Linux and Mac OS X

William J writes "Here is an article with an interesting slant on the relationship between the Mac OS and Linux. The author suggests that Gnome and KDE developers can learn from the Mac GUI. Worth quoting: 'It is amazing to me that an OS which was developed largely by volunteers (and which is essentially free) can run with unprecedented stability on the same hodgepodge of PC hardware on which another company has spent billions of dollars in R&D costs and is still unable to produce a product which can run for more than a few days without crashing -- and it costs hundreds of dollars.'"

Comments

Can't connect to Windows?

[sg3000]

> I was unable to get a Windows 2000 PC to see any
> Macs (OSX or 9) on the network or vice-versa.

I don't want to be tough, but I've had no problems getting my Mac to load Windows servers via SAMBA. I do it every day, and I'd hardly say I'm an expert at SAMBA. So I'd say that rather than this being an OS X or Windows limitation, this guy may just "lack the skills to pay the bills". What was the point of the article again?

The submitter made a misleading quote...

[Daniel Wood]

Worth quoting: 'It is amazing to me that an OS which was developed largely by volunteers (and which is essentially free) can run with unprecedented stability on the same hodgepodge of PC hardware on which another company has spent billions of dollars in R&D costs and is still unable to produce a product which can run for more than a few days without crashing -- and it costs hundreds of dollars.'"

This was in fact a reference to Windows, not Mac OSX.

On the subject of Windows stability. If you're not using that crap VIA puts out, but instead use tested Intel solutions, it is not an issue. Since my migration to Windows 2000, I have had a total of eight memory dumps. That is since my initial use of Windows 2000, RC2. As a desktop OS in the Intel world, nothing comes close(available software versus stability). Eight memory dumps over twelve systems in a period of Three years seems like a good track record to me.

I will probably be modded to hell for posting anything positive about Windows, but these are the facts.

Re:Proposal

[sydb]

This story is a melange of Linux, Mac, Windows and *BSD and hence is likely to fan the religious flames, generate page hits, advertising views and revenue.

That's why it's here.

Re:KDE and Linux

[Arandir]

What the hell are you talking about? One of the goals of FreeBSD-5.0 is "to implement all requirements of the ISO 9899:1999 (C99) and IEEE 1003.1-2001 (POSIX) standards." I don't have time to do a POSIX audit right now, but my -4.5 system has a man page for POSIX.1e, every random man 3 page I've tried yet states compliance for C89, C99, POSIX.1 or SUSv2 under the STANDARDS section. Having done a bit of pthread programming, I know from first hand experience that FreeBSD us *much* more compliant with the standards than Linux.

Is FreeBSD fully compliant? No. No free unix implementation is. But FreeBSD (and I assume the other *BSDs as well) is a lot more compliant than some commercial unices I've used.

Re:What IS the fucking deal with Apple? (readme)

[DavidRavenMoon]

Bzzzzt!!! Wrong. OSX is a product that includes a desktop GUI, a baffling array of APIs and subsystems, and no UNIX whatsoever.

BZZZZZZ!! Wrong! From Getting Started With Darwin

Q: What is Darwin, and how does it relate to Mac OS X?

A: Darwin is an open source, UNIX-based operating system built on BSD 4.4 and Mach 3.0 which forms the core of Mac OS X. Darwin is primarily what is called the "core operating system" (i.e, the kernel, drivers, and command-line utilities common to UNIX distributions), but a Darwin release includes several other pieces, including the compiler toolchain, a security framework based on CDSA, and parts of the Mac OS X "Core Foundation" framework. When we say a "Darwin system", we usually mean one built only using Open Source code, though technically every "Mac OS X" system is also a Darwin system, since it is built on top of Darwin.

Q: How hard is it to port BSD or Linux applications to OS X?

A: Given Mac OS X's strong BSD roots, this is actually very easy. Thousands of existing BSD and Linux applications (as well as Solaris, SCO, etc...) have already been ported to Mac OS X. Our dedicated Darwin developers are constantly striving to simplify portability, since they use these applications themselves and frequently are the first to encounter any problems. With their help, portability will surely get easier over time.

If you are interested in porting BSD or Linux applications to Mac OS X yourself, here are some common gotchas:

• The latest GNU configure supports Darwin, so check to see if your package is using an up-to-date version (currently version 1.2). Usually, it's just a matter of typing "./configure ppc"

• On Mac OS X, "GCC" is called "CC," and some common libraries and headers (e.g. "-lm", "stdio.h") are implicitly included in the System.framework, which can confuse hard-coded Makefiles. You can always create a symbolic link from GCC to CC (i.e. "ln -s /usr/bin/cc /usr/local/bin/gcc")

• Our dynamic library mechanism (dylib) and executable format (Mach-O) differs considerably from other UNIX implementations, so applications that require detailed knowledge of runtime and user loadable modules may need to be modified.

• We currently offer limited support for POSIX threads, so some thread-intensive applications may encounter problems. We are working to address this over time.