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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.'"
After all, Mac OS has got solid user oriented UI... We're working on that with linux - but we've got years to go before it's set for the home user -> linux trounces for business of course :-D
oh, and fp!
What he was doing in 1979 was academic work, and the source code was available. In the years since then, Unix has been locked away by various companies (e.g. SCO). Linux isn't about making the best user experience, it's about a return to making improvements based on freely shared knowledge.
David.
What made Apple successful (if you can call it that) a strong set of UI guidelines that everyone is supposed to follow. Thus there are two key questions:
1. Does the Linux community have a set of UI guidelines?
2. Do Linux app developers follow them?
If the answer to either question is "no" then Linux is not likely to take over the desktops of average (= your grandma) users.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I'm a big fan of OSX.
but; give me a dual 2ghz system, gb of ram, and a half tb or storage, and I'll love whatever it runs. I'd take DOS on a system like that.
Does 'overkill' mean nothing to these people?
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
as much as it pains me to say this... linux needs to drift much more to the windows/MacOS way of doing things... point and drool works for the majority of the people out there. If u need a windows driver... click on it and it goes (most of the time :P )... I think Linux has the foundation to be the ultimate OS if there is an easy setup and configuration, along with the power to drop to the command line and change anything. I recently had a chance to try out the new MacOS, and was very impressed... if I could have a windowing system like that, with all the configuration abilities of linux... the world would be a happier place for me. as it is now.. the only reason i run windows now is because im a hard core gamer.. and too many games use DirectX(in my opinion, one of the greatest things MSoft has ever made (and free :P) ), but if i could game on linux and have the ease of use for others in my household that windows provides... I'd make the full switch no prob.
Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
And if Linux was entirely about re-implementing what Bill Joy designed in 1979, then he might have a point.
But the things Bill Joy designed and partially wrote back in the 1970s are functionally inferior to features found in modern Linux.
Sure, Linux and BSD share similar APIs, but it is more than a little deceptive to claim that BSD and Linux are the same design. Internally they're completely different.
This is like a 100 year old Mr Ford looking at a modern V8 EFI car with independent suspension and AWD and ABS and saying "pfft, it's not very interesting, I designed all this back in the early 1900s". It shows a complete lack of comprehension regarding the modern state-of-the-art.
"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
Bill Joy on Linux, Mac OS X, and George W. Bush. Yeesh, I didn't expect so much of it to be a political rant. Then again, it's Bill Joy, maybe I should have. :-)
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
Well, Bill, you may be right, but just keep in mind that re-implementing what ken and dennis designed before you probably didn't impress them so much, either.
seriously, he's spot on here. there's lots of good things about linux, but few of them are technical. OS X is doing real new stuff.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
A: Re-implementing what I designed in 1979 is not interesting to me personally.
[...]
Q: All right, you win. What are you doing for fun these days?
A: I'm figuring out a meditation wall for my apartment in New York. Eight feet high by 12 feet wide, with an array of overlapping rear projectors, each with a tiny Linux box and connected by gigabit Ethernet.
Fascinating.
Linux is 1979 technology and yet runs the projectors for his meditation wall -- built by a Walt Disney Imagineer and the inventor of massively parallel supercomputing.
I should like to ask Mr. Joy why these projectors are not running Mac OS X or even Solaris. Perhaps he owes a greater debt to those kids 20 years his junior than he imagines?
Thomas
Of course he's totally right.
Why should he be totally into Linux given his background. And why shouldn't he enjoy OS X on this droolproof hardware?
Give the man a good gui or go whine about something else.
I think Linux *could* one day make a comprehensive home user system - if that were a goal in itself - but I'm pretty sure most linux contributors are not the ones you should ask about the hi/gui guidelines. They don't care.
And as long as that's the situation, it's totally understandable someone prefers OS X for the everyday stuff and Linux for doing rocksolid stupid stuff like meditation walls - as long as he doesn't have to set it up himself.
I can dig linux for servers, since you expect the thing to not give you a head-ache *once you set it up*, but to do this constant maintenance on your main machine without the benefits a windows or os x machine gives you, ffff that takes guts and balls, not for me...
Who's Bill Joy?
I don't agree. Even geeks (me included) like some "confortable" environments now and then. Thats why I'm migrating all my Linux (Gentoo and Debian boxes) to MacOS X shortly. I can keep doing my OSS work and have a great OS (or UI). I've used FreeBSD (which OS X is based) and I always liked it. The only reason I migrated to Linux was that Linux was more... agile. You surely can work the Unix way on the MacOS X. only prettier :)
"For someone who primarily works on the commandline and needs graphical programs only for the occasional web browsing, graphics/pdf and video viewing (for all of which excellent free, X11-based solutions like mozilla-firebird and mplayer do exist), MacOS X offers no advantages over a GNU/Linux or NetBSD system in which all the system- and commandline-level things are done cleaner and better."
Heheh. It's precisely this type of attitude about *nix why it's no surprise that Linux just isn't "there" yet. I still find it amusing that it was Apple that brought *nix to the masses.
I'm sorry, but you're kind of 'out of it'
/Applications, home spaces in /Users, OS X specific System files in /Library and /System. I find the layout quit logical and quit consistent. As for the unix stuff in OS X, it's where you'd guess most of the time. BTW, why should /bin be shown in the GUI when you can't run command line apps from the GUI?
- Classic is not bloat. It's a feature to allow compatability. Classic doesn't introduce overhead to a system unless you NEED to run an old app. I didn't have Classic installed for over a year and never missed it. It's only on my machine now because I did a clean install of panther.
- Carbon API is an equal partner with Cocoa on OS X. It is based (heavily) off of the Classic Mac APIs but it isn't bloat. It's another enviornment that has benefits and disadvantages compared to Cocoa (or standard BSD libraries). The is a reason why the Finder isn't Cocoa.. it works better as a Carbon app.
- "Vintage BSD" is often a lot faster than your vaunted Linux. I know 2.4 and the upcomming 2.6 have made big strides, but the Linux compat in FreeBSD was faster than Linux for a long time, and as far as I know, still occasionally is faster than real linux.
- Linux files systems are anything but clean. Different distros put stuff in different areas, Major apps switch install and config locations between versions. For the most part, you rarely ever need to dig into the filesystem on OS X. Apps go in
- Netinfo was depreciated in 10.2 and it's pretty much not used in 10.3. Apples moved everything into the BSD files and/or LDAP. Anyway, There really wasn't much in Netinfo. Comparing Netinfo to The Registry is total flamebait and it shows your lack of knowledge.
- consistent package management on Linux??? HAHAHA If I could count all the problems I've had with RPMs..
Fink automatically handles dependencies. The system software updater tracks packages. In general, the software install tools for OS X work fantastic. Package Manager is way better than anything on linux. And don't forget the use of Bundles. It makes a lot of software installs as easy as copying over an icon [which is a directory with all the goodies inside, but looks to the user like an app]
- haha, you consider the Mac OS unusable out of the box, yet you love linux. With so many distributions of Linux, do you really believe you wouldn't have to apply as much configuration to a distro you weren't intimately familiar with?
Give OS X 10.3 a real try and come back with a comparison to Linux. You'll find a quick, responsive machine. A great bundled development environment, best of class bundled apps, and a hardware accellerated X11 right out of the box.
ffakr.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
I would say what made Apple successful was the whole ease of use factor. Put the CD in the drive, hold down the "C" key, turn machine on. Machine boots off of CD. Click the install icon, provide a few simple responses and info, and your OS is installed. No "detecting hardware...found something...don't know what it is...do you have a driver for this ? piece of hardware?" that you get with windows, and certainly not like linux installs. Configuring the network has always been straightforward as well, with all the relevant fields in one place, and easily accessible. Appletalk was self configuring, as is the new Rendezvous technology. No BIOS settings to mess around with, and you don't NEED to know the command line aspect of OS X. How many Windows users actually know how to maintain Windows properly (ie msconfig, the registry, etc). With the mac OS, you had the extensions folder before OS X, and the extensions manager made managing extensions easy for even the novices. OS X takes care of it's own maintenance. The whole UI guideline is just an extension of Apple's commitment to delivering highly complicated and advanced technology in an easy to use package. If you want Linux to take over the desktops of the average user, you need to make it easy to use. This means making it like an appliance! You turn it on, you click to check your mail, click to surf the web, click to type a document, click to check your appointments, click to print, and then turn it off. Want to add a (video conferencing camera/scanner/DVD burner/joystick)? Great! Plug it in, pop in the CD, click the icon, and it's installed. Windows has the edge over Linux because it's a giant bag of drivers and installers so that most users can usually install their own peripherals. Linux is more stable, more secure, faster, and cheaper, but it still isn't even remotely easy to use! The average user does not want to have to learn any type of CLI. Period.
It's ridiculous to say that Macs are out of the spending range for mere mortals. You can get a dual 1.8 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive, Radeon 9600 Mac for under $3000. Anyone with an average salary can afford that. You can buy iMacs (with the screen) for $1300. You can get an eMac for $800.
Sure, you can blow $10,000 on a Mac; but have you priced dual Xeon workstations lately? A Dell equivalent (dual 3.06 Xeon) to Bill Joy's Mac, but with 4 GB (since 8 GB isn't even an option) was about $7700. Subtract $2600 to reduce Bill Joy's Mac to 4GB, and it comes down to about $5900. It doesn't look all that expensive any more, does it? And it still includes the digital audio, Firewire 800, and Airport Extreme over the Dell box.
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.
After "cutting my teeth" with Linux for the last 8 years (from kernel 1.2 & first slackware), I finally got tired of the administration. I learned most of what I wanted to know about unix, and now I just want to use it. OSX to me is the dream system I've been waiting for since I went from Amiga to Unix.
Unfortunately I'm not the ambitious 20-something I was when I started with unix. I don't want to recompile my kernel every week any more. All the linux I run now is imbedded (net integrator box and dreambox satellite recievers), exactly because I want the power without the maintainence. I think OSX is going to become the burnout hacker's choice of desktop OS exactly for that reason. All the power, none of the fuss. The point is that it's a finished OS. My G5 gives me an experience superior to any desktop OS with superior power than the Sun, AIX, and OSF workstations of just a few years ago. And a full unix implementation to boot! I couldn't be more happy.
Granted there a few non-unix annoyances, but for the most part, it is what I waited and worked 8 years for linux to become, today. It amazes me how fast they threw it together and how well it came out. It is definately the best example of a successful non-open-source project coming together I have seen in a long time.
You don't really know much about OS X.
;-)
First, it's a mach kernel that can act like BSD.
Big difference.
And, it's not really the UNIX part that's so interesting.
It's nice to have as a foundation.
The beauty of OSX is its completely object-oriented layers above UNIX.
Written in Objective-C, a decent mixture between plain C and smalltalk, it lets you write VERY dynamic code.
You have services (one program can offer its capabilities to other programs). Say, one program can open and read PNG files. Sudenly all programs can handle them...
Everything is an object, can send/receive messages etc. And objects can be changed at runtime (say, you can modify the GUI of an compiled program, and even add buttons that connect to objects within the code..!!!)
Look at the really small software shops that crack out incredible code (omni, stone etc.). Not possible without these layers and APIs
This is the "new" bit about OSX.
But this was all developed by NeXT in 1989-93.
So it's not THAT new, but being lightyears ahead back then,
it's still an armlength away from all the other OSes right now.
This makes OSX exciting.
And this is exactly the part that is NOT open sourced at Apple
Cheers, Martin
engineer and boulevardier
While it certainly is interesting discussing the merits of *BSD, Linux and OSX, I don't think that that is what Bill Joy's problem is. While he has definitely been an important visionary in the world of computing, he seems for all the world to be one of those philosophical types who lose the connection to the real world. His big worries about machines running out of control in the future, while perhaps pertinent didn't seem to help Sun's bottom line and I remember an interview with Scott McNealy saying that he would have made some Sun people leave much earlier if he could go back in time. I wonder if he was referring to Bill Joy here?
His comment on Linux is simply demeaning to all the hundreds of thousands of developers who develop for it (and I use Mac OSX!). Linux has become more important than Solaris, HP-UX and AIX, like it or not, Mr Joy, and those (IBM) who saw this coming are now reaping the benefits and those who didn't (Sun) are now struggling to catch up. Mac OS X is hugely successful, precisely because it appeals to all the people that want the OS to just work, but that in no way means that Linux or the BSDs are worse. They are very good at what they do.
I had to take a bite on this, however, ffakr, covered most of what I wanted to troll on.
There is one more thing though...
MacOSX's kernel is more of a hybrid kernel, than a pure microkernel. There's only a single layer that messages get passed through to communicate with the kernel, and vice-versa. No one has been able to produce a microkernel that has a.) portability and b.) performance. L4 is by the far the best implementation of a microkernel that is somewhat comparable to the speed of a monolithic kernel and retains all the design goals of a true microkernel.
I believe microkernels ultimate goal was to create a portable operating system with a BSD operating system interface. It achieved that slowly, but performance was terrible. Linux has solved this problem, and people don't pay as much lip service to microkernels as they use to.
Microkernels also aren't as small and streamline as you believe. Mach was just as big a monolithic kernel, and to streamline any of its processes, you had to run kernel extensions in kernel space, not user space, nullifying the user-level kernel extensions goal.
Microkernels also inherently will have more overhead than monolithic kernels. They have to buffer and analyze messages that get passed through each layer in the operating system, just like a network architecture does.
Object-oriented frameworks like Java, Cocoa and Carbon, would crawl on a microkernel because of the number of interrupts generated in such systems.
But MacOS X has great Java support. Cocoa is heavilty object oriented, but is a fast API.
This fast/portable/small microkernel-stuff about MacOS X is a myth. It's a hybrid like NT.