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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.
Well, Jordan is an Apple employee, too. So he gets paid to have fun and contribute to the FreeBSD family. A nice arrangement.
Seems that the w00ts go to you for being first poster...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
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
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.
I wonder how much Apple is "contributing" towards him.
Why does this even matters? He gotta support his life anyhow, it's a nice thing when one can support open source and make a living out of it at the same time.
geek page at KY speaks
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?
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.
FreeBSD is a fine OS, there isn't a whole ton of things you can point at and say are intrinsicly wrong with it. There are some religion issues and a handful of ticky tacky things that some of us might want different but it's pretty darn good. It's very well engineered.
Darwin is maybe a more modern design. It uses Mach as a microkernel and 4.4 lites as a BSD support subsystem. Internally it is very different. Better? I wouldn't say that. The microkernel design appeals to everyone's sense of aesthetics and design but to make it perform well you often have to break the model some.
I'm inclined to believe that while the monolithic BSDs are all fine products then future of where BSD is going is probably microkernel based. In that sense Darwin is probably a better place to be. That's just guessing though.
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.
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.
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.
score 5...insightful?
I miss the great slashdot blackout. It was so much nicer here for that week.
--Have a Johsonville brat.