check your prices, things have changed.

I dont see any dell on that site over 2.5k, the 2.5k dell totally destroys the TiBook in every area, better processor, better monitor, more ram, (Tibook comes with 512 megs of ram)

Prove you arent biased, show us a link to the precise model, else I think you are fibbing.

Re:Oh please!!!

[raque]

This misses many of the points, and like many Mac users I'll point out the obvious first:

1)The Tibook is 1 inch thick and 5 pounds *WITH* the battery, the dell is 1.6 inches thick and over 6 pounds *WITH OUT* the battery. This is a big difference in size.

2)processor speed is a joke, your HD speed and graphics card make a more noticeable difference in any high end machine, PPC, Intel or AMD. Unless your grinding down massive files humans can't see these differences.

3)Why do people post screen resolutions when they talk about monitors? Color accuracy, now that is important, and can be checked. Screen resolutions are only useful when seenng how any OS chooses to draw the screen.

4)Macs can be more expensive, the dell is a butt ugly black slab, the Tibook is super cool. Yes, sexy costs. A lap dance from a super model will cost you more than a common stripper.

Re:Oh please!!!

[wdavies]

Hi,
Here's the DELL I was pointed to Latitude C400-- looks quite close -- but it comes with nothing for the $1800 base price. Sorry I can't grab a URL for a maxed out C400 -- just check the boxes yourself, and press update price. I think we are basically talking cross-purposes. No doubt you can get a maxed out chunky black box for $2500, but not a lightweight TiBook/VAIO style one. A lot of the extra cost is in the engineering to get it down that thin.

Follow the customization, give it 1 gig, a combo drive, a builtin wireless card etc. Delete XP, and put on cheapest M$ os, and take the 3 year warranty. Oh, and the disk should be set to 30Gig. It starts to add up. I don't know whether the -$200 for the 866 is
worth it, I would go with the 1.2ghz cpu anyway. That might outclass the G4 on my tasks (I dont have specialised code that would take advantage of the G4's //ization.

For Apple go here: Take the TOP END configuration Here, hope this works

Incidentally, you are working on old data. The high end TiBook is 667 mhz.

Winton

Sorry this is a late reply, out to LOTR for the second time.

Re:Oh please!!!

[Shanep]

Lastly, The 1 gig of ram thing, how as if you need 1 gig of ram ofr a laptop,

There are very compelling reasons to max out your RAM on a notebook computer:

1. 2.5" notebook drives tend to be slower than 3.5" desktop drives, so the RAM speed vs drive speed is much wider on a notebook than a desktop, meaning that any dependance on drive speed (say for swapping or re-getting something that could otherwise be cached), makes the notebook slower than the desktop. The speed gains of adding RAM are higher for notebooks than for PC's.

2. Those little 2.5" inch drives are expensive and have higher failure rates, they don't generally last as long as a desktop drive. With more RAM, there is less head movement due to caching, which can lead to longer drive life and...

3. less head movement = better battery session life.

I was sold on the i8000 until I saw the G4 TiBook. I am glad the TiBook can support up to 1GB RAM and when I get mine, that will be the first thing I upgrade it to.

and the powerbook doesnt come with 1 gig of ram either.

At least it is capable of supporting 1GB.

I will take more RAM over Mhz any day. I cringe when I see people complaining (at various work sites I attend) that their P3 750MHz Dell notebook is slow (and they demand an upgrade), when it only has 64MB RAM, so they get the latest machine which is only 30% quicker as far as CPU goes, yet has 256MB RAM, and they think the enormous speed gain was due to the quicker CPU. Blah. Of course, being executives, they're not interested in what I said about the cheap RAM upgrade, they want whats on the pretty web site.

the 2.5k dell totally destroys the TiBook in every area, better processor, better monitor, more ram, (Tibook comes with 512 megs of ram)

Destroys? The P3 1GHz is close to the G4 600MHz in the benchmarks I've seen. "Destroys" seems to be a school kid way of saying, "my PC is 15% quicker than yours!". I like the TiBook screen for what it is (wide screen), but I also like the i8000 screen and the TiBook is capable of supporting more RAM. "Destroy" is something a 2GHz Xeon does to a 4MHz 8080.

Prove you arent biased

You were'nt replying to me, though I can tell you, after 12 years with x86 (some of that repairing notebooks for NEC and DEC), am I much more impressed by what Apple is offering. They offer extreme stability and usability thanks to high quality hardware, limiting what hardware they support and their efforts of extending the super workhorse OS, BSD.

It's the package, the hardwareOS+app meld that works so well. After all these years putting up with x86, my next machine will be PPC. I will probably never buy another x86 again (besides SBC's I use for firewalls, etc, although I might look at PPC SBC's for them also).

Re:Oh please!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I can get a lap dance every night for the same price as your one lap dance from the supermodel. You'll be happy for one night and I'll be happy all year long. Nya nya. :-)

Re:Oh please!!!

[HanzoSan]

You should have gotten the dell INSPIRON not the lattitude!

Its not my fault you got a crappy model.

Re:Oh please!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I don't have an account yet, but I've never posted here before. Also the G4 600mhz is not faster than P3 1ghz. Well, it's a 667 G4, not a 600, and at least it doesn't "step down" the speed when you're on battery power or use a special, trimmed down, "mobility" version of the processor. Lastly, The 1 gig of ram thing, how as if you need 1 gig of ram ofr a laptop, and the powerbook doesnt come with 1 gig of ram either. Anyway, I'd like to point out that the high-end PowerBook at the Apple Store *does* come with 1 GB of RAM, and a 48GB hard drive that runs at 5400 RPM... among other things. It's $3599, or $3383 for students. see for yourself: apple store

Re:Oh please!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

yes - but you end up with a nasty little rash and your budget didn't cater for the subsequent trip to the clinic ;-)

Re:Oh please!!!

[mr100percent]

How do you base the CPU speed?
Gigaflops? The G4 wins
Photoshop? The G4 wins
Quake3? The TiBook wins over the dell laptop

The G4 has MULTIPLE altivec, meaning performance not unlike multiple processors when running calculations.

Re:Oh please!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuckwit. Latitudes are more expensive than Inspirons because of the build quality. Try deploying Inspirons in a business (no docking stations, fall to pieces inside 6 months, bunchafuckingcrap) and you'd change your mind soon enough.

Latitudes+Linux are fscking amazing pieces of kit.

cut/paste buffer sometimes doubles output

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but the cut/paste buffer sometimes doubles outputcut/paste buffer sometimes doubles output

Has windows changed? nope

[HanzoSan]

The Windows GUI has not changed since 1995.

The MAC Gui has changed just now, from the gui of the 80s it had for almost 10 years.

"that's your opinion, ok. but remember - in 2 years OSX and XP will have matured on their collective timelines. linux will have to mature twice as fast to even catch up to the current levels of usability if you're 2 year prediction is correct. i think that is unlikey."

Huh? Are you serious? They move at a much slower pace.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

4.2 GHz processsor? How do you work out the CPU speed comparison?

Gates/Jobs Connection!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering when someone might notice that. If OS X competes with Linux in any way, doesn't that explain why Bill Gates bailed out Apple?

goodbye!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have fun running Explorer and Office!
As for the "dictators" comment; I suggest
you look closely at the personalities and practices
of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates before you go wagging your finger at "Linux zealots". Have fun working
for those guys.

The OS that Amiga could have been!

[mrnick]

Comparing Linux and OS X is an exercise in futility! It's like comparing Apples and Penguins, they just are not comparable.

I recently purchased my first Macintosh. I never thought anyone would hear me saying that because I have been, for many years, a card-holding member of the "You SUCK, Mac haters club." So, what reformed me you ask? If I had to pick one thing it would be an open mind. During my Mac hating years my strongest supporting evidence that all Macintosh users were morons was the absence of a command line. I knew this even before being introduced to UNIX. My commodore 64 had a stronger command line than Apple! But that said I never had anything derogatory to say about their GUI. It is and has been known that Apple has the easiest to use GUI available. Ease of use is the driving factor behind having a GUI and any moron can use a Mac right?? Now enter UNIX unquestionable the strongest CLI available. So, combine the worlds strongest CLI with the easiest to use GUI how can you deny the strength in that union?

The only valid complaint one can argue against Apple now is the price of their equipment. I believe that this will change. If you look inside of G4 you will notice how similar it is to today's X86 platforms with ATX, IDE, PCI, etc. The attempt to open clone manufacturing of the Apple platform failed primary because from a hardware standpoint it was drastically different from what was being mass-produced but that's no longer true. The main reason that Apple stopped the production of Apple clones was that they did not want to have sub standard hardware to launch their OS on. Now with these factors mitigated I would not be surprised to see Apple give the clone concept another try.

Now I will attempt, once again, to drive home what I believe to main marketing problem that Linux has today. That problem is that Linux cannot currently compete in the workstation arena. It seems to me that most everyone on Slashdot is devote support of Linux as a workstation operating system instead of simply being a supporter of Linux. In marketing you emphasize the positive while trying not to shine light on the negatives. If Linux has one major negative right now it would be it's poor GUI. It's strong points include stability, cost, and function as a server. I would say that most people that taught Linux as a workstation OS are those people that believe that the power of the GUI is its ability to be customized. This goes to the mindset of this group of people whom I believe are primary made up of techies, geeks, etc. They are superimposing the functionality of the CLI with that of the GUI. When in fact the reason the first GUI was created was to make the OS easier to use. So, if you create a GUI that offers greatly expanded customization at the expense of ease of use you have lost site of the concept a GUI.

If you want a good comparison to Linux I would match it up to say Solaris or some other primarily server OS. In choosing something to compare with OS X I would suggest looking towards Microsoft. XP and OS X are the closest modern workstation operating systems that I can think to directly compare. I say modern because the closest thing to Mac OS X that I have EVER seen would have to be Amiga. It's a given that it would be an unfair comparison due to the fact that Apple has today's technology to build on but if you have ever worked on an Amiga and sit down at an OS X machine you will instantly recognize the similarities. Mac OS X is the Operating System that Amiga could have been.

Well, there it is a RANT from a reformed Mac Bigot!

DrVPN

That study was stupid.

[himi]

In vi:
:%s/e/|/g
:%s/|/e/g

That runs almost instaneously on an arbitrary sized file - I'd like to see someone with a mouse do /that/.

Saying that using a CLI is slower than using a GUI is stupid - it's not that one is better/faster than the other, it's which is better suited to the task at hand. The major difference is that the GUI requires less remembering and more recognising in order to use - this makes it easier to start with, and superior for some tasks, but it /doesn't/ make it faster in general.

I've devoted many hours over the last few years to learning to use emacs (my choice of programming environment). I can remember most of the commands I use regularly, and I can type them in without having to actively think of the commands - I just think /what/ I want to do, and let my muscle memory do the work.

You might think a modern GUI is the be all and end all of interfaces, but I'm afraid that's a very blinkered view. Personally, I'll stick to using the interface that I find best for my needs - whether that's mousing around happily in mozilla, or chording away madly in emacs.

himi

Re:That study was stupid.

[tdelaney]

:%s/e/|/g
:%s/|/e/g

You are forgetting one simple thing - these studies are performed over a large number of tasks that are considered "common" in a single session of using the computer.

Now, obviously if all you are doing in a single session of using the computer is text substitution, and assuming you know how to use the CLI and GUI equally well, using the CLI is likely to be more efficient for this particular task. (I presume that the above is a text substitution, but I don't use vi, so I wouldn't know.)

OTOH, you may well find that it is faster to fire up a GUI search-and-replace app which has the various options as checkboxes (case-insensitive, etc) so you can concentrate on the syntax of the regex and not have to try to remember the syntax for the options required to make the expression work.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a mac user, don't try to make sense of it, just BOW DOWN TO THE MIGHTY STEVE JOBS and realize that you will never ever ever ever ever show mac zealots that their silly comparisons are skewed and intended only to make the mac look better. They'll never give up, so don't get started. I mean, how can you even think about buying a laptop without GHz ethernet? It's absolutely necessary. And medium high-end PCs always cross to low-end unexpandable macs. Starting to catch on?

You are the religious freak!

[mrnick]

I too used to be a member of the "You SUCK, Mac Haters Club".. it's strong religion because of all the facts to back it up.

But, an inteligent person would have an open mind to reevaluate the situation when circumstances change. You should stick your head inside of a G4 sometime you would be suprised at the similarities.. ATX, IDE, USB, PCI, etc.. Lay a PC motherboard next to a G4 motherboard and most people would not be able to tell them apart!

Also, Mac OS is not Unix-Like.. it IS UNIX. Unless you think BSD is not a UNIX?

With the information you are relying on to support your conclusion I would be amazed if you knew any "knowledgable" people.

DrVPN

Re:Never actually been to the third world, have yo

[Linuxathome]

Plus, not to be blunt or anything, but linux's foreign language support is laughably bad.

Foreign language support is dependent on the base of users in that country. I know that many Chinese developers are using linux and hence, the Chinese language support isn't "laugably bad." A year ago, slashdot ran a discussion about China's own brand of distribution for linux (named, no joke, Red Flag...or was it Red Code, which is not to be confused with Code Red...well I know the word Red was in it). This effort was to develop an alternative to Microsoft's OS, which they distrusted, being from a US company and all. Bill Gates' new licensing practice for XP will slowly squeeze some users in these countries, making it more difficult to pirate the OS and it's a sure bet to say that many of them will look to free software options. You've traveled in the asian countries, I see, but how about the rest of the world? Brazil is another country, that I know of, that has decent language support and a substantial base of linux users and developers. The bottom line is, to argue that foreign countries will not adopt linux merely because of bad language support is an inappropriate statement. You are not giving the hackers, coders, programmers in those countries nearly enough credit to be able to roll out their own brand of linux--are we in the developed countries so high and mighty that we assume developing countries can't make it without us? Sure, they may not be using the latest and greatest OS technology, but are they using the latest and greatest hardware also?

Can I get an AMEN!

[mrnick]

One of the points of swayed me into buying Apple/Mac OS X was the availability of MS office on that platform. And PLEEEEAZe don't point at Star office because there is NO comparison there.

DrVPN

Re:Can I get an AMEN!

[Archie Steel]

And PLEEEEAZe don't point at Star office because there is NO comparison there.

You obviously haven't tried StarOffice 6.0...it's a completely adequate replacement for MS Office. It is MUCH better than version 5.2, which was kind of crappy. Perhaps the eye candy on SO 6.0 isn't quite as neat as MS office on OSX but, really, once you've used the software for a while, do you still give a &$%! about the eye candy?

More IGNORANCE

[mrnick]

I use a logitech cordless optical USB wheel mouse on OS X that has COUNT them 2 buttons (not counting the wheel button) and all the buttons/wheel works EXACTLY as a windows user would expect.

"I've not tried MacOS X yet"

Do you people even know what a fact is or do you just spew useless info out of your ass straight onto your keyboard?

DrVPN

Three things:

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Software availability
2) Cost
3) Learning curve
Those are the iron rules of mass market consumer electronics. The first two are more heavily weighted than the last. It doesn't matter if you are discussing VHS vs Beta, Cassette vs. DCC or DAT, Mac vs. DOS in '87 or Mac vs Linux vs XP in '02.

Mac advocates should have learned this back in the '80's when the Mac OS and hardware was technologically superior in every way imaginable yet MS/Intel kicked Apple's ass.

It's not the GUI, stupid, it's the apps and the cost.

Furthermore, it is somewhat questionable that a workstation class desktop system will continue to be relevant at all outside of specialized environments like engineering and graphic design. With Linux poised to become the worlds leading embedded OS, the usability and application availability issues evaporate.

the actual information on PowerBook resolutions

[moof1138]

from

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=8 82 12

* Support for dual display and video mirroring: Millions of colors on the built-in display and an external display at up to 1600 by 1200 pixels

* Support for a single external display: Millions of colors on a single external display at up to 1920 by 1440 pixels

Re:the actual information on PowerBook resolutions

[HanzoSan]

Thats EXTERNAL and SUPPORT FOR.

Lets see, my dell internal display IS 1600x1200 and support for an External is 3000+x2000+

Re:the actual information on PowerBook resolutions

[Anonymous Coward]

when you reduce the rez on tft screens it doesn't look great - even on a Mac. i could not use a 14 or 15 " screen at 1600 by 1200 because a lot of text ends up naturally too small to read comfortably. 1152x768 on a 15" screen is perfect for prolonged use, whether it is writing code or trying to use palettes in photoshop/quark &c.. ergo The Ti PBook strikes the perfect balance of rez and legibility at that screen size. That's just one reason why I use one and don't worry about those who cite 1600x1200 on a laptop as a good thing.

http://www.perth2.com/~netwerk/haxor.html

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot seems to become more and more biased towards linux by the day.

and btw, yes that url is a joke. i got bored, and became inspired by linux idiot #54353463463 trying to tell me that linux is unix, and bsd is a type of linux, and that linux is 3l33+

It's got the balance of Yin and Yang.

[cuteface]

I got my first view of the new OSX when one of my
colleague brought an iBook recently. I must admit
it has a few issues yet to iron out such as

1) lack of apps that fully support the new OS
2) the GUI is a resource gobbling monster.
3) there was one or two strange glitches like the Dock
refusing to appear once after IE clashed.
Hmmm...may that's M$ problem not Apple's fault.

Anyway, i have been a Linux fan for something like
2 or 3 years...i only use Linux at home now ;-)
Sometimes, i really want to tear my hairs
out whenever i wonder when Linux would
get a piece of delectable and exquisite GUI as OSX.
Well, not that i've got a right to complain
as i have not contribute anything to the community.
....but still....i like to indulge in my fantansies ;-P

You're wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

if you think they want linux people. At 0.24% YOU DON'T MATTER!

not a P3 but a P3 mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

your 1 gigahertz Pentium is not a Pentium III, it's a Pentium III Mobile. it's not the same thing. the CPU's in Apple laptops are the line of CPU's that are used in the desktop. and be care full about CPU speed comparisons. a lot depends on you application and for mine a G4 gets the job done first.

Re:not a P3 but a P3 mobile

[Alan Partridge]

I AM a Mac zealot, but you're wrong here. The desktop Powermacs use the MPC 7450 CPU (or MPC 7451) whereas the mobile machines are fitted with the MPC 7440 (or MPC 7441). Thus far, the G4 series has seen the MPC 7400, 7410, 7450, 7440, 7451 and 7451 chips.

Re:not a P3 but a P3 mobile

[gig]

> I AM a Mac zealot, but you're wrong here.
> The desktop Powermacs use the MPC 7450 CPU
> (or MPC 7451) whereas the mobile machines are
> fitted with the MPC 7440 (or MPC 7441). Thus far,
> the G4 series has seen the MPC 7400, 7410, 7450,
> 7440, 7451 and 7451 chips.

The guy's point is that a PowerBook G4 has a "real G4" in it, whereas Pentium Mobiles are seriously crippled. A desktop G4 runs about 15 watts, while a notebook G4 runs about 10 watts. A desktop PIII runs about 50 watts, while a notebook PIII runs about 20.

P4's are in the 60-70 watt range, same as Athlons. The low-power and heat of the G4 is why Apple's desktop boxes can power the display, FireWire, two independent USB busses, AirPort, and still have four empty PCI slots and room for four hard drives all on one power supply. With an Intel box, half your power supply and cooling is just for the CPU.

Linux is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember this well: the BSD ppl have a secret card that will kill linux as a desktop. Wait and see >:).

Re:Has windows changed? yes

[Anonymous Coward]

The Windows GUI has not changed since 1995.

On Win2K it has changed marginally but in the right places. They got it pretty much right in 1995.

XP on the other hand is much different. You do yourself no favours by remaining so ignorant.

What a bunch of crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how the article states "Windows and Apple have 98% web browsing share" - yeah, like Apple adds any more than a couple percent to Windows 90% plus. It could've just as easily have been stated (while remaining equally misleading) as "Windows and Linux have 95%".

I also like the way he states "Engineers are abandoning it left and right" - says who? You? Where's the facts to support that? I'm an engineer and the only Apple's I see are the ones used by the attendants at the trendy corner coffee shop. I've never even heard of EDA tools in my neck of the woods for that platform. 'Engineers adopting Apples en masse'... Yeah, if you say so...

Re:What a bunch of crap

[netwerk]

try Windows and Linux have 90.2%

Re:Never actually been to the third world, have yo

[Doktor Memory]

I know that many Chinese developers are using linux and hence, the Chinese language support isn't "laugably bad."

Really? So you mean that there is a version of linux out there in which every single last configuration file in /etc has been translated into properly idiomatic Putonghua and implemented in big-5 encoding? And all of the major system daemons (init, inetd, syslogd, cron, etc) have been updated to parse big-5 input correctly? I would very much like to think that this is true, but I suspect that it is not.

Being able to display Chinese characters in GTK+ or QT windows and widgets is not the same thing as top-to-bottom localization. And "developers are using linux" is a far cry from "linux is in shape for use by the general population."

You've traveled in the asian countries, I see, but how about the rest of the world? Brazil is another country, that I know of, that has decent language support and a substantial base of linux users and developers.

I'm not sure that I'd consider Brazil to be a third-world country. In any case, the post I was responding to was predicting something much more momentous than just having a "substantial base" of linux users -- he was asserting that linux would inevitably triumph over Windows in third-world markets, something that hasn't happened in Brazil any more than in China, despite the substantially easier task of localizing linux for Portugese use than for Chinese.

Re:I'll switch to Windows before I'll buy from App

[davechen]

Damned mac-hating idiot. I hate the "macs are for morons" narrow-minded attitude. I have a ph.d in computer science and I use macs. I do research in computer graphics and medical visualization on my Mac, along with my linux box and my 20 processor SGI.

So go screw yourself.

dave

Over to the dark side...

[CyberBry]

Well, I admit it, I've moved over to the dark side. Last year, I distinctly remember teasing a coworker who used a Mac - I though they were pretty... pretty useless.

However, I started reading more and more and about OS X - as an ex-Linux user gone FreeBSD, I was very anxious to see what they'd done with it. So I went out, got myself a new iBook (not the coloured ones, the new white ones) with some OS X, and I have to say, I'm a believer. Now all my friends tease ME for use a Mac, but 5 minutes with OS X, and they shut up.

The GUI is incredibly nice looking and powerful, but on top of all the user friendliness that makes using the computer just a tad easier/quicker/nicer, there's a console, which saves me the window I usually have to one of my BSD boxes when I'm running Windows. It's basically the OS I've always wanted.. the power and functionality of Unix/BSD, with the user friendliness and ease of use of a Mac or Windows machine.

Can you Windowsites compile bash on YOUR machine? :p

Mod this up -- his last point is the best

[twilight30]

'As long as there are available users they'll make their own determinations about what is obsolete'

I started on a Mac, many years ago. I started using Linux five years ago, when I began to despair of having to use Win95 and x86 hardware. It was manna from Finland to me.

While I don't deny that there is a certain mental relief in 'just having the equipment work' as many Mac users find with OS X, I will never go back to that platform. Too expensive, too weird, too niche.

If Linux desktop users keep plowing the furrow, the rest will come, eventually. I know this has been said many times over the years, but the workable, pretty desktop is just about here already. The advantage is, barring hardware failures, we'll be using these for a lot longer than most other OS users, regardless. It won't be dependent on the OS.

Re:I'll switch to Windows before I'll buy from App

[leereyno]

"So go screw yourself"

I'd expect more from someone with your education.

Offtopic, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

here's another explanation for the stats:
An average Windows user will need about 5 crashes, and up to 7 other reboots and/or restarting IE to read your average web document. If we set that number to 12 (worst case), Windows' 90% market share will go to:
(100 * 90 * 12)/(90 * 12 + 10)
Which is approximately equal to 99.08%.
This will, needless to say, skew the results a little bit.

Re:Afterthought?

[willardj]

Yeah I understand it is opensouce utils ported to NT, I meant to say you still dont get a great unix experience with Cygwin. You cant see/kill/manipulate NT processes for example (Correct me if Im wrong).With osx the command line is incredibly powerful/integrated

Really my only problem with NT (aside from that I dont like MS in general) is the weak command line.

Not so, dear Watson.

[ljaguar]

I've got pentium II 233 Mhz on W2k that cuts the job very nicely. According to MS, the machine is barely supposed to run W2k. Disable all the flashy crap, and it's very very usuable. It's not a linux thing.

Anything below that system, even in linux, would be very flakey in GUI. I have pentium 166 on Linux, and even in windows maker, GUI won't work well. Of course, it's a closet server.

Re:Not so, dear Watson.

[Anonymous Coward]

What GUI are you talking about ? Agreed, KDE will be slow on that thing but it's not too terribly fast on more recent systems either. But if you try windowmaker that's quite fast even on an older machine.

Re:Not so, dear Watson.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a moron? Did you read his post? He said even in "windows maker" which means windowmaker.

Re:Not so, dear Watson.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you don't know how to set it up. I've been running a Cyrix 150+ for a long time, and it performs quite respectably with WindowMaker. Your GUI issue isn't the problem of your hardware.

Re:Not so, dear Watson.

[aussersterne]

I run windowmaker on a 486/33 laptop with 16MB RAM and 8-bit color depth and it works great and is completely stable. Are you sure you know how to configure a Linux system? Are you running all six million services that Red Hat turns on by default? Do you have backing store or save-unders or something like that on?

Re:Not so, dear Watson.

[ljaguar]

I never sais unstable. (Ok, I said flakey, but) WinMaker itself is usuable. Like I said, it's a very small webserver. I don't use X all that much, as you can imagine. Only times I do is when I have to use the web for a sec. That's Opera. That is slow. In fact, practically most of the apps for X runs slow. I have no idea what you use on that 33Mhz machine, but as long as it's not a console, I bet it's slow.

lintel?

[Suppafly]

"I'll run it on my Athlon or not at all" mindset of current Lintel hardware owners.

Doesn't Lintel imply linux+intel .. AMD isn't really == intel.. atleast not last time I checked.. AMD chips aren't even intel clones anymore and require different motherboards than intel chips.

it doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

here is what i think about macs, no matter how good the hardware is, or how advanced OSX is, if a person doesn't want to use them, they won't. even if apple did drop the price, alot of people still wouldn't want one, it's not about how good the product/price is. it's all about opinions, even if they make no sense or are not accurate. i know many people that just hate apple and it's products for no reason. i'm a MacOSX user, and it rocks my socks. but then again, that is just my opinion.

Like many others ...

[TheViffer]

I would love to give OSX a run for the money as my main desktop OS .. but the hardware .. gawd .. health insurance, dental insurance, 401K contributions, heating bill, groceries, gas money, mortgage payment ... or the Mac ... hummm.

If you take the current G4 733 setup ($1699), and consider what the "guts" cost, your going to end up paying about $1100-1200 for a case, motherboard, cpu and OS .. thats just insane. For $1100 I could put togethor one hell of a Linux box.

Re:BS

[Juanvaldes]

The Titanium has a DVD/Cdr as well, not just a DVD. And where they hell did 4.2 Ghz come from? Simple slips like that ruin your argument and credibility.

Pretty good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I'd love OS X on an x86, it's not going to happen.

That aside, he's almost dead on with the idea that the days of Linux as a desktop entity are numbered.

They never began.

KDE is trying to copy the Microsoft desktop. This is fine and well, and seems a noble goal - until you realize the fact that there's plenty of MS users who *don't* *like* the Microsoft desktop.

Enter Gnome, E!, and others.

Usability is somewhere far beyond for them.

Yet the problem itself isn't really with the windowmanagers/desktops themselves (Though I think we'd all like a 'better X than XFree86'..)..

It's with other software.

Where's the video software? Most knowledgeable MS users I know won't go near RealPlayer, and rightly so. So where's the rest? The little that's availible isn't enough.

Where's the browser? IE blows the living crap out of Netscape, and its alternatives, I'm sorry to say.

Where's the office suite? "Coming along." Coming along doesn't cut it.

Sound, I think, is done in terms of seperate utilities. Even mixing so I can have my ICQ client make a little 'ding' while I listen to an mp3 is here.

Same with graphics - we've got the gimp. And don't give me that 'It's not Photoshop!' crap - the average user doesn't utilize more than half the options availible in Photoshop. For the average user, the gimp is possibly *too* much.

Oh, I'm well aware of the fact that the majority of open source/Linux projects are done by people in their spare time. And, frankly, I'm content with Linux. Quite content, even if I have to boot into Windows to view a video now and then, or visit a certain site.

However, Linux can't dare to oppose anything in terms of the desktop.

Face it, people, Linux isn't going to 'rule the world'. Hell, it's never been about ruling the world.

Then how come I don't know anyone

[Anonymous Coward]

that's switched to OS X except my brother
and my brother in law?

I know 12 people that have switched to Linux
(I helped 3 of them with the changeover)
as their main OS with winblows as a backup
for a few specific apps.

Heck.. I even live in a town with less than 6,000
people. We have 10Mbit wireless available
as well as dsl. (no cable companies close enough
for cable modem) There are a total of 9 Mac
users. There used to be 11 but one moved and
the other switched to PC-winblows (go figure).

I kinda like OSX.. but uhh.. I really don't see
myself going out and buying a Mac.. just to run it.

Re:Never actually been to the third world, have yo

[ljaguar]

I'm from Korea. I know this first hand. Sorry to break it to ya, but the parent post is right. Everybody in Korea (except few who are geeky enough) use Windows, Korean version no less. There are actually korean linux distros out there, based on red hat. It just doesn't compare. The facts are facts, and you lost. MS has the same, if not bigger, monopoly in Korea. Even more in china, naturally. It doesn't matter what your reasoning is. The facts are just indisputable. So if you don't know the facts, just shut up and don't speculate. God damn couch scholars.

Uh..

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're "crashing when you open 4 or 5 windows" then you should TROUBLESHOOT YOUR BOX instead of blaming the OS.

I've got a beige G3 right here. Haven't had any problems with MacOS X installing on it - WITH SCSI hardware. With a Voodoo 3 2000 in it. With an OrangeMicro USB/Firewire card. Only issue i had was no drivers for the 10/100bT NIC.

Re:Have Linux evangelists really stooped so low?

[ablair]

Yeah, I've never seen a "BSD is dying" post here on Slashdot from anyone pro-Linux. Talk about kicking the underdog.

Why don't we all just get along?

Popular; therefore Good

[extrasolar]

This is a good article. I appreciate its depth and its honesty. The reasons for OSX become a real player (and better player) in the desktop market are distinct and clear. And perhaps this article is right. GNU/Linux may not be a real contender for a majority of desktop users.

But reading the article, behind every statement said is the assumption "popular; therefore good". Now don't get me wrong, its not a bad assumption. We all know what advantages being popular have. Popular platforms get better hardware support, get more software, are better supported, and typically get better press. It often means that using software is no longer an uphill battle.

But such an assumption has its flaws as well. Its of course important for owners of intellectual property to own popular propery. Like businesses such as Apple and Microsoft. So Apple users are constantly watching for Apple software to become more popular and thereby ensuring the livelyhood of the software they use.

But what happens when intellectual property doesn't mean much? Thats the idea behind the copyleft. And that is what happens with GNU/Linux. The assumption "popular; therefore good" isn't so easily applied. Look at the loss of Eazel? Its obviously sad what happened to such a noble business (and perhaps too noble) but their software is still being improved upon. Its still part of the greater whole.

Something the article mentioned that I'd like to offer a counterpoint to is the idea that when there are less users of open source software, development slows down. But if you look at the new users of GNU/Linux--often they aren't developers. Many of them don't know what channels to offer bug reports. The core developers often won't abandon their projects (or maybe I am wrong?). And if you haven't notice, it is still these core developers who put in the most significant work into a majority of free software projects.

Another fault of the axiom "popular; therefore good" is the qualification of desktop environment. A desktop is good if it is easy to use. It is easy to use if more people are able to be productive in the environment. If more people are able to be productive in the environment, its reasonable to say that more people would use the software and it becomes more populare. Popular; therefore good. And we come full circle.

So then you see numerous rants about the average user who typically means that if you appease this user, you would appease a majority of users. And this, in itself, is good. But it would be another rant altogether about the myth of the average user. But my point is that free software hackers perhaps shouldn't be so desperate for users. Perhaps it is enough that the software is good in other more technical ways like efficiency and interoperability. When you see people advocating GUIs around command-line tools you must imagine me thinking "what a warped perspective!" Somehow there is this belief that the interface of a program is more worthwhile than its function. And as we have already seen, this is from the axiom "popular; therefore good" !

So when you consider the greatness of operating systems, when you take away the assumption "popular; therefore good" you add a completely new dimension to its judgement.

But I just had an enlightenment...how this sort of follows ethics. While any sense of morality may seem inappropriate when talking about software, instead consider a judgement of merit. The axiom "popular; therefore good" could be said to follow the utilarian philosophy "the greatest good for the greatest number of people". Consider cases of the egoist philosophy "satisfies my own needs; therefore good"; the virtue philosophy "allows for a better character (you can share it, copy it, make you a better programmer, cause you to think more); therefore good" -- perhaps there are more relations.

I should provide a conclusion to this ramble---after continuing to read from digression to digression. Even though I haven't made any real solid points here and my logic is perhaps flawed, hopefully I have successfully offered a different way of judging software systems. But not following "popular; therefore good" you learn that perhaps GNU/Linux may not be in such a bad position as you might think.

Try Windows Maker and GNUstep crap (n/t)

[ljaguar]

nt

Once again...

[wedg]

...the best comparison for Linux is: Linux vs. Nothing. Because Linux is not about Monopolizing the Desktop Market, or Monopolizing the Server Market, or Monopolizing, Occupying, Infiltrating, or doing anything else to any other Market. Linux is a free, hobbyist OS. It started that way, and will always be just that.

Why? Because that's what Linus created it as. I use it because I like it. If you don't like it, that's fine. If you do, great!

Isn't that what it's all about?

Re:Once again...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's about crushing the evil capitalist pig-dog Bill Gates and his disgusting minions of enslaved zombie programmers.

You are either with us or against us. Those who harbour the evil-doers of Microsoft are just as twisted and guilty as the Evil One himself. Steve Jobs and Miguel deIcaza, that includes you. Be assured, the Might and Fury of Linux will rain down Hellfire upon the sinful users of Microsoft software and there will be no peace until every single last user is properly turned away from the Darkside of the Force, and converted to our Cause.

There is war going on, and it is not in the hills of Afghanistan, or in the streets of Kandahar; Nay, this war is taking place in the homes of every True and Free American. It is the War of the Desktop. There can be only One. True Believers know the Truth. They know that the time has come and that Linux is the One True OS. No longer will our kind be relegated to the backrooms of corporate IT, collecting dust and serving HTML created in Microsoft FrontPage. Today is our day, and tommorrow is the future, and the Future is LINUX.

If you don't support Linux on the desktop, and you just want to use it as a hobby, perhaps you should just stick with your MAC OSX, hmm? Your fickleness is what is hurting the Movement.

Re:BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that he somehow thinks that the powerpc uses a different unit of measurement for frequency, as somehow it is actually 1.5 times that of a pentium.

StarTux is Wrong

[ablair]

Apple people don't "keep going on" about killing Linux off. A lot of posts here such as yours seem to try and make it look that way, though. If you'd even read the article, you'll know that while the author does suggest the possibility that OSX is the "new Linux", he also criticises the 0.24% Linux statistics and additionally says "even if Apple succeeds in its goal of doubling its market share, there are still going to be plenty of PCs around to support the Linux platform."

All in all, the article is not Linux-hostile at all, and much of the Mac community looks upon Linux *BSD and other Open Source 'alternative' systems amicably. Why you seem to want to paint them as anti-Linux is beyond me; perhaps you are sensitive somehow.

Re:StarTux is Wrong

[StarTux]

Yeah re-read it again during cold light of day and I did get a lot wrong, but I think that there is a good chance that Mac OSX may in fact create more users who want to try Linux. Plenty of people use Windows and Mac, so maybe, just maybe some will think about using Linux too.

Matt

LONG TERM of MacOSX v Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok.. This is the truth of it. Linux will last because of the nature of truly being opensource. Macs have better interface but will never be truly opensource. If you check under the hood on a mac you can see the quirks and proprietary bullshit already in place. Linux has none of that going on. So, linux won't offer a smooth user interface, but will have great software that is tried and true. I own both I use both, and for a server you won't beat linux, for a quasi server apple will do, just make sure you learn NetInfo.. Uggh..

and Yes, I am a Coward and being anonymous is as good as taking a dummp on president bush's plans to revitalize the sucking economy, while visiting his bro in florida talking about the election while having their servents serve them tea and cakes. Long live the american rich.. (used to be there darlins)R

Re:LONG TERM of MacOSX v Linux

[FooBarney]

"... being anonymous is as good as taking a dummp on president bush's plans to revitalize the sucking economy, while visiting his bro in florida talking about the election while having their servents serve them tea and cakes ..."

In addition to being Christmastime, it's apparently Long Weird Analogy Week.

Who knew?

Too many variables with Linux

[Aqua OS X]

I love linux, but there are way to many hardware and software variables for it to ever become a good consumer OS. Consumers do not want to deal with different distros, supported (or not supported) hardware/software, different (and typically complex) installs, yada yada yada. Lets get real here, a lot of distributers and hardware manufacturers are going to have to agree to some realistic consumer oriented standards before linux is able to become a possibility in the consumer market. No doubt, the linux community has linux has done a great job at standardizing certain technological foundations, but that is only one slice of the pie.

Buzzworthy Bullshit

[Rogain]

Anyone using the phrase "not ready for Prime Time" go Die. Get a new buzzword, you're fucking stupid lamer. I'll install OSX when I can apt-get dist-upgrade it from debian.org (ie NEVER). Live Free Or Die!

Re:Buzzworthy Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is not ready for Prime Time.

*shit-eating grin*

Microsoft == Apple

[logout]

It might sound strange, but I am talking about Microsoft Office on the Mac.

Would it have been possible for Mac to have a solid user base had it not been for Internet Explorer for Mac and MS Office for Mac? Think about a few years ago when Jobs came back to Apple: Apple's sales were dwidling, and MS is attacking Apple with the *lazy* support for its Office and Internet Explorer product.

In my opinion, the real power of MS is its Office product combined with Windows. The interesting thing is that Apple decided to jump on this monopoly, without harming Apple's hardware sales. Jobs agreed to Gates that Apple would drop Netscape broswer from its Macs and Gates agreed to support Mac platform in return. It might sound strange, but Apple is an important part of MS office monopoly: MS is earning market share and Apple is earning hardware sales. Who will stick with Mac if he must use old-fashioned Netscape and old versions of MS Office on his Mac?

Luckily or not for Linux people, Apple seems to have no intention to port its OSX to x86 hardware. It would have been a disaster for KDE or Gnome project if Aqua was ported to x86 without its source open to public. Everybody would be complaining that closed source Aqua is killing KDE and Gnome. But the reality is that a user must buy a Mac hardware to run OSX. Personally, I would love to buy a new laptor from apple but I would never buy a desktop from apple. it's simply too expensive. Linux user base is insulated from Mac OSX influence in some way with its large portion of x86 users.

In addition to that, MS won't allow Apple to be a solid competitor in the operating system market with OSX. OSX has the power to kill, or have a competition with, the almighty Windows. But MS already has a strategy to kill Apple in reply when Apple surfaces as its competitor: just drop supporting IE and Office for Mac. Apple has another reason not to port its OSX to the x86 platform. Not only it kills its hardware sales but also it will provoke a war with MS in the operating system market.

For this reason, Linux people are separated from either Windows or OSX market. Now there is no other way for Linux communities than to continue to work on KDE and Gnome project; running OSX on x86 hardware, even running Aqua on Linux, is a foolish dream that cannot be realized in the future.

However, this will turn out to be a good thing for Linux, including KDE and Gnome project. Now they have another good desktop software example, and they are secured from the attack from OSX. I am glad to wait and see what will be happening in Linux desktops in near future.

Making enemies?

[TheInternet]

Why do Apple people keep going on about how they will kill Linux off?

When you say "Apple people" you make it sound like employees of the company, which isn't the case.

poor Apple will have to find out just what they are dealing with is not a corporation, but a very large evolving user community

I think they're familiar with the concept. Their software team has a long history with Unix software. Jordan Hubbard works for Apple. They also have several open source projects going.

- Scott

Jobs Ain't Perfect

[krmt]

Don't forget all of Jobs' mistakes.

He brought in Scully, who wound up having him fired anyway.

His first baby was the Lisa, if you recall. We all know how well that one did. Only when he got kicked off of Lisa did he take up Macintosh. Raskin deserves a lot of credit there.

He insisted that the original Mac have only one floppy and 128k of RAM, both of which made it almost useless. He also had these grand delusions of how well the original Mac was selling, and made up his own projected figures and treated them as real. This helped precipitate his firing.

While I'm on that one, he didn't want the 3.5" floppy at all. The original engineers literally had to hide the sony representative selling the things in the closet when Steve popped up unexpectedly. The team saved his ass there.

Jobs didn't have color in that first Mac. The Mac II really sold a lot because of the color.

No games originally. These new Macintosh things are serious machines. He didn't fight this one at all.

No development environment free until OSX. This sort of thing stifled a lot of free/sharware that could have really helped things out. Thank god for Bill Atkinson and Hypercard!

The G4 cube.

Not that Jobs' return hasn't done great things for the company, but I think one of the things he's learned is to leave all the technical stuff to Avie Tevanian, and just run the show. The man isn't a saint (stole some money from Woz in the early days too) and he doesn't have a crystal ball. There's no guarantee he'll maintain his lead, and there's no guarantee that his ego won't push everyone with a mac in a direction they shouldn't be going. And if that happens, or if he leaves, then you're up a creek again. It's Ok though, Linux will run on all those old Macs that cost a fortune to upgrade.

OS X is everything that linux couldn't be

[ShmakDown]

OS X is awsome!

It may not convince many people to switch their main home/work stations, but the power that OS X offers in a laptop is a god send. I recently got an iBook and I can't help but be more and more impresed as I use it. Aqua is does everything that most linux GUI's will never be able to do. Linux's GUI keeps it out of mainstream. I think that Linux will always remain a developer's or garage hackers or hobbiest's OS, And there's nothing wrong with that! I think thats where Linux belongs. But Aqua lets novice users ( ie common denominator ) do anything that they want, easily. Even more important, OS X lets you do anything that you want with it's BSD system. You can build all your standard *nix apps easy enough, and the X servers run smoothly.

After finding things like fink ( a port of debian's package management system ) I'm only more enthused by what the BSD install has to offer.

I've also noticed a lot of new users being turned onto *nix stuff. They never had all those choices before an now they find it apealing.

Another nice side effect of merging mac stuff with a BSD system is software availablity. An advanced user generally has A LOT of choices about different types of software to use. Don't like *nix IDE's? Fine use a Mac one! (or vice-versa).

Basically I think that OS X could win out as a OS that the masses could use. Grandma can use it, and your run of the mill CS geek can geek out just fine with it. (Lord knows I do!)...

Jim

Re:you are why the dotcom bubble failed

[Anonymous Coward]

The bubble burst because clueless idiots much like yourself were given too much money for shitty ideas that had no chance of making it.

God, You Must Me the Most Boring Man Alive

[krmt]

Is a hammer fun to use?
Sure. Ever built anything for fun? I took woodshop in junior high, and I loved building things in there. Yes, I used a hammer, and I had fun doing it, as well as all the other tools.

Are a pen and paper?
Yeah. I love doing things like reading books printed on paper, doing crossword puzzles printed on paper with my pen. I also love *gasp* writing things like short stories and poems. For fun. With pen and paper, just to clarify.

Celphone?
Yep. Unless you don't enjoy talking to friends on the phone. Plus, I can play solitaire on mine on the busride to work.

Answering machine?
Well, not in and of itself, I grant you that, but I know a lot of people who like putting weird funny messages on their machines to mess with friends who call. Plus, if someone leaves a message that leaves to getting together with them and having fun, then well, why not?

What you must learn, Mr. Genius IQ, is that Tools != Work. Tools are, like many things in this world, without any inherent purpose. A hammer is used to pound nails, but nails are used to hold things together, but what is that thing? The hammer is completely separate in and of itself from me, and as such I can get what I want out of it. If I get enjoyment out of making marks on paper, then how does that affect the status of the pen and paper I use? Does it make them any less tools?

And besides that, what happens if I use my phone while I'm on vacation? It's still a tool, but I'm using it to have fun! If you can't extract even simple pleasures out of things, then you really must be living a miserable life. Not that things are all there is to life, but they're so easy to find some small joy in. If you can't do that, then I pity you. Maybe you need to not work so hard. Stop and smell the flowers, which are not only meant to be ground up and sold in perfumes, but are also meant to be enjoyed as they are.

Alas, that shall never be !

[Choron]

I too wish that I could run OSX on my PCs, OSX looks good indeed, but given Apple is licking Microsoft shoes and more if affinity we won't see OSX or any major software from Apple for Linux any time soon. Had better live with it and support the development of existing packages, like KDE.
We heard about "donate for perl", what about a "donate for KDE" campaign ?

Linux PPC

[MrDalliard]

All I can comment on is my experiences, namely those being that OS X is more likely to be a nail in the coffin to the likes of Linux PPC, than traditional Linux on x86 machines.

For me, OS X was a bit of a godsend, as I was using Linux PPC for a while prior to installing OS X. Basically, I've got what I want... a *nix derivative with a good front end. I can use command line if I want, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I want to use it for everything - there's sufficient there to mean that you never need to open a terminal window if you don't want to.

If anything, the figures are likely to be good news for web server software such as Apache, which is going to quickly settle in to the new Mac market, as well as the x86 market.

M.

Re:BS

[wdavies]

Nice try, but I'm a 38 year old software engineer with 20 odd years of computing experience, and a still warm PhD student Id. True the pay helps, but I also need the gig of ram so I can run experiments in hours rather than days.

Winton

Darwin being ported to x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin is being ported to the x86:
" Preliminary support for Intel is provided, allowing developers to begin bringing Darwin to the Intel platform."

http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/ ar chive.html

Re:Darwin being ported to x86

[90XDoubleSide]

The link you provided is to the old version of Darwin (the one that came with Mac OS X 10.0); The home page for the new version is at http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/, and the installer CD image of Darwin 1.4.1 for x86 is at http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/1. 4/release/darwinx86-141.iso.gz.

Re:Darwin being ported to x86

[ablair]

Darwin already runs on the x86 hardware platform, and has for a while now.

So really, slap X-Windows on it and you've got yourself an (OSX) Mac running on Intel, moslty just missing the Aqua UI. So let's all just shup up now about Apple porting MacOS to x86; posts like that are about as lame and automatic as "BSD is Dying" and "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these" here on /. And should be moderated just as low.

Re:0.24%

[Anonymous Coward]

. It's much easier to write a GUI for Linux through X than for other OS's.

If it's so easy to write a gui for X when why the fuck dosn't someone write a good GUI for X?

Huh? Every fucking window manager for linux sucks compared to MS Windows.

Apple CEO's Other Than Jobs

[krmt]

I think these guys get a worse rap than they deserve. Remember, the original Mac wasn't selling for shit becuase it was underpowered. The Mac Plus was the computer they should have released (a full meg RAM was so necessary) and Scully presided over that. He also helped push the low cost color macs that really earned Macs their place in the educational market. All those iMacs in elementary schools are spiritual descendants of the lc. Before that, all Macs were way too expensive.

Say what you will about the Newton also, but it's still a great platform. I love my Dad's 2000, it's just too damn big. The one (name escapes me) that the guy who designed the iMac made, the one that had a keyboard and was like a tiny laptop, now that thing was cool. I wanted one so bad even though I knew the platform would be axed. Newton was a great idea. Scully doesn't deserve all the crap he got over it.

There are some other great things these guys did too. They started bringing game developers back with Gamesprockets and Quickdraw3d (pre OpenGL/DirectX dominance). They shepherded the fantastic transition to the PPC. They really moved the multimedia stuff, with things like video editing which are really major areas for Apple now. Quicktime is a major fruit of those labors, and it's still a big part in what they do now. Truetype fonts were largely an Apple thing, and they were critical for the publishing market. Hypercard too, went counter to everything Jobs wanted in his Mac, so Scully was the champion for that wonderful program.

I think all Macheads (me included, in the past) tend to idealize Jobs and demonize everyone else. It's really not fair, as Jobs wouldn't have nearly the same flexibility to build up Apple with if he didn't have raw material like color screens and Quicktime.

Re:Q&A With Heinous Turdballs

[Anonymous Coward]

What do we think of ForWhomTheHellTrolls ...

He's all right

Troll on slash dot

OI OI!

..awsome troll dude! One small problem - to true to get any bites.

Egg's troll's as cool because they are full of so much bs that stupid geeks bite every time.

100% new? umm, no.

[metacosm]

I am not sure I would call an OS built on top of another OS "100% new".

To quote apple.com/macosx/technologies/darwin.html

"At its core, Darwin uses BSD. If you're a hardcore geek, you'll like having a full command set available to you from the terminal. Developers will appreciate how easy it is to port existing UNIX applications to Mac OS X. Plus, Mac OS X incorporates the time-tested BSD networking stack, the backbone of most TCP/IP implementations on the Internet today."

I am happy that apple renamed the BSD core "darwin" and build lovely layers like Quartz and Cocoa on top of it, but I think you can still _hardly_ call it a "100% new OS", Apple also built their own filesystem for it, but the filesystem still is broke (so I hear, try "touch FileA" and "touch filea" to see the bug), and I don't count broken stuff..

-- Just my 2cents, but that doesn't mean I am wrong :)

Comparing Apple/OSX and Sun/Solaris

[heilbron]

When reading this it comes to my mind that Apple and OS X in this situation also somewhat resemble Sun and Solaris. Porting to Solaris to x86 only had a somewhat limited success. Sun's trying to get out of a somewhat limited market by expanding into the software business into the enterprise, e.g. network management, is also taking a long time....

Re:"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux

[crayz]

Why would Apple not want that kind of publicity?

One major difference...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Dell doesn't run MacOS X. What a beautiful interface. Smokes the hell out of Windows and I'm sorry, but Linux looks absolutely clunky compared to it. That's from a 6 year Linux advocate getting to play with a Powermac G3 running OS X for 1 day. I'll still keep my Linux box around to play with but for a desktop I'm absolutely obsessed with saving money for a Mac now.

Re:One major difference...

[Enahs]

Your Dell doesn't run MacOS X. What a beautiful interface.

Yes, it is.

Smokes the hell out of Windows and I'm sorry, but Linux looks absolutely clunky compared to it.

Sure, why not.

That's from a 6 year Linux advocate getting to play with a Powermac G3 running OS X for 1 day. I'll still keep my Linux box around to play with but for a desktop I'm absolutely obsessed with saving money for a Mac now.

Well, that's cool, but I hope you're doing it for technical merits of commercial-software availability, and not just for a pretty interface. If you need a pretty interface . . . well, may I be the first to suggest that maybe you don't even need a computer?

Seriously, once in a while I feel like bashing people like Rasterman and Arlo Thomas over the head for getting people obsessed with pretty interfaces--right now, I'm using KDE 2.2.2 with the Qt Motif toolkit look and the KDE1 window decoration--and I find my productivity level to be far higher than it was when I was using silly windowmanager look-and-feel interfaces, as well as ridiculous toolkit themes/styles.

I feel pretty much the same about the OS X interface--and I've been using it a while. I'm sorely tempted to install the Sosumi theme (very Platinum-like) when I get back to work on Wednesday.

Re:One major difference...

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have to just be a pretty interface, it has to be one that's simple as well as powerful and intuitive. I hear that all the time about Gnome, but I still had to look around to figure out the features. Behind the GUI is still a steep learning curve.

Re:One major difference...

[Lennie]

Actually, I just use the console on my iBook these days, it's just so...

clean...

not distracting...

(only problem is, people think I'm some kinda Linux-nutcase)

Re:One major difference...

[Enahs]

It doesn't have to just be a pretty interface, it has to be one that's simple as well as powerful and intuitive.

Agreed, but I have a hard time believing that OS X is that, either (note that I agree that Gnome's interface is crud, too...which is why I stick with KDE) especially since Apple felt the need to take the new system's native interface (N*xtStep) and their legacy interface (MacOS) and stir the two together, and combine it with eyecandy that's there primarily to show off their new display tech.

I've worked with it for a while, and find it to be an unintuitive pile of crap.

Give me my NextStep look-and-feel! :-P

My thoughts

[Jebediah21]

Ok, here are some random thoughts of mine on the subject.

First off Linux has come a long way in an incredibly short amount of time. Wasn't more than 3 years ago I was messing around with RedHat 5.1. No GUI install, Netscape as a browser, no GNOME, etc. It would be folly for anybody to say OS X will be superior to Linux in 5 years. A lot can happen in that short amount of time.

The Mac OS used to keep people away from Apple hardware. Most of the Macs with OS 7 were horrible with crashing. I didn't go with a Mac when I came to my college (which is a Macintosh campus (or so they say)) for two reasons. One was price (of course) and the other was stability. I instead built my own machine with windows, became a heavy drinker, then installed Linux. I'm still using Linux. Will making a more stable OS make more people willing to pay for Apple hardware? I think so, but people looking for a stable OS can save a lot of dough by going with Linux.

I read a Scott Hacker (the BeOS bible dude) story about OS X. He said it felt slow. I can't help but wonder if people are going to be satisfied plunking down money for a machine that feels slow. Most people probably won't notice, but still.

Macs are great. I love them. I own one (old 9500). I can't see buying another for a good while. I still got a fully functional *nix box, and I just built a new one. Macs are too expensive for me to consider at this time, especially when their success hinges on Microsoft (Office and IE). If you got the extra money for a new OS X machine go for it. I'll be perfectly comfortable using Linux.

One last idear on the .24% figure hitbox came up with: Is it possible that many of us *nix users are blocking cookies from Hitbox? I just checked my blocked cookie file (.galeon/mozilla/galeon/cookperm.txt) in Galeon and found I was rejecting cookies from 3 of their servers (ehg-sportsline.hitbox.com, hg1.hitbox.com, hitbox.com). This would explain the insanely low figures. Doubt many people on other systems block cookies.

Sorry for me rambling.

Re:What's with all the VS Linux?

[Gumshoe]

...or linux.

Re:What's with all the VS Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay I note the smiley, but let's put
your comment in a different context.

"Would we really be happy if the Nazis took
over the world? There'd be no more Jewish
people to poke fun at;)"

Even with the smiley it doesn't sound
particularly funny to me.

Perhaps you feel offended that some people
choose a different computer platform to you?
Why is that? Do you need to feel part of the
crowd in order to justify your existence?
I suspect so.

Ideologues-R-Us

[JonathanF]

Don't pretend you're on a higher plane of existence just because you use open-source software... Apple is a company based on profits, and OSX is a major factor in those profits. Would you rather they went bankrupt and force people to only have two real choices for an OS... and Linux requiring much more effort to use well? In my experience, publicly claiming some sort of inherent superiority in ideals is more a confirmation of how much further you have to go.

Linux better than OS X in some respects

[ikekrull]

I am typing this on a TiBook, which i must say is by far the best laptop i have ever used. The screen is great, battery life is great, size and weight are great, keyboard is good, trackpad is good. I always use an external 3-button optical mouse with mine, so the trackpad sees minimal use,

I run OS X, to primarily so I can use Photoshop, Freehand and Flash without needing to dual-boot (Though I still have to use Classic for Photoshop and Flash) along with XDarwin to run rdesktop, Nedit and WindowMaker, as well as to run various apps remotely on my Linux servers when necessary.

I also program with OpenGL and C using ProjectBuilder, which is a pretty nice Development Environment (this is a genuinely great MacOS X feature)

However, i miss Linux for a couple of major reasons:

1. SMB and NFS connectivity - Linux is so, so very much better for connecting to a Windows or UNIX network than OS X.

Apple are either trying to be funny calling what they have done with samba and OS X 'integration', or theyre living in a dream world populated only by Macintoshes, none of whom would ever need to connect to an existing Windows share.

Mounting NFS shares practically requires a third-party shareware GUI app (which seems overcomplicated anyway), and nfs shares that fail to work (for seemingly inexplicable reasons) can't be unmounted, even by root. Despite using the supposedly 'More UNIX than Linux' BSD core, NFS support in MacOS X sucks bigtime.

2. The UI makes you feel like you have your hands tied. You can't actually turn off the superflous window animation antics entirely, which i find completely idiotic.

I miss multiple workspaces greatly. If its such a good idea to support multiple monitors ( a feature Apple has touted for years), then surely it's both easy and a good idea to support multiple 'virtual' workspaces?

Aqua has some good features - it is very consistent, but this certainly seems to be at the expense of flexibility. 'WindowShade' is a useful thing to have, and i can't believe there is no option to enable it on OS X.

After using Linux almost exclusively for the last year or so, i find OS X both a breath of fresh air and a set of candy-coloured chains for my computer.

The biggest (actually useful) feature Aqua has over something like a heavily tweaked Window Maker is the sensible and consistent cut n paste system.

This is the thing I find most liberating about it, as i never have to worry about whether the piece of text i copy from one app will actually paste successfully into another like i do on Linux (though i think my beef is largely with Mozilla's cut n paste)

Konqueror is easily a match for the Finder in terms of functionality, and frankly i find the 'Home', 'Favourites' etc. icons in the Finder downright ugly.

I think OS X is a solid foundation on which to build (it is pretty stable, though prone to annoying problems - See how much fun it is if you accidentally associate the extension '.app' with an application.

Quicktime and DVD playback is handy, though the 'Register for Quicktime Pro' message is not what i expect when i purchase a NZ$6000 machine.

Fuck you Apple, I bought your computer, if i wanted Quicktime Pro, don't you think i would have ordered it with the machine?? This kind of intrusive advertising makes you truly appreciate Free and Open Source software.

And theres no way it can compete with my Hollywood+ equipped Linux machine for DVD playback.

All things considered, I like OS X, but if anything it has impressed upon me just how well-matched Linux's desktop functionality is with Apple's flagship OS.

I won't be replacing Mandrake-PPC which runs on my iMac with OS X anytime soon.

Re:Linux better than OS X in some respects

[Kevinv]

I've got a TiBook running OSX too. I really want multiple desktops (I normally run as a non-priveledged user and it be nice to be able to fire up an admin session without losing my primary session).

All my Linux experience so far has been CLI instead of GUI so I can't really compare.

But I'll say that my 667Mhz TiBook is the most amazing machine I've worked on. Speed is great (I moved from a 300Mhz G3 iBook) and the screen width is awesome.

I don't think linux's firewire support is far enough along to support some of my devices (firewire video capture, hard drive and cd burner -- I think support for hard drives is it)

As far as file sharing goes, SMB support sucks. I haven't tried NFS. Appletalk with a Linux server seems to work ok (not great, but better than previously).

I'm really interested in seeing if I can do file sharing via WebDAV with a linux box like iTools does with Apple's servers.

Kevin

Where are the good ideas?

[roffe]

I don't buy the argument that Linux has come a very long way in a short amount of time. Well, I am impressed by development speed, but frankly I am a bit distressed by the apparent lack of originality in the Open Source community.

KDE and Gnome are based on the same ideas as Windows and MacOS. Ideas that took a long time to develop - coding them is, apparently, much easier. The same metaphors, the same look-and-feel. User interface design has come a very long way since 1984, but there is an overwhelming paucity of applications.

The arguments for Gnome and KDE are that people want to use metaphors that are familiar, and that's true, but this argument is misunderstood. The metaphors don't need to be familiar from other desktop user interfaces, they can be familiar from any aspect of the user's life!

As an example, in The Humane Interface, Jef Raskin describes a topological user interface where documents and applications are arranged topologically as "cities" and "villages" on a desktop. The user can surf the desktop looking for the right "pile" or "town", zoom in to view details, zoom out to get an overview. This desktop uses recent insights from the behavioral sciences (to be honest to both Raskin and myself, Raskin uses cognitive metaphors, but I am not a cognitive psychologist). This is just one example.

I have earlier defended Alan Cooper's right to his patent on one-click shopping, arguing that even if it is easy to implement, it must have been incredibly difficult to invent or even have somebody code. The same thing shows up, I believe, in Linux - good, new ideas are hard to come by! I was very disappointed by Eazel and Nautilus, for one thing - it was hailed as something new and exciting, but in reality this was just the same old story - twenty year old ideas, just a bit better-looking than the competition.

In order for MacOS X to "win", it's got to beat the Intel platform, which it won't. So Linux still has the chance to win on the most popular platform. But frankly, when I buy my next computer, I'd rather have Mac with OS X than a PC with Linux, unless Linux can be made to come with something that's obviously better than the current metaphor. I can't see how Linux can win the desktops unless the Linux GUI designers make some truly radical moves.

I see a lot of competence on coding there, but it seems that the Open Source community does not appreciate how difficult and competence-demanding it is to innovate in human interface design. Those who have the competence too often are in no position to contribute for free, spending all their time raising families and working. As sort of a piece of advice to Open Source GUI designers, I suggest you drop your coding for a while and read

• Donald Norman's The Design of Everyday Things
• Ben Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface
• Alan Cooper's The Inmates are Running the Asylum
• Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface

If you are familiar with these books and can recommend others in a similar vein, please do tell me!

Re:Where are the good ideas?

[Oswald]

As usual, I just let 5 mod points drop unused yesterday, and today I see this. I like this post, and wish I could mod it up. Also, I agree with most of the points made. Linux has evangelists aplenty; where are the visionaries?

Re:Where are the good ideas?

[roffe]

some jerk then went ahead to prove every single point I made by scoring my submission down by -1.

sometimes I hate being right.

QuickTime Serial

[Anonymous Coward]

Name: MACOS QA
Org.: Leave this blank
Code: WT8Q-UQPJ-PAEU-P3RT-CA8D

One of many. Enjoy Usenet.

Intel Athlon?

[Free Bird]

"I'll run it on my Athlon or not at all" mindset of current Lintel hardware owners

Uhm, forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't it seem a bit odd that a Lintel (notice the intel part) guy would go for an AMD Athlon? I propose the term "Lamdux".

Free Bird

why I chose OSX over linux

[deafgreatdane]

I am extremely frightened for the future of the computing world as dominated by Microsoft. As I started debating 6 months ago what I could do to help unseat the operating system stranglehold they maintain, it came down to voting with my dollars.

I had a choice, I could buy into the OSX world (a nontrivial investment), or I could build an x86 base machine and install Linux. Where would I make the most difference? By buying an apple and OSX, I would support the only currently viable competitor to Microsoft in the consumer space. (If you want to argue that point, come back and talk to me when I can go to a national consumer electronics chain and buy a preconfigured linux machine off the shelf.)

Here's the thing that's liable to get me modded as flamebait. I considered Linux to be a much smaller vote against Microsoft than buying Apple. Not just because I would spend more money on the OSX vote, but because most of the money I would spend in the Linux choice goes to the hardware. I really wonder in the popular press how much they distinguish sale of Intel boxen from sale of Microsoft operating systems.

To really contribute to the vote against microsoft in the LInux space, you need to contribute to open software. I can code, but I want to do other things with my computer time than make my computer run. A weak analogy: not everyone feels the calling to be in the Peace Corps, but most of us can contribute some money to the people who do. Good things get done both ways.

Bottom line, by buying an intel box without an MS operating system, I'm taking a way a few dollars from their bottom line. By buying apple, I'm putting a much larger amount in the hands of a competitor.

An alternative, getting closer to a monetary apples vs apples instead of apples vs oranges (no pun intended), would be to buy the intel box and send a $1000 donation to the FSF. However, as in politics, a significant part of the process is evangelizing. As I talk with my friends and family, if I told them I made a non-trivial donation an open source foundation to balance my purchase of the hardware, they would rank me a crazy idealist. But if I show them the beautiful platform that they can get with an Apple, they might give it some thought.

So that's a big chunk of why OS X got my vote over Linux.

Re:why I chose OSX over linux

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a need for constructive dialog in these issues. Remember that there are only TWO major flavors of OS: 1. everything M/$oft; and 2. everything *NIX. I hope the *NIX worlds (which includes Unix(es), Linux(es), OS X) can survive M/$oft's manipulations.

Linux Statistics at Google -1.2%

[Jonathan Byron]

Google's Zeitgeist page lists stats on the percentage of hits by OS and browser - In August of 2001, just under 1.2 % of Google Queries were from Linux boxes. This is approximately 5 times higher than the 0.2x% reported in some places, and probably more accurate in terms of web usage. Google Zeitgeist August 2001

Re:Linux Statistics at Google -1.2%

[camper805]

I'll go along with the relative Linux/Windows percentages on Google being more accurate than those cited in the article. Mac users are likely to be a bit under-represented on Google compared with their actual net presence since many of them search with the Mac's built-in Sherlock utility instead. It uses multiple search engines not including Google last I looked. Being a fairly small part of the total either way, a shifted Mac share has little effect on the Linux figure.
November figures posted look the same, except they are rounded to the nearest percent.
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/zeitgeist- no v.html

Not as complimentary as you think

[ZigMonty]

As for why Apple needs Linux, lets see what Linux has that Apple didn't have before OS X. The whole slew of technologies that *nix utilizes. Preemptive multitasking, protected memory, SMP. All of which are VERY important.

Yes, these are new with Mac OS X but since when did Linux have anything to do with it? Mac OS X is based on the Mach microkernel and BSD. You seem to be making the assumption that Unix==Linux.

A million and one Linux apps which are easily portable to darwin.

Yes, all command line or X windows based. The CLI ones are obviously important and useful to Mac OS X. The X Windows ones are mostly useless. Mac OS X doesn't have an X server. Sure, you can download one but, at > 40MB, how many will? I have one but I'm not average.

By the way, and I know you didn't say this, a lot of people seem to think that Mac OS X is going to help bring more apps to Linux. How? CLI possibly but I think that transfer is going to go in the other direction. GUI apps? Impossible. It'd be no easier than porting them from Windows. The GUI APIs are entirely different. If you want Mac OS X programs (Cocoa ones anyway) on Linux, go help out with GNUStep.

After saying all that, Linux and Mac OS X do have things to learn from each other. You just gave some bad examples. Linux could learn a lot from Aqua and Apple could learn a lot from the power of the open source model.

Maybe Linux isn't supposed to end up as a desktop OS and maybe Mac OS X isn't meant to be a server OS. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should take a lesson from biology: diversity is good. Monopolies run by ANY company or group are bad. I don't want everyone to be using the same OS as me, Linux, Windows or Mac OS X, the potential for virus and worm plagues is too high. Not to mention the stagnation that usually follows. I see the ideal as lots of standards: GUI API standards, networking standards, etc, etc. Then you'd have a very heterogeneous mix that is still largely compatible with each other

Cool Display of Power

[zensmile]

I had really wanted to learn about Linux and install it on one of my Macs at home (or work). I bought a distribution of LinuxPPC and found it "doable"...but a little daunting. This was not a newbie's typical OS. It is even fussier than Windows, I had said to myself more than a few times. It was just so unfriendly.

Along comes OS X. I didn't have the hardware to run it but on my family machine...so I bought a laptop to check it out. This is what I am typing on now. I found it to bea dream. In about 1 month with OS X, I was able to upgrade the installed Apache, install mySQL, and install PHP. Everything was running like a dream. I am very happy that Steve Jobs introduced this OS. As for peripherals...Apple has for A LONG TIME said that they are moving away from legacy devices. USB and Fireware are "it". Leave SCSI in the closet. I saw the writing on the wall and when moved over to USB and Firewire on all upgrades.

One last note...my wife and son insisted that I install OS X on their iMac. To my surprise, my son was using the terminal window last night. He is only 8 years old. When I asked him how he learned of this...he replied the help in the menu bar. I was floored! Of course, he asked a million questions....and I answered all that I could.

So if a person wants to know a little (or a lot) about some Unix flavored OS...then I would be happy to direct them to OS X.

You dont know what you are talking about

[HanzoSan]

For messing with 3d graphics, having a fast processor helps.

Screen resolution is far more important than color, try looking at a DVD movie. Try messing with graphics or surfing the web in low resolution. I have millions of colors, and thats good enough for me.

The Dell ugly? Who buys products based no appearance? Seems mac users do!

Weight is that important? Are overweight and out of shape? If not then 1 lbs extra weight will NOT make a diffrence.

I will give you that PowerBook has a better battery life, and design but thats about it.

Re:You dont know what you are talking about

[antibryce]

Screen resolution is far more important than color

Try messing with graphics for a living, sending the graphics off to the printer, and finding out you've wasted 2 weeks of design work because the color of your laptop was slightly off, and now your boss is firing you.

The Dell ugly? Who buys products based no appearance? Seems mac users do!

People who buy something strictly based on appearance are stupid. However, that's not to say looks shouldn't be factored in. If the iBook has everything I need and is sexy to boot, even better. If I'm car shopping, I would obviously factor the look into my purchase. It may be a BMW under the hood, but I'm not buying if it looks like a Pinto.

Also, there's no question about it, Dells are UGLY.

Weight is that important? Are overweight and out of shape?

It's less about being forced to lug around that extra 1 pound (also, that's 1 extra pound WITHOUT a battery. Add the battery and probably get at least 1-3 more pounds) and more about getting what you need in the sleekest design possible.

Dell has some fast laptops out right now, assuming you only look at the MHZ rating. Of course, most of them probably have significantly slower than 5400RPM drives, speedstepping processors, and sub-par motherboards. Dells (and Compaqs, and Gateways, and anyone else) are slapped together and sent to market asap. No thought is given into usability, or design. It's just "How much can we cram into an acceptable space." Forget about battery life and convience.

Anyway, my point is: Comparing Apple to the commodity PC market is like comparing a Porshe to a Neon.

Now before you accuse me of being a macfanatic, I've been using PCs since 1994. I've always hated Macs, because OS9 and lower were so braindead. I've been using Linux since 1995, and when i saw OSX I was in love. I still love Linux, but I honestly have no need for it any longer. OSX on my desktop, and FreeBSD on my servers.

And finally, after reading through HanzoSans past posts, anyone else get the feeling he might work for Dell? Astroturf maybe?

Re:Have Linux evangelists really stooped so low?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats because all people that "kick" can not stand the fact Linux has great potential, and they are affraid they "own" OS will disapear. So if you then
KICK and KICK you finally will believe your own
bullshit. Psychics.

Use whatever you want to use....

personally:
Apple OSX on the desktop and then?
buy for 100k software to satisfy my needs?
I rather use Linux and get myself a 100k sportscar! ;)

question

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "OS the Tenth"?

"Remember, only you can prevent forest fires."

OSX on x86

[cl0secall]

Why do i keep hearing that "this will never happen", etc.

The Darwin kernel is "open source" so to speak, and I remember hearing about a Darwin/x86 Project. Is it just me, or has it already been done?

Re:OSX on x86

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple

Re:OSX on x86

[90XDoubleSide]

(Sorry to post this again, but it appears people are copying the bad URL :) The link the AC provided is to the old version of Darwin (the one that came with Mac OS X 10.0); The home page for the current version is at http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/, and the installer CD image of Darwin 1.4.1 for x86 is at http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/1. 4/release/darwinx86-141.iso.gz.

I disagree

[HanzoSan]

You need ram depending on what you do. For most laptop uses having more than 256 megs of ram is useless. Of course i use linux and not bloated windowsXP.

As far as procesor benchmarks, I checked them myself, the 1ghz processor totally smokes the G4 at specific things, I mean like x4 the speed of the G4 at certain things. Some things the G4 is closer to the same level, but these things are very rare things, like using a certain feature in photoshop.

As far as ram, Dell supports over 1gig of ram too.
As far as battery life, you win, Tibook beats dell.

Having more ram wont give speed gains, having a faster harddrive will. Get SCSI raid on a laptop and 1ghz chip will distance itself even more.

For now it still wins on encoding, decoding dvix and movies. It wins on gaming. It has a better screen, UXGA and if the guy above got the Latitude model which sucks its only because he didnt got the "network enhanced" model instead of the "desktop replacement" model. He had the choice.

The Dell is better than the Tibook in most areas, even in some, and the Tibook wins in only a couple of areas.

Looks like dell wins

Re:I disagree

[gig]

> For most laptop uses having more than 256 megs
> of ram is useless.

Well, you just disqualified yourself from talking computers with most Mac users. I routinely create and access files that are much bigger than 256 MB, so naturally, I like my computers to have more than that in RAM. As another poster pointed out, you want as much RAM as possible in a notebook especially, because the hard drives are slower than desktop hard drives, and RAM uses less power than spinning hard drive platters.

You're just knee-jerk trying to sell us that the Dell is better, when it's not. It's WalMart, buddy. It's cheap and that's good when it does the job for the user, but if it doesn't do the job, it's a fucking curse. I know a lot of people (myself included) who got their first Macs in the last couple of years (post-NeXT) and we are all spoiled now for anything else. I would rather have one Mac every three years than a new PC every year. It's more productive, it's less admin work, and my Mac OS X box has NOT been open to anyone on the Internet for the past couple of months, like EVERY Windows XP box was, and still is until the user patches it. Apple's security patches are downloaded by the OS (it just asks for your permission to install them, and this can be disabled if you like), so even Grandma's iMac has the latest patches (not that there has been anything even remotely like the recent Windows XP holes).

You can pick on the price of Apple's desktops, even though they come with a ton of hardware and software included that you don't get with other PC's (FireWire, DVD-RW/CD-RW, Gigabit Ethernet, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes and much more), but it's ludicrous to pick on their notebooks. The PowerBook and iBook are a whole class ahead of any other notebook computer there is. Even if you only look at battery life and wireless capability (5 hours and built-in wireless card and antennaes vs. Dell's 2 hours and no built-in wireless card or antennaes) you are in a new world with the Mac. When you factor in other connectivity, there's no doubt (built-in Ethernet on iBook, built-in Gigabit Ethernet on PowerBook, built-in FireWire on both, built-in TV out on both, built-in REAL modems on both, built-in IrDA modem on PowerBook, built-in VGA out on both, plus both can act as FireWire hard drives for easy connection to a desktop computer).

Every once in a while I take a look at "what I'm missing" since I went Mac-only, and I honestly can't get past the fact that there are PC notebooks out there that don't have Ethernet built-in (my PowerBook has Gigabit Ethernet, and I use it all the time, connected to my PowerMac, which also has Gigabit Ethernet built-in). How can you call it a computer when it doesn't have an Ethernet port? That's not what PC Card slots are for (they're for occasional stuff like CF cards and unexpected stuff like Ricochet modems).

Re:I disagree

[Shanep]

You need ram depending on what you do. For most laptop uses having more than 256 megs of ram is useless.

I would agree that 256M would be way more than enough for something like an OpenBSD firewall, with it's super small footprint. However...

On my Debian machine, installed at 2.1 with an on-going upgrade to Debian-testing, my /lib is 28MB and /usr (apps, X, fonts and other libraries) is 1.3GB minus /usr/src/linux. Having as much of this, of which I use most often, cached (Thanks to loads of RAM) will improve performance thanks to less paging and less fetching of data that has already be fetched before.

Of course i use linux and not bloated windowsXP.

Of course I am impressed beyond belief. I see you are a Mandrake junkie. Congratulations on your successful install of Linux.

As far as procesor benchmarks, I checked them myself, the 1ghz processor totally smokes the G4 at specific things, I mean like x4 the speed of the G4 at certain things. Some things the G4 is closer to the same level, but these things are very rare things, like using a certain feature in photoshop.

As far as ram, Dell supports over 1gig of ram too.
As far as battery life, you win, Tibook beats dell.

I win? This is not a competition HanzoSan. How old are you? You obviously have little knowledge of CS, seemingly because you are young and closed minded. Trust me, if you want to compete here, although there are plenty of morons, there are also many people who do know CS very well, you will loose with this attitude until you open your mind. The smartest man, is the man who always questions himself and is not afraid of being wrong and adjusting his opinion accordingly. Here, ego will get you nowhere.

Having more ram wont give speed gains,

My desktop 7200rpm UDMA drives perform at about 25 sustained MegaBytes per second, my RAM "destroys" them (I have two, striped (RAID-0)) since my RAM sustains about 800MB/s. With the cost of RAM lately (with the exception of the recent artificial price spike), anyone would be CRAZY not to max out thier RAM. (That 25MB/s is not the stripe speed, but the raw single drive speed.)

Do you know what caching is? If so, what do you think of a 32:1 performance ratio? Would you rather be re-accessing apps and libraries from RAM@800MB/s or file-system/swap on disk@25MB/s?

To rub salt into wounds, my RAM might be considered slow by todays standards (PC100 SDRAM) and my disks way faster than any 2.5" notebook drive, so the ratio between disk:RAM would be much more pronounced. We could be talking about a 100 *times* speed difference or more. But even worse, I am comparing transfer rates here and not factoring in access times. Start using these disks with random accesses, with head movements that delay access to data in milli seconds (0.001s), versus nano seconds for RAM (0.000000001s), and you can see how cached data can effectively be thousands of times quicker (I know, 1nS is one million times quicker than 1mS, however, the entire time is not spent randomly accessing nothing).

having a faster harddrive will.

Of course it is a good idea to have a fast hard drive. But pouring money into your drives, and then skimping on RAM, is an ignorant move to say the least. BTW, the performance gains of loads of RAM, if often a performance area that benchmarks miss. Contrary to popular belief, benchmarks are acurate tools for measuring performance, but not overall performance. They are tools that measure specific areas of performance, that provide results that should be pondered and acted upon by someone who knows how to read and design for those numbers. If you do lots of 3D or even 2D CAD work, you will want fast floating point, 2D bitmap work will want fast CPU integer, loads of fast RAM and maybe good fpu also, video editing might need these and some real fast hdds or hdd array, a server might want loads of RAM, real fast networking hardware and a fast efficient networking OS.

Case in point for lots of RAM... Say my girlfriend is making a poster with Photoshop or The GIMP. It is going to be physically large'ish (typical poster), so high res is in order. Lets say she will be working with a bitmap of 4096x8192 32bit (8bits per RGB + 8bit alpha channel). The raw size of that, decompressed in memory, *without* layers, will be about 134MB. Now lets say shes using 5 layers for her various effects, that comes out to about 670MB being used *just* for the bitmap storage. Add to that OS and app memory usage, and consider whether you want to be doing this with RAM or disk. ; )

With something like this, whether you have a Xeon 2GHz or a Pentium 100, without enough RAM Photoshop is going to slow down at some stage to the speed of your hard disk. In fact, a Pentium 100 with 1GB RAM might "destroy" a Xeon 2GHz with 256MB RAM in this situation. So how important is your MHz now?

Get SCSI raid on a laptop and 1ghz chip will distance itself even more.

SCSI RAID on a laptop? Did you get some fine Jamaican hashish for Christmas or what! You think GHz is da bomb and SCSI RAID is an option for notebooks? Don't get me wrong, I would like a 2GHz G5 TiBook with 2GB RAM, a solid state 2.5" UDMA drive and OS X if I could have it, but I'd be quite happy with the current TiBook maxed out with RAM.

For now it still wins on encoding, decoding dvix and movies. It wins on gaming. It has a better screen, UXGA and if the guy above got the Latitude model which sucks its only because he didnt got the "network enhanced" model instead of the "desktop replacement" model. He had the choice.

I assure you, if you've got 256MB RAM and I've got 1GB RAM, I am going to enjoy my notebooks speed a whole lot more and a whole lot longer than you are. But I could'nt care less what you or anyone else is happy with, because I'm happy with how I set up my computers and thats what matters. This is not a dick measuring contest.

Looks like dell wins

For you, if you think you're the "winner", then good for you.

Just don't try to give me a lesson in CS.

overpriced Macs? I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep seeing arguments like 'Macs are so overpriced!'. I fail to see how a current top of the line G4 is more expensive than a top of the line Intel or AMD box. People tend to compare their budget x86 boxes with current G4's instead of going for the justified comparison with the prices of last years G4 models.

OS X, not so user friendly

[BOFslime]

I bought a cheap imac (dv special, 400Mhz ($500 it cost me)) just to play with os X. As I was working with it.. I installed os X clean onto a 40GB quantom drive. partitioned it up (useing the partition program on the install disk) into 3 sections.. two UFS partitions.. and one HFS (small for legacy mac crap)

after instilation failed twice, I had to set it so it formatted the root partition again on install for it to boot properly when it was finished. once there.. I played around with all the settings (all the very few settings) ftp'd over some files.. and atemted to move them onto my /file partition (fake /files as I found out.. its like /Volume/hd0012/files or whatever, that mac is long gone as I write this). my user didnt' have write permition to any of my other 2 partitions.. enableing it though the gui was useless, because the owner was system... so I wasn't an owner, and I wasn't in the group.. only way to enable this now would be as the root user.. being as you can't log into the gui as the root user (and the adverage user.. or joblow imac would even know of a root user) I ended up changing this in the shell with chgrp. now.. how is anyone else with no unix expirence expected to do something like this....

go ahead and flame over the fact that most people arn't going to have multiple partitions like that. point is there are alot that know how to have multiple partions.. and have absolutly no unix exprience.. this is just one example where apple does not yet have a fully functional gui. there are many many things yet that simply can not be done unless you do them in a shell. also there is just a grate lack of configureablitly.. (again, unless you do it in the shell) OS 9 is more configureable (in gui). I don't see at all why they didn't transfer over simular functionality in the "system preferences". sold the iMac... (hated that keyboard.. key's sticked, this is fault of the keyboard itself.. i've tried other mac keyboards.. all have the same fault) wouldn't play quake3 at all either.. crashed all the time. I was quite disapointed.. with Apple as a whole. I had hyped up for it.. was excited when I got it.. went in not only with an open mind.. but thinking it was gonna be cool.. and was sorly dissapointed by nearly every aspect that I tried to do. I could sum it all up in one word.. Combersome..

back to power using my winXP box.. (hasn't crashed on me yet, only time I reboot is for updates.. and yes I gripe about MS holes too. just play to many games to use Slack full time, although quake3 runs faster in slack than on win :)

If you drive a jeep, you use windows ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and if you drive a tank, you use linux!

Re:100% new? umm, no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it isn't exactly BSD, either, it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that...

There's a lot of NeXTstep there, except that the BSD part of the Mach kernel has been upgraded to a 4.4 BSD level (from 4.3, which is what it was with NeXTstep IIRC), there's quite a bit of FreeBSD stuff in the libraries etc.

I believe the GUI is based on NeXT technology, as well, at least it also uses a postscript display engine. I'm not an OS X user (yet) so I haven't got into it in-depth, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "new" APIs looked like NeXTstep, too... I hope that the non-GUI parts are POSIX, though.

Oh and Apple's product WebObjects has an awfully familiar name...

No flames on the capitalization of NeXTstep, please.

Re: Serial ports

[ZorinLynx]

I find the fact that new Macs lack RS232C serial ports to be disconcerting. RS232C is a standard that has been around practically forever, and computers manufactured decades apart can talk to each other because of RS232C. I remember sending data back and forth between a modern PC and an Apple IIe using RS232C not too long ago.

Not including RS232C is a step backwards, in my opinion. The cost to implement it is insignificant and it provides interoperability between, literally, thousands of machines.

Re: Serial ports (OT)

[melatonin]

Not including RS232C is a step backwards, in my opinion. The cost to implement it is insignificant and it provides interoperability between, literally, thousands of machines.

You can say the same thing about floppy disks. Really, serial ports are useless when you have USB. It's a brain-dead interface with no expandability (in terms of functionality- that's what USB is fore), the fact that our Apple //es had them just underscores how obsolete they are. There's nothing stopping you from putting in a PCI card if you need it. But hardware vendors won't make devices for those ports, so there's no point in shipping Macs with them.

Linux is almost ready.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been reading /. since sometime in '95-96. Linux has been "almost ready" for the desktop the whole time.

Migrating

[Captain Pooh]

The only way I would use OS X is if there was a port to the PC platform, and that wouldn't happen because Apple depends on their sale of hardware.

Ph.D, so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re-using the previous overstatement, "the only people I know" that get Ph.D.s in CS are those who hate the actual work involved and would rather stay locked up in an ivory tower and project an illusion of competence through that three-letter suffix after their name.

UNIX

[Anonymous Coward]

There were Windows, UNIX (all flavours) and MacOS. And what happened? UNIX conquered the Mac. I think most of us use Linux because we like UNIX. It's because of the "beauty" of UNIX, not only this open source thing.

OS X only shows that UNIX is going strong, and so does Linux. It's not OS X vs Linux, it's UNIX vs the rest. And in the end, UNIX will win.

Konsole.

[saintlupus]

KDE kicks Aqua's ass as a GUI... tabbed Konsoles (with keystrokes for opening new tabs and switching between them)

I'm typing this from OS X. I think it's a hell of a system -- I've tried OpenBSD, Yellow Dog, and LinuxPPC on this iMac and OS X stomps the hell out of all of them. But that's not why I'm writing this.

Despite my non-programming background, I spend a lot of time at the command line playing around. And Terminal.App, the default OS X version of xterm, is absolutely fucking _dreadful_. Can anyone suggest a replacement?

--saint

Fonts

[vanguard]

I also have an iBook and I love it. I guess you could say that I "abandoned" Linux for OSX. I have made the switch.

The reason that I switched was that I need a notebook with nicer fonts and 802.11b support. This iBook is perfect for me. (BTW, this screen is awesome. I've never seen viewing angles so good.)

My opinion on fonts is that msft and OSX are both good. I thought the general opinion is that msft cleartype fonts are actually better. However, I have to really try hard to see any difference.

Re:What's with all the VS Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, I've been trolled by *Retarded Troll*

It has been done.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) NeXT did this when it left behind the slabs and cubes. The customers ended up being wall street, some publishers (hidelberg) and places like the NSA. Ever walk into CompUSA and saw NextStep for Intel?

2) Apple under Gil planned on this. And they shipped to develpers DR2 of Rhapsody for intel. The project was Steved.

In fact, not complimentary at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Complementary, you knaves!

Re:He's right. Hows your liver?

[alfredo]

make an offer. ;)

You can get an iBook for $1,200. They come with OSX.

New terms.

[saintlupus]

I propose the term "Lamdux".

Lame ducks? Ought to go great with that Greased Turkey from last month, eh? :)

Anyhow, as the submitter, I probably ought to clear up what I meant by "Lintel." Obviously, I meant people running Linux on x86 hardware. Also, I believe the lintel is the top bit of a window frame, the part above the window itself. It was just a little pun, that's all.

So people can stop typing the "An Athlon is not an Intel product! j00 suX0r!" posts. Thanks.

--saint

Re:0.24%

[oo7tushar]

that could be true, but we write custom GUI's not a general purpose. I write for myself rather than for the general population. That would require quite a bit of research.

wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

doesn't it come with SSH already installed?

It's all about money

[realkiwi]

I started my life as a geek on the Mac. In 1997 OS 7 made me look for something that stayed up for more than 20 minutes...

I moved to Linux and have been using a Linux desktop since then. I also have a G3 OS X box.

My G3 blue and white will be payed for in June. I'll replace it with a G4 or whatever is available at that time and finance that over 3 years too. Before then I will upgrade the game box to Athlon 1.x Ghz with a new 3D card - I'll be able to pay that cash...

If Macromedia ported Ultradev Studio to Linux I wouldn't even look at a Mac. I could build 2 Machines for the price of a G4 - and two machines are better than one.

Looking at my main machine it is a toss up between an iBook and a new Vaio Picturebook. The Vaio has form factor in its favor. In any case the iBook would be dual boot Linux / OS X.

Re:"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux

[sakusha]

Of course Apple is dying for that sort of publicity. That's exactly why Disney doesn't want any. Disney wants a monopoly on all publicity relating to itself. They figure that if anyone wants to use the Disney brand for publicity, they'll have to pay for it. And pay big.

I piss on the grave of Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

x86 == The Yugo of computing platforms.

Linux is dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just more proof that Communism doesn't work! Linux is going extinct.

Re:Linux is dead!

[borgheron]

Linux is very much alive. Mac OS X has it's advantages, but is not as powerful as Linux. Comparing the GNU approach to communism merely exposes one's ignorance of it's purpose.

Re:Linux is dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stay beyond the boundaries of the lamerland! This board is aimed for professionals, not for lamers like you.

a functional GUI?

[jonabbey]

Now, OSX has the advantage of a pretty decent Mach/BSD core, and an incredibly impressive and functional GUI.

Mac OS X's Quartz layer is very nice, but in following Steve Job's quest for a unique visual "hook" for X, Apple has rendered the system far less usable/functional than either KDE or Windows. Window transparency is a cool trick and it's wonderful that the graphics engine can do it, but the processor cost for actually turning it on is astronomical. The dock has been widely criticized as being tuned to make a cool demo more than to actually be useful.

Mac OS 9 and before had a really functional GUI. Mac OS X is still a bastardized system that's optimized to look cool on TV more than it is to use.

For my money, the only real advantages that Mac OS X has over Linux are 1) commercial polish, in that all adjustments can be gotten at through the GUI, and all Mac OS X systems will do it the same way, 2) the ability to run your old copies of Dark Castle and SuperPaint, and 3) Quicktime.

For commercial polish, check out Mandrake or the latest Red Hat. They still show more UNIX than OS X does, but they are getting better and better. 2 isn't a factor for me, and as for 3, well, I wouldn't care to run a given OS just because Apple is trying to hold online content hostage to their choice of platforms.

Re:He's right. Hows your liver?

[Master Bait]

You can get an iBook for $1,200. They come with OSX.

Which reminds me that this week I realized that the coming commoditization of the laptop market is approaching very quickly. Check this $799 laptop out. Apple has done very well and remained competitive in the laptop market, but not for long now!

Re:Never actually been to the third world, have yo

[Linuxathome]

just shut up and don't speculate. God damn couch scholars.

whoa, whoa, whoa. My comment to the parent comment was in no way a flame. No need to crack the whip. Has the MS monopoly in Korea made you that bitter? You see, when there are enough people like you in Korea (that is, enough people bitter at MS practices) they'll band together to work on alternatives. With the growing distrust of the US around the globe (and with the growing distrust by the US of other countries), it's inevitable that MS will face competition in other countries.

Remember the slashdot controversies about the Carnivore system and the SSSCA? Well, what I'm trying to say is that with the current change in the tide by the US public and regarding homeland security, MS will be mandated by the US government to place back doors in their OS to allow the government to "tap" computer usage. My point is this: if other countries, whose primary source of software is pirated software or even legit software for that matter, start using this type of OS from MS, who's to say they won't be tapped by the US government? It's obvious other countries will be hesitant in buying and using MS. It'll come to a threshold point when they'll start writing and developing their own competitive brand, whether Bill Gates likes it or not.

Anyway, I was merely trying to feed a discussion on the ability of other countries to move away from MS. So, you said it yourself, there are Korean distributions...again, just because there's bad language support doesn't mean that language support won't be there in the future. I doubt that the Korean developers of their linux distros have halted development. And with the growing distrust of the US and US companies (by even US citizens for that matter), there will no doubt be grassroots movements in other countries in developing their own software....and guess what, what code base do you think they'll turn to if that happens? Open source--because it's out there, and it's been tested and developed, and it'll save them time and money. I don't think I'm way off here when I say this. Sure it's speculation, but again, this is a slashdot discussion isn't it?

Wrong Mindset

[CAIMLAS]

My goodness. Why do people insist on comparing linux with other OSes that are entirely unlike it?

First off, the name or this article is flawed - OS X isn't any more a linux than Solaris is.

Second, people need to stop getting all pumped up over marketshare. It simply needs to be realized that the success or vitality of linux can not be determined by how many people have it installed in a dualboot configuration and use it every one in a while to 'dick around' - no matter how few people use linux, there will always be the developers that love linux, and will continue to develop for it. I'm not talking about the VMWare variety developers, I'm talking about the everybuddy, GNOME, Enlightenment, and kernel type developers - the ones that do it for love, mostly. (Yes, I know there's Cox, but he's an exception, in general.)

Race to the desktop, BSD won. Not SYSV, Not Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO failed. Sun Failed. And Linux, for the billions of VC money, failed.

Yet Apple, a company on the rocks at the time, did it. They did it with LESS people and money than the collective Linux effort, and will now make a profit do it.

Apple wants you to buy new hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

Years ago (1998) the Mac camp was able to agure that buying a mac ment you'd be using the hardware alot longer than if you bought WinTel.

But Apple turned their back on this idea. Gil said at WWDC 1997, any machine sold in 1997 by apple would run the next generation of OS. I'm still waiting for Apple to do this.

Power.

[Doktor Memory]

You had no power to say "I want OSX to support my older Powermacs!"

Incorrect. Not only can you do just that (since the core OS code is available openly), but someone has already done it for you.

Many of your comments about Apple, while on-target, refer to a very different company than exists today.

Re:Power.

[krmt]

Fair enough. The problem is though, what happens if the company that exists today doesn't exist tomorrow? I have nothing against the Mac community at all. In fact, I still feel a great deal of allegiance to it, and I'm really happy with the strides they've made in terms of shareware stuff for OSX. But there are, unfortunately, no guarantees with apple, as anyone who pinned their hopes on Lisa/QuickdrawGX/OpenDoc/Copland/Be/Clones knows. Apple has definitely changed for the better. They are easily 100% better than they were five years ago. But Mac users are still tied in the end.

Re:Power.

[Doktor Memory]

The problem is though, what happens if the company that exists today doesn't exist tomorrow?

Well, it kinda boils down to the question of whether you trust the market to have a corrective influence.

Remember, Apple's original plan right after the acquisition of NeXT was to do a five-minute port of OpenStep to the Mac hardware platform, slap a (very) thin coat of mac-ish gui paint on it, ship it on every box and tell every developer to learn ObjectiveC and OpenStep or suffer. (This plan was called "Rhapsody", although "Dissonance" might have been a better name.) Classic head-in-the-clouds Apple, but Macromedia, Microsoft and most importantly Adobe told Jobs and Amelio where they could stuff the idea, and they went back to the drawing board.

Feedback from the outside world penetrated the Infinite Loop in a pretty thorough fashion in 1998. Nothing like a near-death experience for a wake-up call.

But there are, unfortunately, no guarantees with apple, as anyone who pinned their hopes on Lisa/QuickdrawGX/OpenDoc/Copland/Be/Clones knows.

True. But then again, there are no guarantees ever. Even in the open source world. How many years late is Mozilla? How stable is Gnome? How snappy is StarOffice?

In the end, projects succeed or fail on their own merits, open source or not. A lot of the ones you call out for mention (notably GX, OpenDoc and Copland) failed not because of lack of effort by Apple, but because they just weren't adopted by ISVs (GX), were sacrificed to industry politics (OpenDoc), or were a horrible, unimplementable idea to begin with (Copland).

Committing yourself to any computing platform carries a set of risks. Some of those risks are general, some are platform-specific. You spends your money (and your time) and you takes your chances.

Re:Race to the desktop, BSD won. Not SYSV, Not Lin

[Anonymous Coward]

Did what? Licked Micro$hit's ass? Yeah, that's what they did! Keep on licking!

Aside to idiot moderators.

[Doktor Memory]

Marking a response to an on-going discussion as a "troll" is begging for the hammer of meta-moderation. Think carefully in the future, lest your toys be taken away.

OSX for now, but Linux will do fine in 2 years

[einhverfr]

Here are the relative strengths of these platforms:

OSX:
1: An enterprise-ready office suite (MS Office).
2: Lots of other apps written for UNIX or Mac. 3: The stability and power that Linux and other UNIX-compatable OSs have.

Linux:
1: Lots of native software of varying degrees of quality.
2: Office suites which are still not ready for the enterprise but are getting there.
3: Stability (probably comparable to OS X).
4: Cross-platform (this is a big one).
5: Customizable to be optimized for any task.

So OSX is ready for all kinds of desktops while Linux is only ready for the small-to-midsized business. That means that OS X will do much better in the desktop market in the near future.

However, the weaknesses that Linux currently has are not systemic weaknesses. They are ones that will disappear with time and Linux has made amazing strides in the last 2 years even. This progress will continue and Linux will eventually be a creditable threat to the corporate desktop market.

The flaw with OS X is not a technical flaw, but one of business models. Apple is in the business of selling proprietary hardware and the economy of scale makes this difficult. I think that Apple will be making a serious run for the server market in the next few years, where this model is still very profitable but that they may still be unable to hold desktop market share in the next few years (the upcomming G5 chip is awesome and would work well in the server market). I think that this will provide the impetus for the ability of Linux to fight for the corporate desktop.

But OS X may help to pave the way...

Re:OSX for now, but Linux will do fine in 2 years

[mr100percent]

Customizable, customizable, bleh

Yes, it's a sorta good thing, meaning I can tweak any part of it, sorta like a Ford.

But the majority of people don't want to strip it down and take off all the unnecessary parts. I don't want to have to be a CS major to adjust programs to run to my spec. It'd be much easier to buy Office than to overhaul OpenOffice to my spec.
I find OS X to be easier, and has the best parts of Linux and Mac

Re:OSX for now, but Linux will do fine in 2 years

[einhverfr]

Ther majority of people don't need MS Office either, but the parties that drive the economy do.

I think that in 2 years, the office suites for Linux will be sufficiently advanced for the corporations to take Linux seriously.

Seriously, look how far KDE and GNOME have come in the last 2 years... Linux is not ready for the corporate desktop but it soon will be. (It is ready for the personal/small business desktop, though that is another story, and those markets are not driving markets.)

There is a little thing called privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn it, love it, live it.

Yes, all the other computer vendors track every copy of the OS sold and who it is sold to. They have their applications embed information in every document so that those documents can be traced back to you. This is called "invasion of privacy."

On the other hand, if you don't like mega corps tracking your every move then there is a choice.

That choice is Linux, but this also means that we will never have any idea of how many people are using Linux, nor what Linux will be used for. Freedom is scarey and uncertain, eh?

I use Linux on my computer at work, on a desktop machine, on my laptop, on my firewall, and on a services box for dns, dhcp, printing, file serving, and scanning. I also have a NIC computer that runs Linux and a Tivo which runs Linux.

Is that 3 Linux desktops, 4 linux desktops, or 7 linux desktops?

There are at least 8 million web servers running Linux. At least one sysadmin per web server is running Linux as a desktop. There are many times more people running Linux for fun than running it as their job.

So, based on these estimates, world wide, I would guess that there are at least 32 million people that use Linux as a desktop at least sometimes. But this is just as much as a SWAG as any other guess.

Sad really, only 32 million people in the whole world that values freedom over convenience.

Cut and paste

[horza]

An operating system where I can't cut from my text editor (KWrite) and paste into my web browser (Galeon) is definately not ready for the big time.

Phillip.

Extreme view with a couple good points

[einhverfr]

OK. I think you were modded Flamebait fairly, but I also think that there are a couple of real truths in your points:

1: Command-line is MUCH more efficient at asking the computer to perform complex and obscure tasks than the GUI ever can be. How do I use a GUI FTP front-end to download something to a floppy disk and change its name? In the windows/DOS command-line FTP, it is as simple as get myfile a:\archive1.txt This is because user -> computer information density is higher on the command line.

2: You are right that most people don't need MS Office, but the large businesses do, and that is one thing that really drives that aspect of the market. Therefore, MS Office has many features that need to be added to Linux office suites.

But here are the reasons for a GUI:

1: Learning curve is lesser for common tasks.

2: Infomation density of the information the computer is submitting to the user is much higher. This means that surfing the web is a more pleasent experience as is viewing a report of, say, security logs (if done right). Computer -> user information density is much better.

Again, I think that OS X is more ready for the desktop than Linux, but that Linux beats OS X in the next couple of years.

Had OSX on a dual 533,but sold it 4 a AMD on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone that just recently sold myself out of a very nice Apple loaded dual 533 G4 with OSX 10.1 and built myself a dual AMD 1800MP running linux(for less money, I might add). I can say this much about OSX taking away from the Linux desktop. It simply is NOT going to happen. OSX is nice and pretty, but the OSX desktop is not nearly as functional as my xamian gnome desktop. Not even by a long shot. OSX is all tranparent and oh so pretty to look at, but where is the functionality of that? The CDE styled menu bar, apple's "DOCK" is far less capable then a gnome panel. Though I was pleased at how OSX looked, I found myself very annoyed by lack of functional options, and resorted to digging around in UNIX more then using Apple's GUI. The hardware was another issue. The hardware support was limited almost entirely to Apple's hardware and just barely covers their own hardware, leaving alot of apple hardware unsupported. I was excited when I found I could run xfree's X server on top of OSX, and even get Gnome running. That's when it hit me, why in the hell do I even want this money leeching Apple based OS anyways with hugely limited hardware support, when the most functional thing I could run on it was a replacement desktop evironment? A desktop found in almost every free linux distrobution out there, with suppport for 100x more hardware, hardware of my own choosing at that! The only people that would dare to claim OSX's desktop opsoletes Gnome and KDE are those people that can not understand the Linux for Dummies book well enough to actually get Linux setup properly and customize their desktop to meet their needs. What kind of impact will OSX have on the linux desktop? I say it will only boost linux development, programmers will see something that works well in OSX and simply port it to linux and as Apple's more inteligent users explore the world of X servers and run Gnome on top of OSX, they just might realize the same thing I did, Gnome and other Linux desktops alike are simply more flexable, more function, and can be deployed for far less money on a much wider hardware base. And the risk of Apple and MS alike obseleting their own OS's for their own ends simply doesn't exist for Linux becuase the whole world makes Linux, not just one Company.

(Besides OSX comes with MS Internet Explorer, the perfect way to make any OS unsecure, what could they have been thinking?)

Re:He's right. Hows your liver?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference being that a commodity beige box desktop usually works OK. But every attempt at a 'commodity' laptop has turned out to be a 8 pound fatty with shitty battery life and terrible stability and a second rate screen. I don't think IBM is too worried.

OS X is another proprietary Unix based on BSD.

[Kaz Kylheku]

This is what Linux was developed to get away from. I started using Linux in 1993 not because it was better than proprietary Unix systems, but because of the freely redistributable source code.

Finally there was something that really delivered on the promise of freedom. Unix gave you a platitude about freedom embossed on a license plate; Linux gave you the actual freedom.

So people who are comparing OS X and Linux nearly a decade later simply don't get the point. Taking BSD code and making a proprietary layer on top of that is old hat. What do you think SunOS was?

Take a look at some family trees:

here
here

OS X is another SunOS, another Ultrix, another NeXTStep. From the point of view of someone who values freedom, not only technical excellence, it is just as irrelevant as these predecessors.

Re:BS

[gig]

PowerBooks all have DVD/CD-RW ("Combo") standard, now. A combo drive that fits into the 1" enclosure was just released a couple of weeks ago by the OEM. Prior to that, there just wasn't a way to put one in there.

That's something that gets overlooked a lot in Mac vs PC notebook comparisons. The PowerBook and iBook are getting on for subnotebook size. The iBook is Apple's low-end, $1299 "kids and consumers" notebook, and it is 1.3 inches thick and 8x11 depth and width and weighs less than five pounds (including the 5-hour battery). An interesting comparison that I read once put it up against a 3 pound Sony subnotebook, and the Sony weighed more in total, because the "3 pounds" didn't include the battery, external optical drive, and the PC Cards you needed for Ethernet and modem and such, which weren't built-in.

Apple is kicking ass in notebooks. You really owe it to yourself to check them out very seriously before you make any future notebook purchase. You pay one price, put in some more RAM since it is so easy to do (user-accessible RAM doors on all Macs) and then you just go about your business for a couple of years with no worries at all.

Re:0.24%

[90XDoubleSide]

Glade is an interesting program and a great tool, but by no means is it easier to use than IB:

• First and foremost it is an imitation of IB, which is the more mature product by far, having been around since 1988
• Apps output by IB/Project Builder will run on any OS X machine, without requiring any optional libraries to run (GTK or GNOME)
• Interface Builder has a much friendlier interface, thanks to adherence to the Aqua user interface guidelines
• IB does everything graphically, whereas Glade edits many things as textual lists
• IB can be used with AppleScript, the most human readable and easy to learn scripting language around

7-segment LEDS Anyone?

[Bilbo]

OK... I may not have as low a /. ID as you have, but I'll bet dollars to donuts that I've been around computers longer than you have. Shit -- I've programmed computers with 256 BYTES of RAM, where the display consisted of 4 digits of 7 segment LED's and a Hex keypad.

Technically, that's ALL you need to "make a computer sing (especially if you put an old AM radio close to the board and tune the busy loops to the right frequency...), but I think even you would agree that some of the recent advances in UI technology make things easier to do.

The essence of bigotry is the assumption that, "Everyone else should be just like me!"

who gives a rats ass

[Rogain]

Apple has consitantly sucked since the AppleIIe.

Deal with it.

Closed source software blows, and I don't care how much money it makes for Steve Jobs.

Fold in a touch of BeOS

[Lord Custos]

If Linux could handle multimedia as beautifully as the laste, lamented BeOS, then it would have an easier road to Desktop Domination.

Listening to you

[simm_s]

Almost every post is about why OS X does not have a future or why X11 is too bulky or why the poll results are wrong because of .

OS X has only a small fraction of the "desktop market" (whatever that is) and Linux probably has an even smaller fraction. .45% or even 2% is a joke in comparison to Windows dominance in the market.

No matter how much you cry, wine, or lament this is a fact. The best thing to do is to stop whinning and use the desktops you love and if you have the skill attempt to improve the desktops you believe are worth supporting. OS wars are childish.

This article is irrelivant and reading this constant bickering makes my stomach turn.

Re:Never actually been to the third world, have yo

[Archie Steel]

Er...what about those localized versions of windows? Do you think that the Registry keys are in the native tongue? Well, they aren't. The idea here is to have a localized user interface. That's the point you were trying to make, and the counter point was made that you have wide language support in Linux for the UI...not the config files. The top-to-bottom localization you speak of does not exist for Windows any more than for Linux.

As soon as you get under the hood, everything is in english - english is the universal language of computing, for better or for worse. (I remember when they tried to implement a french version of BASIC...it was really weird.)

The fact that Linux may eventually triumph over Windows is of course a matter of pure speculation. Who knows what can happen five years from now...ten years...One thing is for certain, it makes much more sense to have an open, free (as in beer) OS than a proprietary one.

...and Delusions of Dictatorship...

[ablair]

-Remember when some users got together and tried to make a theme creation app for the Mac?
Yeah, and there's lots of those kinds of apps still thirving. Just because a company has a right (and obligation to investors and employees) to protect their intellectual property in 'look and feel' does not mean they are an 'evil corporate dictatorship'

-Remember when Apple didn't want to let their users upgrade their machines?
No, and neither does anyone else because that buggy firmware update was fixed the same month. Save the conspiracy theories for /. story submissions, OK?

-Remember when some people made Apple parody sites?
Yeah, and like any popular company there's more hilarious parody sites than ever before.

-What happens when you want to upgrade your video card?
The same thing as what happens on the Wintel side of things: you go out and buy another from ATI, Matrox, an Nvidia card, whatever. There are fewer choices available to Mac owners, sure, but that's through no fault of Apple in trying to woo gfx card manufacturers.

The Mac user experience is highly customizeable; it's less so on the hardware side than software but since Apple has adopted many open standards like AGP ports, PCI busses, ATA HDs, USB & other interfaces, etc etc it is getting less and less 'dictatorial' yearly. Just buy a standard HD for instance and slap it in. By the way Y-Crate, have you ever actually used a Mac lately?

You'll move with Linux as well...

[ablair]

Once again the 'balance sheet' references. So as part of the Apple (Mac) Community you had no power? I'd reply you have just about the same amount of power as part of any other computing Community. No power to save Cyberdog or OpenDoc etc? And so now as part of the Linux Community you can save Easel or Win4Lin etc? Come on.

You have to admit that since Jobs has returned to Apple, they're listening. Over 75,000 beta user responses in a few months and the most common suggestions implemented (eg. the Apple Menu returned, speedup in 10.1, spring-loaded folders in 10.2 just to name a few). It shows that they're paying attention again.

Again, I'm sorry you feel alienated - it's obvious from your posts. But I'm glad you found a Good Place with the Linux Community (I certainly did). But now I also have a new home in the Mac Community too. For me it's not an "either-or"

Hate to bust your bubble, but...

[KMSelf]

MSIE runs under GNU/Linux. Ways, means, and degrees vary. Older versions are relatively easy to get up under WINE, with appropriate Windows libs installed, even newer versions are rumored to run relatively well. There's also Lin4Win and VMWare, but the first is somewhat a borderline case, and the latter I'd say really doesn't count, as the virtual system has nothing to do with GNU/Linux.

THERE IS NO "versus"

[ablair]

What I don't get is a lot of people in this forum taking Moore's "Is OS X the Real User-Friendly Linux?" article as somehow an attack on Linux or anti-Linux. As I read it, he's quite pro-Linux, as are much of the rest of the Mac community. You can hear his positive attitude towards Linux throughout the article, in words like "...even if Apple succeeds in its goal of doubling its market share, there are still going to be plenty of PCs around to support the Linux platform... Which is good. I would be dreadfully sorry to see Linux go the was of, say, Amiga, and happily the prospect of this happening is slim to nil"

The last thing us 'alternative OS' users need is picking fights amongst ourselves where there were none. We should all remember that MacOS X success is good for Linux and Linux success is good for MacOS X. Each's popularity will result in ever-more software being ported to the other that wouldn't normally have been there. And the more people exposed to the CLI and UNIX features on MacOS, the more will try experimenting with Linux.

A user can happily be part of both communities (they're not all that different, after all) without them being mutually exclusive, as I've found out. We shouldn't shut ourselves out from the other, whichever angle we're coming from.

OSX core has been on x86 a long time now

[ablair]

Darwin has worked on intel hardware since it was first released; you can add a GUI to it (X-Windows, whatever) and run a great deal of Mac software on it, so what you hear on this forum about "never a Mac x86 port" is essentially bogus. What's unlikely to be ported is the upper-layer stuff like the Aqua UI, that's all.

CLI / script

[KMSelf]

Just adding a point that seems to have been missed.

You do something in a GUI, chances are high that:

• You can't repeat the action simply.
• You can't back out if you make a mistake.

A good CLI provides the ability to do "here" documents and command-line scripts (vi mode in bash) which can be used to compose complex (or dire-consequence) commands, which can then be viewed, desk-checked, or "neutered" (echo command...) and then recalled and run for real. If it turns out you actually wanted to save the command, you can script it.

My own claim to fame was processing some 125,000 files which were part of a web archived I'd snarfed (with a wget script). Tasks were to correct nonstandard HTML, rewrite URLs to point to local references rather than a remote site no longer in existence, and to fix some badly broken HTML and files. A combination of tools and scripts got me through this in a matter of hours. I don't care to think what the GUI equivalent would have been.

CLI and GUI both have their place, but for work which can be expressed algorithmically and which contains repetitive elements, a scriptable CLI kicks Tog's ass.

Yes, I know this is a troll, I'm writing for the rest of ya.

ADB devices can work in OS X

[GPS Pilot]

Kensington released drivers that make its ADB products work well in OS X.

So it's possible, and not even all that difficult because I/O Kit makes writing X drivers sweet 'n' easy.

It's just a matter of the manufacturer caring enough about support.

I'll be happy Apple will make OS X for PC's!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using Unix since 1991, Linux since Red Hat version 5.0, currently using Red Hat 7.1. Linux desktop fonts in X Windows are too dull. YOu can't run most multimedia's like in Mac or Windoze.

I will be very happy if Apple will make OS X available to PC or PC clones!!!

Font antialiasing algorithms overrated (way OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Feh, I really don't care what font antialiasing algorithms are used on any given system anyway, as long as it occurs and it generally looks better than just plain on or off bit rasterizing.

What I really want to see in the future is a 2D OS GUI based not around the paradigm of pixels but of a common absolute unit measurement, say millimeters or inches or heck, make the printing industry happy and choose picas. Then you just choose how tall you want your fonts to be and presto they are that tall. Just say how thick you want your menus to be and viola they are that thick.

This obviously means two things: that computer display devices will have to start supporting very high resolutions in order to avoid the blocky-font effect and that the actual output devices (CRTs, LCDs, whatever) will have to start accurately reporting exactly how many pixels (or whatever you want to call your rasterizer minimum display unit) fit properly in a given absolute measurement. Such a number should hopefully be a very large number. Just optimize video code and hardware away from being pixel-centric to being measurement-centric.

I can't think of a huge reason this would conflict with 3D applications or anything either. After all, geometry is geometry, and rendering 3D objects on a flat plane is something that happens all the time on plain paper with it's absolute measurements.

Oh, and yes I will admit that it will be a pain in the ass for web developers at first. They'll have to learn how to design a page properly like magazine and newspaper layout artists have been doing since almost immediately after Gutenberg invented the printing press. Boo hoo hoo.

Besides, everyone seems to want to keep using the web as the new print format anyway. You don't hear about magazine publishers bitching about how many pixels they have to work with on a page. They talk in measurements of picas and inches and such; absolute measurements that don't change from device to device.

That's the way all computer graphics should be too, and in a few more years, I can't see any reason why it shouldn't be that way. Pixels suck. Absolute measurements rule.

Oh and, uh, since OS X's GUI is based off of a PDF rendering system, I'd have to say they're probably a good few steps ahead of the curve here, and this is likely what Apple is hoping things shift toward as time goes on. I hope they're right, and I hope they nail all the bastards to the wall when the revolution comes. (-;

There's nothing wrong with proprietary systems as long as developers and end-users alike are treated well. (Note that my idea of 'treated well' includes monetary cost considerations. Bending customers over a barrel does not count as treating them well. It does, in fact, count as abusing them.)

Re:Font antialiasing algorithms overrated (way OT)

[be-fan]

Coupla points:
1) Actually, 3D meshes perfectly with absolute measurement systems, since 3D has never used pixels. OpenGL, for example, is enitrely based on abstract units.
2) I think Berlin does this.

Linux vs. Corporate desktops

[BilGe]

I'd like to add a little different persepctive to this long thread ... that of the Corporate America PC user. I work for a major reinsurance company on the team that builds the desktop coreloads (among other things). We currently use Windows NT 4.0 as our standard desktop operating system. Planning is under way to convert to Windows 2000, a task we hope to complete in a year or so. One thing I think gets lost in the debate over operating systems is this: Operating systems exist to support applications. They have no other purpose in life. Linux is not and never will be used on any desktop in our company. It doesn't matter how good the operating system is, or how stable, or how friendly the GUI is. Nothing matters except the availability of applications. As an insurance company, we are heavily regulated by state and federal governments in all countries where we operate. Complying with those regulations consumes as much as 1/3 of our staff time. The applications we use to help us comply are available only for Windows - no other operating system, not even MAC. Among the applications we depend on: Freedom AS2000, which prepares our Blue and Yellow annual statements. Premium Pro, which prepares premium tax returns for state and municipal entities. Tracker - Keeps track of our agent appointments. Mosaic - prints policies that conform to state regulations. RMS Catrater - evaluates property casualty exposures for windstorms, flood and earthquake risk. TAS - analyzes policies in our Life Reinsurance portfolio for exposure and reserving. Silverplume, AM Best, AXCO and OneSource - Various databases of information on other insurance companies and insurance regulations. Outlook 2000 - because we require MAPI-compliant email. Not one of these applications will run in anything but Windows. This is just the beginning. We have almost 500 known applications in our environment and none of them work in anything but Windows. A very few, such as Office, have Linux or Mac equivalents, but they are the exceptions. Even if we could change some users to Linux, we would not. The cost of supporting two operating systems is more than twice what it costs to support one. Some might argue that Linux costs less to support than Windows. My view is that it doesn't matter how much less Linux might cost to support. What matters is the applications we must run.

office applications

[Jens]

As for the common denominator desktop, do not underestimate the power of Office. A platform can not hope to succeed in the commercial desktop space without Office.

Yeah, you need to have an office to be able to work. I don't know why you capitalized this though.

But you also need a productivity software package (word processor, etc) like Staroffice or Lotus Wordperfect Office for Linux, The long term goal is not to gag yourselves with proprietary file formats so that you are _able_ to switch if you _want_ to.

I heard Microsoft makes a single-platform, single-proprietary-file-format office suite as well, which doesn't fulfill this requirement.

Re: Serial ports (OT)

[Anonymous Coward]

posting as an AC cuz I'm lazy

It is very easy to say that rs-232 ints are old skool - however, there are many many many devices the we deal with in the real world (routers, unix boxen, etc) that still use this interface, and will for the forseable future. Crap-ass CPEs like the one provided by your DSL or DOCSIS provider wont have usb console ports for a while, d00d.

Re: Serial ports (OT)

[melatonin]

If you need one you can get one through USB. Most people don't need it. Thus, Apple doesn't include it on Macs.

Re:"the engineer community is abandoning it [Linux

[LazLong]

You're a moron. I seriously doubt Disney has more than 16,000 Mac's in a single location. We do.