Slashdot Mirror
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."
[p]I would like to ask, as a completely serious question, aside from the matter of personal preference, the whole, "Linux is better than anything else in the world," thing, why in the hell would anyone feel a need to install Linux on a Mac?[/p][p]OS X runs on most modern Macs, and is based on a *BSD. It's stable as hell, more secure than any distro of Linux I know of, and it has a very functional GUI (if you like such things).[/p][p]I mean, I run two Linux boxen, one as a server, the other as a generic code monkey-ing machine, and if I had a Mac I would in no way see or feel a need to put Linux on it.[/p]
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
...will they sell me one without charging me for the MacOS?
If I buy a Mac then I'm paying for the OS and the brand. Is there another, cheaper, source for the hardware?
...the best of both worlds under linux on Mac hardware:
http://www.maconlinux.org
-Ghostis
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
One thing that is certain: If you use a Mac, you have no exotic hardware and drivers should work quite well. Thousands of users have the same harware configuration as you. Therefore you can get the most out of the hardware - if you want to use linux on a mac - I think MacOSX is quite a nice Operating System, especially for desktop use.
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
Everyone talks about user-friendliness issues that prevent Linux from becoming desktop-worthy. Wouldn't Apple be the best platform to introduce this on? Not due to technical merit, but simply because ease-of-use is a major selling point to Apple? If people want to make a truly slam-bang intuitive GUI for Linux, code it for PPC and worry about porting it later. Hell, Apple themselves could sponsor such a project and use it as a way to garner themselves more Mac sales. "Look, the most intuitive Linux distro out there runs best on a Mac!" Maybe end-users wouldn't get it right away, but sysadmins and such types would, and there's always the "My friend knows computers, and..." factor to be considered. They'll hear about it soon enough (remember when the Internet was a geek-exclusive playground?).
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
If you want something totally concurrent with the PC world then Gentoo linux is the way to go. Nearly all packages will work with PPC because they are self compiled. As long as you know a little about linux and have used it before, or are willing to learn Gentoo can be installed. They have the best documentation I have yet found, and the most friendly forums.
YellowDog is a port of RedHat, pretty much. The advantage is that they only produce a PPC distro and are very good at it. They have navy contracts with PPC products and actually sell PPC hardware. One of the very few companies who do aside from Apple. YellowDog is good if you want the ease of use that a modern distro should provide.
OpenOffice should run fine. It will also run with OSX using apple's X11, but not natively under Aqua.
KOffice and the Gnome office will also work out-of-the-box.
One of my friends runs a music studio and is constantly fighting with turning off ACPI on Win 2000. It causes all sorts of issues with our sound cards (Dual Delta 1010s), SCSI card, and IDE controller card. Having to worry about IRQs and ACPI has got to disappear. Are IRQs treated the same under Linux? I would hope that Linux would not give the same kind of issues, the way all Mac OSs don't. I had never heard of an IRQ until we started having these problems at the studio. No wonder most studios are all Mac, we don't have the time to fsck around with this crap. No BIOS, etc.. It's better that way, it seems.
Hm - there are some interesting implications with that.
IBM wants to sell chips. Apple wants to sell hardware. If IBM came out with a "desktop" or even "workstation" PowerPC machine that ran, say, Yellow Dog Linux (or PPC Suse or the like), how would Apple respond?
Especially since most of the programs made for PPC Linux can easily be ported to Apple - whether running under X11 or adding in Cocoa portions - and I'm sure Apple would be more than happy to supply a compiler that could turn PPC-X-Windows code to Aqua code - cludgy, but it could work.
If such a system took off, Apple would be pretty happy - more programs could be converted easily. And odds are, if you're already running PPC desktop, you might be looking at OS X for ease of use issues.
On the other hand - who would use such a system? Most people would probably go for x86 Linux - x86 parts are cheaper, more software is available (even on just the Linux side alone). So a person wanting a PPC desktop would have to have a very good reason, like wanting to do high-end calculations or graphics rendering.
In which case, they'd probably just go for a Mac first anyway.
Personally, I think that Apple's best move is this:
1. Keep the high-end Powermacs/powerbooks.
2. Keep the lower-cost iBooks.
3. Make the iMacs truly cost compatible. Yes, there are the eMacs - what I think would blow away the market is a $600 headless iMac. Small base, maybe like the Cube (only upgradeable - that's what killed the little guy). Most people already have monitors, and if they could by a $600 G4 Mac they'd be estatic. Apple would make money, and could eventually move them over into the more expensive stuff - and even if they didn't, they'd gain market share, which would still mean more money.
Either way, we'll have to see what happens with IBM and Apple. The 970 chips are becoming more popular (Xbox Next, anyone? - this could be a side issue about how many Xbox games could be ported to OS X if the Xbox Next is truly G5 based....), so the future could hold anything.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
For almost any model there is an installation report about Linux on an Apple PowerBook or iBook.
I have two iMacs with Debian installed. Why? Because they're near as damnit silent! One acts as a server and one as a desktop. On the desktop, OOo runs just fine, as does the Gnome desktop and all the usual toys. Thunderbird and Firebird packages are available in Debian's "testing" stream.
... in Europe. Seriously, compare the prices at the current exchange rates, especially for Powerbooks (but do remember to substract the VAT, which is included in most European Apple stores). Apple sells it's stuff for hundreds of dollars more in Europe. Same goes for many brand stuff electronics and PCs. But with PCs, at least you can buy separate components, which are usually not much more expensive than in the US.
Ridiculously well.
OS X (and OS 9, as well, if that's your cup of tea) wakes from sleep in less than a second (to displaying the desktop), and is usable (as in actually responsive and opening a program) in maybe 3 seconds. It's one of the reasons why Apple notebooks are so highly prized. Shut the lid, and it's asleep in less than two seconds. Open the lid, and it's awake in less than three.
On desktop machines, it's equally as functional. Plus, it's always cool to see the pulsating (snoring) "sleep" light, since a lot of Macs are basically dead silent when "asleep"; it saves you from the idiot who wants to press the power button on your machine.
OK, I'm not trying to be anal here but people who don't know might be misled by the following in the article:
Apple's G5 towers are comparable in speed to the fastest x86-derived CPUs and systems; in other words, the Intel Itanium and AMD Athlon64.
Itanium is not x86 derived. It has its own novel instruction set.
If so, then that would be a real good reason to replace OS/X with it.
This is my sig.
Mac OS X is so much more refined than Linux, and actually has a huge amount of produtivity software. So why should anyone in their right mind want to run Linux on a Mac, unless (s)he is a masochist?
Yellow dog linux
might very well be Mac on Linux, ironically enough. Check out this:
http://www.maconlinux.org/sshots/pic12.jpg
Running multiple versions of MacOS in parallel. Think about the possibilities for software developers. Having multiple environments immediately available for testing.
Then of course there's the ability to run all those Mac apps when needed and still have the Linux desktop to go to when they aren't needed.
Mac on Linux is what the open source world should try and create for the Windows world. Think of the possibilities if you could run Windows at work in a Window - be able to do all the windows specific stuff at need, but have Linux goodness in which to work as well. If a phb strolls in, just flip your desktop over to full screen windows. Then for the rest of the time go stealth with Xpde, good enough to fool a casual glance. Maybe some rootless window hack could even be figured out.
Of course, if your boss says you Must Use Windows, there's not a whole lot you can do. But perhaps this would be an acceptible compromise.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Exactly. It's like putting a VW Bug engine into a mid-60's porsche. Not only is it not going to work right(and LinuxPPC doesn't work nearly as well, just on a features basis, as OS X), but it'll be slow and everyone who sees it will just stare at you- and if they're not polite enough, demand to know why you did it. Even Robin Malda uses OS X!
Who cares? Slashdot is hardly an example of technical prowess; in fact, it's rotting(HTML 3?!?). The FAQ hasn't been touched since '99, and they have yet to rise to the challenge of solving any of the problems they themselves created(slashdotting for example). From what I've heard(several OSDN sales people worked where I used to work), Malda got wined and dined by one company after another hoping he'd either post about them or endorse their products. Absolutely no integrity.
Please help metamoderate.
You cannot boot directly from OF (openfirmware) into Linux. Wrong, OF is a really a boot loader and can load any ELF or xcoff binary from many different file system formats, hfs, hfs+, ISO CD, ext2, and ufs.
Also OF can read both partion maps, Apple format and x86 format.
Of course you can still use yaboot if you want.
While the heading refers to Linux on Macs, there's a number of other PPC machines that'll run Linux
a pegasos I or II is a PPC based machine, there's also Amiga One boards - a new Mini-ITX AmigaOne looks REALLY appealing, as long as it's not slugged with the "Amiga Tax" (double the price for the privilege of being able to run AmigaOS4 if it's released). a Mini ITX board with a GHz or more G4 - not a scaled down VIA type setup, but a full honest-to-goodness G4. That's appealing.
There's also several VMEbus boards based on PPC chips from PPC440 to G4s, and a newer one out soon from Momentum computer, Dual G5s on an ATX board. Pricey, but it's just a reference board at the moment.
If prices dropped on these, especially on the Momentum board, I could see these being real alternatives to x86, especially for people a bit worried about MS's palladium plans. A mac is a wonderful thing, but if you ask 'Why bother" about putting Linux over the top of a machine that'll run OSX, one of the above solutions might be an option.
OK... maybe this note is a little karma whoring by the author of the referred article. But what the heck, I -did- write it, and I'm always pleased when things by or about me make the slashdot headline.
:-)).
/.-ing.
A question a bunch of people have raised in comments is "why bother with Linux if you buy a Mac with OSX on it"... well, read the article. I don't say that switching to or adding Linux is always desirable; but I think I do a good job of describing some scenarios where it is. That said, I certainly -do- like OSX quite a bit (where my favorite installed application is still bash
Also, contrary to some down-modded poster, IBM can INDEED easily handle the load of slashdotting. In fact, a zillion hits to my article is indirectly good for me (I'm not on commission or anything, but it puts an extra sparkle in my editors' eyes). Also, FWIW, all my articles soon make it to [http://gnosis.cx/publish/] (which reminds me that I need some updating, it's been a couple months)... which is also quite strong enough to survive
Yours, David...
Buy Text Processing in Python
a lobster. But they are not the same.
That's why I bought an iBook.. I figured it would be a perfect linux laptop.
Then I tried OSX for the heck of it, you know, it was already installed.
And now you can pry OSX off my mac from my cold, dead hands.
That second hierarchy actually comes from NeXTSTEP, where it was called /NextApplications, /NextLibrary, /NextDeveloper, etc. Mac OS 9 did not have a particular imposition of hierarchy in the same way that UNIX might; applications can live just about anywhere.
Secondly there's a very conscious and IMHO good reason to farm off the NeXTish stuff into a different hierarchy - that is that it's a different system. All of the files in /etc, /usr, /var etc. are in the same places that you would expect to find them on any UNIX. Looking for the run control scripts? They're in /etc/rc*.
The OPENSTEP-derived APIs, the Aqua GUI, Cocoa applications etc. are orthogonal to UNIX. They just happen to be running on a UNIX system (unless you're using Yellow Box for Windows NT). Keeping them in their own hierarchies so that they don't intrude on or get confused with UNIX stuff is a good idea.
There is an anti-case-study: GNUstep does indeed put all of its files into the UNIX hierarchy, but it still partitions them into separate subdirectories, namely /usr/GNUstep and ~/GNUstep. Again, because it's orthogonal to the underlying UNIX system, it tries to keep out of its way.
The author isn't aware that Mandrake can do the same thing by running urpmi PACKAGENAME. And the graphical front end, rpmdrake, is a competant method of installing softare. Also, it is possible to install yum or apt-rpm via urpmi if you prefer them.
The Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP, aka PPCP) was released many many years ago, but it hasn't really taken off. IBM did sell some of these systems, and the modern pegasos platform offers G3 & G4 processors.
Here's some more technical info.
p.s. mac sleeping is perfect - sleep and wake are quick, and network connectivity (even when roaming) is very fast.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I still run linux exclusively on my laptop and in the office, and on just about any server I have a say over. Some people ask why install Linux on a ppc but a lot of oss apps don't run smoothly on osx even with fink. I've had a lot of problems, where running a full fledged distro seems to run pretty smoothly on the ppc.
OSX is nice but if I was not running photoshop, garageband, or final cut, I would not have purchased a mac. I have a dual 2.8 xeon at work running gentoo that I prefer hands down over the G5 for coding, mainly for software reasons.
I like the gentoo packaging system, everything is available through portage. With OSX, I feel like I'm running windows again because most of the software is shareware. Like I just paid $130 for isight, but I can pretty much only video chat with it by default. If I want to use it for a webcam, I need to pay $30. If I want to record video with imovie, I need to pay $50 for ilife.
Another thing that bugged me about isight was the apple has hard coded the min requirements for the software. So if you plug the isight in to a 500mhz g3 ibook, it will not even attempt to work even though it could. I've never ran in to windows or linux software that will not even attempt to run if you don't meet the min requirements.
so it turns out I can use the isight with the g3 500 ibook, but I have to spend another $30 for some shareware that removes the limit and lets usb cameras work for isight. So in total, it cost me $110 in software in order to get basic functionality out of my $130 fire wire camera.
My debacle with the isight is classic case of why free software and keeping a separation between the software developers ands the company that makes the hardware, has a lot of value.
I have a second hand 400mhz G4 powerbook. When OSX came out I tried it, but it seemed to run a bit too slow on the powerbook for me and watching a divx movie in osx was nearly impossible with quicktime.
After a week I was fed up with it. I've been running gentoo linux on a lot of x86 servers, so I decided to make it a gentooppc computer - with a GUI for the first time.
It took some effort at that time, since gentooppc was just starting, but eventually I managed it.
I felt proud that it worked and it made many mac addicts give me strange but cool looks.
Nowadays I run the 2.6 kernel and kde 3.2 and I must say it's perfect (only vga out is a bit of a b!tch with my graphical chipset): reliable and fast and all of the hardware is supported. I use it mainly for webbrowsing (konqueror), movies (mplayer), email (sylpheed-claws) and SSH'ing to other machines.
Only one but, if you run linux on a non x86 computer, you don't have the nice Wine things, but on the other hand you can run DOS apps with Bochs (though terribly slow on my system).
I won't swap if someone offered me a faster powerbook with OSX and I weren't allowed to reinstall my beloved linuxppc.
Knoppix-MiB has ppc isos, see the discussion and posts by 'fleny68' here.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
"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."
Unfortunately, it seems as though you have never even tried Xcode and/or Fink ( http://fink.sourceforge.net/ ). the current open source apps I run on my Mac are: Mplayer (direct port), Xchat (direct port), Gaim (direct port), Camino (Mozilla derivative direct port), Gimp (via XFree86), XMMS (Via XFree86), and GNUPG that I personally compiled with GCC. I also have absolutely no problems at all with an ssh -X session to run my X apps off my Linux server.
If you are going to bash something you could at least provide some examples; everything I have tried to run that is open source has compiled and run just perfectly.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
One of the things that people have been saying with each iteration of OS X is that it is getting faster and faster. While this may be true, they still have a long way to go. I recently tried out a gentoo live cd on a friends 600MHz G3 iBook, and I was blown away. In OS X 10.3 the iBook feels responsive, but it is clear that a fast G4 or G5 would fair a great deal better. Under Gentoo running gnome 2.4 this computer was sickeningly fast. It felt almost as fast as my Athlon XP 2500. I was amazed at how much this little 600MHz G3 was capable of. If you are looking for a reason to use Linux over Mac OS X, look no further than getting to utilize the performance your system is capable of.
I know I know OS X is a more modern os blah blah blah. People used to say (maybe they still do and I just ignore them) the same thing about java, it is a more modern language and all of it's advanced capabilities are too much for todays computers. The end result? Very few modern GUI apps are written in java. I say the same thing for OS X, just because it uses a somewhat new concept for GUI (pdf-based) doesn't justify it's cripplingly slow speeds. I for one would rather have a fully functional GUI that doesn't make a decent processor suck wind every time I try to resize a browser window, than have the prettiest antialised interface. For the record I personally find gnome 2.4 with the ximian industrial theme quite pleasing to the eye. Just my $0.02.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
I have a All in One G3, 250mhz G3 w/768 mb of ram.
OS X runs OK on it but Yellow Dog, in addition to providing a modern browser for the platform, etc., just flat flies on the machine.
Resize a window on an old machine running OS X and you will know the pain of having a kick ass OS that is unusable in normal circumstances.
Linux provides older macs with a modern OS without the bloat.
As for hardware support, at least using YDL, the volume control on the old AIO is functional while on OS X it is broken.
YDL also fits nicely on my 1Ghz G4 flat panel imac although it does not provide any additional functionality that is not already available through OS X.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
1) Turning it off in BIOS, 2) During the start of the Win2k installer, where it says press F6 (or F8? I forget) to install third party drivers, you hit that button and then install "Standard PC."
I think you can do the same by changing the "ACPI-compliant computer" driver in Device Manager under "computer" to "Standard PC." Of course, this isn't recommended, as I believe it requires the reinstallation of a lot of drivers (maybe all?), and I don't even know if that works correctly, but one should always be open to experimentation I guess. :P
Try Jaguar on a 7300. Or Panther on a 9600. Or even Panther on a beige G3. For those of us who love Apple hardware, can't afford gear more recent than four years old, and want to get some UNIX out of it, Linux just blows OS X right out of the water.
Linux doesn't care about my video chipset. X11 DEs don't require 32 megs of VRAM. Linux runs inside of 128 megs of physical memory without difficulty. Fluxbox is just as responsive as OS 9 on the same hardware- something OS X still can't claim.
All that and here's the bag of chips: The Debian "Software Update" (apt) updates EVERY APPLICATION ON THE SYSTEM. Compare to OS X, where I get my Apple updates through SWU and have to download and install Adobe updates, new builds of BZFlag, new versions of Quicksilver, etceteras myself.
Not to say I don't have issues with various packages, but dear GODS Linux is far more useable on older hardware than OS X. On a general level- quality of applications and userland are a slightly different matter.
Linux on Sparc is the real untold story. The installation of Debian unstable on an unused Sun Ultra 5 has been a recent revelation, and given the prevalence of such hardware sitting unused in many locations, represents a low (or no, if one carries out an ftp install) way of recycling such hardware to make it truly useful. The Sun Ultra 5 recently rejuvenated in this way is running much faster than it ever did using Solaris 7 or 8, and also has none of the compilation/compatibility problems which beset Sun desktop users who don't have Sun's own (expensive) compiler. apt-get install - could life get any easier?
I have Puma on my 8600 and Jaguar on my Beige G3, atm. Have a look at X Post Facto.
If you want to run X11, then yes it does. Have a look at /etc/X11/XFree86Config-4 on your Linux box. Now go and install X11 on Darwin, and look at the same file. Oops! It isn't there. That's right; it doesn't need you to tell it what blinking graphics card you have, it can just ask the kernel.
Only if you only install Debian packages. As soon as you install something from another source, you have to maintain it yourself. Just as you would on OS X.
OS X also has the benefits of being a BSD: no ugly klunky SysV init, a classy signal handling mechanism, and Ceren. But it's a ++BSD; have a look at the System Starter. Marvel at the way you can compile a single binary that will run on multiple architectures. Drool over the dynamic loader. Whimper in awe at the Mach threading system.
Oh look, you're just regurgitating a pre-written troll from a troll site. Go away, troll.
The Mac has been 32-bit since day one, the 68000 8MHz CPU. I don't know if that's why, but the Macs have a LOT of IRQs, one for every device, and MANY more to spare.
My IDE is on IRQ 26 on my Mac, and USB is 28, I don't know what else is in there, but I'm pretty sure the Mac has 255 IRQs and there's no sharing.
This is why hardware for the Mac is so much easier to plug-and-play.
Do you realize that even on modern PCs there's only 8 IRQs? There's another 'cascade' interrupt device that provides IRQ 9-15.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
It's an iBook G4. I'm now a happy and proud owner of such a machine, and user of both MacOS X Panther an Linux on it.
/home directory, so now I have a single home for both Linux and OS X. Same desktop, same config for common programs.
The first thing I did when I got my hands on it was to re-partition it's hard drive and install Panther. Then I followed the instructions on setting up the mother of all Linux distributions on it from here.
I did the initial install of the Debian GNU/Linux base system (not without having to use a different kernel image for the ATA support, among other things to fiddle with), but then I started to take a serious look at OS X. It's an impressive operating system, with such a lovely and responsive GUI but the real power of UNIX I'm all used to underneath. I installed lots of open source software that I've get used to and couldn't live without. It all works so smoothly and nicely along other native applications, such as iTunes, Mail.app, Safari, Keynote, etc. - you get the best of both worlds. You have fink, you have darwinports, there's even OpenOffice.org. And if you're a developer, you also got Xcode from Apple. As I said, the both of worlds. And for some extra bucks you can get back some of your most beloved features from the Linux world: WindowShade X is a fine example of it.
Panther is also packed with some neat features not present anywhere else. Finder, for example, if one of the best file manager I've ever used. And Expose - I really miss it when working on Linux. One of the most useful enhancements a desktop environment could have get, it's not only eyecandy.
But then the necessity came and striked me hard. I have a small Linux consulting company. I was in a meeting with a customer the other day, and he wasn't so convinced that Linux could be a _viable_ alternative on the desktop. He thought it was just a black screen with UNIX-y commands and such. And there I was, with my iBook with Debian loaded on it but with no desktop environment to show off. Just a black screen with UNIX-y commands and such.
So I spent the whole night that day googling around and finally got my iBook to work nicely with Linux 2.6.2, supporting almost every single feature that's present on it except for Airport Extreme and the sleep functionality, which are not supported: sound, networking, USB 2.0, firewire, the combo drive, the ATI Radeon 9200 with DRI, the special function keys, the CPU frequency scaling. I even configured it to use an hfsplus partition for the
There are still some things that Linux can do better than OS X. Like OpenOffice.org or GIMP. Certainly both programs do exist for OS X but their performance and overall integration with the rest of the system is not so good.
The conclusion of it is that, even if MacOS X is one hell of an operating system, Linux is fun. I love to use the same plataform on my x86 desktop I've grown used to for more than 6 years than on my PPC based laptop. And I still have the chance to reboot and use Panther for the amusement of it.
Regards,
Articulos para gente geek: Poleras, linux, libros y mas
His problem the tech support guy didn't let him know that Airport runs its own DHCP server, that the Apple documentation doesn't mention it, or that it was one of those things that Just Runs (TM) even if you already have a DHCP server on the network (the Linux machine).
It's totally his fault that a piece of equipment was designed to be "smarter" by autoproviding certain services without checking to see if they already exist!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I tried replacing an app with my wife and she unexpectedly quit.
One would normally not see this as the canonical form is:
This is faster as it does not need to send information between two processes using an IPC mechanism (the pipe) and it avoids unecessary computation ("grep filename" may be slower (depending on the grep implementation) than simple filename comparison a la fgrep).If you're actually going to use a regular expression to search for a file, the more common method is:
This avoids printing directories. Add '[^/]*$' to the end of the regex to avoid matches in directory names. Many versions of "find" (including Mac OS X "find") support a "-regex" option, but this is nonstandard.If your search allows it, even better is:
I'm not suggesting that you didn't know these things, but you can be certain that (due to the nature of the article) some *nix newbies will read your post and they may start doing those commands on a regular basis, not knowing of better alternatives, so one should be careful when posting these things to such a forum.The company I work for writes software for wireless adapters, and Windows was our first platform. The appeal for us of porting our software to another platform would have been much greater if there was some similarity between OSX and Linux, but there is very little. The driver model, the device management, the hardware platform, the GUI, and even the main user mode languages (OC vs. C/C++) are different. I recognize that there is a fair bit of compatibility in the user, non GUI, API's and in the CLI, but I think that was the minimum possible (ie. it couldn't be avoided).
This was Apple's choice when they did the big jump to PPC and OSX: they could have gone with the PC platform, they could have built OSX on the Linux kernel, etc. I think the OSS community would have embraced the slick, polished GUI and software that Apple has if Apple had given them a reason to - it's exactly what Linux needs. But what the OSS community did not need (and still doesn't need) was to reopen the BSD vs. Linux divide (like GTK vs. Qt).
I'm sure they had solid financial and strategic reasons for staying away from any Linux compatibility, but for both Apple and Linux users (and for us developers) it was a bad choice. Perhaps they were concerned that if they did something that really benefited the OSS community then MS would get mad (ie. no more Office).
It's a shame - since Linux is focussed on the low cost, business market, and Apple is focussed on premium, brand conscious, consumers, they could have co-existed and cooperated very nicely.
In the end my company delayed, but has recently decided to port to Linux.
I've yet to see Debian or YDL support a new apple computer straight out of the gate. When they do support a new model, its most often in a crippled state. Like some posters here have mentioned, the nvidia Go line of graphics cards are barely supported and lack 2d and 3d acceleration. Other items still NOT supported are Bluetooth, Airport Extreme, and external video (on powerbooks). These features were all in the 12" powerbook that came out over 12 months ago!!! The powermac g5 support page just simply lists "No."
YDL hardware support page
Linux on ppc is just not worth it on a new machine. But on a positive note, by the time support is available, the computer will be too old to upgrade to the newest MacOS and will need the linux build.
That would be because that is incorrect. Rhapsody and the earliest release of OS X, OS X Server 1, did indeed use the Display PostScript system from NeXTSTEP, modified to present a slightly more Mac-esque user interface. But when Adobe bumped up the licensing costs for DPS, Apple were forced to go back and effectively write a new graphics system from scratch. They based it on Portable Document Format, it's called Quartz and the user interface is known as Aqua.
I find your assertion that OS X does not use X laughable. The latest version of OS X comes bundled with an X server that will run rootless right on top of the Aqua screen. The XFree86 distribution will build from unmodified source and work on earlier OS Xs too: have a look at X11 running in Aqua on a Beige G3 with Jaguar. I develop software for a network of Linux PCs, OPENSTEP PCs, NeXTs, Macs, Suns and assorted other systems. If it wasn't for OS X's support for X11 there would be much less portability between the systems (although GNUstep helps a great deal in that regard). So OS X does use X11, even if you and some other users choose not to.
Actually I'm talking from the perspective of a Debian user here. Debian's package hierarchy is good, but it's still far from exhaustive. There will come times when the program you would like has not been Debianised. And when it does, you have to install that program yourself and maintain it yourself, just as you would on any other operating system.
Darwin is not the kernel. Is that so freaking hard to understand? XNU is the kernel, which is a part of the Darwin Operating System. Darwin is a BSD operating system which includes the Mach microkernel running in monolith mode, with features from the BSD kernel added in. The BSD subsystem does not as some people think run as a personality on top of Mach; the two have been combined by Apple.
Yes indeed I am. This post comes to you from a turbo colour slab running OmniWeb 2.0 on top of NeXTSTEP 3.3. Acquisitioned is not a real word, acquired is. Yes, I know that fat binaries came from NeXT. They're still in use today, in OS X. OS X is the only modern operating system to use this technology, in which it is far superior to other offerings. It's jsut a pity that Apple don't make more of it.
No you don't, and frankly I don't give a monkey's because ELF is getting old. The Mach_O binary format provides portability as well as small executables when compiled thin. It provides superior threading by realising processes, LWPs and threads as kernel-scheduled Mach threads. It's better than ELF.
It appears that more homework is required on your part regarding the various parts that go to make up OS X. Find out about Xnu, Mach, Darwin and FreeBSD, then report back on your progress. The second assignment will focus on Cocoa, Quartz, Aqua, CoreFoundation, IOKit and possibly WebObjects if we have time.
As a Mac (primarily) and Linux user, I would say Linux on the Mac or Mac clone is not ready for prime time. Just look at Yellow Dog Linux. Terrasoft sells Macs with YDL preinstalled, but, if you browse their site, there are major areas in their own Mac machines which are not supported.
I run Gentoo on a Mac clone (Power Computing PowerCenter Pro accelerated with a G3 add-on card). Getting this up was quite a chore and the video (an on-board version of an ATI Rage card) still only works in fb mode despite literally months screwing around with it. On a G4 dual processor Mac, Gentoo works better, but the DRI acceleration is still not up to snuff.
I mostly find Linux useful in bringing slow older x86 boxes to a useful speed. My main laptop is an old 400 MHz P2 Dell which runs wonderfully with Knoppix/Debian (although the Dell Rage Mobility is still a problem).