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Apple and Linux Beneficial to Each Other?
viewstyle writes "There is an interesting commentary on eWEEK discussing the 'synergies' between Apple and Linux after visiting LinuxWorld. It makes a good point that advancement of Linux is good for Mac OS X and vice versa, because of the ease of porting across the platforms (soon to get easier with the X11 on Mac OS X)." Next thing you know, most of the Slashdot editors and programmers will be using Macs ...
>Next thing you know, most of the Slashdot editors and programmers will be using Macs ...
:)
But this is already happening. Cmdr Taco and Hemos both have Mac laptops, and from what I read online on their pages/blogs, they are their main machines these days!
I am thinking of buying a 12" Powerbook for myself. I have many PCs over here (8+) and an old G4 machine. But I need a new laptop, and that 12" powerbook does look good.
If they can work towards an open file format system to replace MS office, they could chip away @ the MS desktop market.
I attended Jeff Bates's talk at linux.conf.au where he gave his presentation using OS X. The only presenter all week who dared to use a non-Linux platform.
True enough...
However, them being a commercial company is part of the appeal.
Things like supported dvd playback, good media support, cohesive destop experience.
And all other things being equal, a computer purchace (thankfully) isn't forever.
It's funny, I've used Macs since I was a young'n in 1984, and I've used Linux since kernel 0.99. I've never used anything else, except for a couple years in college using Windows and Sun on and off.
;-).
Linux has power and flexibility, and the Mac always "just worked". Sometimes I was annoyed that Macs were so closed, and sometimes I was annoyed at the lack of polish on Linux. Between the two I could do anything.
It's amazing, almost *surreal*, that Unix and Mac merged together in Mac OS X. It's truly the best of both worlds.
Of course, I'm still wary of "depending" on Mac software, because of the proprietary lock-in and other evil stuff that companies do. But Apple's continual underdog status has been keeping them in check.
I look forward to more cool stuff from Apple...just getting ready to invest in a 12" powerbook (Mac #8 in my life) and a new Linux-based mini-itx PC to build a home gateway (Linux box #4).
Life is good (well, computer-wise
if someone plugged the OS X interface on top of Linux. man oh man that interface is snappy.
1) the stability of linux
2) the price-point of linux
3) the beauty of the Aqua interface
there'd be no reason to ever own a windows machine again.
smd4985
First off, just to clear this up...
soon to get easier with the X11 on Max OS X
X has been on X for quite some time. You could fink it if you wanted, or, if you want something even easier, you could XonX it or xdarwin it.
What's new, of course, is Apple's X11. That Apple would Aquafy X11 is really a great step forward, and hopefully means that -- and this is key -- Apple will start shipping Macs with X11 preinstalled.
Just as OS X's built in Java Virtual Machine makes OS X a first-rate Java deployment platform as Java apps look and act native without a single end user consideration about VMs, soon OS X could be a first-rate, well-integrated client-side deployment platform for open source software. Most importantly, this will continue to add new developers to open source movements, and that can't be bad. Even if Apple doesn't share everything they do, the fact that you'll have people used to making client-side apps increasingly contributing to open source projects is a great thing.
Not to mention that I've been impressed with what Apple's give back to the oss community, even though they technically often have no reason at all to do so. They've made Darwin open source, and have worked with the BSDs to share code that they have no pressing legal reason making them do so. Safari's updates to KHTML continue to be checked back in to the Konquerer source code by this paid Apple employee, which is another great move.
The only way I see Apple's new love of oss possibly being a bad thing is that Apple tends to hire the best away from open source projects and slap them onto Apple-first ones. Though this is great in that these people feel connected to the oss community, it has to shift their attention away from Linux and other F/free *NIXes a bit.
But more developers, especially good client-app developers, is a good thing, and having Apple return their contributions to the community is icing on the cake.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
As I posted in another Mac article,
:
Here's what I'd like to see
User Mode Linux under OSX That would be interesting. Running a complete Linux distribution as a user process under OSX.
Based on the comments from the linked exchange above, Jeff Dike (UML developer) thinks it can be done.
Actually, if you use fink, you've noticed that the shared libraries in Apple's X11 distro are named in a non-standard way. I've spent days recompiling things that I'd compiled before I noticed there was a problem.
That said, the opengl support makes pymol nicer.
You say
I laughed when I saw this story because just now I was trying to understand Apple's relationship with Linux regarding Quicktime. I complained earlier today to the U.S. Mint because of this page, which is a sublte advertisement for the Microsoft Media Player. WMP has significant proprietary features, and just linking to Microsoft as the sole standard implies something.
... I've written several emails to other government sites that sport the infernal "best viewed with Internet Explorer" links. I doubt I can take credit, but my state of Virginia dropped the MSIE tags. (They originally wrote back explaining, "Frontpage told us to say that." :)
... why was I hanging out at the U.S. Mint site? My 6 y.o. thinks the state quarter program is very cool, and the Mint even has a whole kids' site built around the damn things. I'm getting tired of state factoids, but am impressed by the savvy of the Mint. We've already calculated how much the Mint would make if everyone in the U.S. took a complete set of commemorative quarters out of circulation.
The immediate licensing problem in WMP may simply be a side effect of DRM, but of course Microsoft intends to use WMP as a wedge to push its own standards into what is now fairly generic commerce -- as it did with MSIE. I told the rep at the U.S. Mint (who knows if anyone will care) that it was unseemly for the government to tacitly endorse a private company by offering just one format, even providing a link to the company's site to get the player, especially where across town the government just recently busted Microsoft for monopoly abuse.
Anyway, Apple doesn't make a QT player for Linux (right?) but appears supportive of it (right?), and there are options to access QT content from *nix. Meanwhile, Microsoft's antagonism towards GPL is very well known, and may appear over WMP. Of course, generic MPEG does streaming, which QT plugins will play. (Also, there's Real, yech.) Maybe this is most another Windows versus Macintosh struggle, but I'd hate to see the government take sides, and I don't trust MS.
On standards and compatibility
BTW
The article makes a lot of good points, especially the fact that a lot of Linux users are picking up Apple portables. As a longtime Mac user I noticed this trend early last year on all the Mac boards I frequent. More and more Linux users were popping up talking not about how they "switched" but how they picked up an iBook to compliment their Linux desktop. The most common reasons for doing so seemed to be a combination of the stylish design of Apple's portable line, the slick GUI mixed with the familiar CLI and of course the long battery life.
:)
On the contrary, the adoption of OS X on the desktop by Linux users seems quite a bit lower in my experience. Perhaps this is a testament to the fact that Apple is losing the edge in price/performance in the desktop market (even among its own users) and that it's just so much geekier to build your own box.
Either way I agree that both systems compliment one another quite nicely. Then again, as a web developer I produce my sites on OS X, test them on XP and host them on Linux boxes so in my opinion all the OSes have something good to offer.
DigiSquid Design.
Well, perhaps IBM has improved in the last few years, as far as their marketing goes. Don't get me wrong -- there's nothing wrong with the _hardware_! Indeed, the thinkpads are pretty rock solid notebooks, and except for the rubber nipple mouse (which is admittedly a taste thing and not a quality thing) I can't say enough good about them. And their big iron is... well... Big. and Iron. Heh. Yes, I've used both extensively, as well as a lot of IBM-built NT servers, and I've always been happy with IBM equipment (even servers running AIX, believe it or not).
There's a difference between good -products- and good -marketing-. IBM has good products. Their marketing, IMHO, sucks (at least to consumers anyhow). They're getting as much play as they possibly can out of the Linux thing, in order to try to get out of their dinosaur-era mainframe stuffy-shirt perception. They still have that image though, and they've done little to shake it in my books. Perhaps that's not such a bad thing though...
They're playing to very different markets, of course. IBM sells mainly to stuffy shirts, Apple doesn't. IBM doesn't -have- to be sexy and cool to make a zillion bucks.
I guess my point was just to differentiate the approaches that Apple and IBM take wrt OSS. I think I can strip it down to this: Apple doesn't necessarily have to care about OSS as a philosophy, they're just using some robust, free software to build their products.
As per licensing requirements (and to foster some developer good will), they contribute back to the community. And why not? What they've discovered is that it doesn't matter. People aren't going to -not- buy a Mac just become KDE or (say) MySQL has become a bit better. Well, maybe a couple will, but I'd be willing to be that the prospect of a super-fast, slick, fun set of applications (iLife, Safari, etc) will win more customers over than they'll lose -- their applications get better right along side the free stuff. Apple is selling hardware, and all these cool applications working seamlessly together. The fact that you can get the source code really doesn't matter. Is this not one of the reasons we have free software? So we can all have good quality software and we can all benefit without someone taking it away from us?
IBM, on the other hand, is cashing in on the openness of Linux/OSS and its popularity in the tech world. And good for them! There's nothing wrong with this. It's not appealing to consumers though, not really. You and I are an exception. Buuut as I've already said, IBM doesn't deal so much with consumers, they're much bigger in the big business. Fine, that works for me. Ultimately, I think IBM has more invested in the "success" of free software in the long term -- if the entire Linux development process was suddenly to collapse under its own weight, then it might affect IBM. I'm about as afraid of this happening as I am of getting hit by a comet.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
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I have been comparing hardware prices for some time, as I'm looking for a good cheap laptop. At least in the laptop market, PC prices a ridicously high, and the iBook series is actually much cheaper than a comparable intel Laptop.
In 95 when powerpc's and risc were the new buzzwords I wanted a mac so bad. I had WIndows 3.1 and a defective motherboard(didn't know it at the time). My system crashed ever 3 to 4 hours and even froze up in DOS. I hated it, the dos and WIndows3.1 memory limitations not to mention powerpc's at the time were twice as fast. Motorolla fucked apple bigtime recently while AMD/INTEL got into a speed race leaving apple in the dust. I wanted to be different and run a risc processor to impress my friends.
Today I enjoy FreeBSD and Windows2k. Pallidium and drm scare the crap out of me. Mainly because palladium will require modifications to the cpu, memory, and every component into a trust relationship anti-tamper proof nightmare.
Its my dam computer and if I can't use it then I don't own it. Drm is a blaspheme in the regards that it takes a public copyrighted work and turns the ownership to the creator. To make things even more extreme, they now want to own your possesions are you purchase them! First right of first sale need not implied. Legally the items are still yours but your own items will work agaisnt you and serve MS and Hollywood.
Sure macs are slow, expensive, lack alot of games and other software products but dam its mine! I am wating for the powerpc 970 which will make things hell of alot faster and competitive again. I have a feeling if palladium turns into a situation where you can't turn it off then you can expect Linux to take a noise dive and leave IT along with opensource software altogher. WHy? Because if redhat can't stay in bussiness and all the new kernel hackers prefer macs, then Linux will become the next sco and IT managers are scared of being obsolence and leaving the heard.
I personally believe this is Microsoft's plan.
Its the same fud that killed borland and hurt unix when NT became popular 7 years ago. MacOSX may be the only free unix left that won't be shunned by IT. Yes Linux is hot now but after people can no longer run it under commidity hardware it will become a SCO.
http://saveie6.com/
I have never been happier with my home office setup: an iBook on my desk (with the improved Mac X server :-) networked to a dual-processor Linux box in a closet (so I don't hear it).
I do a lot of AI work, and having the Linux box for long machine learning runs, etc. and for hosting experimental sematic web stuff is great - that leaves my iBook for most coding, running design tools, Microsoft Office, etc.
Apple's recent release of a customized X server really helps a lot (still some work needs to be done on it though). Linux KDE applications look great (fonts!) using the iBook display.
Anyway, I feel like I get both the fun and productivity of Linux with the great experience of OS X. Perfect!
-Mark