Free Software on a Cheap Computer

Shell writes "Is this the solution to free software on a cheap computer? NetBSD and Yellow Dog Linux have both begun to support the Mac Mini. This article from IBM looks at open source operating system options on this new contender in the embedded PowerPC platform space." From the article: "This article looks at the current state of Linux and NetBSD support on the Mini. If you need all the hardware and options fully supported, these open source options won't do it for you ... yet. But, if all you need is a stable kernel, a C compiler, and network support, the code is high-quality and the price is unbeatable." This is part two in the series. Part One was covered a while back.

Comments

OS included?

[WilyCoder]

Is it possible to get a mini without the apple OS?

If you can't, then whats the point? You've already paid for an OS....

Re:OS included?

[lederhosen]

The sam could be said for most winboxes.

The answer is that you can get a _free_ os with 64-bit support.

Re:OS included?

[ciroknight]

The computer's so cheap, Apple's pretty much undercutting themselves in the OS's cost. Those machines probably cost every bit of 2-300$ to build, which would pretty much say the entire profit margin goes to selling their operating system. Apple is a software company, that just so happens to expect the best when it comes to hardware and peripherials.

Re:OS included?

[cowscows]

That's what I was thinking. Anyone who's got needs so specific that, as the article write up says, they don't include the full functionality of the hardware; well, if that's you, you're probably capable of building your own systems for a even cheaper.

The mac mini is cool and all, but it's not the first solution to cheap machine with free software. Maybe the first powerPC machine, maybe the first that has a the fancy case design, but that's about it. This is not going to be the piece of hardware that finally brings linux to the third world masses. You'd have to bring the price down quite a bit more for that.

Re:OS included?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you on that. This is a solution in search of a problem.

Re:OS included?

[AaronBrethorst]

Bullshit. Apple is a hardware company that happens to need to make software in order to move their pretty plastic boxes (and I am typing this on my iBook G4, FWIW).

Re:OS included?

[ciroknight]

Odd, you know what motivated me to buy one of their pretty plastic boxes (iBook G4 as well)? iTunes.

I was so impressed on how well iTunes worked for me, though not being perfect, it seemlessly worked with my iPod and my crappy Riothingy I had at the time. When time came to buy a laptop for college, I looked at my options and saw OS X. Now, I'd seen OS X before; 10.0 disks came with my teacher's G4 desktop (our school's video editing machine), but it wasn't quite the beast I was looking at on Apple's website. I thought, "an entire operating system, as seemless as iTunes, as crashproof as OS X, and good battery life on their laptops." I was sold.

I would have NEVER considered an Apple product had it not been for OS X 10.3. 10.0 was fine and dandy, but it seemed sluggish, nothing seemed to work quite the way it should have, and required expensive hardware to run on. OS X 10.3, however, was stylish, integrated, things Just Work(tm)ed and on top of it all, it was a HELL of a lot cheaper than the Wintel laptop I considered (1300 w/ educational deal, plus 69 for another iPod, vs 2100 for the Dell I would have otherwise got [centrino]).

Re:OS included?

[jericho4.0]

I call BS on all three of you. Apple is a magical place, staffed by gnomes, that sells hardware, software, and drugs to children.

Re:OS included?

[bonch]

Except that the Mac mini isn't a 64-bit G5.

Re:OS included?

[amonredotorg]

Mind reader.

1. Installing Linux or BSD takes time and experience; Mac OS X comes preinstalled.
2. You can run most Linux/BSD software on Mac OS X. X11 comes preinstalled, too.
3. Mac OS X doesn't lack any package management systems: Fink, DarwinPorts and now even Gentoo MacOS.
4. No need to compile and install drivers for any devices you have. They are preinstalled.
5. If you don't like the Mac OS X GUI, run X11 with your favourite window manager in fullscreen. It works perfectly.
6. You can easily use X11 and the Mac OS X GUI at the same time. It works perfectly, too.

The list goes on.

"Free Software on a Cheap Computer" doesn't mean getting rid of Mac OS X, dammit.

Re:OS included?

[duffbeer703]

"...it was a HELL of a lot cheaper than the Wintel laptop I considered (1300 w/ educational deal, plus 69 for another iPod, vs 2100 for the Dell I would have otherwise got [centrino])."

That's like saying that a Honda Civic is better than a Bentley because the Civic costs $13k and the Bentley $130k.

A $1300 iBook is a much lower end machine in comparison to a $2100 centrino machine. The Dell you compared had a bigger, higher resolution screen, faster CPU, more memory and hard disk.

Mac hardware is excellent, but more expensive -- you could get a laptop similar to your iBook for about $300 less.

I'm buying a Powerbook when Tiger is released, understanding that I'm paying a premium over what I would pay for another functionally similar Thinkpad T42 or T43.

Re:OS included?

[Lord Kano]

I would have NEVER considered an Apple product had it not been for OS X 10.3.

I stopped buying Apple right before OS 9.0 was released. When Apple decided that "beige was bad", no one should make clones and everything had to be clear plastic, I lost interest.

The Mac Mini is the first piece of Apple hardware that I have seriously considered buying since Steve Jobs returned.

It was a smart move. Now that there are linux distros trying to add support for the new hardware, it's just looking more attractive.

LK

Re:OS included?

[ciroknight]

At the time, the machine I compared it against had a smaller HD (40gb vs the 60 in my iBook), a faster processor (1.8 centrino), the same amount of memory, and a bit better screen resolution (15" display, 1280x760 or something really weird like that), and a bit of a better warrantee (3 years, which I guess I have the option of getting with Apple; Dell wanted to force it down my throat. Also, take in account this was before Dell was giving away the world with their machines..). The thing is, I wouldn't need that much power if the damned operating system that came with it (Windows XP Pro, another few bucks on the price, regardless) would simply do its job and not require as fancy hardware. Yes, I evaluated Linux as a possibility; I run Linux on my desktop machine at home, simply because it's a bit older, and all of the stuff that came with it (by the graces of a few donating coders in the world) was supported. I knew if I got a laptop, I wouldn't be so lucky. Also keep in mind I only evaluated Dell; by the time I saw Panther, I was sold.

Re:OS included?

[galaxy300]

I disagree. I think Apple hardware is getting much more affordable. I feel pretty strongly that a G4 iBook at $999 (add $25 for an extra 256 MB RAM aftermarket) is one of the best deals out there.

That may be because I just bought one, but I did my research first, including having a couple of other laptops at home to play around with. A laptop "similar" to the iBook for $300 less would simply be a cheap laptop, and that's *not* a good deal.

Re:OS included?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question here is:

Why would I give a crap about a free OS for a computer which already comes with a better one as a standard feature?

I mean, if I'm building a cheap AMD tower for $300, then yes, load her up with Linux or BSD and save myself the "Microsoft Tax." By all means, great idea. I get a better OS, and save myself about a hundred bucks. Fantastic.

But the mini already comes with an OS which not only works better than any of the free alternatives, but will run most "free" software (plus a lot of apps which a Linux box won't.) What would be the point, unless I'm a "free as in speech" Stallmanist cult member?

Re:OS included?

[swillden]

Mac hardware is excellent, but more expensive -- you could get a laptop similar to your iBook for about $300 less.

Depends on what you consider "similar".

I bought my wife an iBook for Christmas and researched it pretty thoroughly. At the end, I decided that I was paying something of a premium for the Apple hardware, but it wasn't $300.

First, if you want a small laptop (12") in the x86 world you're stepping into the realm of "ultralights", and they cost a lot more (and they're smaller and lighter than the iBook). My wife wanted small, but didn't need tiny, so in that respect I couldn't really find a truly comparable machine to her very specific needs.

Beyond that, I looked at many laptops around $800 that had similar specifications to the iBook, so on paper I figure I paid a premium of about $200 (and I was okay with that, see below). However, I don't think that's quite true, either. The iBook is a better machine than those $800 x86 competitors, in lots of ways that don't show up in the typical list of features.

One thing I noticed right away was the quickness that the machine resumes from sleep. That may be hardware-related, or it may be OS-related, I don't know, but it's very nice. From the moment you open the lid, the machine is ready to use in two seconds, tops.

The sleek design is obviously another issue, one more important to my wife than it would be to me, but it is an issue. It's a pretty computer, and she likes that. You can get pretty x86 laptops also, but not for $800. It also has all sorts of other little goodies, like the design of the power adapter -- sleek, functional, clever -- the "heartbeat" sleep mode indicator, the battery status indicator build into the battey, etc.

The machine also *feels* like a well-built piece of equipment, rather than some cheap POS. I don't know if that will translate into corresponding reliability, but I actually expect it will.

All of that said, I still think I paid a bit of a premium for the Apple logo, but less than it would appear on paper.

I did it because I knew that I absolutely did not want her to have a laptop running Windows. I had just eliminated the last Windows machine in my house, and I didn't want the support burden of adding another one. My Linux laptop is pretty high-maintenance, but that's because I choose to mess with it a lot. I pretty much ignore the rest of the Linux PCs in my house (server, media PC, my desktop, kids' desktop) except to run the occasional "apt-get upgrade", but I seemed to spend way too much time fixing Windows boxes when I had them. OS X has turned out to be as pleasantly low-maintenance as I expected. It requires a bit more than my Linux boxes but that's mainly because I don't know the OS as well.

So from my maintenance-focused perspective, an x86 laptop running Linux would probably have been ideal, except that I'd have to be careful that all of the hardware had Linux drivers available. That, plus the fact that I haven't yet found a good Printshop-like application for Linux made me opt for the Mac. Oh, and the fact that the Mac came with Quicken (unfortunately, we later found out that Quicken for Mac sucks).

On balance, she likes the iBook, and so do I (though I'd put Linux on it if it were mine), so I think it was a good purchase decision.

Re:OS included?

[kabloom]

I personally think that being able to describe something as being both "UNIX" and "simple" is quite an achievement that you shouldn't pooh-pooh.

Re:OS included?

[John_Booty]

The real question here is: Why would I give a crap about a free OS for a computer which already comes with a better one as a standard feature?

No, the real question is, "did you read the opening post?"

Not the linked article - the opening post. It clearly says, "This article from IBM looks at open source operating system options on this new contender in the embedded PowerPC platform space"

Key word here is "embedded", which implies a whole different ballgame compared to desktop or server computers. Google if you're unfamiliar with the term. A feature-rich GUI desktop OS is not ideal for the embedded market.

Re:OS included?

[diamondsw]

Bullshit or FUD, I can't decide which. Gentoo/MacOS is brand-spanking new, and has a handful of things running - it's nothing more than a technology demo at this point. Fink, on the other hand, is very mature and works extremely well.

Apple's X11 implementation is extremely fast, being OpenGL accelerated and such. For a silly example, fire up an xterm and run "sudo ls -R /" and watch it fly. For better examples, run KDE or Gnome - they run very well, as well as on any Linux system.

Oh no, Aqua is only available to Cocoa/Carbon which are *gasp* non-standard! Non-standard to who? These are the default frameworks and API's for the platform. I could say just as well that X11 is non-standard on Mac OS X, or Win32 is non-standard on anything but Windows. That is such a completely bogus argument it's trollish.

OS X has a nice kernel, all of the BSD userspace tools, good debian-based package management (although I do look forward to Gentoo/MacOS, as emerge is very nice), a full X11 system that can swap back and forth between OS X and X11, full hardware support, "mainstream" applications - what the hell more do you want?

The only people OS X will not satisfy are RMS-style free software zealots, and those who want complete tweakability and control (which is perfectly valid). For everyone else who wants a UNIX workhorse that is stable, has full driver support, has "It Just Works" down pat, and wants to get work done, OS X is peerless.

Re:OS included?

[Selecter]

People that are using Mac OSX just possibly, maybe, prefer it to Windows or Linux, and dont give a SHIT how free the software is. They use their computers to do things, and they will pay for whatever gets the things they want done faster, easier, and simpler.

I have never met a Mac user that would even consider Linux, not in 15 years. But there are tens of thousands of linux users who have adopted OS X. What operating system do you think all the science geeks who went out and bought powerbooks last year use?

It's not linux.

But ya know what? WHO GIVES A FUCK? The whole argument about who "wins" in the computing world sucks. Use whatever you want, it used to be a free country.

Unbeatable?

[gellenburg]

But, if all you need is a stable kernel, a C compiler, and network support, the code is high-quality and the price is unbeatable.

Especially when all of these things ... as well as full hardware support comes with the f*cking computer!.

Ever hear of installing the Developer Tools on your Installation CD?

No offense, I'm a big *BSD supporter, but this article's summary is rediculous.

Re:Unbeatable?

[Visaris]

Mod parent up. This article is a waste of time. I know people like to put linux and *BSD on everything, but talking about this as a price/feature advantage is just crazy. When the mini comes with OS X, which supports gcc, gdb, X windows, (almost all gnu software) as well as all the Mac software, why the hell would throwing out all that support somehow become "cost savings" ?

Re:Unbeatable?

[ciroknight]

Everyon'es got an agenda to push. It just so happens this article's trying to push the free software agenda. Sadly, I don't think they do so effectively; the Mini Mac is virtually a perfect desktop computer, it comes with a great, fully functioning and partially Windows/Linux compatible operating system, great hardware support, a decent hard drive for the home user (though lacking for the mid-upper range users we are), and Wifi (if you want it) to integrate seamlessly into your home's wireless network.

I just don't understand the need for better software on the machine, even if it is lacking in the USB/Firewire (read: hardware) department.

Re:Unbeatable?

[ArbitraryConstant]

"In all seriousness, there is not //one// Linux-created piece of software (that I wanted to run) which I couldn't compile for myself under Mac OS X. With or without Fink."

You downloaded software that had already been ported to MacOS. That's why you had to run the ./configure script, so it could figure out what the local OS looked like. The developer has already made provisions for the way code needs to work on MacOS.

Linux and MacOS are not source compatible. Linux x86 and Linux PowerPC aren't even fully compatible (byte order issues and such). As an example, MacOS lacks the aio API, while Linux lacks the kqueue API. This is a problem because they're both APIs that allow asynchronous I/O. Portable software should take this into account, using aio on Linux and kqueue on MacOS, but because you're doing something different on MacOS, you can't test on MacOS if you need to run on Linux. And you can't test on Linux x86 if you need to run on Linux PowerPC.

For example, imagine that your software needs to run on one of those big IBM POWER systems that runs lots of Linux partitions. You can't afford one (that's not difficult to imagine), but you still want to do testing so you don't have the customer running into bugs. A Mac mini running Linux is a pretty damn cheap way to get that done, assuming the software isn't 64-bit. If you needed it to be 64-bit a G5 running Linux system would still probably be cheaper than the IBM alternative.

It takes a lot of effort to make the portable software that you use. Don't assume MacOS and Linux are fully compatible just because you're lucky enough to use software that was ported by someone that knew what they were doing.

Re:Unbeatable?

[TheRaven64]

As an example, MacOS lacks the aio API

Wrong. That's the second time I've seen this on Slashdot. OS X includes a full implementation of the POSIX aio specification. Take a look in /usr/include/sys/aio.h. I have spent the last month developing software on OS X that makes extensive use of this facility. What OS X does lack, is the man pages to go along with these system calls (although the documentation in the header file is not bad).

Sadly the support isn't complete (Airport)

[CdBee]

To my knowledge and confirmed by TFA, no distro of Linux or BSD (well, apaprt from OSX) supports Airport cards (either version)

They lay the blame at Broadcom's door for keeping the spec a secret, but lots of manufacturer's don't publish specs but still end up being supported, either through reverse-engineering or emulation + non-native-driver

Can any informed person comment on why this is taking so long?

Re:Sadly the support isn't complete (Airport)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the ordinary (802.11b) airport cards are supported quite well as they use the popular orinoco chipset. Monitor mode is even supported for all your sniffing needs.

Airport Extreme (802.11g) cards remain unsupported for the same reason other broadcom chipset based cards are - no information was released on how to actually use these chips.

Re:Sadly the support isn't complete (Airport)

[Nichotin]

Search for broadcom on sourceforge, and you will find a project for reverse engineering the driver.

Debian too

[Doc Ruby]

FTA:

"Current releases of Yellow Dog, as well as of Debian and Gentoo (both of which run on the Mini), are stable enough for use."

What's wrong with the Debian running on the Mini platform? Is there any reason Ubuntu couldn't run, too?

Free software

[eumaeus]

Doesn't the Mac Mini come with a stable kernel, a C compiler, and network support, all implemented in "high quality code" at the right price? And, OS X comes with excellent support for Java, in contrast to the last time I experimented with Linux on PPC (about a year ago) and found that there was no up-to-date JVM or SDK. (But perhaps I missed something.)

Re:Cheap? Hardly.

[nunchux]

You fail to mention that this system is listed at nearly double that price, and the link shows you how to go through rebate hell to get a deal. And the deal expires tonight.

Re:I don't understand

[gilesjuk]

..and some people don't like the archaic x86 platform.

PowerPC is a nice platform.

Re:Cheap? Hardly.

[McDutchie]

$500 for a plain, low end box is not cheap. A Dell 2.8 GHz P4 with a 19" LCD, keyboard, and mouse for $529 [gotapex.com] is cheap.

No DVD player in the Dell, nor FireWire, nor a modem, nor a stack of bundled software, nor 90 days of free telephone support. Nor is it small, or silent. Laptop technology, which is what the Mini uses, is more expensive.

Just because the Dell costs less doesn't mean the Mac Mini isn't cheap, especially since the box contains more in less space.

Re:not the point

[the_2nd_coming]

how about the fact that 300 dollar computers do not come with firewire, dvd drives, cd writers, modems, and all the good software that comes with OS X,

Fullscreen in QTP

[Monx]

if you are reffering to quicktime, yes, they charge for fullscreen

They just charge for the menu item:

tell application "QuickTime Player"
enter full screen display 1
set the scale of movie 1 to screen
play movie 1
end tell

Re:Why not OS X?

[FLAGGR]

You do realize most apps that run on linux work in OSX? Right now I'm running X11 along with OSX's window server (quartz or something), so you have plenty of free apps you cheap basterd. What do you mean Firefox is better when its not in OSX? I'm failing to see a difference, I've had my mini since it came out, and my PC runs Gentoo (which means its up to date ;)) and the only difference I can see is the close/max/min buttons are on the left in osx :) Modern X font rendering? I prefer OSX's thank you very much. They both look equally nice, but in OSX I don't have to spend hours getting things working. You can repair and upgrade OSX - it's still a BSD. For example, you can still get all that scrolling boot text ala *nix by changing a setting in the BIOS to remove the bootup framebuffer. You can do anything in OSX that you can in BSD. Just some of the things aren't open source, like Aqua. If that bothers you, you can switch to only X11 and use KDE. Oh, and show me a PC that is 1.5--2x cheaper than a Mac Mini, with equivelent hardware (That rules out the Dell knock off pc's) and with the same software bundle. (I hate to tell you, but some open source apps aren't as good as their closed source counterparts. iLife just plain rocks.)

Re:Cheap? Hardly.

[bcrowell]

You fail to mention that this system is listed at nearly double that price, and the link shows you how to go through rebate hell to get a deal. And the deal expires tonight.
The grandparent's point is perfectly valid. Fry's sells Great Quality brand generic PCs for $180-250. I've bought several of them to run Linux on, and they've worked just fine. The price doesn't include a monitor, but that's not an issue if you already have one.

It boggles my mind that people are still referring to a $500 computer as cheap. That hasn't been a good price since at least five years ago.

Sunk cost

[omnirealm]

If you can't, then whats the point? You've already paid for an OS

When making decisions about your future actions, you should not take into consideration what you have already spent. That's a sunk cost, and it can only serve to bias your decision. Rather, you should be considering, from where you stand right now, what your best options are for the future. This is why companies will spend millions on building a new facility, only to abandon it one month before completion. They do this because they figure that they will wind up losing more by continuing to dump time and effort into the facility, so what's the point?

If you get more usability, security, performance, or what have you, out of Linux than you do out of MacOS X, then it does not matter whether or not you have already paid for MacOS X. That has nothing to do with what operating system you should be using from this point forward.

Re:Sunk cost

[iammaxus]

That was about the longest way possible to say "because maybe you like Linux more than OS X"

Parent has simple QT solution, pls mod up.

[cfalcon]

One of the reasons I go to slashdot is the sheer power of people fixing annoying problems with 1-10 lines of text.

But can it act as an "embedded" computer?

[2nd Post!]

The whole premise of the article is: An embedded view of the Mac Mini

So for $499 you get an entire solution as an embedded computer; developer tools, OS, and hardware.

For your $98+$40+$40 (case, mb, hard drive, video card, and CPU), where are your developer tools, OS, ram, and SIZE?

Can you place your $178 (+ram, OS, development tools), inside a car? A backpack? A handheld?

The point of the embedded development system is that you can use your tools and hardware from your development environment and transfer it into production. IE, an embedded PowerPC.

Where is the LOW POWER embedded Pentium 4 or embedded Athlon? Your proposed solution would be to develop on a $200 Intel PC for a $80 PowerPC solution.

The Mac mini proposed solution would be to develop on a $499 PowerPC for the same $80 PowerPC solution.

Your idea works great... if you're developing for the XBox. For all the other PowerPC devices (like say the TiVo, or maybe the GameCube, or the future PS3, Revolution, or XBox2), it seems kind of backward.

Re:cheap $500 ?

[Chess_the_cat]

You're absolutely right. I'm interested in the Mac mini and think it's a good price but that's because it's really OS X I'm interested in. A Mac mini is the cheapest way for me to be able to run it. That's what they're really selling: the OS. As cheap hardware to run Linux on it's a bad deal. I can cobble together hardware for less than $500 that'll handle Linux.

Re:hardware support

[StarManta.Mini]

Then again, can someone remind me why the UNIX under OSX is not good enough?

Because it wasn't compiled and installed from scratch, obviously.

Also, it's too easy to set up and use, and there's not enough hacking to get apps installed.

More Grapes to IBM's Linux Vine

[delire]

.. IBM has a vested interest in encouraging interest among Linux developers for their PPC architecture.

If there's anything to the rumours, we'll be seeing Linux PPC desktops/laptops sometime soon. Wonder if they'll use their Thinkpad offshore, or the Taiwanese company already making the Mac Mini's, FoxConn http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20050114A7040.html

On topic I'd be interested to know if Apple has any exclusionary rights over the market for PPC desktop machines. I'd sure buy a PPC laptop if it came without the sugared fruit..

Read the article in context!

[treerex]

People need to remember that the first article in the series was talking about using the Mini as an embedded development platform. Mac OS X is hardly an embedded OS, so being able to replace it with a more customizable system (i.e., Linux, NetBSD) is a plus, especially if you can make use of the hardware provided in the sexy little package.

Putting a crippled Linux/BSD on a Mini when you have OS X installed is silly: except for the sheer studliness of it go out and buy a cheap x86 box to get your Linux fix.

Re:What about Mini-ITX platform?

[LongShip]

I'm currently agonizing over the decision to build a Mini-ITX or buy a ready made MiniMac. I'm probably going to do the Mini-ITX. However,...

Unfortunately Mini-ITX is not cost effective. One has to specifically want either an extremely small, or extremely quiet computer and be willing to pay the admission price. The MiniMac offers both at a very good price (comparitively).

In order to compete with MiniMac, a Mini-ITX box would have an MII-12000 MoBo ($200+ US) plus a small box like one of the Casetronic Travla's (~$150), low profile memory (~$80), a slim optical drive (~$80+), and a notebook hard drive (the only cost effective peripheral ~$70). Total cost, ~%570. The Mini-ITX would have user service-ability, Compact Flash + PC-Card, and better connectivity. But the G4-based MiniMac would blow the doors off the C3 Nehemiah-based Mini-ITX box.

Until Mini-ITX components come down in price, the MiniMac might be the more cost effective solution.
But only in the very small, very quiet computer market. As others in this forum have already pointed out, one can build a faster X86 box for less money. If one doesn't care about small and quiet, that's the way to go.

Re:SemiOT: Connecting a mac mini to a linux PC

[Porter Doran]

You may not need crossover -- straight ethernet will do, as the Mac's NIC will "cross" the connection if it senses it needs to.

As opposed to...

[ShatteredDream]

MacOS X which has 64-bit support. Besides what does it matter since the Mac Mini uses a 32bit processor...

Re:cheap $500 ?

[Ucklak]

There is no way the Wintel boxes can compete with $500 for a full blown Mini-DV editing, DVD authoring, and sound editing.

Do you forget that the $500 also includes iLife?

Free = beer or Free in RMS-speak? Software or OS?

[aristotle-dude]

What is the point exactly for installing a BSD or Linux when OS X includes a BSD subsystem?

Want free software? What's wrong with the following:
Gentoo for OS X: http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/
Darwin Ports: http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/
Fink: http://fink.sourceforge.net/
Freshmeat: http://osx.freshmeat.net/
Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php? form_cat=309

I need clarification. Are we discussing Open Source Software or Open Source GUIs?

Mac OS X has an open source kernel, a closed source GUI, OSX specific frameworks and some apple specific drivers. I don't see what the problem is. They have to have something extra to entice people to buy their OS. Fortunately, they support open standards and document their APIs very well. I consider "open standards to be far more important that open source software. as the former help to prevent vendor lock in while the latter does not necessarily do that. What good is it to have open source software if it does not support interoperability?

Running Linux or FreeBSD on a mini will gain you nothing for software availability and you will lose WiFi support so I really don't see what is the point to not run OSX.

Re:cheap $500 ?

[mrchaotica]

What part of SMALL FORM FACTOR do you not understand?

Let alone NOT WINDOWS...

So many of you miss the point...

[cbreaker]

So what, MacOS is a decent OS. Who cares? It only runs on Macs anyways. The great thing about Linux and other open systems is that they aren't platform dependant.

You know, some people actually LIKE Linux systems, and they prefer to use them on whatever the hardware of the day is, be it a G5 or an Opteron or an Itanium. At the end of the day, you're still using your trusted and open OS, which you'll more then likely be able to run on the next system out the door by whatever company.

Don't you get it? Vendor lock-in sucks, I don't care if it IS the proverbial underdog that's doing it.