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Could Apple's Intel Desktop Threaten Linux?
esavard writes "
If Linux enthusiasts don't want
Mac OSX on Intel to become a threat
for the future of Linux Desktop, they must rethink the concept of Desktop as we know it today.
Symphony OS did exactly that and propose some fresh concepts about how a desktop should and should not be.
If you want to know more about Symphony OS, a good starting point is a Wikipedia article
describing the innovations proposed by this new desktop OS. The Linux Desktop Community must encourage such initatives
massively to compete against Mac OSX and Windows."
After looking at the screenshots, allow me to be the first to say: Wow. That's so beautiful, it brought a tear to my eye.
.APP application scheme, and IOKit interface which tracks files by INode instead of path.
The one thing that stands out at me is that Symphony uses Yet Another(TM) packaging system that is supposed to fix all the woes of the previous packaging system. Haven't we learned yet? In a complex system, packages are just as bad (actually worse) for users than DLL Hell. And they certainly don't solve the issue of maintaining the sanctity of applications, and maintaining file associations across deletes/manual installs/program moves. These are some of the greatest break points in the Windows OS. Yet Mac OS X has none of these problems thanks to its amazing
Under OS X, installation consists of downloading the application, and optionally extracting it from an archive. That's it, nothing more. You can run the app from any location (although the "standard" is the Applications folder), including right out of the DMG archive! File associations are easy: Just have the program on your hard drive. That's it! The OS takes care of querying the program for its associations. If you move the program, the OS knows. And if you delete the program, the OS removes the association. No mucking around with manual configuration. The *only* thing you can change is the default program!
Given that OS X has shown us the power of this method, why haven't any distros latched onto it? Yes, it means that the OS must promise a base set of shared libraries, but the user experience is so much better!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Interesting. An advertisment, disguised as an Apple article, disguised as a Linux topic. Interesting.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Its a really sad day when Mac OS X becomes a potential threat to one of its close relatives.
Die First, Then Quit
this is a big dupe, and let me answer the question: NO it isnt a threat, If aple ties it to hardware amd people break that and make it work on anything, that is a DMCA violation and thus only a relative few qould do it, most that want apple will buy apples anyway because theoor hardware is nicer than the PC equicelant for not too much more $$.
Apple wants to commit suicide and alow the Mac os to be run on generic pc's. So far what Iv read says that the Mac os will still only run on Mac's. Apple has no plans on releasing the os as software to run on any pc.
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
Apple are moving to X86 yes , but it wont be standard PC equipment .
This is no threat to linux , Apple are going to keep with their custom hardware and linux for A-x86 will spring up and take over in a few years from linux for PPC (well not totally )
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
If linux had a mac os x like desktop it would offer mainstream users a better experience. Not all users are system admin types. But if you want to you still have that freedom to do your thing. Or you can play around in the awesome desktop environment that mac os x is, which i do 90% of the time.
Each of those you listed is an ATTEMPT to make "one graphics layer for all applications".
It's just no one can agree on which one to use.
(Social problem, not technological).
Oh yeah? Why is that? Why does it matter if Mac OSX uses Intel or PowerPC or Transmeta for that matter? Apple will still lock their platform, still charge too much for accessories (such as RAM), still take 20 years to develop a 2-button mouse.
Tell me, fearmonger, why should I start running down the streets in panic?
...the corporate desktop? I doubt it. The primary advantage of Linux here is to set up simple, free desktops for users which are not locked in to Windows.
...the tinkerer's desktop? Nope. They'll keep going with Linux just as they did before Linux could compare to either Windows or Mac (at least on the desktop side).
...the mass market desktop? Maybe. Except Linux never really had it to begin with. As for OS X being so much better - well, I must say that I could build a much better Windows experience with Win+commercial apps than I could with Linux, if I had endless cash or no ethical problem with copyright infringement. Still, Linux and the free legal desktop interests me. I don't think it will be significantly different with Linux vs OS X.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Apparently you have not heard of "Quartz" and "Cocoa"
--------------
David O.
How will MacOS on intel threaten linux?
It's not like you'll be able to install it on any old x86 box - you will still have to buy a Mac.
It's just the internals of the black box that will change - the end user won't see any major difference (performance aside).
I don't see how anyone deciding between linux or a mac would be influenced by this change.
Symphony looks nice.
Because of the Apple news about switching to Intel chips, I've read a ton of articles stating that this is going to be the end of Linux, or Apple is now trying to compete with Dell or Microsoft directly. It is all a bunch of crap.
Apple has stated that Mac OS X(x86) will only run on Apple Hardware. So, really the only thing this changes is that Apple will be able to put out better performing Macs in the future. There are competitive issues when comparing processor speed and architechure that will not be in the equation as much as before, but it doesn't change the business model for Apple, it doesn't change how people will use their hardware. It doesn't change who will buy their hardware. The competitive landscape remains unchanged. They are still built like an appliance, you plug it in and it just works. You may be able to run Windows on them, but why would you buy one for this purpose? It would be cheaper to buy a dell or something like that. If anything, it goes counter culture to the Mac zealots, but they will get over it once the realize, it still looks like a Mac, Sounds like a Mac, works like a Mac; it is still a Mac in the end.
All this speculation is generated by a bunch of journalist, trying to make a buck off the sensationalism of it all. In the end a G4/5 and a x86 chip are designed for the same purpose, and can be used to accomplish the same thing.
my 2 cents.
The Linux Desktop Community must encourage such initatives massively to compete against Mac OSX and Windows.
Why?
Maybe I'm missing something and /. can enlighten me. I use Linux. OSX gets a lot of fans.
So, exactly how does this involve me at all?
I keep seeing that OSX might become a "threat". How exactly? Will OSX suddenly become self-aware and begin deleting Linux from the entire Internet or something?
Maybe it's just me, but I just don't feel a threat here. They're both fairly posix/unix, so I'm reallly seeing a potential ally here more than anything else.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
1) We don't know how to do a desktop. If you want proof, look at what we've got so far.
2) We don't *want* to do desktops. This, too, should be fairly obvious by the effort ( or lack thereof ) put forth up to this point.
If OSX is a great desktop OS on commodity hardware ( it won't be, but that's the assumption at this point ), why should we spin our wheels coming up with yet another version of the wheel? The focus, I believe, should be server side. We should be making file/print and directory services under linux so damned impressive that no one would want to bother with the MS alternative.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Just like it didn't threaten Linux yesterday.
OS X is what Linux dreams of one day being.
Total bullshit. Nevermind the fact that Linux doesn't have a single entity behind it and can't "want" to be anything. I use both Linux and OS X and find that they are oriented towards different areas. OS X still has long ways to go before being a server-oriented power-user UNIX system (although it tries), although it has the desktop thing down. Linux has ways to go before being a desktop-oriented non-techie-user system although it has the server thing down. And not everyone likes the choice of GUI that Apple rams down your throat. Personally I like a little choice in my user interface, and OS X is very deficient in that area.
If Apple screws up something in their UI (which we saw with Tiger), you are pretty much stuck with it unless they fix it. This is not so much a problem in Linux distros where everything is open source..
#!/
Everybody I know who's a linux user but wants a useable desktop they don't have to mess with has already bought a Mac and "switched" to OS X. They still use linux, but the machines are either console-only or headless.
Of the dozen or so people I know who've "switched", they've all been linux or *bsd users, and they switched because Apple provides a useable desktop experience that Just Works Out Of The Box.
Of course, these are people with lives who don't like plinking around with their computers just for the hell of it - they use the things to Do Work.
First of all, I doubt that OSX, evens if it runs on commodity x86 hardware, will seriously decrease Linux's marketshare. Linux enthusiasts and Free Software advocates are not suddenly going to switch over to a new proprietary OS just because it's available. (Raging anti-Microsoft zealots might though, but that's a segment of the population I think we can do without.)
However, this is a unquie opportunity for the Linux community and Apple to help one another and both gain a big chunk of Microsoft's userbase.
Imagine if Apple started contributing funds and/or developers to the Wine project, basically doing for Wine what they did for Khtml.
Imagine being able to tell someone that, yes, they can switch to Linux/OSX and still run all their Windows programs/games.
Imagine what that would do for the marketshare of both operating systems.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Q: "Could Apple's Intel Desktop Threaten Linux?"
A: No.
The concept of Apple-on-Intel threatening Linux might be valid if Linux was a commercial operating system, sold by a company whose market share and profits might suffer if Apple were to compete successfully against them.
But it isn't.
You can't threaten Linux. If Red Hat and all the other Linux companies were to drop Linux and switch to something else, if Dell, IBM and all the other box suppliers stopped supporting Linux, if all the hardware manufacturers who currently provide Linux drivers for their products all stopped supporting Linux, it still wouldn't be dead. You'd still have people like Torvalds and Cox writing code in their spare time and there'd still be geeks downloading Linux and installing it on old PCs.
Giving people an alternative to Linux isn't a threat - it's a choice. It's freedom of choice and freedom is what Linux is all about.
More and more, we see articles and talk about Linux's market share, whether it's going to be successful on the desktop, whether it's going to be able to compete against Windows, against Solaris, et cetera, et cetera, et ad infinitum cetera.
Linux doesn't compete against Windows, MacOS X or Solaris. Linux vendors, like Red Hat, compete against Microsoft, Apple and Sun. Linux just is. The fact that it's supported by various companies is great but it's not essential for Linux survival. The fact that the amount of people and companies using Linux is huge and growing is terrific, but it's not essential. If everyone, right up to and including Linus abandoned Linux, I'd still be able to dig out my Red Hat CDs and install it on an old PC.
This article is just typical of /. these days - it's a stupid, hype-ridden question, which hundreds of clueless fuckwits will comment inanely on, wasting bandwidth and electrons.
Wake up and take your heads out of your asses.
D.
..is for Don't. Be so. Fucking. Stupid.
The only Linux this is a threat to is Yellow Dog.
Apple are staking their entire company on OSX not being pirated to other x86 platforms. OSX will not support any non-Apple hardware, so it's not a threat, unless you count possible increased Apple market share due to lower prices.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
This is dead on imo. The situation isn't any different than before, Apple is still tying the OS and hardware. Linux is still free and uses (presumably) cheaper hardware.
This is a story for the sake of having a story.
Linux will continue to improve, but so will Apple; the question we need to ask is which one will improve faster in the GUI department. In this regard, my money is on Apple, simply because they have near total control over the user interface. They can stand up and say, "the behavior for X will by Y," and that's how it will work. Linux simply does not have this luxury. With Linux, you still have situations where applications work wonderfully with GUI A but have "quirks" if you try using certain features in GUI B, C, or D. Until there's a standard that desktop environment developers agree on and adhere to, you're going to have a fracured desktop experience.
Yes, in another few years, the Linux GUI will quite possibly be as "good" as the Apple GUI is today. You're fooling yourself, though, if you think Steve is gonna sit back and say, "well, that's good enough." The real challenge for Linux GUIs will be to get better faster than Apple can--and I'm not sure they can, for the reasons stated above.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I realize this could start a 'flame war', but it surprises me how many Linux users just don't see why package managers are not the greatest thing since sliced bread for average users.
While you and others may go "wow!" at all the magical stuff apt-get does, the average user doesn't even know what dependecies are, nor do they care. And they don't want to care. On Mac, as "simple and dumb" as the OS X system is, it *just works* for everyone from grandma to geeks. A simple and dumb system is also, well, very easy to understand! Drag and drop your app into the folder. Easy. Nice. As for package managers, I've had to deal with scenarios where I had to muck with the package manager configuration to get it to install packages for me, and I've had to "add URLs" to the database at which time I was warned about "untrusted sources" (the average user is NOT going to grok all that). In fact, when the average user sees "no results" from the database, they'll simply conclude the package isn't available and stop. I'm not sure how anyone thinks this is easier than going to versiontracker.com/apple.com/etc. and just downloading a file (or popping in a CD), then dragging the app into the applications folder.
If you doubt me, have someone do usability research on package managers and drag and drop installs, and see which is, on average, easier for users to understand and get working with. If you really think package managers like apt-get will come out ahead, then you must spend a lot of your time on the computer and deal regularly with others like yourself.
If you really want the Linux desktop to succeed, you have to question why lots of people are switching to Mac instead of just 'bashing' anything that is not as complex and elegant as apt-get. Call it dumb, call it simple. I call it a solution that works, and considering Macs are seeing a 40% growth this year, so do a couple other people as well.
As someone whose tried every Windows from 3.1 to XP, close to a dozen Linux distributions (including Debian and Ubuntu), and OS 9 and OS X, I have to say application installation and removal on Mac blows the others away. It works and it's brain-dead simple, which means I spend more time doing real work than fooling around with installers and packaging programs. Good luck on converting the world to apt-get, though.
If they should not have to be root and not even have to type in some form of confirmation that yes, I want to add this PROGRAM to my computer, what?
This is how windows has worked for ages and it's the most common way to own a system - it's so incredibly easy to install something, just click and bang and we own u.
It's not hard to type a password when installing an app. It tells the user they are doing something to alter the fucntionality of their machine and it tells the machine this is what the user wants to do.
What makes you think Apple will get rid of Open Firmware?
What interested me most about Symphony OS is that he put togther a bunch of mock-ops and explanations about how things worked, before coding.
It seems to me that we're moving towards a specification-based development model. Even some of the GNOME guys are talking about making GNOME a ''specification,'' rather than a particular ''implementation.''
If we can do this, then it's a great thing, because it means we'll have the basis of a not-just-coders development model. We'll have something where the body of developers are separate from the body of designers. This leads the way for even more decentralization, which is exactly what we need: Right now, the developers are the bottleneck in pretty much all operation. There is very little separation of work, except for website maintenance.
The more we can make clusters of people working on specific tasks, with well defined roles, the greater we can scale this Free Software thing.
An advantage is no advantage if you are losing power to make a computer efficient in computing.
True, PowerPC chips were competitive against a similar x86 processor--oh, about 3 years ago.
Now, because IBM can't or won't improve the specs, PowerPC chips are outstripped. And Jobs saw that happening--FIVE YEARS AGO. That's foresight. He wants to keep a Mac at a comparable speed and performance to that of his competitors.
PowerPC chips WOULD still advantagous IF IBM would have a 3.2GHz chip for Apple's desktop ONE YEAR AGO and IF IBM had a 2.5GHz mobile G5 ONE YEAR AGO. Apple had a choice of being left behind or shopping around. Intel, for all its faults, is a strong chip maker that doesn't have their hand in many other projects to distract them. They power some of the faster computers in the world, and are happy to work with Apple for two reasons.
One, AMD is a serious competitor. And two, they hate the rep they have that all of their chips are piss poor, when the blame needs to go to the Windows operating systems that drive the majority of them AND the old IBM clone architecture still used on PCs today that limits their chips. We know that Linux works fine on x86, so we can expect that standard at the least with an Mactel system. But I expect more because that is Apple's wont.
Imagine a PC mobo without the BIOS and legacy limits, high bus speed, and running an OS that doesn't inhibit the processor's performance or require ancient hacks to work with new hardware. That very computer might be a Mac in two years. We'll see.
Time and again it has been said: putting an x86 chip doesn't mean a Mac's architecture will change dramatically. It might change for the better since Intel will aid Apple in making a mobo spec that really, really uses the processor to its fullest. It's what we expect from Apple, but we'll have to wait for the goods to be sure. In the meanwhile, my PowerBook is fine, my G4 is fine, and I look forward to a future that looks a hell of a lot brighter than it did when a 3.4GHz Mac of any kind did not exist.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Installing a program involves installing system files
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
This is why you have to reboot after you install many Windows applications. Why in gods name do many developers think they must put their glorified DLLS in my C:\winnt\system32 directory and modify the Registry into the high heavens (or pits of hell depending).
If you need to use parts of windows use the ones that come with windows library or ask the user to install it (like Direct X 9) and not overwrite it for them.
For gods sake man! You don't know what other program is using that DLL if you overwrite it. This is why one must format their hard drive after installing and uninstalling programs after a given amount of time in windows.
Programs should remain independant of the OS and make calls to it when it needs to. Programs should not modify the OS!
BTW this is not a common pratice on Mac OS X.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Plus using the GUI package manager built on top of APT was incredible easy. Simply point and click and I installed MySQL, Apache web server, PHP4 (with mysql support), mod_php, and phpmyadmin. All the installs took literally seconds and all wored first time out of the box. Oh - and all the apps are Free Software.
What makes Apple better isn't necessarily the GUI so much as the ease of use. If the linux community keeps making things this easy, then I think that will be what makes the difference.
21st-Century-Citizen
No application uninstall operation should ever delete user data, including user preferences. For a consumer oriented desktop, asking the user isn't an option because they probably won't understand the questions, if they even bother to read it. The right this to do is to have removal of an application and user data as two separate actions that the user might choose to do. At it's best, OS X has the right approach. It's just not consistent enough across all apps.
The preferences issue is not really so much an issue, as a 'thing'.
.dll
By this I mean that throwing away an app doesnt clean up its (usually) one small pref file, isnt really a big deal, as in comparison to the windows registry. The registry is actively 'marketed' as the place to keep application prefs. IMHO its insane to keep user application prefs in a system structure that is loaded into memory at boot time. On top of that many apps that have installers dont do a good job of cleaning up after themselves.
So you have a branch in a system structure that make a user cry, and isnt recommended that they access to clean up, that is loaded into memory for apps that may no longer exist.
*OR*
Usually small pref files in the users home directory that are named for the app that they came with that are sitting unused on big secondary storage devices.
I'll gladly take the latter of 2 evils.
The rest is valid, sorta. Most things do not install kexts, Drivers for hardware, are well drivers. they arent loaded unless needed. That only becomes an issue if there is a compatibilty problem with a old diver version, and with something like printers reinstalling overwrites. As for prefpanes, most (not all anti virus for example) are things that users tend to isntall manually, and they have instructions on where to put them. If someone cant figure out how to reverse.. well *shrug*
And the extra bonus is that all of these things are generally in well named folders so you know what to expect in there. While its not really automated; and not exactly trivial; its still a far cry from a nameless xxxxxxxx.scr or
Now that is truly a heroic reach.
You mean to tell me, that dragging the application's icon to the trash is somehow less logical to you than locating a Control Panel that will 'teleport' it off your system?
'Single-click' = click icon, drag to trash.
'many-click' = click Start, click Control Panels, click Add/Remove Applications, click down scroll arrow to desired app, click app, click Remove.
Look, the Add/Remove thing is stupid. There is no good reason in this day and age that the OS cannot figure out what I want to do when I drag an app to the trash/bin.
And you are wrong about 'traces' of an app - the only thing left behind is the .plist file, which is all of 4k.
There are good things to pick on in OS X, but application installing/de-installing is not one of them.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
A user should never want their preferences deleted. Even an application with thousands of savable options will use so little disk space that it doesn't even matter, and of course if the user ever did want the application back (perhaps he was merely upgrading manually), his preferences always Just Work.
You think users should have the option to delete them, and they do have that option. Preference files are always stored in the same place. If you really did want them deleted, you would know where to find the file. My grandma, on the other hand, has no idea what a preference file is, doesn't care whether it's deleted, and certainly doesn't care where it's stored.
Main point here: deleting preference files certainly isn't the drama you would like others to believe. I believe that's called FUD, or perhaps you just have never had any real experience using app bundles.
Moof.