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Freshmeat Launches Mac OS X Section
Liedra writes "After announcing Mac OS X software surreptitiously within its main section for the past several months, freshmeat has now launched a section totally devoted to the platform. Read the article by scoop and visit the section directly." Since I switched my primary laptop to OS X, I'm glad to see scoop do this. (Note, Freshmeat & Slashdot are both owned by OSDN.)
IIRC, someone here on slashdot speculated that OSDN was going to attempt to be bought out by Apple, hence the significant number of Mac-only topic icons here on slashdot, plus the dedicated apple.slashdot.org address.
Though it makes plenty of sense for freshmeat to have a dedicated Apple section, this certainly provides more fuel for the Sell-to-Apple hypothesis...
-A
One of the things that's kept the Mac software distribution under the radar of most sites like FreshMeat is the fact that for quite some time they've had VersionTracker doing quite well at it. VersionTracker's just starting to get into the PC aspect of things, and remains highly Mac-centric even though PalmOS software is supported as well. VersionTracker may be a pay service, but I discovered a very nice set of features is available with the "Pro" subscription for $50 a year. Not only do you get the daily list of new software updates, but a nifty little application to run on your machine that acts as a new app ticker. Quite nice. But the really nice part is the fact that for your $50, you get 10 licenses and are able to use the Pro software on both PC and Mac platforms.
Maybe someone ought to look into getting a *nix section started with VersionTracker?
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Since I switched my primary laptop to OS X, I'm glad to see scoop do this.
The great Taco isn't using Linux? Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say "OS-X" at will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land! Nothing is sacred.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Sure. Lets have the government monitor open source application use. It'll just make it that much easier to track us down when Microsoft makes it illegal!
/sarcasm ... I hope.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
I wish it -were- a plug. I could use some more cash.
Damn unpaid "holidaay vacations".
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
You mean like this?
rather above the usual sophistication. Perhaps not quite art, but definately at least craft.
Now I'll take it more seriously anyway.
The business model isn't the only one by which one can measure "success" or "failure."
Clearly the measure of "success" for an open source program is whether or not *I* find it successful. This is the reason that all Linux needs to "succeed" is for one geek sitting in a basement somewhere at three in the morning going, "Oh, wow man."
The rest is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
KFG
All OSX really is involves an updating of NextStep (for good or ill), and a replacement of X11 with something more bulletproof using interface guidelines. Was NextStep *nix? Nobody I know disputes it. Why're you disputing OSX? Because it's proprietary? That horse has been beaten to death, and nobody hammers on SGI or Sun for proprietary OS'es. Is it because of Aqua being closed source? Okay, so compile (or download the binary for) Xdarwin and use regular X apps. Of course there you have to worry about dependencies, and libraries for GTK, window managers...
I hope more people re-engineer X11 apps with a Cocoa frontend. Or, perhaps someone ought to start a project similar to WINE, but for the Cocoa API? Just don't put the look and feel in exact, and do it for interoperability... who knows, maybe you can slip under Apple's legal radar.
Or not. Bleah.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
That would be what I most want to see on freshmeat, a Cocoa port of Evolution. Increasingly that looks like OS X's only hope for native Exchange compatibility. MS doesn't seem to be budging on Outlook. If we users ported Evolution, Ximian would surely give us Connector. They can make money selling Exchange connectivity to Mac users.
I would start the project myself if I were competent.
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
I think that too many people are afraid of the open source movement. And Mac OS X, while partly open source, is a good intro into what Unix/Linux is all about. I have met alot of people, who are afraid of implementing Linux, but have no problem with Mac OS X. While widly different, it is nice to have a stable version of linux on my system that all my *nix commands work with (Unlike windows where i have a hard time remembering a Display Directory is DIR and not LS) I think Mac OS X is going to open the world up to *nix because Apple has done what many people have tried to do, Put a Pretty Face (Aqua) ontop of an Ugly Operating System (BSD). This is going to help out in the long run especially if they release their I-32 version of the OS.
---
Uh...wait. So you're telling me that we were supposed to be bathing this whole time?! Oh my god! Why didn't anyone tell me this earlier?
---
Open Source Shirts
I mean to say there aren't enough *good* sites where you can find out about Windows software. Both Tucows and download.com are useless compared to Freshmeat - they don't seem to carry fields like project licence or release history, don't have good project summaries or comments, and the site layout isn't nearly as crisp.
I'm more interested in free software for Windows than the latest shareware. Those two sites are more oriented towards binary-only software and towards users rather than developers. Freshmeat is pretty much perfect, at least it is better than any other site I've found, except for the small detail that it won't carry Windows software.
If anyone knows of a comparable site to Freshmeat but dealing with the Windows platform, please do post details.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What makes a unix-like os unix-like?
Bash/tcsh/sh/*sh ? OSX Has it
X11? OSX has it
Unix kernel? Got that too
ssh? Yup
Stability? Yup
Bad UI that's hard to use and not fully intergrated? Hmm... maybe OSX has a ways to go.
Hell... it *should* be possible to port any unix app to darwin and run it in an xserver on OSX.
If it's anything like the whole
Or, perhaps someone ought to start a project similar to WINE, but for the Cocoa API?
I really don't know why, but GNUStep doesn't seem to be very popular. GNUStep is an implementation of the OpenStep specification and they even track changes from Apple! It's what you are looking for - with a little effort, applications can be made to compile under both GNUStep and Cocoa (completely legal too, since OpenStep is open(duh)). Foundation seems to be pretty much complete and AppKit lacks just a few Apple-specific things like Drawers and Sheets (which will be added at some point in the future).
Really, GNUStep needs a little more exposure - I switched to a Mac, but I still think GNUStep is great and could be something better than GNOME/KDE.
-- The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
Freshmeat lists projects which run on Unix and also happen to run on Windows... but they won't allow Windows applications, even those that are free software. Maybe nowadays you could sneak some in by compiling them against winelib and calling it a Unix port (as happened for PuTTY).
Indeed, the site doesn't even allow a link to download the Windows version or to give more information about a Windows port. In the release information the field for entering a zipfile URL says 'It is not intended for any Win32 version of the software'. Yet there is a separate field for a Mac OS X package. One platform is encouraged, another is explicitly forbidden. I don't pretend to understand why.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Get your geek-girl an Open Source Thong!
How come they're only available in medium and large? Are all the smalls and extra smalls sold out or something?
Hello? Uh, hello?
I write in my journal
they have listed windows software for a while.. ntrawrite, for example? It may not have its own section, but the database and software allow you to filter by OS..
In other words, "We can't win, so we'll just say we're playing by different rules."
;-)
I write in my journal
Bash / tcsh: not shipped with Windows but you can get them from Cygwin or DJGPP.
X11: not included with Windows - but IIRC an X server is not included with Mac OS X either. Has this changed? You can certainly get X servers for Windows.
Unix kernel: here I have to disagree with you. Mac OS X is based on the Mach microkernel, I think, which is rather different to the classical Unix kernel. It's closer to NextStep or even Minix than it is to traditional Unix.
ssh: but that's just an application isn't it? Ports of ssh exist for the Mac, for Windows and for a whole bunch of other platforms.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
They should really add an RSS feed to that. Just for me. Like a Christmas present, you know? That would be great.
Same goes for apple.slashdot. That would be like *double* Christmas.
And that's where you are off base. You are not totally wrong, but you're not right either. Yes, OS X/Darwin uses Mach, but it' s hardly used as a microkernel. Sure, you can have mach threads, but the BSD subsystem sits next to Mach, on the bare metal. The BSD stuff isn't done like a personality, like you would expect with a Mach MK.
Not that this hasn't been hashed around before, but Mac OS X uses XNU, which has elements of the Mach microkernel but is, in effect, more like a typical kernel found in other UNIX-styled operating systems.
X Window is not included with Mac OS X, but you can install it just by downloading a binary installer from XDarwin or compile it from the main XFree86 distribution, which supports Mac PPC hardware now.
In fact, if you really want to, why not build your own Darwin kernel?
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Actually, according to the owners of the UNIX name, OS X is a UNIX. It is not "*nix" or "unix-like." OS X is UNIX. Period. I don't recall the link at the moment, but your point has been proven false repeatedly. Search for the link if you like.
Since OS X is a UNIX, it should be included as a category on Freshmeat. I'm glad it finally is.
t'nera semordnilap
I just saw a new 'old style iMac' (no LED Screen) for sale for $699 new. Frankly, if I were buying a new mac, I'd buy one of those. IIRC, it had okay specs.
BTW, OS X 10.2 runs fine on my older iMac (DV Graphite SE purchased Jan 2000).
And eBay Macs are even cheaper. If you want a machine that runs Jagwire, there really isn't any reason why you can't afford one. Granted, it won't be top of the line, but it will work, and work nicely...
My father is a blogger.
Exactly. You can bypass Mach alltogether if you'd want to.
Freshmeat is about Unix software. Mac OSX is Unix. Windows is not.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
> If Freshmeat isn't going to restrict itself to Unix OSes,
l
" The most widely-distributed UNIX-based operating system, Mac OS X offers a unique combination of technical elements to the discerning geek, such as the fine-grained multithreading of the Mach 3.0 kernel, tight hardware integration and SMP-safe drivers, as well as zero configuration networking. Jaguar integrates features from state-of-the-art FreeBSD 4.4 and GCC 3.1 into Darwin, the Open Source base of Mac OS X, to provide enhanced performance, compatibility and usability. "
% uname -a
Darwin Johns-Computer.local. 6.2 Darwin Kernel Version 6.2: Tue Nov 5 22:00:03 PST 2002; root:xnu/xnu-344.12.2.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
http://www.daemonnews.org/200104/bsd_family.htm
indicates that OS X is a kind of UNIX.
Apple indicates (http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/unix.html):
It quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck, I think it's a duck.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
Does that mean this story will get posted three times instead of two?
char sig[120] = "\0"
Sorry man, you are actually wrong again =) The kernel of Mac OS X is something called Darwin, which is heavily based on *BSD, and specifically is highly inspired by FreeBSD. It is 100% UNIX. Not like Windows+cywin, since the kernel of OS X is actually a 100% fully blown UNIX. People are running it on x86 hardware too!
You also say that "the GUI isn't UNIX." Well, I challenge you to tell me of a GUI that *is* UNIX. UNIX and windowing systems have nothing to do with each other. You need to have a better understanding of the issues before you blast Freshmeat for this.
Freshmeat's policy of UNIX-like operating systems holds perfectly true here. OS X is as much a UNIX as Linux, FreeBSD, AIX, Solaris, or OpenBSD.
And, you can't interpret "UNIX-like" loosely enough to call Windows + Cygwin UNIX. I don't even want to have to argue that =)
Ummm...one assumes that Apple would want to invest in something that might actually make a long-term profit and build their core business. OSDN doesn't seem to meet those criteria.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
I was using the word Unix (not UNIX) loosely to mean the whole package of tools you normally expect on a Unix box - which includes the X window system, a C compiler and development tools like bison which are associated with Unix systems, perhaps an ssh client and server... it's a fairly loose definition I admit.
Perhaps the best definition of 'Unix' is that from Debian's definition of an important package - an important package is one where an experienced user sitting down at a box and finding it lacking this package would grumble and ask 'where the heck is foo?'. So you or I might say 'where the heck is awk?' if we found a supposedly Unix-like system which lacked it. Therefore having awk is some part of being a Unix system (though not the most important). X11 is another part, I believe.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Replying to my own post, I think a better example than Mac OS X is PalmOS. There's no way that you could reasonably count PalmOS as a Unixlike operating system (or at least, any such definition would be so broad it would have to include almost any modern OS). Yet Freshmeat happily lists PalmOS-only software. Windows software? Oh no, we can't have that, this is a Unix site. Please, Freshmeat, consider ditching the Unix bias (particularly as a large chunk of Mac OS X applications will not run on any other Unix system) and accepting submissions for software running on all operating systems, even that one from Redmond we're not supposed to like.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
MY definition of a 'Unix' system is a computer which I can SSH to and install software like this:
./configure && make && make install
And it works.
OS X qualifies. You don't need X-windows to be a Unix system: many of my Linux boxes have X explicitly removed, to save space and prevent sploits. All the tools are available. Jaguar even includes bash now, my earlier os x needed bash built from ports (yes, you could use FreeBSD ports on OS X, though I think that went away in favor of fink).
I've worked with AIX, SunOS, Solaris, HP-UX, Digital Unix, IRIX, OpenBSD, Linux, and FreeBSD. IMEAO OSX qualifies as a fully-fledged member of the Unix fraternity. Don't let the fact that it's easy to use and pretty fool you. It's kinda like IRIX without all the security flaws, frankly.
The kernel is Mach.
Not Unix.
Darwin refers to the userland stuff, and it seems a bit odd to equate "heavily based" with "100%".
Quartz clearly isn't unix, but that doesn't necessarily mean that X isn't either.
Historically, X is the unix GUI, and has as much justification for being considered part of a full-fledged unix system as say, 'tar'.
As for freshmeat deciding this warrants its own section, I could care less. Just another category for me to filter out. I would not consider this newsworthy by any means, though. Maybe if they were specifically excluding OS X packages, or excluding everything else except OS X, but not this. This lands in importance just above "Freshmeat fixed a typo" and just below "Freshmeat redesigned the look of the site again"
-transiit
As a Mac developer for some years and MacHack attendee, where this year CmdrTaco keynoted, mostly about l#sbian sim characters on his ThinkPad, I'd like to be one of the first to welcome you to the world of the MacOS X. Seriously, I hope you enjoy the ride, Rob. Great to have you along.
VersionTracker could use some competition, so it is great to have the more Unix-focused Freshmeat and MacUpdate on the scene.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
give them time to get it up and running. Not that many in the Mac community know of freshmeat. I will post it on a OSX mailing list if it hasn't been posted yeat.
photosMy Photostream
Granted I don't know much about OSX. However -- with most *nix OS's that are posix complient -- should not only ./configure;make;make install care about what the underlying OS is (as long as all the right libraries installed? (Or is there special reqs. for programs to be ported to OSX?? -- and if there is, then what good is it..)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
iBook, it's quite possably the sweatest laptop out there
If carrying an iBook makes you work up a sweat, you are seriously out of shape.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
That took a while, I don't use OS X but I figured it would have been included on most major software sites by now.
Uhhh, it has been, but Freshmeat isn't "most".
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I have a classic iMac, but I was willing to pay a premium for a fanless machine in a pretty case for a special application. But for general desktop use, the Dell hardware beats the iMac hardware in every way.
I can't get particularly excited about the iBook. With a 600MHz G3, it's rather slow, and at about 5 pounds, it's pretty heavy.
A Sony VAIO SRX99 makes a much better ultra-portable laptop: longer battery life, more memory, much lighter and thinner at 2.76 pounds.
And something like the HP ze4101 gives you a much better general purpose laptop at less money and little extra weight.
With a name like yours, you can't possibly expect to be taken seriously, can you?
If you don't believe what you're saying, then ha ha, very funny, go away now. If you do believe what you're saying, then kindly take your nihilism elsewhere. The things that you say mean absolutely nothing do, in fact, mean something, because people attach value to them.
Either way, that's about enough out of you.
I write in my journal
Clearly, the issue isn't that the Operating System isn't Open Source, or OSX wouldn't be acceptable either.
The file system is handled by the BSD part of the kernel. You use mount to mount disks just like you would in any other BSD. Classic is really a virtual machine that runs an instance of OS9. Being just another userland process Classic accesses the file system just like any other program.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
FreeBSD does not come with X as part of its base system, it is a port you have to add. FreeBSD is a Unix. MacOS X does not come with X as part of its base system, you have to apt-get, make install, or drag from a disk image later to add it. According to you MacOS X is not a Unix. I don't understand your logic.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Thanks for reading our FAQ :)
http://freshmeat.net/faq/view/34/
Compare our Unix software section and the Palm section. The Palm section is microscopic in comparison; it's dwarfed by the Themes section, which is in turn dwarfed by the Software section.
But imagine what would happen if we allowed Windows software. A flood of applications, to say the least. Sometimes it gets a bit hectic keeping up with all the Unix software and themes, and I think we'd be totally swamped if we added Windows software, thus reducing the usefulness of the site.
Finally, as the FAQ says, there are plenty of software download sites for Windows. We don't need to reinvent that wheel. This is different than PalmOS, because our selection of Palm apps is generally a different sort than the ones at other sites (When we launched the section, Jeff noted that other sites had mainly apps for business users, whereas ours could be more for geeks).
[Why Palm? Unless I'm mistaken, that's still the PDA of choice for *nix folks, since they can actually sync with it]
I am not officially representing OSDN, blah, blah...
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I did have XFree86 installed but I realised that I didn't need it and it was just taking up space on my drive. However, if you had the slightest hint of a clue you would know that XFree86 compiles on OS X from the same source tree as Linux. OS X doesn't come bundled with XFree86 but who gives a shit about that? Are you implying that PicoBSD isn't Unix?
BTW, GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix! The presence or absence of GNU tools (such as bison) does not make or break a Unix. Nor does the lack of an XWindow system.
This same stupid, pedantic, ill-informed point was argued to death on Mac forums a year or more ago. ("A: Is this a Unix application? B: No, idiot, it's a Carbon app. Only Cocoa apps are Unix! C: I'm pretty sure it has to run in the Dos terminal to be Unix").
The point is: Who really gives a shit? You do realise that technically Linux isn't a unix either? Here's my definition of a Unix: /dev exists. Probably also the idea of mount points instead of drive letters or a 'Desktop'. (Before you use this as proof that Mac OS X isn't unix, please realise that disk mounting on the desktop is GUI only. Disks are mounted under /Volumes, which is practically identical to /mnt except that it is more automatic.)
Oh yeah, Merry Christmas! :-)
Yes, you can compile XFree86 on Mac OS X. But:
- Mac OS X does not include X11;
- The Mac OS X GUI is not X11 or even vaguely related to it;
- Graphical applications written for Mac OS X will not run on other Unixes, even those that have XFree86.
This last point seems the most important to me - sure you _can_ disregard the native windowing system, compile an X server and libraries and run only X11 applications. You can do that on Windows too. But the Mac's standard user interface, the one that 99% of its users run, is not X11 and not particularly Unix-like.
Yes, I know that under some definitions Linux is not 'Unix' either. That is my whole point, that trying to include or exclude operating systems based on whether they are 'Unix' or not is silly. Almost any system can be classified as 'Unix' by some criterion or another - even MS-DOS with DJGPP has a fairly complete Unix environment. Freshmeat should just accept software for all platforms.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
You can't just take out Mach and expect it to still work. You wouldn't have any Virtual Memory! However, you could write another scheduler etc, and apple probably will at some point. The Mach and BSD sections of XNU should not be considered separate. BSD processes *are* Mach tasks, they just have a bit more semantics. Apple's insistence on saying "Mach" all the time is pure marketing. Forget it is there.
Apple tries to keep the BSD stuff synced with FreeBSD as much as possible and makes lots of modifications to everything. XNU is no more a microkernel than Linux is. They both use modules (called Kernel Extensions in Darwin) but are pretty monolithic.
If it runs on a Unix machine it is Unix software. An XWindows program will not run on a Unix that doesn't not have an X Server installed. What about a Gnome app on a KDE only Linux workstation? You can't judge Unixness based on what APIs it supports. Gnome apps are no more unix than Carbon apps are.
Open Source != Unix. Just because the carbon API hasn't been ported to Linux doesn't make Carbon apps any less "Unix" than say a Qt app. The real problem with your line of thinking is that there isn't a standard UNIX API when it comes to GUIs. "Unix applications" don't exist. OpenStep apps exist, Gnome apps exist, Motif apps exist, etc.
BTW, how is having a Mac-only app on Freshmeat any worse than something Linux only, such as a kernel module? Does a bit of software have to run on every single Unix distro out there before it is accepted? There is plenty of unportable, Linux-only (sometimes Linux-x86 only!) software out there. A lot of it is on Freshmeat.
You got it exactly right, except more so. It has been said that NeXT bought Apple for a negative amount of money. Steve Jobs was the CEO of NeXT. How often is the CEO of the bought company made CEO of the buyer? Mac OS X is the next version of OpenStep, with a lot of Mac stuff thrown in to keep us happy. It is not a complete rewrite and NeXT used Mach because it seemed like a good idea at the time. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with Apple's code as it stands. They worked around pretty much all of Mach's problems. It is important to realise that Apple used Mach's code, not its philosophy. You won't find a microkernel in OS X, ignore what Apple marketing tells you. Having said that, I see Darwin getting closer to FreeBSD as time goes on, mainly because Mach is a dead project.
Ad hominem attacks are not acceptable.
Come on, now. Critiquing the source is not always an unfair attack. If a man stood at a lectern in a full Ku Klux Klan outfit and gave a lecture on the evils of affirmative action, would you not take just a moment to consider the source?
A user who posts under the name "Trolling4Dollars" is asking, positively begging, not to be taken seriously. I merely gave him want he was looking for.
Since then, he's gotten quite attached to me. In the sense that leeches get attached, I mean. Check out his journal.
On a completely unrelated topic, I checked out your Losing Nemo site, and I found myself a little confused. What have you got against Disney, exactly? I'd really like to understand your point of view on that subject.
I write in my journal
On the other hand, others may believe that a user who posts as "Twirlip of the Mists" may be asking for the same thing.
Yes, but for those who know where the name "Twirlip of the Mists" comes from, it makes perfect sense. There's a difference between a name that discredits oneself and a name that acts as a shibboleth.
I've covered the anti-Disney issue in my journal so as not to draw a -1 Offtopic by continuing to discuss it here. Please reply there.
Will do. I should have thought to check that first. Thanks much.
I write in my journal