Slashdot Mirror
Jordan Hubbard moves to new OpenDarwin.org
bootc writes "Last week we heard the news that Jordan Hubbard was leaving the FreeBSD Core Team. I received an email about the new OpenDarwin.org web site and had a look around, just to find that our friend Jordan was member of the OpenDarwin Core Team!" Apple has consolidated its Open Source web site, including Darwin, under its developer site, while the Internet Software Consortium is hosting the independent OpenDarwin.org, which will develop OpenDarwin with the developer community and collaborate with Apple to merge OpenDarwin technologies into Darwin and Mac OS X.
I wonder how much Apple is "contributing" towards him.
I think Jordan is moving around in a Survivor-style alignment to the most-abundant version of BSD. He likely gets the advantages of working with what he knows, but also being able to show results as users play with the results in Darwin and Mac OS X.
Oh...and I think I got first post. What was that phrase...oh yeah...w00t!
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Is it just me or is this the first story with the strange, new fangled slashdot logo in the corner? I dont recall seeing it.
I think that cute little platypus should be used for future Darwin stories.
Anybody can come out with a strain of Free BSD! When the hell are they gonna release the source to Aqua? At least the parts that aren't licensed from other companies (like Adobe).
IMHO, it's the lack of a good desktop (KDE is OK) that's keeping *nix from becoming the premiere desktop and Aqua could help a lot.
L. Ron?
BSD is crawling with Code Thetans! Someone get me an E-Meter!
Oh c'mon, it's easy. Here's a hint: use the word "dying".
The goatse guy for president. Win one for the gaper!
Apple doesn't want *nix to become the premiere desktop. It wants Mac OS X to.
From an OS point of view (not GUI) is Darwin better than the BSDs in any technical way?
Okay...hmmm...something funny to go for the coveted +5 score. How about:
I've decided to fork a *BSD tree into my own offering. I'm going to call it "The Darwin Awards". Why? Because, "BSD is dying". Ba-dump-ba!
I'm not sure if you are serious about this. Darwin has been running on x86 since day one!
Read about it here
I just think it's amazing that there's a hexley.com!
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
We have a good *nix with the premier desktop...
:)
It is called Mac OS X
Seriously, Aqua and Quartz are definitely slower than KDE or GNOME. That is partially due to some of the effects, but it is also due to their youth. Aqua, Quartz, and OS X as a whole has gotten better with each release and I am looking forward to Jaguar (10.2).
I don't think Apple will open source any of the GUI components as it doesn't have much of an upside for them. The reason Aqua is so nice to look at is that it is uniform. Once it is given away for everyone to change up, we all know what will happen. Everyone would have their own agenda on where to take it. This will destroy the uniformity and make aqua no better than KDE or GNOME (neither has a look as clear, well defined or consistent as OS X). Don't get me wrong, they are nice and I would love more code to be released, but GNOME and KDE don't even come close to comparison to the OS X user experience.
Bill
IMHO, it's the lack of a good desktop (KDE is OK) that's keeping *nix from becoming the premiere desktop and Aqua could help a lot.
I seriously doubt Apple will ever release Aqua, there are too many advantages to keeping it in house, the biggest reason being control. Apple is primarily a hardware company and they, like Sun, use software to sell thier hardware. If Aqua were released to an open source license, it would be ported to other platforms, at which point at least one reason for buying an Apple system is gone. Who would spend $1800 on an iMac when you could get similar functions from a $800 Celeron system.
I personally think we may, in the future see some x86 OEM do something similar with Linux. Have an open source core (command line only), with a proprietary GUI on top (only sold and supported with thier hardware, no retail version), but make it easy to run X Windows concurently in rootless mode, so all the hardcore Linux users can still use thier favorite programs. I suspect someone could sell alot of hardware this way, if done right and done well.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Where's my source?! Gimme gimme gimme!!!
I'm a dirty GNU hippie, and all their hard work should be given to me for free!
not day one!!
but you are mostly correct,
Darwin ran on x86 fairly soon
after it's release.
We have Aqua. Or about 95% of the look. (Not the underlying technology, but then, does it matter?) Want it? First, use KDE. I say this because I know that there is an Aqua window decoration theme that has translucent unfocused titlebars. If there's a Sawfish window decoration with similar capabilities, speak up. Next, get Aqua themes for KDE and GNOME/GTK. You may have to tweak them a bit so that they are identical, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Grab some OSX icons off the net, play with KDE's kicker until it looks like the dock, and you've got Aqua!
Of course, if you really wanted to be clever, you could patch the kicker source code to get that "bouncing icon" effect that OSX has. If you want to be even more clever, you can patch KDE so that window menus are displayed in the desktop menu, thus giving you that genuine Mac experience. (This might already be the case in KDE3; I'm still running 2.2.)
:Peter
Get it into your skull crackhead, they will never release it, Least of all to freeloading GPL socialists who think its their god given right to leech other folks work for nothing.
Curmudgeon
- Aqua depends on the Quartz rendering layer (Display PDF)
- Apple developed Quartz (Display PDF) in-house specifically in order to avoid paying licensing fees to Adobe like Next was for Display postscript
- The PDF spec is open for anyone else to develop their own implementation, just like Apple did
- Apple's implementation of Display PDF is apparently fairly MacOS X-specific and while chunks of it could likely be retargetted it's supposedly not a candidate for a direct port
- Apple considers the Aqua GUI their trade dress and are quite vigorous about defending it
So, instead of whining at Apple to give away their goodies how about actually supporting the projects out there with the same aims? And instead of looking to rip-off their interface howzabout showing some initiative and coming up with a distinct sperate one - goodness knows there's enough folks happy to criticize the Aqua GUI.When did Open Source become gimme gimme gimme?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
On a slightly more serious note, it's very clear you haven't used OS X. Looks are NOT everything. If you honestly believe that the KDE 3 user experience is on par with Mac OS X, then I truly hope you stay out of usability testing. It's getting better all of the time, as is GNOME, but it's just not there yet. For example, the KDE configuration system is far more complex than System Preferences. Sure, it's because you get a lot of extra customization, but it overwhelms newbie users. (And, on a similar note, any user who really wants to customize things that badly in OS X need merely get the TinkerTool Panel installed and he can configure a number of out-of-the-way system settings.) KDE lacks any functionality close to an iDisk, and you cannot configure things such as webserving with the click of a button like you can in OS X. The excedingly simple directory structure of OS X is completely lacking in all Linux distros. (I.e., while the full structure is, of course, there, the user needn't worry about it. ~/Preferences houses all the user's prefs,
Just because it looks like a duck does not mean that it quacks like a duck.
Don't believe me? Check out these screenshots:
GNUMail on Linux/GNUStep
GNUMail under Aqua/MacOS X
Don't write off GNUStep just because they haven't reached the popularity of KDE or GNOME. I think that with Apple's dominance in the UNIX market place, that we may see GNUStep become increasingly important.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Actually Apple have found lots of bugs and reported them back to the respective opensource project. As i understand it there is some serious testing at apple that the open source community doesn't have resources to do and both worlds gain from this.
Im pretty sure apple developers have commited code to opensource projects.
For those sorry lot amongst you who don't use OS X, perhaps you should look into the GNUstep project and help them out.
The more done this project is, the more likely you'll see Mac OS X Cocoa developers compiling GNUstep stuff for the Linux folks. If the GNUstep folks so far, Apple might be willing to start open sourcing bits and components of their GUI.
I was one of the ones that wondered why the GNUstep folks even bothered, but who's piping down now?
In any case, I don't bother, I use OS X already.
I believe slashdot will need a new icon image for Open Darwin's Hexley
[alk]
Apple's use of OpenDarwin is purely a marketing ploy. There are two ways in which Darwin contributes to Apple's bottom line. First, Darwin is a variant of UNIX, which is similar to Linux, so Apple benefits from all of the existing expertise and anti-Windows sentiment. Second, through marketing and sheer strength, it's a case of "thems as has gits". Apple has a strong following and saavy marketing staff. By "thinking different [sic]" with Darwin, Apple maintains for its customers a perception of philosophical distance from Microsoft, when in fact they are philosophically very similar.
Talking of usability testing, do you have any data to back this up? It's true the KDE Control Centre is bizarrely designed, but in fact it's being restructured for KDE3.1
KDE lacks any functionality close to an iDisk, and you cannot configure things such as webserving with the click of a button like you can in OS X.
Incorrect. There is no centralised free disk service like the iDisk, but on the other hand remember you effectively pay for the "free" mac.com services when you buy a Mac. If you want, you can pay me and I'll give you some FTP space. You'll then find you can browse your "mikeDisk" direct from Konqueror like a normal filing system, and also all your apps will be able to load and save to it directly - you need never know it's on a remote disk. What, you want even more power? Then try InterMezzo, which is a caching, conflict resolving offlineable remote drive system. Not only do you get network transparecy, but also you can disconnect at any point and continue working.
Oh, I almost forgot, there is a KDE panel applet that includes a small webserver, that can be switched on or off with a mouseclick. I think it's included with KDE3 or if not then with 3.1
The excedingly simple directory structure of OS X is completely lacking in all Linux distros.
Switch to root and try again. The whole UNIX directory structure is there, the finder simply hides it. Fine - I can make a version of Konqueror that hides it all as well, would that make it easier to use? Perhaps. I don't know to be honest. It might be something to look into.
You're right in terms of software management, but it's being worked on. Font management is also improving.
What matters is the process - OS X is simply a way of locking you into proprietary Apple hardware and kit. All platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, and the weaknesses you mentioned in Linux are being resolved fast. I could name a lot of weaknesses in OS X too, which I believe Apple are on the verge of solving. So what? What matters is - are you the one in control 5 years from now?
Fact: Darwin is *BSD.
Fact: Thanks to OS X, it is now deployed more widely than GNU/Linux.
Fact: Your argument has been skewered.
I use OS X, OpenBSD, and PPC-based Linux systems. I love 'em all in their own way.
IMHO, it's the lack of a good desktop (KDE is OK) that's keeping *nix from becoming the premiere desktop and Aqua could help a lot.
There is so much to say in response to this one sentence. Where to begin?
Look, KDE not lacking in anything that is "keeping *nix from becoming the premiere desktop". If we want Linux to take over the world, then we need specialized apps, like games and Adobe products. MacOS X users love to talk all day about how they are running Windows/Mac/Linux software all at the same time. The power of OS X is in the applications. As far as the UI goes, I personally can't stand it. It is too limited and too slow. KDE is much more configurable and fully open-source to boot.
Now, there is no reason that *nix can't be a good desktop system for your average user. Apple proves this. Linux/KDE may not be for the average user, but that's fine. I like the power. Each to his own.
Linux/KDE has the desktop. It doesn't have as many desktops as Microsoft or Apple, but who cares? It doesn't have to take over the world to be viable.
Sorry about the rant. From your post, it seemed like you were saying KDE was not good enough and if Linux had Aqua it would change everything. IMO, this is simply not true. Anyhow, Aqua is not a fantasy, it exists. Go get a Mac, or get your mom a Mac. It's right there, and its lack of existence on x86 is not holding anything back.
I agree. Please see my
-Russ
Me
Huh? There's never any fees though and you can have as many accounts as you want. Your statement is like saying you effectively pay for "free" Linux when you buy an x86 machine.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Well, I was attempting to imply that *BSD is dying while OS X is thriving, but whatever.
The goatse guy for president. Win one for the gaper!
FreeBSD is not as "user-friendly" as Linux... and by that I mean it is slightly more complicated to use Ports (cd /usr/ports/net/vnc; make && make install) than to walk through a package tree with GnoRPM. Well, actually it isn't more difficult but might be *perceived* to be more difficult. Want to recompile your kernel under FreeBSD? Edit a text file, run config on it then cd to the appropriate directory and compile... no make menuconfig here.
The interesting thing to me is that all of the "hardcore" *nix developers out there are now screaming for a desktop solution akin to Windows. Seems that some people have lost their way in regards to the command line and good old knowledge being necessary to make their machines perform.
but you are mostly correct, Darwin ran on x86 fairly soon after it's release.
I had always assumed it had been "since day one" because it was a fallout of porting the FreeBSD stuff to Mach, etc.
If it's not a fallout of the porting effort, why do they support x86 at all? Is this to help the Open Source development community surrounding Darwin, or is it possibly the case that Apple is hedging their bets and thinking of going x86 themselves at some point in the future?
Aqua shmaqua.
While the Aqua look is nice, it has and can be duplicated. The fact of the matter is that the real advantage is with the underlying rendering layer. There is no way an X based system is going to be able to present a look and feel of any design, no matter how good that is going to be able to compete with the flat out sophistication of Quartz.
The saddest thing about Darwin x86 is that it is not useable, and Apple is nixing development on purpose. It's annoying to those interested who do not want to buy overpriced hardware. I hope Darwin quickly matures into a useable OS for x86. OS X is just what the doctor ordered for the battle against MSFT and the x86 stranglehold. Mot PPC is annoying to me. It's "think different" in the wrong way. Slower != better.
Huh? There's never any fees though and you can have as many accounts as you want. Your statement is like saying you effectively pay for "free" Linux when you buy an x86 machine.
No -- the point is the very real costs of maintaining the ftp servers are paid by Apple out of its income. Transparent ftp connectivity is already part of KDE, the problem is that there can be no centralized server without *somebody* paying for it.
This is nothing but great news. OS X has really made some strides over the last year or so and I couldn't be more than happy that more Open Source contributions are on the way.
He made the right choice leaving FreeBSD and onto the next generation of stronger and more powerful BSDs: OS X/Darwin
It's funny watching you open source knobbers get all worked up over OS X. Talk about being jealous...
Apple debuts the most technologically advanced windowing system ever, and it's:
"Aqua/Quartz is so slow! And it doesn't support network transparency! And Aqua is so candy-coated and ugly! Hahahah!" Meanwhile 2,000 different Aqua themes appear on the various themes sites within days.
Apple bases their OS on FreeBSD, something that ALL geeks are supposed to be keen on, and it's:
"They've bastardized the tree hierarchy, and used a microkernel. Microkernels are so slooow."
Apple brings third-party developers like Adobe and MS onto the bandwagon - developers which Linux has been trying and failing to emulate since day one - and it's:
"We never needed that proprietary crap anyway, Gimp is 500% better than Photoshop and OpenOffice kills MS Office and... and... and your mom!"
Apple includes Apache, NFS, and Samba connectivity and it's:
"Enabling/disabling my daemons with one click is so inflexible. I want more configurability."
Apple retains their trademark simplicity in plug & play. Mice, keyboards, scanners, you name it Just Work. The open-source community replies: /proc/modules and you'll see a list of modules. Now go into the XFree86 config file and make sure you see these lines, and..."
"You can do that today in ObscureLinuxDistro 8.3. You just have to make sure you've got x, y, and z modules loaded, use modprobe for this otherwise type cat
Once again, open source software finishes last place in technology and usability, and its zealotry continue to deny it. Get out of the basement and into the real world, pizzafaces. Your mom.
In addition to support for WebDAV in the Finder, OS X has a mod_dav enabled copy of Apache. The link is to an O'Reilly article on setting up a WebDAV folder in OS X.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Besides. Windows is working out pretty well for OEMs for the time being. Quit dreaming. I say this as someone who wouldn't touch Windows with a 10 foot poll.
It would be hard to transform OpenStep/Cocoa/Carbon/Aqua into something like KDE and Gnome, in part because the API is already defined, and the principles are fairly different.
A big difference, which also affects uniformity, is that layout (widget placement) is absolute, rather than done by an automatic engine.
Personally, I like automatic placement, but I have yet to find an algorithm that always did things the way I want them without a lot of experimentation and tweaking...and yes, I've built my own widget sets and layout engines (on top of Xlib), and I know it ain't trivial.
Now the next logial step from the x86 port of darwin is the port of OS X to the x86. I know this doesn't seem too special, but I am personally fed up with windows and I would love to see a stable well supported OS (Besides Linux) that looks beautiful. Apple could put a serious dent into Microsoft's market share and it would be the first OS that I would by off the shelf in years.
eh, food for thought...
I understand OS X to be nice, but it is not for x86. Apple has a complete monoply over its technology and should have a right to do so. I just think that in order for any serious business they will need to open up shop to more than their OS. They are lagging behind in processor and innovations design with it becoming ever more evident that their success is in software, contrary to the past. With the recent acquisition of Shake, they proceed into serious video composition. But until it becomes feasible to buy a system based on "gigaflops" instead of raw power, I don't see it a good idea to invest in one. I cannot build my own G4, nor can I upgrade one if i choose to buy one. On the talk of the DMCA and encryption bill (SSCSTASSCCCS?), Apple can have the same critques. In opposite to x86, it has good software and so-so hardware.
Hey AC... care to give examples of how Apple is "nixing development" of Darwin on x86?
The source is sitting their do what you want with it.
The FreeBSD stuff that is present in the Darwin kernel is mostly the platform independent parts (since the platform dependent stuff is mostly in the actual Mach parts), so it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with that.
I'm not sure what kind of ppc support the version of Mach used as a starting point had (it certainly didn't have support for Mac hardware specifically), but it certainly did have i386 (NeXT's Mach, Mach 3.0, Mach 4 all run on i386, and I've seen Mach 2.x/UX running on a i386 but can't remember the specific version), so that could also a reason to have been using it in the initial development.
Um. It cant be run on anything but some really lame old hardware.
Its a half-assed attempt at an distribution of *NIX, with most of the the things that make *NIX what it is MISSING. Lame.
I deprecate this half assed entity and hope only to see a real attempt at dist.
Its lame as hell that Aqua isn't opensourced, but I can see the need to keep us in the dark. I'll stick to Linux or other BSDs and GNU, thanks, this shit isnt even mature enough to look at.
If you were to try out GNUstep on a real X server, one with Display PostScript support, I think you'd find the performance problems less annoying. Though that still doesn't make up for the fact that GNUstep is buggy and incomplete :)
Am I alone in saying I wouldn't mind seeing this done at all, especially if it were sold for a reasonable price? While it'd be excellent for the UI software to be distributed Free or free, the end users who *require* good usability design to make use of the system at all are *not* people who can derive benefit from the personal freedom to improve the code.
If you are capable of programming in this day and age, you are capable of wrapping your mind around a suboptimal interface. (Viz popular coder desktop themes, with little consistency, and a design emphasizing 'l33tness.' Sit your grandmother down at your Enlightenment desktop and she rightly won't have a clue what to do, other than stare at Lara Croft's raytraced boobies.)
Sometimes, it takes corporate-led development to produce a UI for the masses, rather than for other developers. Apple almost pulled it off in 1984, though it still had a long way to go. (We as a UI-developing species have devolved since, and made some pretty dumb tradeoffs. Check out Jef Raskin's book to see what the point really was, and why the Mac should've been even more of a toaster.)
So, point is, I'll postulate that it takes someone with vision (and a good background in interaction design) and money to pull off a truly peon-usable interface. If nothing else, someone has to be paying real morons-off-the-street to come in and test it. They can *still* screw it up, as Jobs wrecked the few working parts in the classic Mac when going Aqua, but it's much harder for a team of developer-led developers to write to the wider audience *and get it right.*
A commercial company could, of course, GPL the UI while only selling the code to purchasers of the software- I'd dig it- but you have to be careful to avoid a Ximian-style setup. If your employees keep merging every Neato GottaHave Feature some hacker cooks up, you quickly lose the benefits of directed development.
Personally, I have my eyes on the Be API-on-Linux merge to produce something vaguely usable for the folks at home. Be wasn't great, but it was at least as/more consistent than Windows, and it's a rational way to ditch X.
Why user need to be able to recompile a kernel? Menuconfig for unexperienced user is like a direct "point-n-click" interface to nuclear reactor..
..; make".
And, after all, if user really knows what he is doing, I don't see any problems "edit textfile; config textfile; cd
In FreeBSD you can "make world; make installworld" - can you in Linux?
Ah, another troll...
Just for the record, the article's first paragraph actually states:
"Welcome to Security Alerts, an overview of recent Unix and open source security advisories. In this column, we look at buffer overflows in OpenSSH, Squid, Listar/Ecartis, slrnpull, and IRIX's syslogd; problems in Sudo, MHonArc, and Mosix; and a local root hole and denial-of-service attack vulnerability in FreeBSD."
Of these, the only issues that are FreeBSD issues as opposed to issues in theird party software are the IO descriptors and syncache/syncookies problems. The others would almost certainly apply to any unix they were run upon, with the obvious exception of IRIX syslogd - and IRIX is a SysV implementation...
HAND.
Apple will obviously not open source Quartz or allow copies of it's Aqua GUI. The reasons are obvious and have been discussed often enough. There's nothing wrong with that. They need the money and, at the least provide Darwin as an alternative commercially supported Unix to Linux(IBM, RedHat, SuSE etc). Their attention to their Desktop is important, as this provides a real alternative to MS' enormous monopoly, and perhaps even more importantly the Quartz/Aqua GUI provides (at least for PPC) a standard interface for applications. I'm not a big fan of Aqua but it does provide a standard on the platform. This is one of the reasons, I think, for MS' monopoly on the desktop. Think of it as crap or good, but it does make it easier for an application designer to design a GUI. Same for Apple. The controls all look the same and the API's are standard. Linux needs something like this as well. Both GNOME and KDE are good but their lack of intercompatibility with one another does no service to Linux. Choice is good but perhaps sometimes it also leads to confusion, in this case for instance amongst normal users who have difficulty understanding how to use the right mouse button, never mind understanding whether QT3 or GTK is better.
Yes, actually we can do this in Linux.
www.gentoo.org
Wake up and look around you, Linux has a better ports system.
I love BSD but you are a dickhead.
Having started to use ObjC on OSX, which is obviously supported on Darwin and GNUStep as well, I found it similar in it's ease of use to Java. No one owns ObjC and unlike C# you can compile it with GCC. No one is going to hijack ObjC, but can you say the same about C#.
It's not much of an argument, but it's worth thinking about.
The history of M$ tells: never trust closed GUI, especially "the best" GUI. It tends to be monopoly. It doesn't want to work with anything else. And it tends to be embedded to OS, rather than to extend it. M$ is an OS monopolist on Intel PC market. Apple is an OS monopolist on Mac-PPC market. That's it. It is same bad. Everybody who enjoys the products of monopoly is poisoned right in the heart. And the best we can, should and must do is to ignore such poisoned people. However, we also should explain, why ignore. And that exactly what I am doing.
How is it compared to Linux? What about BSD? The real question for me is how user friendly is the install. :)
I must say...it does sound like they are addressing a need. Why hasn't anyone picked up on this? This should be out there...being tested!
Re. transparent file access: that wasn't really my point. The iDisk in OS X is extremely thoroughly integrated, such that applications assume that it's there and you can easily send a file to your iDisk even if it's not mounted. Further, the very structure of the iDisk is critical for much of this to work properly. iPhoto assumes that a folder named Photos exists on your iDisk (just like your home directory, I might add), and HomePage assumes that it will find photos there if for your photos page. KDE doesn't need a central service to dupliate this functionality, but a standard disk format and easy way to essentially point to the iDisk (kDisk?) server of your choice would be a really simple and actually very nice addition.
I know it's still there; hell, I rely on it being there in some of the apps I write that in turn call the standard Unix tools in
Again, I appreciate that everything is improving, but you've got to understand that it's not quite there yet. That was my only point, and I honestly look forward very eagerly to when KDE and friends are on-par or surpass Apple's offerings. That's the point where no one will any longer be able to deny that open source desktops are around the corner.
Kernel threads for starters.
This project is going nowhere. No one is using this code. Stop fantasizing about KDE, Darwin, Gnome develoers all of a sudden waking up and moving to GNUStep because it isn't happening. But thanks for continuing the /. tradition of modding up dead project announcements.
Fortunately, 99% of the world wants to use their computer, not disassemble it, so most of this static just goes to /dev/null.
Not only will that never, ever happen, but it would be a really bad idea for software written for a Dell to not run on a Gateway.
This is a good point, but on the otherhand, why should Dell care if its software ran on a Gateway or not. More likely it would be the other way around, Dell is too entrenched in the Windows world. Gateway, is scrambling for market share and far more likely to try something like this. HP/Compaq is a possibilty and MicronPC is a profitable privately held company, so there is no board of directors or stockholders to satisfy.
The whole point of this business model is to sell hardware and as long as the user can do basic things like watch DvD/Video, burn CD's, listen to music, surf the web, send/recieve email, instant message, create documents of various types and connect to a Windows based network, probably too much more wouldn't be neccessary or could be dealt with by releasing a free SDK and letting the OSS Hackers do what they do best. As an example, it did not take long to port X Windows to OS X, once that happened Gimp and several other programs followed, Apple got a whole lot of runnable software with little work or cost on thier part. This would be even easier because it is Linux at its core, no real port is neccessary beyond getting X Windows running in rootless mode after that the user installs the proper libraries and virtually every program available under Linux is now usable without changing a line of code. I see no problems here, it seems to me everyone wins.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
In the Darwin Q&A they sort of explain why they maintain support for x86. From the article they say:
It's a good answer and it makes sense, but I wouldn't discount your theory about hedging their bets. Jobs is known for screwing companies (switching to NVidia from ATI) and going to new hardware, and it's pretty well known that he isn't very happy with Motorola right now.
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
If you check you'll find that Darwin, the OS in the main subject here is open source, runs on x86 and supports GNOME, X11 etc and is free, similar to Linux. If you have problems with that but still insist on using MS software, bootlegged or legal as I know a lot of third world countries do, then I don't think there's much anyone can do for you. However if you're basing your post on your use of Linux on x86 just reread the first sentence.
Sorry to interrupt your fanatic posting.
sad thing is your not even second..
Your forget to mention apples Open Source efforts reach deeper than marketing ploy. Apple released QTSS (QuickTime Streaming Server) under apple open soruce guidlines to get a bost from some of the "open source" hype of the 90's but also to enable all user to run QTSS on any computer.
sad thing is your not first.
Apple will release code to Aqua when one of the two free GUIs presents a tangible threat to Apple's current domination over the Unix gui market.
Look what they did with Shake - they bought the company to hurt the Linux push into high-end film and video production. Apple sucks - and I say this as an avid OS X user.
Great post, Bill. I agree completely with everything you said. You get a pat on the back at the next TriLUG meeting.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
You can go off and write your own C# tools anytime you like. As long as you conform to the ECMA documents, you can claim that your tool deals with C#. Micorosft invented it but does not own it.
Well, not really X but Open Source is Berlin:
http://www.berlin-consortium.org/
It has really nice features.
Because the $1800 iMac is much nicer hardware than the $800 Celeron?
My Powerbook G4 goes to sleep everytime I close the lid, and comes back to life instantly upon opening it. My HP laptop running Win2000 often refuses to wake up after a sleep, or after waking up refuses to go back to sleep.
I use KDE on my desktop workstation. As a programmer/developer who rely mainly on mozilla, multiple term windows, bbedit/kate, emacs/vi, KDE has the advantage of excellent virtual desktop support. I am happy under both environments, and not convinced that Aqua the UI has overwhelming advantage over KDE.
Because the $1800 iMac is much nicer hardware than the $800 Celeron?
I agree with you on all your points, the problem is most people will not know the difference and will choose the cheaper hardware, especially if the label says 1 Ghz.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
I like typing cat door better.
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
why is it so ugly!
It's WebDAV. You're still essentially correct--TANSTAAFL, and I sincerely hope KDE would handle WebDAV at least as well as MacOS X or Windows 2000, but it doesn't help your credibility when you can't accurately define the subject.
As a longtime MOX user I can tell you're worng. You describe a lack of system features and usabillity, that's not true.
.app folder, what makes them impossible to see because Finder doesn't show inside this folders.
/etc files are entirely obsoleted by NetInfo. /etc. Yeah, that's great.
.... for one or two hours, then interface just gets painfull and boring. ... and SLOOOW
I'm using it back from the first beta and to say the trouth I don't like it. Everything is so painfully slow and suited to customed design.
...The iDisk in OS X is extremely thoroughly integrated
Yes I know I can mount iDisk but how painfull that operation is. Everything you run on that system is waiting. Is being slow is userfriendly then yes I agree with you. On the other hand you can always mount any ftp disk on any unix computer just as it is there. Ever tryed ftpfs?
.... I actually run with all files and directories exposed
You gotta be kidding, with all invisible files you run with them exposed.
Secondary, yes MOX has web server, with what lacks of configuration, one at least one part of controling is in control panel, one is divided between few locations on NetInfo and one is accesible only in console mode.
As for file system. Go in terminal mode and use terminal commands to move between parts of file system. File system looked from point of some root user can be described as a nightmare. Even in Aqua run sherlok and try to find some Laserwriter. You'll otice how many times on different locations same files appear.
Preferences you describe as so golden are thrown all over the system, there is no more Preferences folder like it used to be. Now there is 5 different prefferences folders for every account you use, not to mention some applications store preferences inside
...The
First time you'll install sambaX you will notice how nice is to add another place for preferences
To create a startup deamon you need. Try you'll almoust find your self programming a new piece of software at least compared to any other unix I know.
Applications you brag, well they just arent as easy to copy all over as they used to be, ain't that true. Small ones yes but something bigger. That's one of main differences between hfs and ufs. Hfs had internal catalog of files you moved, and where you moved, with ufs that option just isn't working, is optional for desktop icons that MOX has always preloaded but not for everything.
...and can be installed and deinstalled simply by drag and drop
You gotta be kidding, or you don't know. NOT ANYMORE now it's just like any other system as I described to you. If you don't believe just run a snaphot file of harddisk before and after installing.
I admit MOX looks great,
I guess all I wanna say is, I like simplicity of MOX but not enough to exchange for complexity of others.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
And the open source community thinks Microsoft doesn't innovate, and only rips off the competition.
Look at yourself! You're just stealing other people's ideas!
You people are hypocrites!
And no-one uses it.
A better point to make would be why would you want to have linux as your base system? Why must everyone think linux is something that it isn't, great that is.
Might this be the reason MS calles the GPL a virus... or why MS will not allow any GPL code to get anywhere near the MS campus? I'm not a GNU/GPL fan for many reason... this is just one of them... and im not a MS fan either.
Going from one VGA adapter to another is one thing and doesn't make all your software stop working. Going from one CPU to another does.
It is sad but true. Everyone ones everyting... and if they can't get it someone is at fault for them not getting what they want.... what do you do? Sue, protest and blame everyone.
hardly a soul uses it
You have a few problems... people don't care about the speed or look of a GUI... look at windows... with that said a small segment of the world wants an open source GUI... I know I don't, I just don't want eye candy that looks like a cow patty.... thus a reason highly configable GUI's looke like $hit. Users want to buy the company... they don't want to buy junk status (the stock of the distro) linux boxes.
No apple wants get users... thats why the open sourced QTSS. More QT content more QT users. Apple is right thinking Linux is crap... Linux has no direction.... just a group of people doing what they want with no connection.
apple does have a community of volunteers, some paid by apple working on darwin and other apple open source projects.... hey apple has done a great deal for gcc what have you done? Other than trying to rip of a trademark and trying to pass it off as your own... then bith about it. Your another reason why GNU/GPL sucks... give me give me give me.
Uhhh, because Apple wants to have an incentive for poeple to buy their products. It's called SURVIVAL!
The m68k to ppc transition didn't go too badly...
A better point to make would be why would you want to have linux as your base system?
Why not ? At its base (no GUI), Linux is small, fast, dependable, secure and highly configurable. Why start from scratch, when Linux or *BSD can be had for free ?
Why must everyone think linux is something that it isn't,
What do you mean ? Right now, Linux stands as one of the best operating systems available. Of course there also *BSD. Beyond Linux or *BSD, there are not many options.
great that is.
No doubt, Linux is great.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Jordan is not Apple's bitch. He's a grown man. Apple didn't make him do anything - he made up his own mind.
You can grouse about it all you want.
--Richard
But yet 'man man' works, what does that mean?
GNU to the rescue! woman is hiding inside emacs, try 'm-x woman'
What the hell is the Apple Patent Licence?
Apple makes Darwin-x86 to validate their portability. They released it just in case somebody wants to do something with it. It's the 5th free Unix on the block, so maybe nobody wants it. So what? Either adopt it or ignore it.
I din't say anyone was forced to do anything, just it happened...
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
RTFM!
Typical luser comment above.
Paraphrased: "I tried some random (known-to-be-non-easy) distro, on some old computer I had lying around, and I couldn't make it work."
Genius.
Whay don't you try a Supported PC with a current distro like Suse, Mandrake, or RedHat. ADSL modems ARE easy to use under Linux.
Almost every problem they reported was GNOME-only. Perhaps they'd found other things when testing KDE but from my own experience with friends KDE is more newbie-friendly
In addition they sat Mac and Windows users in front of GNOME Systems and the issues were more or less my-other-system-behaves-different stuff and would have been there too if they tested OS X with Windows and GNOME-users
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Where's the compiler? Where's the API's. Apart from the mono project(and look how far they've gotten), who has even attempted to write a runtime for this? How useful is C# (even if you have the runtime and the compiler) if you have no classes and API's? I don't remember MS opening up any of the .Net API's without which (at the moment in any case) C# is about as useful as intercal.
Actually, yes, Konqueror (from KDE3) has an integrated webdav:// ioslave.
-clee
Don't split up into various "organizations" that in the end would, potentially, kill eachother because of stupid disagreements. You only pave the way for Microsoft.
Well, I can sort of see why nobody uses it -- it looks interesting, but really strange and a long way from finished. The crufted-together development process reminds me uncomfortably of the strange beast that is Inform (www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/inform), and it really looks like it's a long way away from being ready to go.
/Brian
I felt forced to respond to the ad hominem attacks of the OS X afficianados. I use both OS X and Linux in my work as a physician and sometimes write code. (buzz.sourceforge.net)
;-)
Bottom line is that KDE3 with Mosfet Liquid, Connectiva Crystal Icons, Freetype2 with antialiasing turned on is more functional and aesthetic than OS X for most things.
When comparing make sure you compare Apples to Linux Apples
OS X: iMac G4 800mhz with 1 gig of ram, GeForce 2 MX 32 meg DDR - Nvidia drivers
KDE3: Dell 4100 1.13ghz PIII with 1 gig of ram, GeForce 2 Go 32 meg DDR - Nvidia drivers
Where Aqua Wins:
Final Cut Pro, MS Office
Where Aqua Loses:
GUI:Closing all the windows of a program does not close the program. Clicking the
Dock for a running program with all windows closed does nothing other than bring
up the menubar at the top of the screen. Hence a one click operation in any other GUI
is a 3 to 5 click operation spread out out over the screen.
Browsing the web is slow or incompatible (IE or Omniweb). Fizzilla may change this.
Where Linux/KDE3 Wins:
Konqueror Browser
Kmail
OpenDX
Where Linux Works:
Codeweavers Office
Codeweavers Crossover
Where Linux Fails:
Editting Video at the level of Final Cut Pro
Software testing: Bugs that you must avoid live in more Linux programs than in OS X.
That said, there are many bugs to avoid in OS X.
If you don't believe me, see screenshots at buzz.sourceforge.net
Believe me, I know about the average user. You're right, they don't need an open source or highly configurable GUI, and apparently you don't either. So I must ask you this: what is the problem with MacOS X? It is available right now and suits your needs.
What I don't understand is the point you are trying to make. All I was trying to say in my previous post was that Aqua on Linux would be of little use. The Linux users (me) don't care about Aqua, and the Aqua users (you) don't care about Linux. So you go get a Mac, and I'll use SuSE Linux. I fail to see the problem here.
They always have the highest amout of replys below my threshold, which is pathetic cause mine is set at zero. All these trolls make stupid, uneducated posts about macs and its obvious that they haven't used one since 1989! over 50% of the posts are bogus!
You have to buy a Mac to use the mac.com services, they are paid for out of the Apple hardware sales.
I guess I'm saying that X, as in the extended accelerated XFree version, isn't all that bad.
It's funny watching you open source knobbers get all worked up over OS X. Talk about being jealous...
Child. My Mac friend is currently jealous of my positive bank balance, that's for sure.
Apple debuts the most technologically advanced windowing system ever, and it's: "Aqua/Quartz is so slow! And it doesn't support network transparency! And Aqua is so candy-coated and ugly! Hahahah!" Meanwhile 2,000 different Aqua themes appear on the various themes sites within days.
Most advanced? Wake up and find out what X can do, and Aqua can't. Did you know you can get Windows XP themes for Aqua? No? It requires a lot of hacking but it works. You're assuming everybody thinks in exactly the same way, a classic Apple-fan mistake.
Apple brings third-party developers like Adobe and MS onto the bandwagon - developers which Linux has been trying and failing to emulate since day one - and it's: "We never needed that proprietary crap anyway, Gimp is 500% better than Photoshop and OpenOffice kills MS Office and... and... and your mom!"
Er, since when has ANY Linux developer wanted to emulate MICROSOFT?!?! Some Linux software looks like Windows (kde for instance), but that's mainly out of necessity - making it easy for people to switch.
Apple retains their trademark simplicity in plug & play. Mice, keyboards, scanners, you name it Just Work. The open-source community replies: "You can do that today in ObscureLinuxDistro 8.3. You just have to make sure you've got x, y, and z modules loaded, use modprobe for this otherwise type cat /proc/modules and you'll see a list of modules. Now go into the XFree86 config file and make sure you see these lines, and..."
Wake up and smell the roses - Mandrake (not an obscure distro) will auto detect almost anything. Oh yeah, and you know WHY OS X is so good at hardware autodetection? Because Apple users have a choice of all of 3 different pieces of hardware. It's easy to do hardware integration when you control the hardware.
Once again, open source software finishes last place in technology and usability, and its zealotry continue to deny it. Get out of the basement and into the real world, pizzafaces. Your mom.
If that's the case, why did Apple junk their own in house MacOS9 (which blew chunks, it really did) and replaced it with an open core? Oh yeah, I know, it's cos your full of it .....
No you don't. I use my mac.com account on my Windows box at work. Yes, they are paid for by Apple, who makes money from hardware sales among other things. But you don't need a mac to use it, only to sign up. And you can sign up for as many accounts as you want. So in that sense it is pretty free.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
Wasn't quartz supposed to represent the first 'Third generation Display Technology'?
If that's the case, why is anyone even trying to say the KDE/Gnome come close?
They may be able to mimic the general feel of some parts of Aqua, but can they dynamically re-render icons while scaling them up or down is size, make effective use of alpha channels etc?
It is known to the whole world that Aqua/Quartz is 'slow' because the graphics cards in current Macs weren't designed to do anything more than put pixels on screen. These cards were made for second generation display technology and as a result the display rendering in OS X is mainly carried out by the processor.
It is rumored that Apple is working on dedicated chips to handle Aqua/Quartz and that the newer graphics cards from the graphics card makers will also work well with this technology.
It is highly probable that if KDE/Gnome were able to do the stuff that Quartz can do then it would also be slow.
However, it must be noted that quartz performance is acceptable on G4 processors and many are 'happy' (if not overjoyed) with performance on most G3 macs.
Given all that, I agree with you. The answer to the question KDE or Gnome is AQUA!
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
People are more than welcome to test it! Just keep in mind that it is not ready for daily use quite yet. It's almost there, but not quite. Feel free to join the listservs if you want to keep up on development, ask questions, or contribute to anything.
Those who refuse to learn History are bound to repeat it – as a farce. Can’t remember who said that, nor exactly in which words.
BSD was hoarded by proprietary vendors before, and this almost killed free software at that time. That’s why copyleft, being so restrictive, got so popular: so that free software wouldn’t be hoarded again.
The same goes for X. XFree hackers even refused a deal to have it GPL’d by the X Group. It’s a kind of idealism, but one which endangers the very continuance of the freedoms we all have come to cherish.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Apple - We make sharp hardware for fuzzy-headed people.
This is completely offtopic, moderate as such. I always liked got a light?
Say hello to zMac.
I don't speak for the previous poster, but I believe this is what he was getting at: You probably know someone who has a Mac. There is nothing stopping you from going over to your friend's house, signing up for an iTools account, and then using it to your heart's content from a PC. Your friend can invite all his friends to do the same, all at no extra charge. Sure, someone has to buy a Mac to get it done, but Apple does not charge any more per account. That was the only point. Whether you consider that "free" is another matter altogether.
Say hello to zMac.
I did not say you only have to buy a Mac to sign up. You don't have to.
It's not like you need to prove you own a Mac when you sign up, or give some serial number. You just have to, at some point in your life, have access to a Macintosh with an Internet connection for 5 minutes.
Go to a library or the Apple store or a friend's house, sign up, and there you go.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
"Incorrect. There is no centralised free disk service like the iDisk, but on the other hand remember you effectively pay for the "free" mac.com services when you buy a Mac. If you want, you can pay me and I'll give you some FTP space. You'll then find you can browse your "mikeDisk" direct from Konqueror like a normal filing system, and also all your apps will be able to load and save to it directly - you need never know it's on a remote disk. What, you want even more power? Then try InterMezzo, which is a caching, conflict resolving offlineable remote drive system. Not only do you get network transparecy, but also you can disconnect at any point and continue working."
iDisk uses WebDAV which is an open standard and uses HTTP over port 80. This means that it gets around firewalls. It also means I can access my iDisk from my Win2000 box at work, I just can't access it natively except through Office 2000 (because Microsoft couldn't be bother to make Win2000 fully WebDAV compliant). Mac OS X is fully WebDAV compliant so I can access my iDisk just as I would a local disk. It's also integrated into the save dialogs.
mbbac
The market would also get confusing for average PC owners. Do I download the Gateway version, the HP/Compaq version, or the Microsoft one?This was one thing that led me to say that your suggestion would "never, ever happen". Yes, they make money selling hardware. Then why do you expect them to put lots of money into developing a new operating system? If they do implement your idea, they would license a distribution from a third party, much like they license Windows from Microsoft. And then you end up with the same thing, with a different company, that's incompatible with all the old stuff, and happens to have Linux as a base.
Your idea to depart from X also turned me off. Despite what many would have you think, there is no real reason to depart from X. There is nothing inherently superior in Aqua/Quartz that XFree86 can't match. especially with some of its extensions. X even impliments Display PostScript, which is used by the very Mac OS X-compatible GNUstep framework.
If you really know where you can get a 1.x GHz Celeron system with digital flat panel display and DVD-R burner for $800, please let us all in on the secret.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying