Slashdot Mirror
Bill Joy on Linux and Mac OS X
(rfm)2 writes "In a Wired interview, Bill Joy mentions he just got a new dual 2GHz G5 Power Mac with 8 GB RAM and half a terabyte of internal disk. He is clearly underwhelmed by Linux: 'Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally. For kids who are 20 years younger than me, Linux is a great way to cut your teeth. It's a cultural phenomenon and a business phenomenon. Mac OS X is a rock-solid system that's beautifully designed. I much prefer it to Linux.'"
"They took systems designed for isolated desktop systems and put them on the Net without thinking about evildoers" - BJ
I haven't really followed Joy's career and what he's created, but if you look at everything on the net, TCP/IP, SMTP, et. al., they were initially dependent on unfounded trust. Once the masses got ahold of it, the evildoers expoited that trust.
For years, Sun shipped systems that were completely insecure right out of the box (blank root password, every inetd service enabled, etc...) It wasn't until the mid-90s that Sun started to do anything about it.
Granted, MS should have known better seeing as they were so late to the party, but Linux systems were no different until enough bitching occurred to make someone change the defaults.
What was that about not knowing your history?
"The area of penetration will no doubt be sensitive." ~ Spock
I'm an elementary school teacher, and run an OS X lab with 30 flat panel iMacs and a nice G4 server. We also have a bevy of eMacs and older iMacs in the classroom.
We use the Apple lease program, which let's us (a very small school district in Massachusetts) buy new technology every 3 years.
The thing of it is, last night I bought 3 decent machines from Tiger Direct, and a switch for about $700.00 I'll install RH linux on them, and use them for all sorts of stuff (web server, DNS, DHCP, SQUID, etc...). I currently use an old linux box for SQUID in my lab. problems with it == none !! Now that 10.3 is using LDAP to authenticate, I might fiddle with that in our lab.
As a public institution, I feel we have a fiscal responsibility to the taxpayers (really) and Linux has a place in our schools.
Apple has made Unix available to the masses, but the cost of entry is something to consider. *sigh*
I used to fret about Linux VS OS X and now I say how do they best work together.
oh, and by the way, if anyone has any suggestions for me, listen to this:
98% of my students have computers with internet access at home. Out of those 98%, 95% have windows machines. I have fought like hell to keep Macs in our school, but the onslaught of windows feels almost inevitable (my strategy so far, is to buy as much OS X software as I can, so replacing it with wondows stuff would be prohibitive). What is an effective way to promote the use of elseOS, when "Everyone else is using Windows" ?
I didn't get the sense from reading the interview that he was talking about the UI.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think when he says that Linux isn't interesting from a technological standpoint, he's not talking about how easily he can check his email: he's talking about architectural and technological innovation.
There are fundamental differences between the Darwin and Linux kernels that makes Darwin, in my opinion, a more interesting, and "better" design. This has nothing to do with UI.
On a related note: While Bill Joy may or may not be using his computer at home, I don't think it's fair to call him a "home user". I have no doubt that he's quite comfortable on the command-line, and if you read the rest of the interview, you get the sense he's using his G5 for more than just web-browsing.