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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."
Both of the aboves gives you a pretty good summary of why Debians way of handling packages isn't really any good in the long run.
No, both of those are asinine examples of stupid assumptions and bad behavior, and don't show any "problems" at all.
First of you can't install a application as a user, now how stupid is that? If *I* want to install a bleeding edge version of Gimp, I neither want to bother the admin with it nor do I want to force it an all the others users, yet Debian requires me todo exactly that.
You jackass. It's called some semblance of security. Allowing any user to install things is a Bad Thing, and even a properly locked-down Windows box won't allow this these days. You want to have some control over what can and can't be installed; if you want somebody to be able to install things, you grant them permission, either by letting them su or by giving sudo access. The latter you can do 1)requiring root's password, 2)requiring the user's password, or 3)requiring no password at all. Your choice. Quit your bitching.
Secondly Debian packages work great, but only for stuff that is in Debian, which might be a lot, but is *far* from everything and its also often *way* outdated
Debian is not a mainstream desktop OS. Go get Ubuntu, which has the same packaging system and basic system design, but much newer packages and a better desktop setup. And quit your bitching.
And this bullshit about "Could not find package xyz"? So, you're complaining because to install something, you need to know what it's called? I mean, seriously......you don't think it's reasonable to ask the user to know the name of a program? Well, ok, fine....apt-cache, and all the apt-get frontends, allow you to search both names and descriptions. So quit your bitching.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
If Apple did have an Intel desktop, it would be quite interesting, as programs made for other x86 OSes could then be made to run on OSX. Imagine, for example, if there were a small compatibility layer, akin to what allows FreeBSD to run Linux binaries, that could run Linux x86 binaries on the Mac. Even cooler still would be the possibility of a Mac OS X compatibility layer in Linux that would allow, for instance, to run Mac-only applications in Linux. The same compatibility layer, made with knowledge of Darwin internals, could allow a Linux system to run the Aqua user interface and other Mac-specific codes. A Mac system on x86 would result in lots of cool hacks that allow you to "install" portions of OS X into your Linux distro via shell scripts that pick and choose the proper files and then bend, fold, spindle, and otherwise mutilate them.
I think that for these reasons, Apple has continuously used the incompatible (and more powerful) Motorola processors. It would not be good for their business if other OSes could run binaries made for their hardware/software combination. So, yes, the title of this article is somehow wrong.