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Terra Soft Ships Macs with Linux Preinstalled
dhovis writes "Do you think the Xserve is cool, but you wish it ran Linux? Well, MacCentral
is reporting that
Terra Soft Solutions, an Apple 'Value Added Reseller,' is now shipping Macs. They are offering several new Macs with Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled now, and are promising the Xserve will be available soon." They are currently shipping Power Mac G4s, iBooks, and iMacs, as well as AirPort cards. See the Terra Soft Store for more information.
How were they able to get Steve Jobs to OK this? That guy has made every bad business decision he could, I dont understand why he is suddenly changing his game plan. Whats next, open source aqua (that would rock)? I dunno, just my 2 cents
How were they able to get Steve Jobs to OK this? That guy has made every bad business decision he could
Exactly. Running Linux on anything is a bad business decision.
I must admit that I'm a little blank on why anyone would particularly want a Mac runing Linux, to the point of buying it with Linux preinstalled.
I mean, yes they're nicely built, and they're decent price performance, but why not use a PC compatable? It would give you more choice in terms of OS vendor, and much of the commercial Linux is PC only. PowerPC is a nice chip, but an Athlon will be as quick, for similar money.
I suppose if you've got lots of PowerPC installed already, then you'd gain by matching architectures, but that's (IMO) unlikely.
Even in terms of numerically power, the Athlons with SSE2 are faster than the AltiVec (SSE2 does double precision, AltiVec doesn't), for similar money.
Don't get me wrong - someone selling Linux pre-installed is a Good Thing - I just can't see anything particularly gripping about Mac's pre-installed with Linux.
Seriously, I'm not flaming or trolling. I have an iMac, and I have intel hardware. I've run Linux on Intel Hardware, and I've run OS X.
Why would I want to replace a unix based OS with an excellent user interface, support for things like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and heck even Flash/Shockwave plugins. None of this is on Linux (unfortunately)
Now, on the XServe, this could be cool, but on a iBook, PowerBook, iMac or Power Mac I just don't get it.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
I love Linux and all, but why ship a quality system with Linux when you can ship it with OS X.
OS X is an absolutely amazing OS, and it has almost all the features Linux has.
If you are going to ship comps with Linux, ship PCs with it pre-installed.
~ kjrose
The most important "added value" anybody can provide for Apple laptop hardware is to fix the broken keyboard.
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need , not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 10 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
Really, in terms of un*x market share, the number of OS X machines sold is irrelevant. What is relevant is the user base, ie how many people are using OS X as a unix. Most of your twit mac users don't know what the hell BSD is, let alone how to use it. They don't know what GUI stands for, or even that there is more than one. So, anyone have an estimate on how many drone mac users have attempted to download some source, compile it, and run it on their "unix" machine? I'm guessing about 3.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat