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A Power Users Look at Linux on the Mac
An anonymous reader writes "Even though most Linux users have treated Linux as an operating system for their x86 white boxes, Linux runs equally well on PowerPC machines. This article looks at Linux on the PowerPC and the appealing range of PPC machines produced by Apple, where the option of using Linux is of great value to many users."
Because iBook+Linux = 6 hours of Debian goodness. Or it would be if Apple can sort out my logic board. And no, this is not a troll - check my posting history.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
/(o^_^o)\
This title should read "A Power User's Look ..."
I don't know, I don't use iCal.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Welcome to January. I'm surprised it took a month for Slashdot to post it.
As for me personaly, I just hate OS X.
:) be serious it runs on Mac and very old and very exclusive (I don't mean good, I mean hard to find) x86 hardware. By the way it sucks
It's inconsistant in core, try a little search for files on drive and you'll see what I mean
piss poor selection of admin applications (who in the world set up NetInfo),
heh, it doesn't support my apps, and if it would I would simply forbid that for my next reason. And besides who in the world has the time to install X11, fink, compile, solve dependancies, compile, solve...
and you sign contract with even more greedy devil than M$.
Why? Apple gave nothing to people.
Examples:
1. Quicktime streaming server that is open sourced has the license that made me just forget about it when I got trough 1/4. It's purely beneficial license that covers unsuccessful (at least unsold) product for future sqeezing of poor bastards that signed this license.
2. Darwin,...
3. Did Apple at least opensourced Carbon??
4. Or Cocoa??
5. Or at least Appletalk?? Quartz, maybe?? Hell, face the reality, Apple hasn't opensourced not even stickies. Poor Darwin and few patches to Konqueror is all that Apple ever give.
Anti-Americanism? No, Bush is not the majority of Americans, so I guess they're just people like the other. But you show great deal of Americanism.
Successful company? Yeah, right. Take but not give, and then squeeze even more. If that's the way you like it...
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Dispite the fact that I am programming 18 years for living, I never was in love with computers. I prefer to use women for love. I use computer for doing the job.
That's why bootable Mac OS never survived on my Macs for long. It always ended up with bootable Linux/PPC, keeping Mac OS for MOL although.
Honestly, I've tried hard to understand why I would prefer Mac OS, but I always gave up. Each time I use Mac OS the "cannot" list grows faster than than "can" list. Besides, it's so inconvinient to have one OS for Macs and another for PCs.
No need to mention that the quality of open source support in OS X is worse than on MS-Windows: Xfree, OpenOffice, Mozilla - they are almost unusable, comparing to them on MS-Windows boxen.
So, I use Linux/PPC on my both Macs and both PCs. So does my family. So my co-workers.
With so many PCs around people are thinking about dual-bootable Windows/Linux configurations, as dual-bootable Windows/OSX doesn't exist. So people, who think realistically, would prefer Linux even on Mac boxen - it's less hassle to learn something new.
Well, I've noticed that most of people who loves OSX, they blindly ignore the existence of other computers around and the fact that the rest of computers are PCs. I think Macs are good, but the reality is different. If you ignore the reality - you are a blind zealot.
Less is more !
Parent... Troll??? For what, for truth?
Really what did Apple gave to people?
I dare all Apple users and fans to answer that? All it does, it's just smoke in the mirror.
APPLE NEVER CONTRIBUTED ANYTHING THAT WOULD MATTER
Linux has its origins on IA32, Intel's 32-bit architecture. Every platform Linux has migrated to since then has been beset with porting problems -- Linux runs 32% more efficiently on Intel than PowerPC. This is very telling as PowerPC is in general much faster per clock than Intel. Somewhere in the translation from PowerPC to IA32 something got lost.
Mac OS is 100% native for PowerPC. The Mach kernel has been optimized for the G3, G4, and 970 since Apple began writing the operating system back in 1996. Why choose a hacked and kludged OS from another platform when you can have an environment tailor-made for the system you'll be running it on? Mac OS certainly isn't plagued by same driver problems Linux is (in)famous for.
In Linux, the development model is highly irrational: anyone is allowed to submit patches, and one man (Linus Torvalds) sorts through gigabyte after gigabyte of amateurish code, attempting to integrate it into the kernel. Apple's model is much more modern and decisive: the code for the low levels of Mac OS is available for anyone to download and modify, while the more complex parts of the system (QuickTime and OpenGL) are kept closed-source so those that know better -- the Apple programmers -- are the only ones allowed to tinker.
The results because of these differing development models are clear. Apple released a major update to the OS once a year, and releases about five minor updates to the OS, as well as several dozen security patches and driver updates, in the interim. Since March of 2001 we've gone from 10.0 to 10.2.5, while Linux was still stuck at some sort of bizarre "in-between" 2.5 kernel patch and wouldn't move on to 2.6 until well after Apple had released Mac OS 10.3.
It's not hard to see the difference here is a bunch of kids playing with source code instead of doing their homework vs. highly qualified professionals pushing their skills to the limits. The Mac OS user benefits.
I don't even think I have to touch on this. While Linux offers several GUIs from GNOME, KDE, and Enlightenment, Apple offers only one. But here we have a case of quality vs. quantity. Apple controls the GUI for its operating system while anyone can hack and modify the various Linux GUIs as they please. This has led to a lack of desktop standards and a whole lot of bickering and flame wars over human interface guidelines. Most of the GUIs for Linux are simply poor knock-offs of the Windows 95 interface.
Apple's Aqua and QuickTime graphical interfaces are faster, more elegant, and very consistent. A Mac user can sit down at any Mac and (assuming someone hasn't installed Linux) get right to work. With Linux, it's hit or miss as to whether the user will know what to do when he logs in! Getting work done is the most important aspect of a computer. After all, it is just a tool. Linux fails in this area miserably you're forced to edit and tinker and kludge and hack to make things perfect. A Mac allowes you to just sit down and roll up your sleeves and get some work done. I don't have time to play at my job.
I've used Linux before and the headache of downloading drivers and libraries and making sure the versions all sync up are too mucvh to handle, especiallly considering one has to compile these applications. On a Mac, I mount a disk image and drag the .app file to /Applications, and I'm done. Hell, most software for Mac even installs it there for you.
To put this last point in perspective, let's look at a recent task I performed under both Linux 2.4 and Mac OS 10.2.
Sendmail and sshd were both cracked recently and needed updated. The guys who code
If you disagree post, don't moderate.
>It's better that way, it seems.
Yah, it *seems*. When it's really just hiding this stuff from you, and if you ever *do* need to use it, you won't know how. OS fanboys all suck, but remember that the concept behind the Mac was to dumb it down until any idiot could use it. They succeeded marvelously, from the look of things.
you linux perverts are like flies at a picnic - your a nuisance and you try to eat our food
Well thanks for telling us. If it wasn't for complete pricks like you, people around here might have to use their brains.
Keep up the pointless work fuckwit.
That was classic intercourse!