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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.
Not only Linux wins, but all platforms capable of running KDE win. Huzzah.
I'm waiting for Apple to get a version of Quicktime for Linux.
What happens when apple change their mind?
That's the great thing about open source: It doesn't matter.
Once something's been released to the community under an Open Source license, there's nothing Apple (or anyone else, for that matter) can do to prevent it being distributed or used by anybody.
X has been available on OS X for about a year. With XDarwin and OroborOSX it's about as perfectly integrated as it can get. Most X programs will compile just fine (and the ones that don't more often than not the problem is with the configure scripts.. rewrite the makefile and it works) I use gvim as my text editor and other X programs with relative frequency. OS X really is the best of both worlds IMO.
Penguins like apples. They grow quite well in Antarctica.
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
Well, but who cares? In the mean time, Apple cleans up KHTML, gives some credibility to Unix-on-the-desktop, and makes a bunch of pretty notebooks.
:)
What's the worst that could happen?
Imagine Jobs has a change of heart tomorrow and decides that open source sucks. So what then? They stop using KHTML. KDE will continue on without them, I guarantee it -- and they'll always have the work that Apple contributed. The xBSD crowd will probably be a little disappointed if Apple stops developing BSD stuff, but it's not going to shut them down or hurt them in any way. Maybe they won't get the benefit of some of Apple's work, if Apple chooses to keep it to themselves, but there's no real subtraction there. BSD software abounds in closed-source applications, yet BSD is still doing just fine (despite what the trolls will have you believe
See, that's the beauty of open source. Companies can -help- by improving the software, but they can't -hurt- by wrecking it for everyone. About the dirtiest trick they could pull would be to try a Microsoftian embrace-and-extend. We've dealt with those before, and they're not that big of a deal in the long run.
I dunno, I say we encourage Apple to do as much as they can with open source software. They're already discovering just how they CAN make money on OSS, and it's not even in the quasi-traditional "support" line of business that people seem fixated on. They take the best of what's out there, improve it, use it in their products, and contribute back to the community at large. It's win-win, as far as I can see.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
I've been running both OS X & Linux boxes at home for the last 10 months. I can and do use both hardware and software as common elements, from drives & PCI cards to mail, music, browser and office apps, etc.
For me, these boxes are extensions of each other, not competitors, and I've come to think of them as one environment.
MySQL on one...MP3s and image db's on the other. Apache and PHP on both...DVD's play on both... TV on one...DVD authoring on the other. It continues to delight me that I can expand and build as they both mature. This effort started out as an experiment. Now, I wouldn't consider just running one box or one system.
The beat goes on.
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.
I brought home my Ti OS X PowerBook from work one day. My Solaris/Linux loving spouse immediately downloaded OroborX (sp?), turned on the wireless networking, fired up iTunes and accessed remote Xterm apps for his job. I have asked him to stop greeting me at the door with "Hi Honey! Did you bring your PowerBook?", as it makes me feel he loves me only for my laptop.
Negotiations are currently underway for his own PowerBook, so that I might eventually recover mine.
bluesangria
Yeah, IBM is using Linux. However, we all know that IBM can't market it's way out of a wet paper bag. Apple, though.. Those guys *definitely* know a thing or two about making their products sexy. You're right, Apple contributes marketing. But I don't think they're going to seriously affect the way that the public thinks about OSS. That would be nice, and I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't think Apple cares. While IBM is using the popularity of Linux to boost itself, Apple isn't using the popularity of OSS and KHTML to boost itself. Yeah, they mention it I suppose, but it's more in passing than anything else.
They don't really care so much about OSS in principle, I'd say, as much as they care about having a robust product working very quickly. It happens to be a fact that OSS very often displays those features. It also happens to be a fact that a lot of OSS lacks polish and flair, "sexiness" -- to Joe Public. Very few people question the fact that Apple is very good at making things friendly, useable, and just all around sexy.
It's a perfect match, I'd say. Apple gets the robust code, and the value they add (and charge for) is the interface that they put on the front. The OSS community gets a few patches and bugfixes, and a bit of publicity. Everyone gets something out of it.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
If this is as good at it gets I'm in deep trouble. One of the synergies between Mac OS X and Linux is that Matlab is available for the Mac again, after Mathworks had previously announced that would no longer release on the Mac platfrom. Very good news for me, however, Matlab for Mac OS X uses XDarwin and OroborOSX, and it's incredibly buggy. (I am using Simulink, which relies heavily on OroborOSX.)
What kinds of bugs you ask? I can't always navigate through the fields in parameter boxes (one button mac mouse and the key combos just don't do it). I can't use the letters 'f' or 'd' in comments when OroborOSX isn't in the mood (well, there are 24 other letters in the alphabet). Matlab crashes reliably if I choose "cancel" instead of "save" with the "save as" command (in a Simulink model).
And sometimes when Matlab crashes, XDarwin doesn't shut down completely which prevents me from being able to reboot from the system on my internal hard drive -- I have to reboot from an external hard drive and then restart. It happened (again) yesterday while I was working at a coffeeshop.
I'm not sure who's to blame here, and I'm really pleased that Matlab is available, but the integration of these various programs still has a long way to go.
blog-O-rama (more raving & ranting about my experiences with OS X, etc. etc.)
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
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.
I could build an x86 box with the same power for 1/4 of the price.
Dual processors? DDR RAM? ATI Radeon 9000 (or GeForce 4 Ti) graphics? Audio I/O? Gigabit Ethernet? FireWire 800 and FireWire 400? DVD-RW burner? Built-in 802.11g and Bluetooth?
Maybe you could build a machine like that for $500. But it wouldn't be easy, no sir.
I write in my journal
So few people understand this - if there were Mac clones there would, in short order, be nothing left of interest in the platform. The key to Apple's role in the industry is that they are the last vertically integrated, "make-the-whole-widget," software-plus-OS company around selling desktop machines. That enables them to do things and be things that give them the unique place in the marketplace. Without that unique place there'd be nothing left of them.
Of course, the vertical integration is at once the best thing and the worst thing about Apple. But clearly without it they'd be entirely forgettable and irrelevant.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I have no idea what that means. Apple does a fairly good job of keeping their public CVS server in sync with OS X.
and where is the updates for freebsd?!
As far as I know, Apple hasn't made any. They just take a good chunk of the FreeBSD userland and ship it with OS X, without modification.
Also we give them X11 support but would they ever give us Aqua support?
:sigh: I've about had it with all the "Aqua"-related ignorance out there. Guys, Aqua is an appearance. It's a collection of graphical elements, okay? That's all. It's not software, in any meaningful sense of the phrase. When you say "Aqua," what you're really talking about is the combination of Quartz, which is the OS X display system, and WindowServer/SystemUIServer, which is the OS X equivalent of the X server, the window manager, and the desktop in your operating environment of choice.
Is Apple going to release the source for WindowServer/SystemUIServer? No. Get over it.
Tell me in what ways Apple has been beneficial to the opensource movement
Well, for starters Apple has done more to increase positive public awareness of open source than anybody else. A hundred thousand non-hacker Apple fans saw Steve Jobs stand up at the last Macworld keynote and declare that he thinks open source is great. There has been no better act of PR for the open source community.
Oh, that and the whole thing with Rendezvous and WebCore and Darwin Streaming Server and CDSA and OpenPlay and Open Directory and whatnot. Can't forget those.
I write in my journal
Key parts of OS X are still proprietary. Until they are free (or at least open), I still consider Apple an enemy.
Ugh. Enough with the communist ideology, okay? Apple spends a fortune developing wonderful things. If they were to simply give those things away for free, they would be unable to stay in business. I, for one, like what Apple produces, and I like the way they influence the rest of the computer industry-- indeed, the entire consumer products industry. I don't want Apple to go away, so I don't want Apple to make any of their core products "free" or "open." I want them to stay as proprietary as possible, forever.
And so do you. You just may not realize it yet.
I write in my journal
Apple is, and always has been, a company who's primary objective is to sell their hardware. OSX, iPod, Safari, iLife.. all that crap just makes people want to buy thir hardware. Unless this changes sometime in the near future, I don't see why they would turn against OSS, there would be no profit in it. It sure wouldn't help them sell hardware, in reality it would hurt them as they would most likely scorn a whole new following of Apple fans (not addicts... yet).
today is spelling optional day.
This is a great example of the kind of attitude a lot of Linux users have. You want a machine that works as well as a Mac OS X machine? Install a GTK+ and E theme!
No matter how much lipstick you put on your grandma, her plumbing still doesn't work like it used to. Likewise, even with a shitty Aqua theme on a windowing system that can't even handle alpha without employing one of many hacks may give you those "pretty stoplight buttons," it sure as hell doesn't give you a clean or consistent interface. It's the same one you had before, exempting a different pixmap in your window decorations.
An interface is a lot more than the color your buttons are. It goes a lot deeper, into the way you interact with the computer.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
repeat after me: "apple is a hardware company". say over and over until you get it. apple is truly an innovative, technology company. apple makes it dollars selling its technology, its innovation. that is why it frequently upgrade their hardware. not like a 2.4GHZ to a golly gee, 2.6GHZ P4, but real upgrades. look at the new TiBooks. hell, they could've installed a MacLinux on every new mac if it's sold more boxen. they just don't make enough on software. in fact, they use their web site to market third party software, so you can see all that the mac can do. so you'll buy their hardware. open source has just been another avenue for them to sell hardware. they understand that all the OSS in the world doesn't cut into their bottom line. not one bit.
no, apple isn't approaching OSS from a philosophical standpoint, like many of us do, but rather from a practical standpoint. and if OSS makes good commercial sense, then it is good for OSS. pissing off the F/OSS community is a bad move on their part. apple knows it. even though office X is nice, m$ is the long run enemy of apple. m$ represents a different direction, different hardware. apple can't sell its os to run on intel. it needs to sell hardware. OSS is just one way to do that. they keep trying to prove they're good citizens, let's just give them the benefit of the doubt.
(writing this on my ibook, running mozilla, while i edit my php/perl files on gvim, and test on apache/mysql, and create graphics on GIMP)
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Apparently you've not heard of GNUstep. GNUstep is an implementation of the OpenStep API and includes most of Mac OS X's extensions.
:)
The GUI builder is almost done (I am the pricipal developer of it).
Take a look at http://www.gnustep.org.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
This means that when you run Konqueuer on KDE you will be enjoying the beta testing that thousands of MacOSX users have performed on Safari. This is what open source is about and this is what makes it powerful.
Go out and get sailing!
Friend, WebCore includes KHTML and KJS with tons of fixes and optimizations-- all of which have been submitted back to the project, as per the LGPL-- Kwq, the QT adapter library, and the Objective-C SPI. Apple improved the hell out of KHTML and KJS, sent their changes back to the project maintainers, and then released the whole shebang in an OS X-style package. What more do you want, exactly?
I write in my journal
CmdrWass wrote: "You won't see me own a mac until the day comes that they open the hardware standards and there is good competition for hardware. In other words, until I can build a mac from spare parts, you won't see me owning one."
... can't count video cards, I guess) that Macs are less different from PCs than they used to be in the days when just exchanging floppies between Windows and Mac OS was a big pain. Now (for instance) I frequently transfer things between Mac and Linux machine with a little 65MB memory key that cost me $35 at a computer show :) (And next year, maybe 128MB will cost the same amount ...) I have an external CD burner that works under Linux and Mac OS X, scanner likewise. Enough components live *outside* the box that the computer itself isn't always as important as it seems ...
... even if no one else can produce Macs per se, Apple knows that they are not alone in the world, and the ability to switch hardware platforms without switching OS has got to affect their pricing. (Not that Apple laptops are badly priced, all things considered ... go price some non-Apple 17", super-thin, aluminum-clad notebooks;)) Even though it's not direct, it's definitely competition. And that's just for people willing / anxious to run Free software; even for Mac OS-only users, Windows laptops (which cannot run OS X) are obviously competition; people need computers, not necessarily Apple computers.
Instinctively, I agree with that -- don't want to be stuck with something dependent on one company etc.
However, a couple of things mitigate that fear:
- there are enough standard-enough parts n' ports (ethernet, CD-ROMs, firewire and USB, IDE hard drives, etc
- file formats: there are quite a few that are legitimately cross platform. Depending on what you do with a computer, they might not fill all your needs, but for many people, RTF / PFD / html / JPEG / mp3 / ogg and other very cross-platform file formats mean a lot more than the OS being used to open / use / manipulate / save them. Double-edged sword, though, since so many apps love to create difficult-to-share filetypes by default, so if that *is* a concern, it is probably a deal killer. [Ahem]
- there are non-Apple OSes that run on Apple's hardware (a few varieties of Linux, and at least the three biggest *BSDs). Now I'll admit this is a roundabout argument, but
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
chess.tgz on Apple's site. It's right there for the taking.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
As mentioned in other posts, if the file format had been open and documented there would not really be an issue. However, since legacy formats are starting to punish businesses with real costs, the issue can no longer be ignored, even by those that don't/can't plan ahead.
DMCA and EUCD are two additional reasons for migrating from legacy formats. These two could legally prevent businesses (and agencies) from accessing their own documents if encoded in undocumented, proprietary formats and the tools to manage these formats are no longer licensed.
Chip, yes, but it MS-Office revenue will collapse like a sand castle when it goes -- but that's a separate thread. Since Microsoft has alrady taken a publicly stated position against the open file formats, the collapse will only reduce the overhead costs of businesses, agencies and citizens.Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
1. Harrassing Aqua-ish theme makers. As Apple should know, you can't patent "look and feel" -- as their failed case against MS demonstrated.
The "harassment" was due to people copying and pasting widgets directly out of Mac OS X and passing them off as their own. And no, that's not what the failed "look and feel" case demonstrates - that case was lost due to the slack language Apple used in the contract they signed with MS. They gave MS more rights than they thought they had, and when they went to court this came out - hence they lost.
You most certainly can sue over "look and feel", due to a concept known as "trade dress". If I set up a MacDonalds fast food chain with a couple of golden-Ms, you can be I'd have a suit slapped on me within minutes.
Refusing to release a Sorenson codec enabled player or library for Linux, effectively locking Linux users out of an increasing majority of all Internet video content and thus making Linux unviable to end users
Mod -1, Boo Fucking Hoo. Apple signed a contract with Sorenson. Sorenson signed a contract with Apple. Those two companies entered into a deal whereby you're not going to get Sorenson's code for free on your platform. Get over it.
Instead of whining about it, why don't you get off your ass and write a better codec? What's that, it's hard? Well that's why people can and do build businesses around it...
3. Undercutting development of established Open Source projects, like Mozilla and XFree86, by pushing less open alternatives and thus both cutting their mindshare and draining developer talent.
Apple doesn't owe Mozilla anything - you've as much right to demand they use Mozilla as I've got to demand the Mozilla developers come over and paint my house. If an Open Source project can't stand on its own merits, why should it succeed?
And before someone replies 'but now it supports X11', the point is that they aren't the 'default' systems under MacOS -- which means "native" GUI MacOS X applications are useless to Linux
Yeah, and your average Gnome/KDE app won't run out of the box on a Mac either - your point is what? What Apple choses to make their default is their business - face it, X11 caters for a minority, and it's just not that useful to Apple's target market.
It's definitely a prudent move for Apple to ensure it runs reasonably well, since they want to see if they can expand their target market into the Unix workstation market (or what's left of it), but it's by no means their main focus.
In short: Apple is not Linux's friend, and these articles that claim otherwise are stupid and tiresome.
Apple is absolutely Linux's "friend" (in so far as a large company can be friends with a bunch of source files). For god's sake, it's Unix. On The Desktop.
Nae bother
At the time that the BSD License was created universities and other government funded institutions were not allowed to profit from projects which were payed with tax money. (With the intent that publicly funded science has to stay in the public domain) This has changed in the last twenty years but the intent of the BSD License was and always will be to encourage the widespread use of ceratin technology.
Everybody may use BSD Licensed technology in the way they seem fit. The GPL is far more restricted in that matter (every change has to be made publicly available again) One might argue that the GPL might be the better license for the purpose stated above but it's not. The main reason being the restriction to publish the source code even if your software just uses a tiny fraction of GPLd code.
But many large software projects will not publish sourcecode, not because it might hurt their business but because licensing patented technology may restrict the ability to publish sourcecode.
So even if they wanted to use GPL licensed software legal mumbo jumbo might keep them from doing so.
To make a long story short. the GPL and The BSDL realize different philosophies:
The GPL forces the publication of sourcecode so that the original developer may profit the most (by making the changes publicly available even if contributing to the original project might not be the intent of the other party) This might discourage derivative works because every enhancement automatically benefits the original author and might make competing products less attractive.
The BSDL wants to encourage the adoption of technologies by not restricting the way people use it. So the BSDL wants to propagate technology and not the changes to it. It was never the intent of the BSDL to benefit the original Inventor of the code but everyone else so if a company doesnt want to contribute it is their right to do so and anybody who uses the BSDL must live with these consequences.
So if i want that everybody and their friends use my super duper new software (even if it is this mean old software company from redmond) i would go with the BSDL knowing exactly that the result might benefit others more than me.
If i want to enact more control over my software and the way it is used i would use the GPL knowing that every improvement will benefit my own project but might hinder adoption of my technology by other parties.
So both licenses have their strengths and weaknesses it all depends on what my personal goals are when choosing one over the other.
Regards Jeff
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
I doubt it. PC making is a commodity market, driven almost solely by price. Nice design and high quality doesn't sell.
If Apple were to move to x86, they'd have to compete with Joe Clonebaker and the Crappy Componentbuilders. And at the same time, Apple would have to make sure OS X worked with all the bazillion motherboards, PCI cards, etc. available for PCI processors.
They would lose much of the "there is no step three" user experience (hassle-free installation, etc.) they can offer now.