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Benjamin Herrenschmidt On PPC/Linux, Apple and OSS
MacBoy writes "The folks over at ResExcellence have a great interview with Benjamin Herrenschmidt, kernel guru for the PPC/Linux camp. He offers up some history of Linux on Apple and PPC hardware, and some discussion on Apple's current and past contributions to the open-source and Linux communities. He makes some interesting comparisons of Linux on PPC vs. Intel hardware, such as the ease of getting important patches into the kernel on PPC compared to Intel. It's an interesting read, especially if you are amoung the many who covet the new Dual-CPU GHz G4 Macs and want to know a little more about the PPC/Linux community."
People forget that the vast majority of the installed base of PowerPC chips is in embedded systems. Apple is a relatively small buyer of PowerPC chips. Linux is a great product for purposes such as those.
The lmbench numbers show that linux is significantly faster for certain operations. I have a copy of the results that I pointed to in an old post over here. Linux spanks OS X. It's a reason.
Other reasons include access to all of the source of your OS and better support for certain things (pcmcia 802.11b card support? Better filesystems. More software already working).
I personally run Debian on my laptop 99% of the time because my environment is the same everywhere, and apt-get kicks ass (fink on OS X is cool, but there isn't as much stuff available).
I'm no Apple user, but I had the chance to play a bit with Macs for some weeks and I'm afraid you're dead wrong.
I'm sure Linux is faster than OS-X for some tasks. Probably a lot of them, actually. But are those the tasks OS-X is geared to?
A web-server? What do you need a GUI and Aqua for in a pure web-server? You don't put KDE and GLTron on your Linux webserver, do you? OSX without Aqua is not OSX, it's Darwin.
OS-X is a desktop-geared operating system. It's made for interactive use, to play with Photoshop, 3D animation, movie editing, software development and whatever the user happens to require. It contains a web-server (and all the other servers) because it's useful for the user/developer. The user wants to see his personal webpage at once. The developer wants to code and deploy.
System requirements? Can I run KDE/GNOME on "very little memory" anymore than I can run Aqua? I don't think so. I tried a couple of times, and I feel stupid for trying. Linux can survive in very little memory just like Darwin can, but Linux-OSX is no valid comparison.
I don't understand either what you're saying about admin tools deep in the GUI. The shell is right there, waiting to be used as always and with all the tools one needs. So are their GUI front-ends, which I never had problems to find as a non-Mac user, and which are much simpler and convenient (the whole point of the GUI front-end) than any I have seen in Linux.
What does Linux offer in advantage to the GUI's organization in OSX? Are you talking about KDE, or GNOME, or something else, any of which you could install over Darwin (if they can be installed in LinuxPPC)?
Apple's GUI is not so slow these days (maybe it was in 10.0). At least it didn't seem to me when I used it, and it's not like I had the time to "get used to it". Not as responsive as my Win box, but much more responsive than my Linux with XFree. Useless? If you mean the pretty effects, transparency, etc... sure, but it's part of the Mac style. Aesthetics matter. If they didn't, you probably wouldn't be buying a Mac.
Price? For a competent, fully-functional, user-friendly desktop system based on Unix? I would prefer free, of course, but if I were willing to pay for the Mac I'd pretty much buy the OS-X no questions asked. But of course, that's included in the price of the Mac.
Apple did the smart thing using BSD/NextStep. Even if they didn't consider it a superior, more robust Unix as they said, it lets them avoid the politics that surround Linux. Just not having to deal with all the license zealotry and "Linux is always better" chanting is worth the price.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Linux is often faster. Just like Intel Linux, it's possible to create a custom stripped down desktop with no fat. I've become accustomed to how things work on my Intel Linux machines and like having almost the same environment on my Pismo Powerbook. I also prefer the GNU utilities over the BSD ones (flame away...it's just a preference...get over it).
OSX is also next to useless on older hardware. We use 233Mhz Beige G3 desktop as an internal server. It's running ssh, Apache-SSL, NTP, mySQL, Apache, and Netatalk. The Apache/mySQL setup powers our troubleticket/inventory system. The Netatalk/Samba combo makes files available to both Mac and Windows clients. It does all of this with very acceptable speed and reliablity. The machine has zero need for a GUI...and doesn't have one. I suppose I could use Darwin but the machine wouldn't do it's work any better and I would have to mess with fussy ports of the daemons. It has full apt-get goodness....I forgot to mention that it is dead easy to admin.
So yeah, there are valid reasons to use Linux on PPC hardware.
The funny part is thus:
Scenario:
Pretend that OS X and linux are functionally equivalent. All of a sudden linux introduces accelerated support for alpha blending and better looking fonts and a beautiful animated GUI that blows OS X out of the water.
Linux communities response:
Woohoo! We are so much more l33t and advanced than OS X. Our fonts are better and everything is animated and pretty. We win!
Scenario:
Pretend that OS X and linux are functionally equivalent. All of a sudden OS Xintroduces accelerated support for alpha blending and better looking fonts and a beautiful animated GUI that blows linux out of the water.
Linux communities response:
Stupid Macs are so slow now. So they are pretty, but all those features are really worthless and just suck up RAM. The GUI just hides you from the command line, the fonts are just way to easy to read and take the challenge out of using unix, and the alpha blending is just a way to force me into buying more expensive hardware just to get the GUI to be responsive.
Justin Dubs