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."

Comments

Beautiful

[AKAImBatman]

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.

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 .APP application scheme, and IOKit interface which tracks files by INode instead of path.

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!

Re:Beautiful

[Bruce Perens]

Thanks for going into depth.

This seems to boil down to an argument that cathedral-style management of all APIs relevant to third-party applications is necessary if they are to work. Certainly they will be made to work more easily that way.

But from a standpoint of supporting a diverse ecology of software producers and lots of competition, the cathedral isn't the most desirable structure. It seems that when one pays a draconian cost (central control) to solve smaller problems (package dependencies, file locations), it might not be the best deal in the end. I'm still endeavoring to provide a better solution to this problem.

Bruce

Re:Beautiful

[AKAImBatman]

If I may be so bold, none of the "issues" leveled against the OS X APP system are inherent deficiencies in the design. For example, there is nothing that prevents a Linux APP design from adding installer/uninstaller hooks. And most installers on OS X are used for either upgrading system components (via auto-update), installing Unix components (which can't be APPed), or to manually build an APP from a highly compressed archive or tailored to the system. Nothing actually prevents such installers from being APPs themselves.

I honestly have never understood this hostility toward the APP scheme. It's a good scheme, that actually *works*, as opposed to packages that constantly *don't*. Yet OSS developers just keep sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming "I can't hear you! La la la! I *like* having a completely unremovable mess of files across the entire system! La la la! I *like* the fact that I'm screwed if my package database should every get lost or corrupted! La la la!"

It's just a... weird... reaction.

Re:Beautiful

[Dcnjoe60]

You are mixing apples and oranges. You are comparing packaging systems using the command line in Linux but using the gui interfaces of Apple or Windows. Shouldn't you be using Synaptic for a fair comparison? At least that way, you don't have the problem of not finding the package, because it's in the list you are picking from.

Next, you complain that the debian packages are very often out of date, which is true, however, you confuse the issue of debian as distribution versus the way debian packages work. In otherwords, you are confusing one organizations implimentation instead of the actual methodology.

Along those same lines, when you complain about packages being out of date, again, they are, in the Apple or Windows world, with commercial software, how often do new updates come out? I'm not aware of anyone running Office 2005, so you could say that Office is also out of date.

Most of your complaints seem aimed specifically at debian itself. There are other debian based distros that have solved many of these.

One final comment, I am assuming that you are the sole user of your computer and it is at home or a small business, because you complain about having to become an admin to install software. Well, in most businesses, that would be a plus, because you don't want joe-worker to be installing whatever he pleases. At home, too, it is a plus, I don't know how often the kids have downloaded and installed something that broke Windows. However whether OS X, BSD or Linux, you could always enable sudo for the users you trust not to screw up the system and thus mitigate the problem. I believe that is the approach that OS X took, along with several of the debian based distros.

Re:Beautiful

[MostlyHarmless]

What do you do with something like OpenOffice.Org, then, which requires about 10,000 dependencies? Should each GTK+ application come with its own statically linked copy of GTK to be carried in memory separately for each app?

The natural response, of course, is to say: "no, that's an unnecessary reduction ad absurdum. We can just declare (by some means similar to the LSB) that all applications must use GTK+ 2.4."

But then what do you do six months down the road when you start to see applications written for GTK+ 2.6? Now, either you have to convince every application developer to stick with 2.4 (unlikely); distribute those applications statically linked (ugly, see above); or explain to your users why they have to upgrade to the next version of your distribution to run what they want to run.

Given that sort of choice, I'd think most users and developers would rather work on making packaging systems more friendly instead of abandoning them altogether.

A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma...

[Adrilla]

Interesting. An advertisment, disguised as an Apple article, disguised as a Linux topic. Interesting.

Only if

[Kilz]

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.

x86 != PC

[FidelCatsro]

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 )

Threaten how?

[solios]

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.

How can ANYTHING "threaten" Linux?

[The Dodger]

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.

Simple, dumb, and easy :-)

[kollivier]

Now, take Debian's package system: it handles dependencies, version conflicts, alternative packages that serve the same purpose, etc, etc, ec. And it is absolutely easy: an apt-get install xyz installs/updates package xyz and all the necessary shared libs, updates file associations, whatever (and it does not takes exactly rocket science to create some GUI for that single command line).

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.